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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
In this article I propose to undertake a semiotic analysis of a novel by a contemporary Czech underground writer, Ludvík Vaculík's Morčata (The Guinea Pigs). A semiotic reading of the relation between the semantic and formal levels of the text is particularly rewarding because this novel combines features of several genres ranging from children's literature to the realistic novel and the surrealistic novel. This study is intended as a contribution to the analysis of the multileveled novel in general.
The Guinea Pigs is a unique modern blend reminiscent of the Latin American current of magic realism that we find in the works of Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Marquez. It is a highly experimental novel in which the author has reached the peak of his literary efforts thus far and includes himself in the tradition of the absurd, showing traces of dadaism and elements of surrealism and continuing the introspective existentialist line of Dostoevskii and Kafka, refreshed with a light touch of humor and an unpretentiously naive point of view reminiscent of Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk.
1. Vaculík, Ludvík, Morčata (Prague: Edice Petlice, 1973, and Toronto: 68 Publishers, 1977)Google Scholar, written in 1970. English translation: The Guinea Pigs (New York: Third Press, 1973; Penguin Books, 1975). Both translations by Kӑča Polӑčkovӑ. German edition: Die Meerschweinchen (Lucerne, Switzerland: C. J. Bucher, 1971). In 1976 The Guinea Pigs won the George Orwell Prize, awarded by Penguin Books to the best literary work commenting on social issues. The page numbers of quoted passages in this article correspond to the pages of the first English translation published by Third Press in 1973. I have occasionally adjusted the translation in the interest of greater faithfulness to the original. Two essays describing Vaculík's The Guinea Pigs have been published in Czech émigré journals: Pavel Tigrid, “Ludvík Vaculík: Morčata. Rukopis (1970),” in Svédectví, 2, no. 42 (1971): 333-45, and Ivan Pfaff, “Mas domácího odporu: Absurdita,” in Promény, 9, no. 3 (1972): 83-91. Part 3 of my article with E. Volek, “Guinea Pigs and the Czech Novel ‘Under Padlock’ in the 1970s: From the Modern Absolutism to the Postmodernist Absolute,” in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 37, nos. 1-2 (1983): 19-52, also describes the novel.
2. Vaculík, , Sekyra (Prague: Československỷspisovatel, 1968)Google Scholar, English translation: The Axe (London: Andre Deutsch, 1973).
3. Vaculík, Guinea Pigs, p. 15.
4. Ibid., p. 78.
5. Ibid., p. 17.
6. Ibid., p. 43.
7. Ibid., pp. 45-46.
8. Ibid., p. 2.
9. Ibid., p. 17.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 41.
12. Ibid., p. 110.
13. Ibid., pp. 117, 122, 136.
14. Ibid., pp. 110, 115, 134.
15. Ibid., p. 20.
16. Ibid., p. 136.
17. Ibid., p. 19.
18. Ibid., p. 37.
19. Ibid., p. 20.
20. Ibid., p. 52.
21. Ibid., p. 4.
22. Ibid., p. 118.
23. Ibid., pp. 134-35.
24. Ibid., p. 135.
25. Ibid., p. 136.
26. Ibid., pp. 148-49.
27. Ibid., p. 155.
28. Ibid., p. 167.
29. See Vaculík, , The Relations Between Citizen and Power: Contribution at the Czechoslovak Writers’ Conference, 1967 (London: Liberal Publication Department for the Liberal International [British Group], 1968 Google Scholar).