Ateliery i plenery w prozie Bohumila Hrabala

Author(s): Wojciech Soliński / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15/2019

The article analyzes the emotional aspect of autobiographical places in the works of Bohumil Hrabal. Its author observes that both the short and the long prosaic forms by the Czech writer are often set in the space stretching between ateliers of pubs and en plein-airs of Nymburk on the Elbe River (“the town on water”), forests of Kersko, and the degraded smelter plant Krásná Poldi in Kladno. The list of Hrabal’s locations does not end here and also includes the “borderland areas”, such as the control room and platforms of the railway station in Kostomlaty nad Labem; the basement of the wastepaper warehouse in Spalona Street in Prague (and pubs nearby); the author’s flat (which had neither windows nor a toilet) located at 24 Na Hrázi (Věčnosti) Street and many other streets leading directly to the Svět pub Special attention is also given to a place that the author had never visited – Drohobych, but got to know through the prose of Bruno Schulz.

Autorské knižní paratexty (nad edičními počiny Josefa Škvoreckého z 90. Let dvacátého století)

Author(s): Lenka Müllerová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 2/2012

The paper deals with the book paratexts by Josef Škvorecký published in the books of 1990s. Authorial paratexts are integral and important parts of literary production. Presented in a book, they have all the functions of paratexts – to attract readers, to organise and to lead reader’s reception, they mean also direct communication between genesis of the work and its life in the process of reception, therefore an uninterrupted communication between the author and the reader. This method excludes intentional or unintentional distortions or misinterpretations of the text as it enables the author to provide the readers only with such pieces of information which are his/her own opinions and also to focus on such aspects that may have stayed hidden.

Autorské pohádkové knihy Petra Nikla a Františka Skály

Author(s): Martin Reissner / Language(s): Czech / Publication Year: 0

The experimental Czech fairy tale includes some books by the artist, theatre author, musician and writer, Petr Nikl. Despite the fact that in the recent years the literary quality of his texts has not increased he still remains an important figure in the area of the modern original fairy tale. Similarly, the fairy tales by the painter, graphic, conceptual artist and writer, František Skála, are aimed at readers and fans of his multi-media works as a whole. In comparison with Nikl he fascinates readers with his ability to find and emphasize aesthetic qualities in ordinary and banal connections, stories and artifacts while originally dealing with the natural environment at the formal (artistic) as well as the story-telling (literary) level. Both the writers are dealt with by Martin Reissner in the chapter Autorské pohádkové knihy Petra Nikla a Františka Skály [Original fairy talebooks by Petr Nikl and František Skála].

Až na konec světa

Struktura starých českých cestopisů

Author(s): Zdeněk Hrbata,Matouš Jaluška / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 34/2020

Tis essay ofers a close reading of the Diary (c. 1465) of Squire Jaroslav, the Commentarius (c. 1467; Czech original lost, a Latin translation printed in 1577) by Václav Šašek of Bířkov, and the modern reworking of Šašek’s text in a children’s novel by Alois Jirásek (Až na konec světa, published in 1890). Te authors try to elucidate the characteristic features of these travelogues by examining the various kinds of fssures that can be found in each text. Troughout Jaroslav’s diary, for example, these rifs are indicated by “etc.”, which the reader is simply invited to fll in. Pavlovský introduces discontinuity into the story by inserting verbatim citations of various documents and charters that ultimately glorify Pavlovský’s benefactors, the family of the leader of Šašek’s legation, Lev of Rožmitál. Finally, Jirásek is presented as an exemplary post-medieval reader of antique texts who flls the ofered gaps with didactic content, anchoring his own agenda in the picturesque scafolding of a knightly quest to the edge of the world.

Bartosz Kaliski: Kurierzy wolnego słowa (Paryż — Praga — Warszawa 1968–1970)

Author(s): Jiří Trávníček / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 6/2016

Bartosz Kaliski: Kurierzy wolnego słowa (Paryż — Praga — Warszawa 1968–1970). Warszawa, Instytut Historii PAN 2014. 353 strany.

Básně Josefa Kainara – bohatství inspirace ke kompozici melodramů

Author(s): Lenka Přibylová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 49/2017

Josef Kainar’s verse draws on a seemingly bottomless source of subject matter, contemplation, poetic imagination, and also inspiration for further artistic interpretation. A number of composers have set his poems to music, not only as songs, but also as melodramas. A form of composition representing a synthesis of music and spoken word, melodrama has enjoyed a long tradition in Czech music: as early as in the eighteenth century, for example, melodramas were composed by Jiří Antonín Benda (1722–1795). Melodramas were composed as adaptations of verse and prose works by great writers from all over the world, including Czechs. In the twentieth and twenty-_rst centuries, composers have also found inspiration in the verse of Josef Kainar (1917–1971). Among them are, for example, Jiří Matys (1927–2016), Jan Schneeweis (1904–1995), Jitka Snížková (1924–1989), Josef Marek (b. 1948), and Antonín Vaigl (b. 1932). Thanks to the project ‘Melodram do školy’ (Melodrama for School), initiated in 2015 in the Music Education Department of the Faculty of Education at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, in Ústí nad Labem, a number of melodramas based on Kainar’s collection of verse entitled Nevídáno, neslýcháno (Unimaginable, unheard of) were written, especially in that first year, by Zdeněk Zahradník and Petr Ježil. Melodramas made using Kainar’s verse have been well received by both adult and child performers and audiences.

