A trickster as a quest for Self in B. Hrabal’s I Served the King of England

A social aspect of the trickster as ‘the reflection of mankind’

Social psychology and cultural studies see the trickster as ‘an expression of mankind’ (Radin, 1956: ix), specifically an expression of the process of becoming or Self-development (Henderson, 1988; Jung, 1956; Kerényi, 1956; Radin, 1956; Vizenor, 1993 [1989]). Radin (1956) defined the trickster as the speculum mentis of mankind, a reflection (or a mirror) of the mind. It is man’s attempt to understand the Self and the world, and ‘solve his problems inward and outward’ (1956: x). In other words, it is a reflection of one’s place and role in the world, and one’s relations to the environment. This corresponds both in form and content to the definition of the mirror developed by Lacan: a process of verification of ego and self-alienation that produces ‘for the subject … the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality’ (Lacan, 2004: 5). The trickster, thus, may become an enactment of the mirror-stage.

Existing literature on the trickster emphasizes its polarized nature, which makes it a twisted mirror or even an anti-mirror. A good example of such polarization would appear in the typical discussion of the trickster’s heroic or anti-heroic value (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009; Engelking, 2009; Kerényi, 1956; Veliká, 2012). The definition of the hero varies depending on the individual focus: the action (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009; Veliká, 2012), people’s projections on the image of the trickster or its acts, the purpose of the action, and the myth itself (Jung, 1956; Kerényi, 1956; Veliká, 2012: 112). Veliká (2012: 112) mentions that the hero finds what he is looking for or accomplishes his adventure. Cosset and Grafnetterová (2009: 164–97) showed that for Czech respondents in a sociological study on Hrabal’s novel I Served the King of England, the activity or passivity of the main character of the novel and the morality of his actions were the criteria that defined him as a hero (active, responsible, meaningful, kind, affectionate) or as an anti-hero (cunning, crafty, passive and disposed to conformism, arrogant, egotistical). These authors referred to Ladislav Holý’s (1996) archetype of a little Czech: the negative features represent collective traits in this individual little Czech, while everything great is embodied in the image of the Great Czech nation and its personification in certain historical figures and events (the First Republic, 1918–38, in particular) (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 171–4). Some authors defined a Czech character as described above as a hero representing remorse instead of an example (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 177).

The discussion of the social component of the trickster brings us to the question of whose reflection one sees in the end. As both the social and the individual represent a totality of multiple voices while reflecting the one, who is looking in this mirror, the trickster represents a relative (in comparison to the Other), relational (in relation to the Other) and a dialogical, if not a polylogical, form of a monologue. Jung (1956: 201) defined the trickster as ‘the product of a totality of individuals … welcomed by the individual as something known to him’.

This makes it attractive and understandable for any individual while becoming frightening and evoking a desire for distance from it, to look at it as an autonomous figure, not me. While laughing at his tricks, the audience will always remain uncertain of who is being tricked and laughed at. That can always be the audience (as in Gogol, 1951b [1836]: Act 5, Scene viii). That is why the laughter, as Radin (1956: x) noted, is ‘tempered by awe’.

The distance opens a possibility for an escape both from the social order (Hynes, 1997: ch. 13) and from the Self. Escape here is not oblivion, but a healing and liberating process of the reaffirmation of collective and individual values and meanings (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 45; Heilman, 1975; Hynes, 1997; Jung, 1956, 1988; Vizenor, 2005 [1988]). It raises the question of responsibility for individual, personal or communal action, and a question of belonging: being by oneself or part of a community and if the latter, what and where this community is. A trickster character, at a certain stage of its myth, is often unable to make his own decision and would typically follow surrounding advice – from a mother, patron, or a chance encounter (Henderson, 1988; Veliká, 2012). At the same time, it is he who is acting, following his own literal interpretation of advice (Kerényi, 1956: 181; Veliká, 2012: 114).

