The paper discusses Tarski’s approach to quotation. It starts from showing that it is vulnerable to semantic inconsistencies connected with what is known as Reach’s puzzle, formulated in 1938 by a Czech logician Karel Reach. This fact gives rise to serious problems concerning the relation between the metalanguage and an object language. Moreover, the paper touches upon a historic aspect, pointing out that the problem at hand is discussed in the only paper signed up as Al. Tajtelbaum, i.e. Alfred Tarski’s original name. It argues that the puzzle reveals the importance of reopening the discussion on the understanding and limitations of deriving the metalanguage from an object language.
In the novel Seventh Autobiography, writer Ota Filip established a wide range of strategies for using quotes from archival documents from the State Security Archive. The writer attempted to respond to public accusations of his collaboration with agents of Czechoslovak military intelligence in the 1950s when he betrayed his colleagues who were planning to escape to West Germany. In the late nineties this scandal led to the writer’s son’s suicide and forced Filip to write his autobiographical novel to deal with the burden of guilt. By using this quotation strategy the writer was able to reassess past events from the perspective of his current position to follow his personal and artistic development and redefine his identity following this chain of traumatic experiences. Quotation also allows us to follow the gradual interlinking of individual autobiographical motifs in wider structures and to observe the relations functioning between them, which enable the autobiographical space of the writer’s literary work to be established. An important and simultaneous process in this context is the development of literary communication between the writer and the recipient of his novel. For the first one, this is an opportunity to share his personal experience and observe how it influences the process of dealing with the problematic past. The main goal of the article is to present the essential strategies for quoting from archival documents in the text of Seventh Autobiography. The author of the study particularly emphasizes the influence of quotation in the field of relations between the actual author of the literary text and the agents holding his security files in the past and the way the disproportion in accessibility of source material on the part of the recipient of the novel influences the process of literary communication. The final result of conducting analytical activities in these fields creates a broader picture of the writer’s methods for dealing with his experiences.