Slovanský romantismus: ani labuť, ani lůna

Author(s): Angelina Pančevska / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2016

This text is an attempt to revise the existing scientific consensus about the so-called Slavic Romanticism. At the same time it represents a conscious act of doubting its existence - not just as a generalizing concept, but also “partly”, with regards to a significant part of the “Romanticisms” in the various Slavic speaking lands in the 19th century. The main argument is that many of the essential features of Western European Romanticism stem directly from its very genesis – an artistic expression of the burgeoning bourgeois individualism. Lagging behind economically and being politically subordinated, the Slavic peoples formed instead an ethnocentrical, collectivist type of culture, generally incompatible with Romanticism. Nevertheless, Literary Studies disciplines in Slavic countries often tend to emphasize its local existence and to describe it by arbitrarily extending the meaning of the term to fit with local literary realities. It is only recently that we have in earnest observed radical critique of such an approach.

Черното езеро в чешката поезия на ХIХ век

Author(s): Zhorzheta Tcholokova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3-4/2016

The Black Lake is the biggest lake in the Šumava mountains and as such draws special attention of the Czech poetry, pictorial arts and music during the second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. This paper is seeking an answer to a question why this interest emerged exactly in the context of the late Romanticism and what the presuppositions for this fact were. Three main problematic spheres are outlined. The first one is the interrelation between the physical reality of the nature and the conception of landscape in art. The second emphasis is put on the aesthetic and poetical functionality of the image of the lake in the Czech poetry and the influence of Mácha’s model on the forthcoming generations of poets. The third focus is connected with the image of the Black Lake in poems by Eliška Krásnohorská (Černé jezero), Jan Neruda (Romance o Černém jezeře), Adolf Heyduk (U horského jezera), and Jaroslav Vrchlický (Černé jezero). Against the background of the representation of the Black Lake in other poems written by the above-mentioned authors – as locus amoenus, as internal landscape, as historical memory, and as transcendental space, this study offers an attempt to outline the specifics of the imagery structure of this water space that is indicative for each one of them.

Literární reprezentace roku 1866 v prózách Vladimíra Körnera

Author(s): Aleksandra Pająk / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

The article discusses works of Vladimír Körner (born in 1939), the plot of which is related to the Austro-Prussian war (1866). These are: series Post bellum 1866, a micro narrative Oklamaný – Der Bertogene and a novel Život za podpis. In the first part of the study the attention concentrates on writer’s statements, taken from press interviews, which assess this armed conflict. These statements are treated as paratexts to analysed literary works. The series Post bellum 1866 is considered as a distinctive guide to a place of the battle of Königgratz. Pierre Nora’s idea sites of memory has been used to its interpretation. In case of the novel Život za podpis, key to its reading is ekphrasis, included in the text, or references to graphics from the series Wojna of Polish history painter Artur Grottger. In the micro narrative Oklamaný – Der Bertogene, which distinctly contrasts with the author’s previous strategy, the ending of work is accentuated, where the author presents historical overview and links the 19th century Galician stronghold with Auschwitz concentration camp. The experiences of Körner’s characters lead to a conclusion that the conflict of 1866 is for the author pars pro toto of war in general, and that is the leitmotiv of his writings.

Zrod Hrabalova spisovatelství: Lektorské řízení Hrabalovy tvorby v nakladatelství Československý spisovatel v první polovině šedesátých let

Author(s): Jakub Češka / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2018

This essay analyzes the review and editorial processes at the Československý spisovatel publishing house, concerning Bohumil Hrabal’s initial three works (Lark on a String, Pearl of the Deep and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age), the first of which, after being reviewed and edited in January 1959, was eventually not published. The processes in question are characterized not only by a variety of editorial and reviewer recommendations (from which we can reconstruct the origin of certain motifs and their subsequent forced transition to other novels), but also by a certain interpretive dispute (both within the editorial office and between the editors and the office) over the final form of Hrabal’s prose, encompassing the more general problem of what can and cannot be considered a literary work (this is especially the case with Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age). Thus, there has been a certain interpretive scheme forming around Hrabal’s style, which after more than fifty years has proven to be not only coherent, but also relatively constant.