Básník a lid

Poet and people

Author(s): Joseph Grim Feinberg / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 6/2017

This study attempts to reconstruct key elements in the thought of literary critic and folklorist Bedřich Václavek. Václavek is generally recognized as a prominent figure in interwar literary development and as a researcher who examined genres of popular tradition that had previously eluded scholarly attention. Yet his thought is not well known as a synthetic whole. The reception of his work is divided into two separate fields, and interpreters have paid little attention to the importance of his folkloristic work on his understanding of literature, and to the importance of his literary theory on his understanding of folklore. Václavek’s work as a whole remains little known. Nevertheless, Václavek dealt with parallel issues in his two main fields, elaborating complementary conceptual frameworks, each of which contributed to the originality of the other. If we view Václavek only as a literary critic, we may see him as a figure who voiced and confronted crucial challenges of his times, but who does not particularly stand out from among the many other critics of his day who made similar attempts to bridge the experimental literary ambitions of the avant-garde and the social objectives of those political movements that the avant-garde most frequently embraced. And if we view Václavek only as a folklorist, we may see him as a careful scholar who contributed to the development of his discipline, but who did not go beyond its boundaries to lay out the more general social importance of this work. It is only when we look at Václavek’s work in its entirety that we perceive the conceptual innovation he brought to literary criticism from folklore studies, as well as the social importance acquired by folklore studies when it is connected to the overall aesthetic expression of the people in society. What emerges from a synthetic reconstruction of Václavek’s thought is his systematic attempt to explain the concept of “people” and its role in aesthetic development, both in the literary sphere and in the sphere of oral tradition — and (perhaps even more importantly for Václavek) in the space between the written and the spoken word, where literature and folklore meet and general “culture” emerges from this fusion.

Bedřich Frída — Jaroslav Vrchlický: Vedle sebe šli jsme dálnou poutí… Vzpomínky ze života dvou bratří.

Author(s): Martin Hrdina / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 5/2017

Bedřich Frída — Jaroslav Vrchlický: Vedle sebe šli jsme dálnou poutí… Vzpomínky ze života dvou bratří. Praha, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy 2016. 271 strana.

Between Adam Smith and Walter Scott

Scottish Enlightenment and Romanticism in the Czech Culture of the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

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.

Between Karel Čapek and a Hard Brexit. Reflections on Robotics and Humanity

Author(s): Derek Sayer / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Karel Čapek introduced the word robot to the languages of the world in his drama R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which premiered on 25 January 1921 at the National Theater in Prague. The word itself was coined by Karel’s older brother Josef, a cubist painter who created the stage-sets for the play. Etymology indelibly links robots with unfree labor, since robot comes from robota, the Czech word for the labor services Bohemian peasants owed their lords until 1848, when servile tenancies were abolished. A robot, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a machine with a human appearance or functioning like a human,” but the term has also come to be used inversely, to describe “a person who works mechanically and efficiently but insensitively.” [...]

Bezdětný hospodář Arne Novák v zrcadle korespondence

Author(s): Ester Nováková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2017

The review of: ŠUBRTOVÁ, Milena, ed.: Krb neporušitelného přátelství: Korespondence Arna Nováka a Marie Veselíkové. Brno: Statutární město Brno, Archiv města Brna, 2015. 320 s.

Bibliografie profesora PhDr. Milana Suchomela, CSc.

Author(s): Pavlína Dušková,Zuzana Urválková,Dagmar Vobecká / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2018

Bibliografie profesora PhDr. Milana Suchomela / Bibliography of Prof. Dr. Milan Suchomel

Błędny rycerz, pielgrzym, tułacz, Rom – powroty do tematów nomadycznych w literaturze czeskiej

Author(s): Anna Gawarecka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2017

The topics of pilgrimage, wandering or roam which were the main subject of the romantic anthropological ideas often returns in Czech literature. On the one hand these topics are included into the resources of universal motifs of the Western European culture, on the other hand they represents an important strand in the contemporary discussion on the modern conditio humana. The repetition of the nomadic topics, based on the advanced chain of the intertextual connections and assumed the preliminary understanding with the reader, who is knowledgeable in a world of the prearranged meanings and ways of representations of the figure of wanderer/pilgrim/ vagrant, is an argument of the long lasting field of imagination which is connected with this figure. It i also an suitable tool for the research of the journey as a symbol of human life.

