Bloc experiments: The syllabus

From before the Soviet experiment, through its rise and decline, and into the present, a rich history in experimental literature has emerged out of Eastern Europe, inevitably tracing, caricaturing, mocking, and giving testimony to the complex social and political realities of the last century. While it is possible to outline different genres and subgenres within this broader constellation, the works discussed as part of this ‘Bloc experiments’ series circumscribe, in a general way, those more specific clusters, offering just an introduction to experiments in Eastern-European literature over the last century.

I’ve put together a “starter kit” of experimental literature out of former Bloc countries, which can be viewed (mostly) on this Bookshop shelf.

Below I offer a sort of syllabus for working through these works. The general idea is as follows:

• In part one, with Blecher and Schulz, we get a sense of experimental literature before the advent of the Bloc, and with Călinescu a later point of contact of sorts for this tradition.
• In part two, we get the bulk of the Bloc, as it were, exploring the grotesque tradition in Eastern-European letters during the Cold War, and necessarily expressive of the political, social, and existential reality of life behind the Curtain.
• Part three looks at three works right at the cusp of the Bloc’s disintegration, showcasing the experimental emerging in a less politically overt fashion as the Soviet experiment comes to its culmination and end.
• Part four focuses on contemporary, and fairly well-known, works by Krasznahorkai and Cărtărescu, hoping, by dint of the three-stage introduction, to cast new light on those works and their situation in the broader Eastern-European context.

Part one: First impressions

These are shorter works of a more straightforwardly experimental sort. If the history of experimental literature in Bloc countries were a game, this would be the starting position, with an emphasis on the instability of experience.

1. Matei Călinescu (Romanian, 1934–2009), The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter (1969).
2. Max Blecher (Romanian, 1909–1938), Adventures in Immediate Irreality (1936).
3. Bruno Schulz (Polish, 1892–1942), The Street of Crocodiles (1934).

Part two: The political grotesque

These books are more politically inflected, and grapple directly with the bureaucracy, surveillance, censorship, and ideological absurdity of the times. Grotesque exaggeration and paranoia figure alongside allegories of dictatorship and absurd humor.

1. S. I. Witkiewicz (Polish, 1885–1939), Insatiability (1927).
2. Witold Gombrowicz (Polish, 1904–1969), Cosmos (1965).
3. György Konrád (Hungarian, 1933–2019), The Case Worker (1969).
4. Bohumil Hrabal (Czech, 1914–1997), Too Loud a Solitude (1976 samizdat; official 1989).
5. Tadeusz Konwicki (Polish, 1926–2015), A Minor Apocalypse (1979).
6. Danilo Kiš (Yugoslav/Serbian, 1935–1989), The Encyclopaedia of the Dead (1983).
7. Norman Manea (Romanian, 1936– ), Compulsory Happiness (1990).
8. Herta Müller (Romanian-born German, 1953– ), The Land of Green Plums (1994).

Part three: Cracks in the Bloc

As the Bloc begins to crack, experimental fiction of a less directly political, and more overtly metafictional, playful sort emerges (or re-emerges).

1. Péter Esterházy (Hungarian, 1950–2016), Helping Verbs of the Heart (1985).
2. Milorad Pavić (Yugoslav/Serbian, 1929–2009), Dictionary of the Khazars (1984).
3. Dubravka Ugrešić (Yugoslav/Croatian, 1949–2023), Fording the Stream of Consciousness (1988).

Part four: Infinite Bloc

A sort of baroque, operatic, maximalist flood of experimentation appears at and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1. László Krasznahorkai (Hungarian, 1954– ), Satantango (1985).
2. László Krasznahorkai (Hungarian, 1954– ), The Melancholy of Resistance (1989).
3. Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian, 1956– ), Nostalgia (1993).
4. Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian, 1956– ), Blinding (1996).
5. László Krasznahorkai (Hungarian, 1954– ), Seiobo There Below (2008).
6. Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian, 1956– ), Solenoid (2015).