Identita díla v pohybu
The Identity of a Work in Motion

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the problem of the identity of a work in connection with the role of the reader. It follows on from the ideas of Herta Schmid, who, in 1999, argued that Mukařovský took both a poetological and an aesthetic approach to the literary text. The former emphasized the closed structure of the work as an artefact, whereas the latter focused on the openness of the aesthetic object. Jankovič asks whether the identity of a work is bound only to the immutability of the artistic artefact. In this sense, the Czech structuralism of the younger generation sought its own path (Červenka 1996). In Mukařovský’s aesthetics the identity of a work does not exclude the mutability of the aesthetic object; its centre of gravity is transferred to the potential efficacy of the work, to its semantic dynamism. From the zenith of the work’s potential aesthetic impact, from the perspective of its unique potential to affect and change the perceiver’s relationship with reality, one must inquire into the work’s identity. It is the identity of a work in motion, in which the dynamic assumptions of the work are realized in the course of time (thanks also to the evoked participation of the perceiver, who is not denied a part in the unifying semantic gesture). Mukařovský’s aesthetics do not contest the notion of the work as a formal unity; they merely make it dynamic.

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