Edvard Valenta a jeho hledání cesty k pramenům umění
Edvard Valenta and his search for sources of inspiration in art

Summary/Abstract: Between 1957 and 1963 Edvard Valenta wrote the essay K pramenům umění (“To the Sources of Inspiration in Art”). In this never-published essay, deposited in the Literary Archives of the Museum of Czech Literature, he is concerned with the origin of a work of art, especially literature. Though not one of Valenta’s best works, the essay is a valuable source of information – both on Valenta’s approach to art and his writing habits. The study first reproduces the main ideas of Valenta’s reflections on art, before looking for parallels with Valenta’s novels and stories in which characters deal with analogous creative problems, as Valenta does in his essay. Further on, attention is paid to the way in which the political and social situation of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s affected Valenta’s writing. Valenta, as a journalist, was used to the immediate response of readers, and he needed this response as a novelist as well; indeed, he struggled to write without it. Thus, after 1948, when he was prohibited from writing, he found himself in a very difficult situation. The study examines how Valenta coped with the ban and how he managed to solve plots connected with the usual editorial practice of the 1950s, at a time when he was allowed to publish and when a writer generally had to take into account delays in publishing books, resulting in publication in a political context entirely different from that of when the book was written.

• Details
• Contents