L’incertitude et le rêve dans le recueil Lelio de Josef Čapek [Doubts and Dream in Josef Čapek’s Prose Collection Lelio]

Doubts and Dream in Josef Čapek’s Prose Collection Lelio The goal of this article is to demonstrate that dream is not only a central theme in Josef Čapek’s prose, which is varied and developped by the author in Lelio, his prose collection from 1917, but is also a technique of modern art that the artist investigates. The main focus of the dream topic and the dream technique lies on the narratives Lelio (1914) and Rukopis, nalezený na ulici (1915). Searching for modern artistic approaches in painting and poetry Josef Čapek chooses techniques which enlight both, visionary and irreal aspects of the depicted objects. They radically differ from classical procedures in art. In Lelio, a text illustrating dream as an intoxicational state similar to death in Berlioz’ early version already, the alienated and unreliable perspective chosen by Čapek leads to uncertanity concerning all categories of the depicted individuals, objects and situations. The transgression of given borders of identity, materiality and mediality is creating an alternative duplex world. In Rukopis, nalezený na ulici Čapek developpes the theme of dream in a diffent way. He puts it as a shadow which depends on a source and compares it to the characters in a manuscript. Then he follows the literary tradition of Antiquity and its conception of „ eidola“, pictures composing a vision. In this tradition dream is understood as a picture which reflects its prefiguration. In Čapek’s text dream is a vision which enables to anticipate the future existence. The dream as a creative technique of modern art does not stand here for an illusion. It allows the understanding of the object’s true identity and leads to a truthful view of man and his world.