Otakar Theer’s prewar episode Cover Image

Předválečná epizoda Otakara Theera
Otakar Theer’s prewar episode

Reflections of creative work and strategy

Author(s): Martin Tichý
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Czech Literature
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Ústav pro českou literaturu
Keywords: Otakar Theer;prewar modernism;verslibrism;avant-garde strategy

Summary/Abstract: This paper, based primarily on archive sources and on published texts of a programmatic nature, examines the place of poet Otakar Theer within the framework of ‘prewar modernism’ between 1911 and 1914, particularly in a comparison of opinions on creative work and the strategies implemented in the literary field. It shows that the inception of the 1914 Almanach project was based not only on the partial compatibility of the programmes, but above all on the strategic alliance that was to provide unknown authors with publication space and to confirm for Theer the importance of his poetic experiments as motivation for a transformation in Czech lyricism as a whole at that time. Whereas Theer’s strategy appears consistent, leading to the suppression of conflicts within the group (even though Theer reflects them in a very interesting manner in his private texts), the conflicts among the young authors (e.g. the Čapek brothers and Kodíček) are aggravated because following the failure of Almanach, this group adopted a strategy to radically subvert the previous semantic order within literature, rejecting the previous centripetal, individualistic conception of creative output, which Theer ultimately attempted to salvage despite all his experiments with form and epistemics.

  • Issue Year: 65/2017
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 418-428
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Czech