Abstract
The study begins by focusing on the romanticizing concept of "artificial fates" - an influential authorial myth which deflects our attention away from Hrabal's distinctive literary compositions and towards the twists and turns of his own life. Češka views Hrabal's proletarianism primarily as a stylistic figure. He offers a detailed analysis of the anthropomorphic and industrial metaphors in the early "epos" Krásná Poldi [Beautiful Poldi].