An activist aspect of the trickster’s nature

The social nature of the trickster as described above carries a call for an action as a quest for becoming. Acting is the trickster’s defining characteristic. Lüthi (Veliká, 2012: 110) stated that the absence of a name or the most generic name given to the traditional picaresque characters in many folkloric tales such as Jan (Johannes, John, Jack) accentuates the act of the character. In fact, discussing the mirror-stage, which, as stated above, may explain the nature and purpose of the trickster, Lacan (2004: 5) called it a drama: ‘action’, or ‘doing’ as translated from Greek.

What constitutes an act? Does it always imply a change? If so, whose change is it? Radin (1956) described several stages of the trickster myth and so of hero development (see also Henderson, 1988), which Jung defined as a ‘transformation of the meaningless into the meaningful’ (1956: 196). Veliká (2012) spoke about different picaresque characters, which due to their similarity to Radin’s stages of the trickster myth, could be considered a development of one character. In his discussion of myths, Kerényi (1956: 184–5) denied the possibility of a hero’s development. Referring to Emerson, he defined the hero as ‘immovably centred’ (1956: 184–5). His argumentation, however, makes it clear that he was referring, rather, to the unchangeability of the hero’s purpose, which does not really contradict the possibility for character development. After all, as Henderson (1988: 112) noted in his essay, a hero often dies when his mission is fulfilled, which becomes a symbolic act of the character having achieved maturity.

The trickster character is a form of metamorphosis (Kerényi, 1956: 188) as it (a) changes its forms; (b) re-establishes boundaries and order by abolishing them (Hynes, 1997: 207–8; Jung, 1956; Kerényi, 1956: 188–91); and (c) as a discourse, involves narrator, character, audience and language, endowing everything and everybody involved in it with trickster traits (Vizenor, 1993 [1989]). This absence of boundaries and forms makes it difficult to capture the trickster: his adventure may be both a reflection of the life quest and a parody of an eternal human quest (Veliká, 2012: 121–2). That characteristic, as Hynes (1997: ch. 13) argues, makes him a constant agent of creativity, transcending cultural and mind constraints, revealing the narrative ‘open-ended metaplay of life’, thus becoming a liberator (Vizenor, 2005 [1988]). That demonstrates the irrelevance of the questions that require a concrete, ‘closed-ended’ answer such as ‘Is the trickster a hero or an anti-hero?’ or ‘Did it succeed in his adventure?’ rather than instead testing existing social structures and the known Self.

Laughter, then, becomes an instrument or facilitator of this testing. Trickster’s slystupid actions (Kerényi, 1956: 180–1) create the necessary distance that facilitates the experiment. The fusion of enlightenment and entertainment adds a tragic tinge to the trickster image: ‘unseen tears’ behind ‘the laughter visible to the world’, as Gogol wrote in Dead Souls (1951a: 134). The open-ended nature of the trickster discourse and laughter as its visible part may also mislead: ridiculousness will remain the only part understood. In this case, it will provide an outlet for discontent for its participants, healing the Self and preventing it from changing, as proposed in the song ‘Harlequin’ (Barkas, 2012 [1975]).

As an initial stage of development of Self (for Jung, Kerényi and Lacan), a trickster figure is often compared with a child (Hynes, 1997: 209; Veliká, 2012: ch. 3). A child provides a significant comic and experimental potential by offering a naïve, simplistic, sincere and selfish (re)vision of the social order that stems from his basic needs. The child does not take responsibility for his actions, but lays it on the social order. Yet, his behaviour represents an alternative logic: as it is judged from the position of an ‘adult’ or normality, the ridiculousness of it is relative, and so is the status of a child. In The Dawn of Day, Nietzsche (1924 [1881]: 257, aphorism 280) wrote, ‘He who lives as children live – who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance – remains childlike.’ This reflects the nature of the trickster. The trickster remains childlike, but the hero of a trickster myth has to grow and pass through this childish stage to fulfil its purpose as a warning, an escape, a salvation and a therapy.

