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The novel has a polyphonic structure. This is because of quite natural reasons rather than theoretical. Can a life be “read” without “reading at least one more throughout it? Can one experience the “other’s” story if it does not become “one’s own”? Or can “one’s own” become “other’s”? The three stories of the book flow into the same ocean, and the pre-stories and post-stories… And we imperceptibly and unconsciously adopt. This is how one adopts: stories, emotions, situations, ambiences, dialogues in the castle called Vešterka. Is there a more cult-like position than the sensual, emotional and intellectual openness: to the pre-story of the forbidden love of father Benjamin and Johana, to the fictional autobiography of the author, and to the recognizing of one’s own story in “other’s” stories. This is how the stories are “read” through each other. This is how they give meaning to each other and they “talk” to each other… Just as lives can comment each other. And in this way they give each other another meaning… But not with words. With life.
The parallel stories are not separate and independent worlds, which we follow on several screens. Thus show affinity to each other. The three stories elegantly and graciously intertwine as thee river mouths of a golden river braid. But there is only one key proof of this intertwining. This specific “physical” contact or channel between them is – an object. The knife is the artifact or the “bridge” between the stories. It “moves” from one story – to another.
But why should the people not be “bridges” through the centuries? The red haired (Internet) child is a possible shadow of the inquisition Johana, and they are a possible vision or a dream of the real girl. Just like the assistant, who is the possible echo of father Benjamin, and they are both maybe just an imagination of the author, who wished to become a character. The game of possibilities is endless, for there is a point in everybody’s life. You enter this point after you ideally “train” and finally – achieve your own life role, the one that you have set for yourself, as a homework. But it is this role – professional, private, social, contextual – that you wish to escape! Just as the author of this novel wished to publicly escape his role in this nook! Imagine that maybe somewhere there is a virtual advertising board, where we can change our roles under a code name. Not as a perversion, but as a possible game – as a new life.
This novel becomes such a possible, subtle advertising board for exchange of old “worn out” roles for new ones. A playground for adults! When the transfer can not take place freely and publicly. For there is also a punishment if you are not consistent to your own role and your own “dungeon”.
The novel gives us a new idea for a new life. Via a sophisticated playground and wisdom ground. The novel is a new gate to your new life. The life in which you choose again.
You even get to choose yourself… Or you eternally miss yourself…
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The novel is a rebus. The sentences and replicas – dialogize through centuries, emotions travel through centuries and they resettle, while the stories sympathize for each other and they intertwine. Philosophemas and parabolas – talk and polemize through stories, times and characters. These wise spots or “lakes” of wisdom ”grow” from the quite subtle “spots” in the novel.
Thus stories themselves make love to each other, this is how they get children. Try to motivate the stories to love and you will get – a new world, a new reality.
It becomes possible for the stories to fit into a mosaic, with us as its creators, And the novel-rebus is in a constant potential composition.
This is not a metapolemic ambiance is built, where the types of writing also polemize to each other. Everything is in a deep, genuine reexamining process, towards oneself and towards the others. There is internal polemics and commenting, not only in narratology, theory of literature, philosophy, etc.
There is a polyphony of authors. A multiplied narrative voice.
Where does the need of the author to become a character, the character to become real, the reader to turn into an implicit reader, and then into a new author, and the pre-author to get out of the book – and become a new reader come from?
The need to change places – is of course not a trendsetting postmodern trend, but an essential need of focalization. To essentially “re-locate”, “re-address” is one of the ideals of this endeavor. To “enter” the state of the other, and him to enter ours. Only then can we try the “taste” of his discourse, but also the “taste” of his emotions, thoughts, views, and sense his breathing and heartbeat.
Via a filigree of pluralism of styles there is a voluptuous polyphony of discourse. This is done via at least three types of discourse: narrative, essayistic and detection one.
The narrative discourse is made epochally shaky and touchy, “hosted” in the horrible medieval pre-story; from its “insides” the gentlest and warmest forbidden world of the father and the anathema – “the witch” grows. But just like that – a pure poetic “sky” fully “bursts” and “opens” above the novel… When the endless “poetry sky” opens above the novel – know that the most precious universe has opened! For it is the poetry that will dawn on you! This novel dawns with poetry! With poetry of love, a timeless poetry, where the loved ones seek for each other through the centuries. And just like that, you might recognize yourself, as already written or read, imagined once again, from your lost part, the one that we seek for in the centuries… I claim that you will feel the most loving addresses of centuries through the most loving possible love of Johana and Papa. The encounter of ideal roles, which transit through them – is fatally fierce, devastating…