Žánr a ideologie Rudoarmějců Vladimíra Holana
The Genre and Ideology of Vladimír Holan's Rudoarmějci

Summary/Abstract: In Holan’s post-War poetic output, the cycle The Red Army Men (1947) enjoys high critical acclaim while the trio of his other works Thanks to the Soviet Union, A Memorial Service, and To You is regarded as a crude exercise in propaganda. The main reason for this evaluative difference, my paper argues, is that the genre of the cycle enables the author to disseminate an ideological message similar to that of the unappreciated trio in a more subtle, less ostentatious manner. The first part of the essay analyzes the various techniques of portraiture employed by Holan to represent ordinary Russian soldiers (prosopopeia and ethopoeia). In the second part the ideological potential of the genre is discussed. Since portrait by definition must depict an actual human subject, the very selection of the model and his/her features embroils such a work in a social reality and reflects the author’s attitude toward it. This worldview, however, is not added to the text mechanically, from without, but comprises an integral part of the very mimetic apparatus that generates its overall meaning

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