The trickster engenders the argument of the fluidity, relativity and constructedness of the taken-for-granted reality. When understood, it reveals our collective or individual Selves and demonstrates the possibility of changes (Hynes, 1997: 202–5). The consistency of the trickster character, despite the multiplicity and fluidity of its forms throughout folkloric traditions and times, may also imply the unchangeability of the human psyche and nature, or at least patterns of thinking, as Jung (1988) suggested. In this context, the development of the trickster character may serve as either guidance or remorse, or be both simultaneously. Remaining essentially the same, a trickster, if compared to the surrealist marvellous, acquires different forms for different generations; they will represent, however, only the fragments ‘of a sort of general revelation’ (Breton, 1972 [1924]: 16). Its temporary form dies when it stops ‘affecting the human sensibility’ (1972 [1924]: 16) and its eternal or overall message becomes annoying or kitsch, as happened with Hrabal’s work, for example (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009). An open end of the trickster narrative leaves the reader to decide what to do with the message.

Background: the Czech trickster tradition

The trickster figure has a long tradition in Czech folklore and literature, in which laughter and humour as irony or grotesque and absurd comedy became a national characteristic (Berka et al., 2013: 33–7; Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 36–46). Summarizing various studies on Czech (Prague) humour, Cosset and Grafnetterová (2009: 45) refer to it as a communal defence mechanism, ‘an expression of wounded sensitivity; or even a trauma of a small, intelligent people’ (Pytlík, 2000: 114, cited in Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 45). Many authors refer to the meaning of Czech humour in a similar fashion, as a survival strategy (de Bruin-Hüblová, 2004; Bryant, 2007; Buláková, 2012; Engelking, 2006, 2009). In this context, traditional trickster characters (stupid Jan/Honza, smart Jan, little Janko) acquire not only a general social but also a national meaning (as in Hašek’s Švejk). They offer hope for the upside-down dream world (Bryant, 2007: 222), where the great and intelligent people have power in their lands and their voice in world events.

It remained, though, an expression of the collision of two archetypes: a little Czech and the great Czech people (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 113–35; Holý, 1996). The Czech trickster fulfils the most ambitious quest for happiness (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009; Veliká, 2012) and, thanks to his ‘slystupidity’, manages to achieve what others cannot. He proclaims that ‘the secret of being happy is simple: not having any ambitions and not being in a hurry’ and at the same time ‘he who is stupid when it is necessary is also wise’ – the words attributed to Jaromír John (Svoboda, 2015). Or, citing the first lines from Hrabal’s novel I Served the King of England (2006: 5), ‘You are a little one here, so remember then! You did not see or hear anything here! … But also remember this: that you have to see and hear everything. Repeat that!’

The jokes especially addressed towards large and dangerous neighbours (the Germans in this case) often expressed resentment, revenge, gloating, shame, embarrassment and impotence (Bryant, 2007: 222–3). These feelings became significant in the formation of the Czech national consciousness that has mostly focused on the Other instead of the Self, preventing the Self from actual Self-development (see Golovátina-Mora, 2012). The novel I Served the King of England, as I argue, addresses this problem.

The I-narrative: an individual or a collective?

I Served the King of England (both the movie and the novel) is a first person or an I-narrative. ‘I’ is an innocent trickster, a small and quite an ordinary man with the most common Czech name Jan and the last name Dítě, or Czech for ‘child’. This puts the narrative in the context of the Central European folkloric picaresque adventures of the stupid/smart/little Jan (Veliká, 2012). The trickster character ventures into the world in search of happiness, meeting different people, and literally and sincerely following their advice.

This average representative of the land tells a story of the Czech Republic between the last years of the First Republic and the mid-1960s, summarizing stereotypical views on the neighbours, particularly Germans (Frankenberg, 1995: 175), as well as Self-stereotypes. The language of the narrative is the everyday people’s language, an improvisation (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 42, 46–52). The style, so-called ‘pub stories’ or ‘poetics of banality’, is both ironic and tragic (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 36–39, 41). The overall style of the narrative and the situations and scenes described make it a ‘national’ or a ‘typical Czech’ novel (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 15, 41).

