Thoughts on "Utz" by Bruce Chatwin

This book was a joy to read. Published in 1988 and written between 1986-7, it is again a very short book. But the story spans from Utz birth to death. Even more broadly and vaguely, the book touches on topics from the 16th and 17th centuries. And everything is focused on the year 1967, the year before the Prague Spring. The story ends round about 1974, after Utz's death.

It was the last novel which Chatwin wrote, before his death in 1989, just before the fall of the Iron Curtain. I found it curious at first that Chatwin even wrote a book about the Cold War. He was a traveler and a collector but not associated with the Cold War in the way that other authors such as John le Carre or SolzIt ihenitstyn were, either as an instrument in or oppressed by etc. Chatwin seemed to me to be an unfettered individual, bisexuality being of the key themes here, not tied down by his marriage or by location. He'd held a number of jobs, including the chief curator at Sotheby's in London for a good few years, and at a young age. He read widely on his interests but never completed university. He found academia too stifling and quit Architecture. For a while, he even threw off all the paraphernalia he had accumulated in the years after he returned from a sojourn to Sudan. There, he realised that there were peoples who lived day to day, without a great care for material objects, much less collection.

In the novel, Utz is very much the opposite. He is an intellectual being and an authority on Meissen porcelain. He is landed and wealthy and possesses connections beyond the Iron Curtain. He keeps a servant.

But he lives in Prague, in a dingy flat. He cannot leave - he is tethered, physically, by his porcelain collection. One character, a "nobody" in the book makes the statement that it was those who never spoke out against the regime were the ultimate heroes, as opposed to the emigres etc. I suppose one might draw parallels with Milan Kundera here as well. A certain contempt for those who went to the West, forsook their home country and built a monolithic picture of Eastern Europe. Those who instead ignored the repressive regime and carried on life as normal as possible - whose silence was the ultimate act of contempt towards the regime - should be remembered.

It is an interesting concept and one must remember that actually, most people could not leave East Europe. It was their home. Otherwise, if life in the East was as deprecating and poor as is made out, Europe would have experienced vast waves of emigration to the West. Check points would have groaned under the hordes of people waiting to be admitted to the new life and freedom in the West etc.

The novel itself chronologies the life of Utz until his death and how he negotiates himself, his own ideals (if any at all) and his collection with the regime. Utz is portrayed as having no innate ideology and perhaps embodies Czechoslovakia - a supple resilience.