Texty a paratexty. Styl Zeyerových autorských úvodů k epice

Author(s): Zdeněk Hrbata / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

This study deals with the ideas and aesthetics of Julius Zeyer, neo-romantic and parnassist,that were expressed in introductions to his literary works inspired by medievalepics or european mythology. Zeyer conceived and represented their codes of honor,courage and fidelity as a transcendental ideal and example. Analysing close thematic andstylistic relations between author´s works and paratexts, the paper is focused, amongothers, on Zeyer´s so-called „Celtic tetralogy“.

Hereze v listech rané Jednoty bratrské

Author(s): Michaela Vašíčková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

The study depicts heresy as a type of social deviance in letters of Akty Jednoty bratrské, published in a two-volume collection by Jaroslav Bidlo in the first half of the 20th century. As a popular tool to discredit an opponent, heresy plays a vital role in religious polemics in the 15th century. The brethren – members of a new "sect" – face this aspersion in countless texts. Authors of the chosen letters carefully build and adapt their image in front of their adversaries as well as the society as a whole. They have to defend themselves against verbal attacks and accusations and, first of all, to justify their radical religious approach. Except for texts by the Unity of the Brethren, the study also deals with letters by their Utraquist opponents, such as Prague university masters or the archbishop Jan Rokycana. Hand in hand with the literary analysis, the approaches of sociolinguistics and pragmatics reveal the basic communication strategies of the brethren; using the Scripture, the authors try to back up their approach to faith, while they are forced to reflect the plain reality, attempting to ensure their own safe existence without persecution. As a result, the approach demonstrates an interesting (yet understandable) duality, mingling theological issues with the prosaic reality of the very end of the Czech Middle Ages.

Divadlo pro hrstku delikátních a vyvolených : polemiky o české básnické drama v šedesátých až devadesátých letech 19. století

Author(s): Michal Fránek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

In three probes, the study aims to describe the controversies encountered in the stage performances of poetic dramas in the era of the Provisional Theatre and the National Theatre. The study examines the critical reception of Vítězslav Hálek's drama Amnon and Tamar (1866) and his defense of the book drama. It also examines Jaroslav Vrchlický's polemic on poetic drama and the critical reception of Julius Zeyer's dramatic experiments. In all three cases, the common denominator is found in the absence of a large sophisticated audience, functioning in countries with a tradition of court theatres, which would be able to keep this type of artistically demanding plays in the repertoire.

Tříštění těla : středověká inkoherence Kafkova Rozjímání a Ortelu

Author(s): Matouš Jaluška,Richard Müller / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

The study aims to show how the short stories by Franz Kafka, proverbially challenging with respect to the modern idea of narrative coherence, can be fruitfully read with the help of premodern paradigms and with regard to their medial aspects. In the first part, the authors examine the affinities between Kafka's authorial practices and the pre-Guttenbergian situation. On the material plane, both Kafka and medieval producers create an environment where various manuscript versions of the text exist in parallel and individual fragments are autonomous. We must also note the status of the fragment in Kafka as part of the temporal continuity created by both writing and life. The oft-noted absurdity of Kafka's texts can be validly interpreted as stemming from the "postreligious attitude", where residuals of the medieval idea of divinely sanctioned meaning are transferred into the secular, post-Cartesian world. The second part is focused on Kafka's first published book, Contemplation (Betrachtung, 1912), and two competing modes of coherence: the temporal coherence of a human life that proceeds towards its termination against the spatial coherence of the human body. The first mode relates to the countryside and eventually prevails over the second one, artificial and urban. The scars and wrinkles inscribed in the human face remind the reader of the external force of time, serving a purpose similar to the physical traces of saintly intervention in medieval miracle stories. It is, however, the new status of writing (especially handwriting) in the new media situation that brings the evidence of the body and textual evidence back to close proximity – again, a feature uniting the medieval condition and Kafka's modernity. Descriptions, especially those of gestures – with roots in the Yiddish theatre, open the texture of Kafka's fiction, providing key clues of sense and disorienting at the same time. Finally, the authors turn to The Judgment (Das Urteil, 1913) and present Georg's final suicidal jump as a modern instance of an ordeal ("Gottesurteil"). The world of The Judgment implodes as rhetorical structures inherent to the "text of a quarrel" permeate it. Significantly, however, Georg's death or survival is withheld from us. Considering the final destiny of the protagonist's body might enable readers to establish a coherent meaning of the story and see through all the rhetorical traps set inside. The challenge to coherence posed in the text continues – in reading rather than perpetuity

