"New human possibilities" in Patočka's philosophy of literature

Author(s): Erin Plunkett / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This article considers Patočka's phenomenological account of literature in "The Writer's Concern" to defend the idea that literary writing offers a distinctive philosophical contribution. In this text, Patočka gives the writer a special claim on the activity of world disclosure and suggests that literature may offer a glimpse out of the techno-scientific framework that dominates contemporary life. I examine both science and literature as modes of relating to the world, raising questions about the distinctiveness of each and their use of the written word. Finally, I locate the philosophical advantage of literary writing in Patočka's dual claims about literature: that it offers "an individual capturing of life's meaning" and that it presents "the world" as an "undivided" whole.

Jan Patočka on structuralism : connections and relationships

Author(s): Ondřej Sládek / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907–1977) knew the representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle (e.g., Vilém Mathesius, Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukařovský) well, but they never established closer scholarly cooperation. The aims of this study are 1) to present Patočka's views on structuralism, 2) to outline Patočka's relationship to Czech structuralism, and especially with Jan Mukařovský. If Mukařovský can be considered one of the leading representatives of Czech structuralism and analyticstructural thinking about art, Patočka was a thinker who sought a synthesizing philosophical approach.

The mystery of art history : Patočka and Ingarden

Author(s): Jan Josl / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

To come up with a satisfactory explanation for the gradual shifts between artistic styles and eras in art and architecture would be like finding the holy grail of art history. Winckelmann, Riegl, Wölfflin, and Semper, for example, attempted to go beyond simple description of composition and theme in art, suggesting, instead, that changes in style could be explained by means of general principles. This step transformed art history from simple expertise into genuine scholarship. In his articles from the 1960s Jan Patočka sketched his own phenomenological conception of art history. He did so by frequent reference to Hegel and Heidegger. Nevertheless, Patočka's categorisation of art into periods of imitation and periods of style seems incompatible with his other categorisation of art history into the artistic and the aesthetic era. Moreover, his essays leave one question unanswered – namely, whether the difference between any two periods originates exclusively from various interpretations and cultural contexts or rather from more profound ontological reasons. In this article, I suggest that the critical reception of Ingarden's aesthetics in Patočka's essays from the 1970s deals with some of the problems of his previous conceptions of artistic styles and eras.

Cesty k textu

Author(s): Jiří Pelán / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2020

Špirit, Michael. Textologie dnes: (příručka pro začínající editory). Vydání první. Praha: Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v.v.i., 2019. 267 stran. Varianty; sv. 12. ISBN 978-80-88069-90-4.

Jaký Pondělíček, takový Kundera

Author(s): Petr Šámal / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2020

Novák, Jan. Kundera: český život a doba. První vydání. Praha: Argo, 2020. 879 stran, 32 nečíslovaných stran obrazových příloh. ISBN 978-80-257-3215-1.

Wir - die Kinder des odsun

Author(s): Lenka Řezníková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 6/2020

Smyčka, Václav. Das Gedächtnis der Vertreibung: interkulturelle Perspektiven auf deutsche und tschechische Gegenwartsliteratur und Erinnerungskulturen. Bielefeld: Transcript, [2019], ©2019. 256 stran. Interkulturalität: Studien zu Sprache, Literatur und Gesellschaft; Band 15. ISBN 978-3-8376-4386-2.

Objevování Ameriky aneb rukopisy a tisky v raném novověku

Author(s): Kateřina Smyčková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2021

This paper contains following book review: Hradilová, Marta, ed., Jelínková, Andrea, ed. a Veselá, Lenka, ed. Paralelní existence: rukopisy a tisky v českých zemích raného novověku. Vydání první. Praha: Academia, 2020. 357 stran. Knižní kultura; svazek 2. ISBN 978-80-200-3128-0.

Olbrachtův Golet v údolí ve světle románu Josef a bratří jeho Thomase Manna

Author(s): Olga Zitová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 6/2013

During the 1930s, when Olbracht wrote all his Subcarpathian novels, he started to become involved in literary translation (basically to earn a living in all probability), translating exclusively from German and mostly from the work of Thomas Mann. This study carries on from the work of Jiří Opelík from 1967, which for the first time put forward the proposition that Olbracht’s approach to translation work was very active, so these translations acted as catalysts to hasten the qualitative transformation in Olbracht’s work. The study compares the collection of prose works Golet v údolí (1937) with Thomas Mann’s tetralogy of novels Joseph and his brothers (1926‒1942), from which Olbracht translated a total of three works during the 1930s (the first two in collaboration with Helena Malířová). A comparison of both authors’ poetics (the nature of the fictional world, their specific conceptions of myth, the narrator and the characters) indicates that between the two works there are several analogies supporting and in many respects complementing Opelík’s theory. A look at Golet v údolí in the light of Mann’s tetralogy opens up new ways of interpreting this crowning achievement by Olbracht.