Viktor Pelevin: postkoloniální postmodernista? Román S.N.U.F.F. jako hybridní konstrukce postmoderních a postkoloniálních praktik

Author(s): Helena Ulbrechtová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1-3/2018

The study seeks for contact points of Pelevin´s postmodernist poetics and post-colonial interand transstructuralism. It sums up selected works of German literary studies on postmodernist practices in Pelevin´s oeuvre, it points to intersections between postmodernist and post-colonial studies from Homi K. Bhahba´s perspektive and thus it proposes two ways of interpreting Pelevin´s texts. In the last part it analyses post-colonial features in the novel S.N.U.F.F. from 2011, including the post-colonial concept of space, hybridization of traditional cultural codes, language heteroglossia and method of mimicry.

„Orlové literární revoluce.“ F. X. Šalda a/versus Arnošt Procházka (a Moderní revue)

Author(s): Luboš Merhaut / Language(s): Czech Issue: 30/2018

The development of a professional network, as well as long-standing disputes, among the most prominent representatives of Czech modernism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries — F. X. Šalda on the one hand, and Arnošt Procházka and the Moderní revue (especially Jiří Karásek) on the other — can be traced through several stages. First, 1893–1895, a period of mutual curiosity and emerging factions, from the earliest meeting up to the formal manifestation of Česká moderna, which was preceded by the establishment of the Moderní revue as first independent literary platform of the 1890s. Second, 1895–1900, a period in which various trends converged in the connection of art to life and society, and in a confrontation with other emerging, alternative concepts of modernism, namely Synthetism. Third, 1900–1910, a period that looks back, from the strata of generational polemics, culminating in the controversy surrounding Šalda’s pseudonyms, to the accusation of Karásek in what has come to be known as the anonymous letters affair. Fourth, 1910–1925, when each side declared hostility towards, or simply ignored, the other’s role in Czech modernism, from the conclusion of the anonymous letters affair to Procházka’s death. This study focuses in particular on the two initial periods, on the roots of the polemic, and on key moments in the 1890s: that is, on the onset and gradual differentiation of modernist literary creation and criticism in all its forms, on the transformations and extremes of the polemic as the example of a genre whose essence is dialogue and misunderstanding in equal parts. While the polemic is often rife with personal attacks, it also tends to crystallize in a mirror that reveals the collisions and transformations of Czech modern aesthetic thinking, and that illuminates connections and transitions in the field of literary and cultural production.

Možné chronologie Hančových textů

Author(s): Michael Špirit / Language(s): Czech Issue: 30/2018

This article presents the post-mortem organization of Jan Hanč’s literary texts (1916–1963) as an openquestion. As a rule, the writer did not date his own works and, with the exception of three handwrittennotebooks, did not put them in any order. In those cases where such information is providedwithin the text itself, we must understand it as an element of artistic stylization rather than evidenceof documentation, or indication of the origin of the work. This article analyzes the work ofthe publishers of Hanč’s selected writings at the end of the 1960s, with regard to the author’s manuscriptsin their material form.

Procházka a kulturní vědy. Metody flanérie a fotografie Josefa Sudka

Author(s): Nora Schmidt / Language(s): Czech Issue: 30/2018

This article is based on my speech on the subject of Otokar-Fischer-Award and deals with the main theses of my dissertation on the flâneur in Czech literature. In several stages it develops the basic issues of literary flânerie and points to deviations from former understandings of the flâneur in literature. It emphasises the fruitfulness of Czech literature as basis of a general work on literary flânerie, and introduces related terms and concepts. All this is based not only on examples by Jan Neruda, Vítězslav Nezval and Michal Ajvaz, but also on photographs by Josef Sudek. The performative and transgressive motion of flânerie in media can thereby be performed by the reader.

Der «provinzielle» Exotismus. Kafkas Reisen nach Nordböhmen

Author(s): Veronika Jičínská / Language(s): German Issue: 01+02/2017

The Amtliche Schriften (Office Writings) of Franz Kafka, published in 2004, are regarded by the editor Benno Wagner as “a record of current and social problems” (WAGNER 2008: 93), in whose literary presentation a specific aesthetic form can be found. Wagner’s approach contributes both to the current debate on regionalism and provincialism, in that he opens up a discursive space for the social, in particular through the inclusion of the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour. In this paper I will show to what extent this discursive space is productive for considering the “border” and the region as a whole, and the north Bohemian border region in particular.

