Volume 47, Number 1 · January 20, 2000
Life Is Beautiful
By D.J. Enright
Lovers for a Day: New and Collected Stories
by Ivan Klíma, Translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner
Grove, 229 pp., $24.00
'Lovers for a day': yet is 'lovers' the right word, and can the dust jacket be accurate in calling this a 'lovely' collection of stories, unless of course the word is used in some special, aesthetic, possibly ironic sense? The dates of Ivan Klíma's twelve stories have an obvious significance: the first five were written between 1962 and 1969 (and duly banned by the Czech Communist authorities), one of the remaining seven in 1987, and the other six in 1994. We are bound to look for differences between the two sets: Will love be more dangerous, anguished, valued, more 'interesting,' under political repression? Will love in a free society be serene, happier, if less 'inter-esting'? Surely happiness doesn't have to be uninteresting; or is this too much to ask, given human nature, or—more to the point—the predispositions of art in our time? Readers will feel whatever anticipations or apprehensions are natural to them.[1]
Review, 3106 words
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