Yet, as Porter (2001: 53) argues, details of Hrabal’s biography easily emerged in his fiction. But it is more than that. His personal experience gave birth to his style and is embodied in it. His major fictional works, his style of writing, ‘pábení’, irony, and, particularly, the novel in question hide fragments of the author’s essence; it becomes his inward escape as therapy or shelter. On various occasions, Hrabal spoke about his concurrent fear. His in-between, unclear, difficult to grasp position – neither an official voice of the regime nor an underground author (Porter, 2001: 52, 53) – proves a successful strategy for hiding.

The I-narrative of the novel imitates a personal narrative typical of memoirs, turning it into an eye-witness account of the epoch it describes (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 40–45, 88), thus removing moralization from the novel. It leaves it up to the reader or whoever becomes part of this narrative to see in it what they need and want to and do with it what they must. Hrabal (2006) ends his novel with a short afterword, which is one of many important keys to understanding the novel, and is unfortunately omitted in some translations (such as Wilson’s, see Hrabal, 2007). The author refers to ‘the fierce summer sun that heated the typewriter’ and a close relative’s death as reasons for this kind of psychography. He allows readers to interpret his work at their peril and lets any of his friends change it as they will. However, the post scriptum, where he mentions that the work was written under the influence of Dali’s memoirs and the Freudian concept of the slip of the tongue, alludes to the covert presence of the author, eliminates the fortuitousness of the said, and introduces the idea of the unconscious into the narrative. The I-narrative and the style of the memoir allow reflection of and on the present moment, representing an attempt to preserve it, as revealed in Jan’s monologue on maintaining the road (Hrabal, 2006: 136–42). In this way, the narrative form allows Self-expression and initiates a conversation with oneself (the author or character) and the reader. That opens a possibility for Self-interrogation or Self-realization, essential parts of becoming.

Pábení as trickster narrative

Hrabal’s style of narration, pábení, loosely translated as a stream of consciousness, is the essence of his trickster narrative. For him, it was ‘not only creative style … but also attitude to the world, others, Self, way of life itself … world view and means of communicating with it’ (Cinger, 2003: 8–9). Based on Hrabal’s definition of pábení (Cinger, 2003: 9; Porter, 2001: 55), it is:

The style itself implies an interest in the world and the Self in it, and in changing existing meanings, norms and structures. The stream of consciousness challenges conventional rules of syntax and punctuation, introducing new meanings to them. A full stop appears at the end of the thought. A new paragraph would usually mean a new apparently unrelated story. The narration breaks the conventional rules, but establishes what is really important, at least for the purpose of the narration or at the moment of narration. Pábení, thus, is a methodological protest within an apparent conformism.

In the novel, Jan Dítě ended up as a cestář (Czech for a road-keeper). Interestingly, a friend of Hrabal’s once described him as ‘a voluntary cestář’ (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 32). In his reflections, Jan draws analogies between the road and his life and defines it as the way of communicating with the world (Hrabal, 2006: 136–42). In summary, it is important to maintain the road on a daily basis without getting upset at the course of events. It is possible that others will keep the road too. In other words, it is essential to maintain and clean the meanings, an idea present in the semi-official intellectual and artistic discussions of the 1960s and 1970s in the socialist bloc (Golovátina-Mora, 2014). As Lach-Lachowicz (2007 [1974]) explained, ‘I destroy and fight those common and schematic experiences: seeing does not mean thinking.’ That is when literal understanding and interpretations, which are typical for the trickster, appear useful. This explains why Hrabal was called ‘a true translator of reality, never the creator of it’ (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 42) and an eye-witness of the epoch (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 88; Macholz, 2005: 19).

