Nitra Symposium

In the introduction to our paper, we ask how it is possible to proceed during the iconisation of suffering in contemporary literature and whether it is possible to achieve originality and uniqueness at all when trying to depict it in the current social paradigm so that it catches the readers’ attention. We try to answer this question by interpreting a novel by a contemporary Czech author Markéta Pilátová called Tsunami Blues (2014). The novel is situated in an exotic environment, but a major part is played by music, namely the blues, not the exotic environment as might be expected. Blues becomes an intermedial mode of depicting the suffering of the story’s protagonist. In our paper we observe and name various types of intermedial references (to music) which participate in the depiction of the heroine’s heart and soul, her emotional world, attitude values, and manners of communication with the world. We conclude that suffering is iconised in Markéta Pilátová’s novel by using intermedial references, which makes the novel unique. The author models the atmosphere of the novel in a blues mood; she presents the protagonist’s musical language, her playing, composing and the effects music has on her in order to approach the naturalness of musical expression and intensify the reader’s emotional experience.