Velká eliotovská báseň
Great Eliotesque poem

Mluvící pásmo (The Talking Zone) by Milada Součková

Summary/Abstract: The core of this article is a long poem Mluvící pásmo [Talking Zone], published in 1939 by Czech Modernist poet Milada Součková (1899–1983). Through Součková’s writing,the abyss between Czech avant-garde and Czech Modernism with its references toEnglish modernism is revealed here. This article offers a contextualization of the genreof zone within Czech Modernism while analysing Součková’s large poem as a specificform of English modernism. Through a detailed examination of Součková’s poemTalking Zone and Eliot’s The Waste Land this article reveals the parallels between herwritings and the writings of the leading modernists. The first section examines theinfluence on the poem of radio, both in terms of its thematic register and its form.It then goes on to analyse the dominant thematic discourses of the poem whichare also key themes of the genre of zone in the 1930s in the Czech context (theseare defined in the article as museum, memory, encyclopaedia and apocalypse). Anexamination of Talking Zone reveals the process of exhaustion of the genre of zone asa leading genre of the Czech avant-garde poetry and the exhaustion of the avant-gardeprojects of the new world. The archaeology of modernism (of an era), as conveyedin Součková’s writing is determined by space (Europe), person (writer) and action(modernism). In Součková’s Talking Zone each of these three elements is depicted asextinct.

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