"Pravda se zle oře" : poznámky k narativní koherenci Vančurovy Hrdelní pře anebo Přísloví

Author(s): Martin Lukáš / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

The narrative strategy of Vančura's fifth novel Hrdelní pře anebo Přísloví (1930) is based on the periphrastic forms which slow down the narration and reduce its coherence. This is realized especially by embedding proverbs and sayings into the narrator's speech and the characters' dialogues. Having the character of gnomic set phrases, the proverbs become unfamiliar in the new context and serve as specific means of evaluating and explicating the course of events. This strategy is also reflected in the way Vančura deals with the topic-comment structure of his novel, which corresponds to its central theme – the elusiveness of reality.

Karel Čapek a Brno

Author(s): Jiří Poláček / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

The paper deals with Karel Čapek's student years in Brno (1905–1907) as well as with his summer stays in Bílovice nad Svitavou and his contacts with Brno in the interbellum period (especially his visits to theatre productions and the editorial office of Lidové noviny). Čapek's first poems and articles with the topic of Brno, printed in the 1920s and 1930s mainly in Lidové noviny, are also analysed. Finally, the paper examines Čapek' relations with authors associated with Brno, such as S. K. Neumann, Arne Novák, Jiří Mahen, Leoš Janáček and Petr Bezruč.

Anatomie národních hrdinů : Osvobozené divadlo uprostřed nacionalistických svárů

Author(s): Kateřina Piorecká,Marek Lollok / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

Art can be understood as one of the voices of the public debate. Liberated theatre [Osvobozené divadlo] emerged in the context of the artistic activities of the international left-wing avant-garde. This premise predetermines the theatre's opponents as right-wing nationalists. When it premiered in the Liberated Theatre, the play The Executioner and the Fool [Kat a blázen] – it caricatured the political practice of contemporary fascist states in the form of a revue. However, what could be considered new was the question of the construction of the national myth. While the left and centre papers regarded the play as a local satire and appreciated its anti-fascist edge, the right-wing papers were irritated by the cynicism and ironization of patriotism as such. Ten days after the premiere, on the 30th of October 1934, a demonstration took place in the theatre; the periodicals published by the Tempo concern, owned by right-wing politician Jiří Stříbrný interpreted it as a spontaneous protest. Nevertheless, police records show that the demonstrators, ultra-right-leaning university students, were linked to the recently founded association of right-wing parties, National Unification, which included the National League led by Jiří Stříbrný. It was the first of the demonstrations connected to the so-called insignia dispute between Czech and German university officials and students over the ownership of university insignia. The second wave of protests, instigated by a right-wing newspaper campaign at the end of November, already showed the protesters' different social backgrounds. The Liberated Theatre served as a target belonging to internationally oriented leftist institutions. The protests no longer had anything to do with the play The Executioner and the Fool. Still, the Liberated Theatre finished the season at the U Nováků Palace, yet with significant financial loss, and the theatre faced the threat of termination. Eventually, the renamed "Bound" Theatre [Spoutané divadlo] opened the 1935/1936 season in the small Rokoko hall with The Rag Ballad [Balada z hadrů].

Z fikčního světa Jaroslava Foglara : Zkáza Jezerní kotliny

Author(s): David Kroča / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

This study compares Jaroslav Foglar's famous novel The Cottage in the Lake Basin (1939) to its free sequel, The Destruction of the Lake Basin (2021), written by a contemporary author of literature for children and young adults, Petr Hugo Šlik. Confronting the two novels, the author draws methodologically and terminologically on Lubomír Doležel's theory of fictional worlds and Gérard Genette's theory of hypertextuality. First, The Destruction of the Lake Basin is placed in the context of Czech fiction, systematically following the work of Jaroslav Foglar. The author of the study evaluates the way Šlik used the so-called encyclopaedia of the fictional world of the original novel. The analyses and comparisons are complemented with quotations that illustrate the way Šlik's hypertext relates to Foglar's hypotext. The study concludes by pointing out not only the positive features of this linking but also the problems and fallacies of Šlik's creative approach.