Irony as an existential promise of harmony

The ironic tone of the narrative makes an impression of a mere reflection, a mirror, rather than a judgement (Černý, 1994, in Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 41). This absence of judgement, in its turn, creates the possibility of an escape, and a soothing sense of freedom and intimacy. The political cluelessness of Jan Dítě and his naïve presentation of events allow the author to put him in various iconic situations and so proceed with the experiment the novel presents. This comic cluelessness emphasizes the real meaning of the content without the need for moralization. Moments such as Dítě’s in-passing comment on the swastika – four letter Fs put in a circle that suddenly appeared everywhere in the streets of Prague, his trip to the head of a concentration camp to ask if they have the mother of his friend, or Dítě’s inability to find his Sokol membership card when he wants to tear it in pieces, are some examples.

Hrabal called himself ‘neither an external nor internal emigrant, but the emigrant of the infinite and of the human eternity’ (cited in Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 89). This attitude evokes the feeling of inner or existential (životní) freedom closely tied to him as an author (Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 43, 89; Porter, 2001: 54–55). It was not exactly the apolitical position it may seem (e.g. Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 89), nor was it a cold, emotionless and impersonal narrative, as some respondents in the sociological study by Cosset and Grafnetterová (2009: 146–147) noted. It was a focus on humanity, but not an abstract humanity as a universal community; rather, it was a turn inwards to individual humanity, the individual and inner world, to emotions and fears. This universality or ‘human eternity’ was the eternity of inward movement and the eternity of a present moment.

Černý defined irony, particularly Hrabal’s irony, as the absence of illusions ‘about nobody or nothing, nor about ourselves or the significance of our deeds’ (cited in Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 41). The phrase, ‘humanity is an evil, stupid and vicious race’ often appears in the novel (Hrabal, 2006: 23, 130). This absence of illusions implies neither an elusive optimism nor a pessimistic fatalism. Its intention is emancipation through acceptance of life, nature and Self in it to acquire the feeling of inner freedom and harmony.

Jan Dítě’s company in the last part of the novel, when he lives in the remote borderland area, becomes a metaphor for this idea. His immediate friends are a dog, a cat, a goat and a horse. However, unlike Gulliver upon returning from his trip to the land of Houyhnhnms or Mark Twain in his alleged saying, ‘The more I know about people, the better I like my dog’, Jan Dítě enjoys their company as much as he enjoys the company of the villagers. Even when the villagers kill Jan’s dog, he forgives them after a week of mourning. After all, they killed the dog because they missed Jan and wanted him to return to the village to entertain and educate them with his stories, as he used to (Hrabal, 2006: 140). They did it out of their nature: to satisfy the need for social contact, or the need for bavení (Czech for self-enjoyment). Bavení is defined ‘as a metaphysical need’ (Hrabal, 2006: 139), through which – and only through which – one can teach anything to anyone. The purpose of the narrative of the novel, then, presents a satisfaction of this need. Through the bavení, he (the author? the character?) ‘not simply could see, but made it seen’, as Peňás (cited in Cosset and Grafnetterová, 2009: 39) wrote about Hrabal.

The narrative appears as a dialogue: each chapter starts, ‘Please pay attention to what I will tell you now’ and finishes, ‘Is it enough for today? I will end with that.’ It is inherent to a pábení: a monologue ‘spoken as rapidly as possible’, the spoken thought, ‘psychic automatism’ (Breton, 1972 [1924]), or the Lacanian truth of the speaking ‘I’. These forms of language, as Breton (1972 [1924]: 34) noted, ‘adapt themselves best to dialogue’. It saves the narrator just as Scheherazade saved herself in The Thousand and One Nights, eventually changing her listener into a better person.

Acceptance of life is the acceptance of the everyday and the present, not as abstract present, but the presence of the Self. In this context, the advice, ‘Remember that, with a little luck, life is so beautiful’, which one character gives to Jan Dítì (Hrabal, 2006: 18), acquires a new meaning. It is not exactly about luck. Beauty of life is seen, in the end, as the beauty in daily routine, as summarized in the last chapter of the novel (2006: 137). Accepting the Self right now and right here is the key to harmony.

