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A Light From Behind. Petr Král in the 1980s

Publication |
2020

Abstract

In the late 1970s, Petr Král formulated the task of breaking with all the illusions of absolute foundations and goals (including those set out by the avant-garde, which largely inspired Král earlier) and to truly "inhabit the world", i. e. to exist "poetically". His thinking developed in poems as well as in essays tries to respond to this world, which is not based on anything solid, to wander through it looking to the horizon and to the Unknown behind it.

In the paper, I briefly introduce this phase of Král's thinking, I recall the affinities to some aspects of Hölderlin's work and to Martin Heidegger, and I point out that the emphasis on the mysterious unavailability of anything secure constitutes just one of the main facets of Král's work. (Another one emerges when an ecstatic fusion with the stream of things coming from behind the horizon lets one forget the unavailability of any permanent support.)