Interkulturelle Begegnungsräume in literarischen Prag-Darstellungen der Moderne

Author(s): Ulrike Mascher / Language(s): German Issue: 01+02/2017

The following paper questions how intercultural phenomena are depicted in Prague modernist literature. Are there intercultural meeting points in Prague that appear in the literature of this time? And how is the pluricultural situation at the start of the 20th century presented in Prague modernist literature? In the context of spatial-theoretical approaches, as found, for example, in Jurij M. Lotman’s cultural concept of the semiosphere, the three stories Das Trauerhaus by Franz Werfel (1927), Weiberwirtschaft by Max Brod (1913) and Richard Weiner’s Rovnováha (1914) are examined in relation to these questions.

Arbeiten zu Kafka. Ein Überblick über aktuelle Studien

Author(s): Steffen Höhne / Language(s): German Issue: 01+02/2017

For some time now, Kafka research has increasingly focused on the intellectual, cultural and linguistic historical conditions that shape both the work and the author. Expression of this new cultural-scientific interest in the contexts of literary production are the current works presented here with quite further perspectives

Emoční zakotvení poetiky Milana Kundery

Author(s): Jakub Češka / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2020

This study aims to highlight the emotional foundation of the poetics of Milan Kundera, a topic often overlooked as a result of the exaggerated emphasis placed on the intellectual aspect of Kundera’s novels. It is evident here that we can infer Kundera’s poetics from three sources – lyricism, his dramatic work (plays, the construction of dramatic conflict, the function of on-stage speech) and essay writing. The study therefore focuses on rehabilitating the lyrical inspiration generally considered to have been surpassed at the moment of Kundera’s transition from poetry to novel writing. Here it is possible to demonstrate that not only Kundera’s poetic work, but also his specific grasp of the lyrical principle, is present in his later novels. I characterize Milan Kundera as a writer with a distinctive emotional insight, regardless of whether this is a genuine authorial quality or merely an ability evoked within the world of the novel. That is, in the analysis of Kundera’s work, we cannot insist upon any further interpretation.

Vypravěčský komentář u Václava Beneše Třebízského.

Author(s): Pavel Šidák / Language(s): Czech Issue: 33/2020

This study deals with the form and function of narrative commentary in Czech prose works of the period 1830–1880, with a focus on V. B. Třebízský’s novel Wandering Souls, in which the commentary material is particularly rich and diverse. What this analysis makes possible, first, is a number of interpretative insights into Třebízský’s work and a mapping of some of his most common narrative figures. Second, it allows us to generalize the form and function of narrative commentary in the broader literary period under consideration, for which Wandering Souls provides a workable synecdoche.

Mezi sakrálním a parodickým.

Author(s): Jiří Hubáček / Language(s): Czech Issue: 33/2020

This study analyses Klicpera’s dubium, a parodic sermon based on similarities between Christ’s suffering and the processing of barley in beer production. The primary aim is to show how a genre that begins by parodying scripture gradually transforms into a declamatory text, which functions in the culture of the Czech national movement mainly as light reading but also aims to homogenize the Czech national community. Furthermore, the study shows numerous thematic parallels in foreign literatures which may serve (mainly within the world imagined by Klicpera’s text) as very interesting comparative materials. Attached to the study is a critically verified edition of Klicpera’s text.

Nerudův verš a co s ním

Author(s): Klára Čermochová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 33/2020

Ozvěna ve svatoivanské legendě F. Bridela (1656)

Author(s): Kateřina Smyčková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 34/2020

Tis study focuses on the motif of the echo in Baroque literature. It is based on an analysis of the Latin legend of Saint Ivan by Fridrich Bridel (1619–1680), Vita sancti Ivani, primi in regno Boëmiæ eremitæ (Te Life of Saint Ivan, the First Czech Hermit; Ludmila Sedlčanská, Prague 1656). Tis book was written as a prosaic biography with occasional lyrical passages, one of which is a dialogue between the hermit Saint Ivan and his own echo. As St. Ivan meditates on life in the wilderness and on the vainness of the world, his echo consoles him and gives him advice. Tis text refects a popular motif in other European literature of its time, characterized by a renewed interest in ancient myths and their philosophical and Christian interpretations. In the secular literature, the motif of the echo could be found mainly in love poetry, typically involving an unhappy lover who roams a deserted landscape (locus terribilis) until he is met by his own echo, which responds to his lamentation and gives him comfort. In religious poetry, by contrast, this echo would be understood as the voice of God, responding to a character — ofen in the allegorical fgure of the ‘spiritual bride’ — who has gone in search of God. While Bridel’s legend presents the echo as a spiritual voice, it is also indebted to older myths based on the theme of romantic love, so that the dialog between St. Ivan and his echo efectively produces the motif of the spiritual marriage. Te fgure of the echo was used mainly in the literature of Bridel’s time in connection with popular conceptual poetics. In the fnal analysis, Vita sancti Ivani demonstrates how Bohemian literature was infuenced by the aesthetic theory of its period.