Creativity as reconciliation with one’s Self

The trickster represents a collision of the desire for forgetting and the importance of remembering as Jung (1956: 202–9) suggested. Coming to terms with the present Self includes coming to terms with the past, which is essential for the future. That means the acceptance of individual responsibility for one’s actions, truth and work, which as Brenner (2008: 104) noted, became the essence of the new ethics and values of the Czech dissident intellectuals in the 1970s and 1980s.

The theme of responsibility for one’s actions finds its culmination in the image of Dítě’s mechanical son Siegfried, who does not appear in the movie. The son was a result of mechanical conception and not the result of individuals’ love, thought, passion or the essence of Self. He did not have the features of his parents, or the gods of Valhalla, on whom Liza Papanek, Jan’s German wife, was calling while conceiving, or of Wagner’s music that they were listening to in the process of conception (Hrabal, 2006: 91–2). Siegfried’s last name is quite symbolic. It is the German form of Jan’s last name – Ditie, which deprives the last name of its actual meaning (2006: 83), rendering it meaningless. It reflects the immediate importance of someone else’s opinion (maybe Liza’s, who was ashamed of the Slavic sound of his last name), instead of what was important for Jan’s Self. Siegfried was supposed to become a New Man of a New Europe (2006: 91), and he was ecstatic at the sounds of bomb explosions. His favourite and only toys were a hammer and nails. He is, in other words, an embodiment of the self-destructive tendency of a missing love that in an individual’s development, according to Freud, causes military conflicts and wars (Freud, 1918 [1915], 1961 [1930]; Einstein and Freud, 1933).

Ignoring the son and eventually sending him away to the orphanage represents repressed fear and guilt and causes ‘neurosis’. Jan hears hammering everywhere he goes, in all the rooms of the hotel he bought (Hrabal, 2006: 107–8) with the money he got from selling postage stamps that Liza brought from Jewish houses in Warsaw. Only when creating his own hotel that expressed his own style or his Self, when accepting his Self, did he make those sounds disappear.

This brings us to the trickster’s proposal of Self-expression and creativity. Self-expression, or Fromm’s notion of creative labour (Fromm, 1942) becomes a salvation for Jan (and possibly for the author and the reader). This idea is absent in the movie (Menzel, 2006). Being ‘the medium not just of popular culture but of populism in general’, as Brass (2000: 207) characterized the cinema genre, it focused on the group identity problems rather than the individual quest for identity, thus leaving out the dilemmas an individual faces in the process of their becoming. When focusing on the expression of the popular stereotypes of collective Self and its significant Others (Germans and Russians, or the socialist reality they engender), the movie reconfirms the belief in the collective Self and emphasizes the eternity of the nation (the great Czech people) rather than nationless individual values. In the very last episode of the movie, Jan is serving beer to another character. Beer is often seen as an unofficial symbol of the Czech Republic and its nation – its national pride (Berka et al., 2013: 56–60; see also the scene from Rebelové, directed by Filip Renč, 2001, when a beer moustache helps develop understanding between a daughter and a new female friend of her father). The last phrase in the movie is: ‘They serve a good beer here. This is where I’ll be coming.’ Then the camera zooms out, focusing on the main character finishing the mug of amber beer shining in the sun. The movie, just like the novel, does keep the idea of reconciliation with the past through communication and emphasizing what is essential. What is different is the symbolism and context. The last scene of the novel celebrates communication between the individual and the others in the image of the animals, villagers, memories of the past, readers and their creativity. It is both frightening and at the same time it is what an individual longs for (see Jan’s reflection over the cat’s behaviour, Hrabal, 2006: 141).

Self-expression is the essence of Self in the novel as a way to capture the presence of the Self: ‘The best person is the one who expresses himself best’, says a professor of aesthetics and French literature who is one of the authorities for Jan (Hrabal, 2006: 142). ‘To express’ literally means ‘pressing out’, or an external version of the original image (Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–13). The expertise of that professor is hardly a coincidence in the context of Hrabal’s reference to surrealism. According to the First Manifesto of Surrealism, ‘surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought’ (Breton, 1972 [1924]: 26). What is unbelievable for others becomes a reality for someone, which is one of the key lines of the novel. Through creativity, or pressing oneself out, one can preserve this reality and make it a reality for others (Hrabal, 2006: 142).