Katalog kramářských tisků

Author(s): Marie Hanzelková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

PENSER LE CORPS DANS L’ŒUVRE ROMANESQUE DE MILAN KUNDERA

Author(s): Khadija Outoulount / Language(s): French Issue: 11-12/2022

In Milan Kundera’s fictional thinking, the body is the place of questioning and the object of a profound work of thought through a panoply of key concepts that put the characters in the situation: “these experimental egos”. Kundera, by grasping the character in their corporality, tries to think about the relationship to oneself, to others, to the world, and the body as a horizon of thought is thus questioned in its relation to the gaze, the soul, love, eroticism and identity. It becomes a reference to find a place in a world that is difficult to live in, to understand and to share with other individuals who are lost as well. In this article, we pose the problem of the body in the work of Milan Kundera and especially of the place it occupies in his “fictional thinking” and in his art of the novel. How does thinking about the body in Kundera’s work participate in thinking about the human condition of modern man in the modernity crisis era? This is the central issue to which we will try to bring elements of answers by posing the problem of the body in Kundera’s fictional work from four standpoints: first, we intend to investigate the body as a theme of fictional thinking; secondly, we will examine the fictional concept of “erotic friendship” and its relation to the topic of the body; thirdly, we will try to raise the question of inhabiting one’s body in relation to the possibility or impossibility of inhabiting the world; and finally we will see the body as a defective machine, hence the impossibility of inhabiting both the body and the world.

THE SHORT STORY THE BRIDGE BY FRANZ KAFKA: WHAT IS ITS MESSAGE?

Author(s): Irina-Ana Drobot / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

The purpose of this paper is to reflect, from the point of view of reader response criticism, on the meaning of the short story The Bridge by Franz Kafka. Previous interpretations of the short story from other research papers will be taken into account, in order to show the various messages that can be perceived, function of taking the context when the story was written, and the author’s concerns. The author of the paper takes into account the associations of contemporary day readers, who are very much familiar with the fantasy genre.

Чешская литература в русских переводах последних лет (2015–2020 годы)

Author(s): Anna Vyatcheslavovna Agapova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2021

In Russia, from 1990 until 2013, 5–6 Czech prose fiction books were published per year. We claim that in the latest years the situation has not changed much in terms of numbers. However, we can observe some new trends concerning the repertoire of literary translations from Czech into Russian. On the one hand, contemporary Czech literature is being translated now more often. On the other hand, Czech literature for children has become far more popular. Although in recent years some new projects promoting, in particular, Czech literature appeared in Russia, they do not seem to have a significant effect on the book publishing market. While analyzing non-professional readers’ reviews of Russian translations of adult Czech prose, we found out that after 2015, these reviews, still retaining an emotional component, became more oriented towards interpreting the work of fiction.

Práce na postupu: Puzzle

Author(s): Daniela Iwashita,Šárka Kořínková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2022

This study deals with previously unknown manuscripts that the authors have identified and reassembled in an as yet unorganized section of the Jakub Deml fonds in the Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) Literary Archive. These manuscripts, fragments and variants of some seventy books and dozens of unpublished texts make a significant contribution to our understanding of the genetics and meaning of the work as a whole. They alter our idea of its genre composition, clarify information on the origin, authorship, co-authorship and addressees of the texts and testify to the complex, non-linear chronology of the work. The authors identify three periods in which Deml’s manuscripts have different functions: the first period involves manuscripts and to a limited extent publishing (1896-1911); the second period independent publishing (1912-1941); the third period is the second manuscript period (1941-1961), when manuscripts became the main medium. Subsequently the study comments on the possibilities of a critical edition of the entire work. It compares the approach of the samizdat Works of Jakub Deml and Collected Writings, touches upon the limits of the second edition brought about by the omission of a substantial part of the author's personal papers and proposes a solution in the form of a digital edition.

