Of Evil Loners / The Darkest Dungeon

Stories of wounded human souls and the drama of blind jealousy

In the early short story triptych Jozka, Forko and Pavlína — Žak — Rasík and the dog, first published in book form in 1913 under the collective title Of Evil Solitaries, Ivan Olbracht introduced various varieties of modern vagabond characters into Czech literature, following on from Uhro' s Bosáky, Gellner' s bohemians or Šrámek' s unhappy others. The plots of the stories take a back seat in favor of portraying " lonely" characters, outclassed, despised, the wronged and humiliated, which unites malice towards the whole world, to the arrogance and hypocrisy of petty-bourgeois society, which does not respect their individuality and denies them the right to personal freedom and human dignity. A different manifestation of " evil solitude" was captured by Olbracht in the psychoanalytic novel The Darkest Dungeon (1915), in which the hero' s frustration and social distance are caused by pathological jealousy, exacerbated by the accidental loss of sight. In their accompanying comments, the editors of the volume, Anežka Libánská and Michal Topor, focused primarily on the contemporary reception of individual prose pieces and the evidence of textual changes made by the author.