Bóg złego Prawa. Próba gnostyckiej interpretacji Procesu Franza Kafki

Author(s): Krzysztof Brenskott / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2015

The goal of the article is a proposal to read the output of Franz Kafka through the prism of Gnostic beliefs and ideas. The author, having noticed a certain convergence between the Gnostic experience of existence and the vision of the world presented in the works of Kafka, tries to seek the convergences between the former and the latter. The point is not to prove that The Trial, or any other work by the writer, may be subject to a full, self-contained and comprehensive Gnostic interpretation, let alone that Kafka was a Gnostic. The author of the article only suggests a different way of looking at The Trial, as just another tool used to extract different senses and new meanings from the work. The sketch analyses Kafka’s novel, focusing, consequently, on the Gnostic anthropology, the vision of reality, the question of the Law, and the possibility of salvation. The adopted perspective enables new readings of Kafka’s work, and the interpretation, on the one hand, stresses the demiurgic nature of Kafka’s Law, and on the other hand, seems to be an optimistic reading through underlining the possibility and role of salvation.

Bogumiła Suwara: {(staré a nové) rozhrania /*interfejsy*/ [literatú- ry]}

Author(s): Jana Tomašovičová / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 6/2015

Bogumiła Suwara (ed.): {(staré a nové) rozhrania /*interfejsy*/ [literatú- ry]}. Bratislava: Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV 2014. 248 strán.

Bohemica litteraria

Frequency: 2 issues / Country: Czech Republic

Bohemica litteraria is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes original contributions to the field of Czech literature studies. The journal focuses on a wide range of topics within Czech literature studies, related to literary theory, history and criticism, comparative literature, didactics, cultural and adaptation studies, and others. The journal publishes peer-reviewed studies as well as interviews, reviews of scholarly publications, and reports of significant events in the field and at the Department of Czech Literature and Library Studies.

Since 2009 the journal has been issued twice a year by Masaryk University (Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech Literature and Library Studies), Brno, Czech Republic.

Bohumil Fořt: Fikční světy české realistické prózy

Author(s): Martin Hrdina / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2016

Bohumil Fořt: Fikční světy české realistické prózy. Praha, Filip Tomáš — Akropolis 2014. 204 strany.

Brückenbauer, Brückensprenger, Brückenreparateure. Anmerkungen zur Konzeption der deutsch-tschechischen Kulturvermittlung in Böhmen

Author(s): Štěpán Zbytovský / Language(s): German / Issue: 01+02/2017

The pluricultural situation in Bohemia between 1900 and 1939 was articulated among others by intellectuals who, as translators, organizers and publicists, mediated in diverse constellations between linguistically, nationally, religiously, socially, politically and aesthetically different cultural complexes. This paper reflects on the possibilities of conceptually grasping this form of mediation between Czech and German culture – in relation to the frequent use of “bridge” metaphors in the context of this mediation, and in relation to today’s theoretical debates as well as statements from the time by Otokar Fischer, Otto Pick, Max Brod and Rudolf Fuchs.

Büyük Dönüş’ün Dayanılmaz Acısı

Author(s): Tanju İnal / Language(s): Turkish / Publication Year: 0

Çek asıllı Fransız uyruklu Milan Kundera'nın ve yurttaşlarının 1968 Rus Komünist işgali sırasında göç ettikleri ülkelerde ve Çekoslovakya’da yaşadıkları türlü sıkıntıları, sorunları, olumsuzlukları, bunalım ve kırgınlıkları öyküleyen anlatı-roman türünde bir yapıt. Rus işgalinden sonra sığınmak zorunda kaldığı Paris'te uzun süre yaşadıktan sonra ülkesine dönen romancı, olumsuz anlamda karşılaştığı değişiklikler karşısında acısıyla bir "düşüş" ortamı yaşar. Geriye dönüş tam bir ruhsal yıkım olmuştur Kundera için. "Büyük Dönüş" diye adlandırdığı eve dönüş, kırgınlık ve pişmanlıkla sonlanmıştır çünkü. Bu anlamda da roman Truva savaşı nedeniyle ülkesinden uzak düşen ilk sıla kurbanı Odysseus’un yirmi yıl ayrılıktan sonra ülkesi "İthak" yarımadasına dönüşüne bir gönderme yapar. Odysseus, çok büyük özlem duyduğu, acılar çektiği ülkesine dönüş sürecinde büyük uğraşlar vermiş, türlü acılar çekmiş ve çetin işkenceler görmüştür.

Byla jednou jedna...

Author(s): Libor Martinek / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 3/2017