Literary Excerpt: Vladislav Vančura

Vladislav Vančura (1891–1942) is, by wide agreement, the most self-conscious stylist in modern Czech prose. His novella Rozmarné léto ("Capricious Summer", 1926) is famous precisely for a style that fights against ordinary speech: deliberately inverted word order, revived transgressives (přechodníky), archaic verbs and diction, and long balanced periods that sound as if translated from a Baroque sermon. The comedy comes from the collision of this lofty register with a trivial provincial plot. For an English speaker the lesson is profound: Czech literary style can defamiliarize on purpose, reordering the clause and reviving morphology the modern standard has abandoned — and because case endings keep every grammatical role transparent, the sentence stays parseable no matter how far the words are shuffled.

The verified opening line

The novella begins with the bath-house keeper Antonín Důra pronouncing, with mock-solemnity, on the cold weather:

„Tento způsob léta," děl vposled, odvraceje se od přístroje Celsiova, „zdá se mi poněkud nešťastným."

"'This manner of summer,' he said at last, turning away from the Celsius apparatus, 'seems to me somewhat unfortunate.'" Three archaisms are packed into one sentence, and they are the whole Vančura recipe in miniature.

Děl is an archaic verb of speaking — the past tense of díti ("to say"), long dead in ordinary Czech, where you would say řekl or pravil. Vančura resurrects it for gravity.

Odvraceje se is a present transgressive (přechodník přítomný) of odvracet se ("to turn away"), agreeing here with a masculine singular subject: "(while) turning himself away". This non-finite form expresses a simultaneous accompanying action — English "turning away" — and by 1926 it was already felt as bookish; today it is essentially confined to high literary style and set phrases. See The present transgressive.

Vposled ("at last, finally") is an archaic adverb for modern nakonec / konečně, and the trailing placement of zdá se mi poněkud nešťastným — with the instrumental predicate nešťastným pushed to the very end after the interruption — gives the whole utterance its stiff, ceremonious fall.

Marked word order (illustrative passage in Vančura's style)

The following short passage is illustrative — composed in Vančura's manner, not a quotation — so we can annotate the inversions safely:

Přišed k řece, spatřil kouzelníka, an rozkládá své stany. I pozdravil jej pln obdivu, neboť muže takové postavy neviděl dosud nikdy. Odpověděl mu cizinec zdvořile a, usmívaje se, podal mu ruku.

"Having come to the river, he caught sight of the magician (who was) pitching his tents. And he greeted him, full of admiration, for a man of such build he had never yet seen. The stranger answered him courteously and, smiling, held out his hand."

Look first at odpověděl mu cizinec — "answered him the stranger". The verb comes first and the subject last (V–O–S), an order impossible in English and marked even in Czech, where neutral order is subject–verb. Why is it still crystal-clear who answered whom? Because case endings pin the roles down: cizinec carries the nominative ending, so it is unmistakably the doer; mu is dative, unmistakably the recipient. The words can be reshuffled for rhythm and emphasis precisely because morphology, not position, marks grammatical function.

Contrast the neutral order to feel the effect:

The fronted object in muže takové postavy neviděl dosud nikdy ("a man of such build he had never yet seen") throws the object to the front for emphasis — a device the modern language still uses, but which Vančura pushes hard. See Fronting and marked word order and Fronting and emphasis.

Transgressives, high and archaic

Vančura's signature is the transgressive, and he uses several kinds. Přišed (in the illustrative passage) is a past transgressive of the perfective přijít — "having come / after he had come" — expressing an action completed before the main verb. Usmívaje se is a present transgressive — "(while) smiling" — expressing a simultaneous action.

Both are non-finite: they carry no personal ending of their own but agree with the subject in gender and number, which is why the same verb yields usmívaje se (masculine singular), usmívajíc se (feminine singular), and usmívajíce se (plural). Getting that agreement right is the hard part; the mechanics are laid out in Transgressives in depth.

Archaic diction and the relative an

Two more archaisms mark the register as high. The little word an ("who / and he", introducing a vivid relative-descriptive clause: kouzelníka, an rozkládá své stany = "the magician, who was pitching his tents") is an old relative pronoun the modern standard has replaced with který + a finite verb. And i at the head of a sentence (I pozdravil jej = "And he greeted him") is the Biblical-narrative "and", quite different from ordinary coordinating a.

The short-form adjective pln ("full", instead of long plný) in pln obdivu is another literary touch, governing the genitive obdivu ("of admiration") — the genitive of the thing one is full of. On that genitive relationship see The genitive of possession and belonging; on the overall flavour, The literary–bookish register.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Vančura's style is deliberately defamiliarizing: inverted word order, revived transgressives, and archaic diction, all clashing comically with a trivial plot.
• Case endings keep roles transparent no matter how the words are reordered — cizinec (nominative) is the doer even when it stands last. This is what lets Czech front, invert, and postpone so freely.
• Transgressives encode a simultaneous (present: odvraceje se, usmívaje se) or prior-completed (past: přišed, přišedši) action, and they agree with the subject in gender and number. They are strongly literary today.
• Archaisms like děl (for řekl), an (for který), vposled (for nakonec), sentence-initial i, and short-form pln all belong to the elevated literary register — recognise them; deploy them only for effect.