Between Nostalgia and Uncertainty: A Review of Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press)

Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press) was published in German in 1996 under the title Verklärte Nacht and was only recently translated from German into English by Anne Posten. It is the last completed novel by a writer of Czech origin who nevertheless identified herself as a German author.

Moníková, who died in 1998, was born in Prague and studied English and German at  Charles University’s Faculty of Arts in the 1960s. For her thesis, she received a one-year scholarship at the University of Göttingen in 1968, a landmark year that brought both the death of her mother and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. After meeting her husband, she emigrated to West Germany and lived there from 1971, teaching comparative literature at the universities of Bremen and Kassel. In the 1980s, she turned her full attention to writing. While her works often take place in Czechoslovakia and touch on elements of Czech history and mythology – Pavane für eine verstorbene Infantin (Pavana for the deceased infant, 1983), Die Fassade (Facade, 1987) – her novels received greater attention from Czech readers after her death. Transfigured Night (Zjasněná noc) only became available in Czech translation in 2009.

Others have also noted that the delayed attention by Czech readers to Moníková’s final novel may also be due to the book taking place during the early years of Czechoslovakia’s transition from a socialist state to a parliamentary democracy. When the book was published, Czechoslovakia’s transition would have been of novel interest to German readers; for Czechs still experiencing the transition themselves, the experiences of the book’s main character, Leonora Marty, may have hit too close to home. Through Leonora, Moníková depicts the changes occurring in Prague and Czechoslovakia’s transforming society, just before the dissolution of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia in 1992. 

The line between Leonora, the character, and Moníková herself often seems blurred.  Like Moníková, Leonora is a Czech national who emigrated to Germany after spending her childhood in Prague. The book centers on Leonora’s return to her home city, where she contends with memories of her youth and a new relationship with a German admirer, Thomas Asperger. A well-known dancer and choreographer, Leonora muses extensively, in intricate detail, on cultural topics and news events of the time, like the withdrawal of Soviet troops and Czech-Slovak political negotiations. These contemplations have a scholarly quality and, for those aware of Moníková’s academic background, they feel written in a voice close to the author's inner thoughts.

Leonora’s observations concentrate on the rapidly evolving changes in Prague, which she contrasts with the events of her youth. One night, as she walks through Strahov, she remembers performing in the Spartakiads, a Czechoslovak communist-era phenomenon that involved mass gymnastic demonstrations held every five years between 1955 and 1985. She “hears the cries of a thousand throats,” the collective cheer of performers and spectators alike, contrasted with the silence of the now-empty stadium. On another occasion, Leonora walks around the city center, newly occupied by Western tourists:

A Klondike mentality proliferates: the arcades in the center, which once housed movie theaters, are now full of imported trash, mass-produced goods from Hong Kong and Taiwan, artificially ripped pants with patches, grommets, and holes, jackets and jerseys with flashy sayings…A flood of plastic. The Russian mafia have claimed the best location, where they sell their Matrjoški, the pregnant dolls–who’ve lately begun to bear the faces of politicians–as well as heavy watches and military caps to Western tourists, who don’t have a clue and enjoy retrospectively creeping themselves out with the Red Scare. 

Leonora’s account of the “Klondike mentality” echoes those of many real Praguers who lived through this period. Speak with them and you will inevitably hear the 1990s described as the “Wild East,” a time of uncertainty and chaos when crime and corruption abounded as did excitement about the country’s future. Moníková captures these conflicting experiences: how Czechs – even ones who emigrated as Leonora and Moníková herself did – may have felt caught between nostalgia for aspects of life under communism, enthusiasm for greater contact and trade with the West, and apprehension about the trappings of capitalism. Another account demonstrates how seemingly mundane rituals, such as eating breakfast, could give rise to more complex questions about who stood to benefit in Czechoslovakia’s changing society: 

I make tea, eat half a yogurt – recently the stores have become filled with Western products, even dairy products, that all taste of thickeners and still are more expensive than the local wares. You have to get up early to get Czech yogurt – and the same goes for the newspaper and other necessities. How do the pensioners deal with these soaring prices?

One of the recurrent observations in the narrative concerns the negative aspects of the post-1989 transition in Czechoslovakia, namely that suddenly having more choice – in something as concrete as food products or as intangible as political expression – was not always a welcome change for some individuals. In the interviews I have conducted as an oral historian, this theme has popped up frequently in interviewee narratives. One of my narrators reflected that having more choices meant adding a layer of complexity to her life that she was not accustomed to. Under communism, “our line forward was much more straightforward,” she told me, whereas now, “we have a lot of options and choices so it’s really difficult to make correct choices."

While Transfigured Night offers a snapshot of one character’s experience in Prague in the 1990s, the book’s themes, particularly the uncertainty about capitalism, are still relevant today. In the city center, vendors continue to sell Matrjoški painted with the faces of famous actors and military caps sporting the hammer and sickle. When the city shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, talks of reviving the city tourist center to a more authentically Czech space – or at least one devoid of the proliferation of imported junk – were renewed. Moníková’s final novel, therefore, presents English-speaking readers with familiar questions to consider about the city and our future, even for those familiar with the country’s past.

Reviewed by Anna West