Přelétavé těkání nad dobrými, protože příšernými nejen literárními texty

Author(s): Kateřina Kirkosová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2022

Průkopnická práce o dějinách literatury Romů v Česku

Author(s): Daniel Soukup / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2022

Traženje petlje. O književnom stvaralaštvu Danijele Hodrove

Author(s): Ivana Kočevski / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2022

The paper presents a contribution to the study about Czech literature after 1989 in order to pay a tribute to 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many Czech writers who wrote even before 1989, have now been able to present their work to readers for the first time after the Velvet revolution. This has also been the case with Daniela Hodrová, author of specific poetics and narrative patterns, whose work has enriched Czech literature with a unique approach in recording subjective and personal experiences and collective memories of Czech people. “Finding a loop” should point out the interrupted development of Czech literature due to limited possibilities because of insisting on patterns of Social realism in literature (viewed from a general development of 20th century Czech literature), but at the same time it should bring out Daniela Hodrová’s specifically established narrative model which she personally relates to a female principle and the archetype of weaving. “Finding a loop” in Hodrova’s poetics refers to studying the history of Prague, collective national memory, subjective reflections on her personal experiences, and defining the historical process that had a great impact on shaping the literary contents. Finally, from the narrative point of view, “finding a loop” in Hodrova’s novels refers to a fragmented literary expression and too long sentences she uses in order to define the incomprehensible nature of life and death.

Krása i pravda

Author(s): Michal Charypar / Language(s): Czech Issue: 54/2022

Although it is generally believed that the central contribution Lumír made to original literary work consisted in verse, it is fair to say that this literary magazine also became the elite publication for Czech prose fiction. In the 1870s, when several distinguished editors alternated at its helm, Lumír was able to assemble a body of prose writers who suitably represented several literary groups, generations and styles. This study aims mainly to point out prose fiction tending to various styles and to present an analysis of their share in forming both the existing and the newly emerging literary canon. It thus demonstrates that the prose published in Lumír was a good representation not only of Parnassianism, but also of various Realist poetics and, particularly in historicizing prose, still valid relicts of Romanticism, like the works of Václav Beneš Třebízský (1849–1884). Also connected to this is the diverse spectrum of genres, ranging from the novel and short story to the ‘romanetto’, scenes from life, the arabesque and the sketch.

Hanuš Jelínek jako redaktor Lumíru

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech Issue: 54/2022

This is a collection of selected letters between Hanuš Jelínek (1878–1944) and Arne Novák (1880–1939) from 1929 to 1939. The two men were key figures connected with Lumír, the longest published Czech literary magazine. After 1918, Lumír held a traditionalist position, critically reflecting on artistic experiments and left-wing art. The introductory study looks at traditionalism in Lumír after 1918, particularly in its manifestos and editorials, and does so against the background of this published collection of letters. Until 1931, Lumír was markedly influenced by Viktor Dyk’s (1877–1931) politically conceived nationalism, which was supplemented in the periodical by Novák’s cultural nationalism. This orientation led to a number of clashes and polemics with proponents of other modernist concepts in the arts, especially those of the avant-garde and left-wing. The study sets out to capture the dynamics and importance of these clashes, using the example of the editorial policies of Hanuš Jelínek and Arne Novák. The emphasis of both of these men on Lumír needing a European perspective was a natural continuation of their work in the area of cultural transfer, particularly the promotion of Czech literary history abroad. Jelínek’s and Novák’s letters are valuable with regard not only to the history of the Lumír literary magazine, but also to the arts between the two world wars.

Možnosti úniku

Author(s): Bronislava Rokytová,Lukáš Prokop / Language(s): Czech Issue: 54/2022

Apart from being a poet and translator, Kamil Bednář (1912–1972) was the author ofdozens of books for children. Beginning in the 1960s, children’s books comprisedhis main writing and influenced his verse. This interdisciplinary contribution looksfirst at Bednář’s verse and essays in order to discover what led him to write booksfor children, and it does so on several levels. In addition to Bednář’s graduallyleaving the world of regime-sanctioned literature, by escaping into the garden ofhis imagination, which evoked in him magical, fairy-tale ideas, the study discussesthe work leading to the actual publishing of his books, as well as Bednář’s attitudesto fine art and his ability to combine different fields of art, particularly literature,with illustration, music, dance, and theatre. Bednář eventually linked togethereveryday life with the world of art and imagination, and created a complex worldof art, in which he took shelter. This was his distinctive way of coming to termswith the changes in politics and society in the Communist dictatorship.

Obrazová příloha III

Author(s): No name Anonymous / Language(s): Czech Issue: 54/2022