THE TEXT OF THE PICTURES IN PÁL ZÁVADA’S NATURAL LIGHT

Abstract

The plot in Pál Závada’s novel, Natural Light, is set during World War II. The historical events are evoked through several narrative schemes, of which the most emphatic one is the multiplication of the narrative voices through voices of narrators and of characters who are also narrators. What contributes to the pluralization of the narrative technique is the fact that various genres are meant to evoke the past: diaries, letters and pictures, all these through multiple narratorial mediation. In the present study we analyse the role of the pictures. Our aim is to map out the medial reference points at which pictures become organic parts of the text, and to examine how these build up the grand narrative of the Second World War, also we highlight how these break down the one-sided exposure of the narration which allows Natural Light to offer the multidimensional cross-sectional view of the events.