Between Adam Smith and Walter Scott

Author(s): Martin Procházka / Language(s): English Issue: 34/2020

The first part of this article discusses the infuence of the representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Smith and David Hume, on the leader of the Czech national emancipation movement and founder of modern Czech historiography František Palacký (1798–1876). The second part assesses the infuence of Walter Scott on the young romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha (1810–1836), whose attempts to interpret Czech history from a tragic and ironic perspective problematized Palacký’s position, especially with regard to his assumptions about the unity of a national community and its interests, as well as the perfectibility of individual nations and the human species.

Cesty tam a zase zpátky

Author(s): Václav Vaněk / Language(s): Czech Issue: 34/2020

This study aims to give a new perspective on Josef Jiří Kolár’s short story Libuše in America (German 1842, Czech 1854), long considered by critics and literary historians as a kind of popular adventure story without ideological or aesthetic ambitions. The study frst examines Kolár’s prose in the context of a contemporary domestic historical short story that takes liberties with its historical source material. In Libuše in America, however, such liberties are exaggerated to the point of founding an alternate parallel history in opposition to the tragic nature of actual historical events. Te next part of the study uses specifc examples to show how the efect of this discrepancy between the fantasy and the real world is intensifed by the original use of compositional, lexical, grammatical and poetic means (i.e. plot parallels, ‘inappropriate’ relationships between characters, linguistic exclusivity and expressiveness, contrasting poetics, and vulgarity). The fnal section shows the mutual refection of an idealized Czech society in America and the real situation in Bohemia as a manifestation of romantic irony and product of the author’s bitter refections on the decline of the Czech world.

Slovo, hlas, médium

Author(s): Jan Wiendl / Language(s): Czech Issue: 34/2020

This article examines a book of speeches and essays by the Czech poet and novelist Jan Čep (Meditations, CDK, Brno 2019), which he broadcast on Radio Free Europe (RFE) in the period afer the communist coup in 1948 and afer his emigration from Czechoslovakia, the texts of which he would later publish in a series of exile periodicals (Nový život, Svědectví and Proměny) in the years 1953–1966, and 1969. At the same time, the author seeks to understand Čep’s work as a whole during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and to elucidate the relationship between the author’s fctional and non-fctional texts of this period, tracing their possible intersections and mutual signifcation. It also explores the broader context of Čep’s critique of Marxism as an indoctrination ideology from Stalinist countries, with an aim to better understand the place and role of the poet in Soviet totalitarian and Western liberal societies, the specifcs of transformation and intensifcation of Čep’s initial aesthetic views in the 1950s and 1960s, and fnally Čep’s own refections on his own position as an exiled poet actively seeking to embolden fellow citizens in his homeland who remained captive to totalitarian power.

Die Zeitschrift für den Tschechischunterricht als Indikator der deutsch‑tschechischen Konfliktgemeinschaft

Author(s): Mirek Němec / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2021

The German journal for Czech class (Zeitschrift für den Tschechischunterricht), published by Eugen Lemberg in 1937, is analyzed using the concept of cultural transmission by Vladimír Macura. The purpose of this is to discuss the function of the journal in the German Czech “community of conflict” and to point out the creative mechanisms of how the German editor creatively dealt with the Czech speaking culture. Ultimately, the limits of cultural transfers should be explored and discussed under the national auspices.The German journal for Czech class (Zeitschrift für den Tschechischunterricht), published by Eugen Lemberg in 1937, is analyzed using the concept of cultural transmission by Vladimír Macura. The purpose of this is to discuss the function of the journal in the German Czech “community of conflict” and to point out the creative mechanisms of how the German editor creatively dealt with the Czech speaking culture. Ultimately, the limits of cultural transfers should be explored and discussed under the national auspices.