‘AN INFINITY OF PRAGUES’ John Banville’s Prague Pictures

Abstract

This article examines the aesthetic and political ideologies at work in John Banville’s 2003 work of travel writing, Prague Pictures. Approaching Prague as a perpetual outsider, Banville constructs an image of Eastern Europe as a mysterious, feminine, ancient and yet irresistible place. Banville’s search for the ‘essential’ Prague is simultaneously a search for the ‘authenticity’ of art. While the historical centrality of Prague in geographical terms and in European intellectual culture is emphasised in the book, the city remains for Banville indefinable and autonomous, a space to which he is attracted and from which he is estranged. The author suggests that in Prague Pictures we find a representation of Eastern Europe which runs counter to an EU narrative of a common European culture. In fact, in spite the end of the Cold War and the Czech Republic’s entry into the EU in 2004, Prague is aloof to the ‘Westerner’. Instead, the essence of the city, like an artwork, is imagined as timeless, autonomous and impenetrable. In this way, the author suggests that Prague is an important site for Banville to explore of authenticity of art and the art of authenticity.

Keywords:

• John Banville
• travel writing
• Prague
• otherness
• Cold War
• EU
• gender
• J. M. Synge
• aesthetic ideology
• authenticity