The trickster narrative serves best in bringing this idea to the reader. The trickster, as Hynes summarized (1997: 216), is a reminder that nothing can be richer than ‘the continual rediscovery of the unquenchable fecundity of all that truly is and can be’. The Self, then, is dynamic, evolving and perceptive, a constant source of creativity, exploring relations between the Self and the outer world. One’s imagination makes reality unbelievable, making visible to the one, what is unseen for the others (Hrabal, 2006: 140), as happens with Jan, who sees angelic wings of poet Tonda Jödl (2006: 23), crucified sleeves of flying laundry (2006: 26), his hut hanging on a chain from the skies (2006: 142), ghosts in the mirrors and the rivers, hears the hammer and even predicts the war with the Russians before others could see it (2006: 91–3). Who the trickster is here remains an open-ended question: Jan, who makes us see it with him; the author, who uses his imagination to make Jan see it; or the narrative itself, which inspires us to use our imagination in search for the true and honest meaning of the world and our Selves in it.

Coda: mirrors of becoming

Suppressing the Self and living the others’ lives prevents one from living a true life and being happy (Rogers, 1970). Paraphrasing this using Lacan’s mirror-stage, a literal or metaphorical mirror image (the specular ‘I’) gives us a false sense of being (Roseboro, 2008: 17). The novel is the discovery of the Self and mirrors are a symbol of becoming. In the end, Jan fulfils the transition from specular ‘I’, a false being, to the social I, from ‘thinking of ourselves as the centre of the universe … to understanding ourselves in relationship to others and the environment’ (Roseboro, 2008: 17), the symbol of which (Roseboro, 2008: 17) is the final kiss of his own image in the mirror (Hrabal, 2006: 144).

Every person, event and the narrative itself are mirrors for the main character (the author or the reader). All encounters with an actual mirror are aimed at reasserting the Self. The encounters in the first chapters represent a liking of what one sees: the reflection of the actual other – a girl from the brothel U Rajských (Hrabal, 2006: ch. 1), Jan’s reflection wearing a tuxedo at hotel Tichota (2006: ch. 2), his reflection at Prague’s hotel Paris, Jan’s admiration for the old headwaiter and an expressed desire to live his life, or Jan’s attempt to tie a perfect tie left by one of the millionaires and imagination of his life as one of them (2006: ch. 3). Reflections in the last two chapters are more critical of Self and represent a hating of what he sees. Yet, until the very end, Jan sees himself as a stranger in the mirror.

Individual value in the novel is relational: it is defined by the actions of individuals in relation to the other. Mirrors in the novel are imprints (Hrabal, 2006: 139–140) that allow the one who looks at them to see themself from different sides and judge what they see. Those are imprints of the past, present and future Self (an idealistic image or a dream). All are important in relation to each other and, particularly, in relation to the present Self. It is always someone else and yet it is oneself, which Jan realizes in the end. The novel ends with Jan’s thought: ‘they came to me, they were worried about me, because I must be of some value’ (Hrabal, 2006: 145). He focuses on the actions and affections of the real others, on his actions, relations with the others and how these affect the Self, not on how he looks. The actual fragmented Self scattered all over the narrative is reunited with the image and achieves its completeness.

The analysis of Hrabal’s novel suggests that social activism may not necessarily mean a direct address to a society, but a seemingly introverted discussion of an imaginary ‘I’. The trickster’s nature makes it a powerful instrument of testing the individual and collective Self. Because of its power, it only appears in a transformed and disguised form. It appeals to an individual mainly on the level of the unconscious. As in Breton’s concept of the marvellous, it cannot be understood completely, in its totality, and uniformly by everyone. Moreover, it will often be ignored and suppressed. However, appearing as an individual example of the construction of Self, the trickster carries the most powerful potential for social activism as it appeals to the only true source and guarantee of social change – an individual Self that is honest with itself.