John Macquarrie, Existentialism, Harmondsworth, 1972, p 204.

Epidemic parabolizes conformity and alienation in a Paralesque style. Petfield (a small suburban town, which may be a parody o f Hostovsky’s adopted home in America, Pittsfield) represents the nadir o f Hostovsky’s depiction o f alienation. It is difficult to travel to other places from Petfield since it has poor transport links. We leam fi'om a drinker in the local bar that nobody in the town has fnends there. The name of the bar itself, ‘Ozdravovna’, appears to be satirical since those who frequent it appear to be suffering from a general torpor rather than recovering from illness: they are uninterested (save for marking the event with another drink) in the sudden death in their midst of the aforementioned drinker. Josef Martin lives a wholly unauthentic existence in so far as he has lost the ability to think for himself. He is so obedient to the company, Lumitex, for whom he works that he has never taken any holidays, has never opposed any of Lumitex’s immoral business decisions and has no passions beyond an interest in vacuum cleaners. His servility obstructs him from seeing through his boss Fitzpatrick’s unctuous manner to the ruthlessness beneath, so that, even when he is sacked, Fitzpatrick manages to make him feel that the company have acted in his interests. Hostovsky draws attention to Martin’s lack o f originality in the way that Martin assiduously stores in his mind empty slogans spouted by Fitzpatrick or banal aphorisms shared with him in ordinary conversation, his mimicking of other’s gestures without having the slightest idea o f what they mean, and his generally derivative behaviour (in the bar he observes what the sergeant is drinking, and then orders the same). Martin’s home life is stultifyingly dull and mechanical. On Mondays and Wednesdays, his mother-in-law Brownova and his sister-in-law Barbara join Martin’s family for dinner, on Thursdays Barbara comes on her own, and on Tuesdays and Fridays Brownova comes on her own. Martin follows a strict routine in the way that he kisses them all, and together they all routinely ask questions but have no interest in any answers.

The artificial bird in perpetual motion over a glass o f water, which Martin buys as a gift for his ungrateful daughter, emblemizes Martin’s own existential fate. The advertisement for the toy mechanism, ‘Perpetuum mobile? Hadejte, v cem je tajemstvi nepretrzitého pohybu toho chytrého a sfastného opefence’ (E, p. 234), invites the observer to unravel the riddle of how this ‘bird’ keeps moving, although the hyperbolic language barely disguises the banality o f the

‘bird” s repetitive motions, suggesting Martin’s automaton existence. The epithets ‘chytry’ and ‘st'astny’ incongruously describe the emotions of an inanimate object, and the reader is similarly aware that, transferred to Martin, these epithets are no more apposite and acquire a further irony through Martin’s insensible contentment once he has surrendered to his inauthentic existence. The fact that the bird is described an an opefenec may intimate that it is naturally built to fly, although we know that its artificial form determines its state as earth-bound; similarly, Martin should be metaphorically capable of spreading his wings (in terms of thinking freely, spontaneously, willingly) but is imprisoned by his internalization of external constraints upon his ‘flight’ — he cannot muster the strength of thought to lift himself from the ground. In terms o f Hostovsky’s treatment of the death theme in Epidémie, the bird’s perpetual motion mimics alienated man’s journey through a life which consists in existing; existing is in itself meaningless, however, since Hostovsky suggests that in order to be vital man has also to know that he is to die.

The post-war protagonist is also passive, indeed his impotence (in the broadest sense) is a symptom o f that passivity. He frequently describes himself as a spectator of, rather than an actor in his life. Pûlnocm pacient begins with Malik describing his degenerative fatigue: he has not suffered too much, for problems and worries have ceased to appear acutely urgent to him, and he is not so apathetic that he is insensitive to what goes on within and around him. He appears, however, to have surrendered control over his life: ‘Ma tehdejsi stmulost spocivala v tom, ze jsem se stal ve svém vlastnfm zivotë z herce divakem, ktery nemâ zadny vliv na zapletky a feseni dramatu’ (p. 11). The source o f the protagonist’s passivity is partly personal and narcissistic: by burying guilt and humiliation which riddle his past, he would like to believe that he has done well for himself. The protagonist’s passivity is also, however, representative of a universal lassitude connected to the reductive politics o f the ruling powers. Nezvéstny begins with a depiction of Brunner’s passivity as representative of a whole society’s willingness to give up on life: he looks around him on the tram and sees ‘jen tvafe znavené, bytosti do sebe pohrouzené, vyrazy rezignace, unavy, nevyspalosti’ (p. 11), while people on the street march in two opposing currents around a half-empty shop-window, ‘beze spechu, bez zajmu, bez d ie ’ (pp. 11-12). The population awaken from