« Accepter et pardonner, c’est se réconcilier avec soi-même ». L’Histoire tchèque du XXe siècle vue par le roman policier

Author(s): Marcela Poučová / Language(s): French Issue: 43/2022

The article explains the development and specific features of the detective genre in the Czech Republic (and its predecessor Czechoslovakia) from the beginning of the 20th century. It observes that these features are just as valid in the last 30 years. The main focus ison crime fiction literature and, in particular, TV crime series that have become especially popular since 2015, both of which have been inspired by true organised crime cases between 1990-2010.

„Polityka do biblioteki nie należy. Biblioteka chce i ma służyć wszystkim obywatelom bez różnicy” – obraz bibliotekarstwa w Czechosłowacji na łamach czasopism fachowych w latach 1945–1955

Author(s): Agnieszka Łuszpak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2022

Various materials published in professional journals show us a picture of the professional life of a given group. Therefore, an attempt was made to reconstruct the image of ibrarianship in Czechoslovakia in 1945–1955 on the basis of the content published in two major periodicals: „Knihovna” and „Lidová Knihovna”. During this period, the functions of libraries and librarian were redefined. Convincing decision-makers about the role of books in building the socialist system resulted in attempts to involve librarians in propaganda activities.

Obrazová příloha IV

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

Mapowanie prozy kobiet, czyli o spotkaniach ponad podziałami i o (nie)rozmijaniu się dróg. Kilka refleksji o twórczości polskich i czeskich autorek

Author(s): Bernadetta Darska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2022

The article is an attempt to consider the common points in the prose of Polish and Czech female writers. It does not constitute a closed story being presented in a categorical tone of recognitions based off of the summary of a given oeuvre’s stage. It is rather a reflexion resulting from stipulations, probability, possible time points of contact and overlapping of these themes that are mainly oscillating around the recovery of one’s own voice as well as privacy and intimacy. As the result, these reflections can be treated as an attempt at pointing out a community of experiences characteristic for a given sex, which rejects the dominating discourse and which focuses on individual experience that is oftentimes difficult to express and is exposed to embarrassment and isolation. The Polish and Czech female writers presented in the narrative of this text are speaking with their own voices and moreover they are speaking for other women as well, having noticed the public and political dimension of privacy and intimacy.

Duszny mikroświat. Obraz relacji rodzinnych w powieściach Petry Soukupovej i Zośki Papużanki

Author(s): Anna Maślanka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2022

Both in the Polish as well as in the Czech literature after 1989, the number of family narrative increases, which – according to many researchers – might be successfully used to observe social transformations. This article undertakes such attempt in regard to two novels – Szopka [Farce] by Zośka Papużanka and Pod śniegiem [Under the Snow] by Petra Soukupová. They are analysed (plot- and language-wise) from the comparative perspective, moreover – in accordance with the opinions of Agnieszka Mrozik, Anna Pekaniec and Eva Klíčová – they are treated as a document pertaining to Polish and Czech realities as well as the difference in both nations’ mentalities. Described were also a different methods, by which both texts deconstruct myth of happy family as well as represent a broader sociocultural phenomena – the Polish Romantic tradition and the Czech escape from the public into a private sphere.

Nie tylko Hašek i Szwejk? [Joanna Goszczyńska, Jaromír Kubíček, Tomáš Kubíček, Česká literatura v polských překladech 1989–2020 / Literatura czeska w tłumaczeniach polskich 1989–2020

Author(s): Anna Car / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2022

Review of: Nie tylko Hašek i Szwejk? [Joanna Goszczyńska, Jaromír Kubíček, Tomáš Kubíček, Česká literatura v polských překladech 1989–2020 / Literatura czeska w tłumaczeniach polskich 1989–2020, tłum. Katarzyna Slowiková, Moravská Zemská Knihovna, Brno 2020, ss. 231]

Zapomnienie jako utrata tożsamości we współczesnej prozie czeskiej i chorwackiej (Katerina Tučková „Wypędzenie Gerty Schnirch”, Ivana Šojat-Kuči „Unterstadt”)

Author(s): Magdalena Dyras / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

The fate of the German minority living in the Slavic countries before World War II has become the subject of numerous novels in recent years, not only those whose authors witnessed dramatic events that took place after the end of the war, but also young writers who only learned about the fate of marginalized groups after 1989. Thanks to literature, images of post-war history which until then had been a „blank spot”, started to circulate. The German inhabitants of Brno (Tučková) or Osijek (Šojat-Kuči) were for many years wiped from official memory, erased from historical studies, doomed to social exclusion, loss of their own language and identity. Interestingly, oblivion and erasure also encompass the city space where the characters of the analyzed novels once lived. Selected literary texts make it possible to trace how the image of memory is constructed and how it is manipulated.

Podivnější než podivné

Author(s): Ondřej Dadejík / Language(s): Czech Issue: 67/2023

The article’s central theme is Vladimír Borecký’s “theory of the obscure,” which is viewed and interpreted from several points of view. Firstly, it is compared from the point of view of philosophical pragmatism, especially from the search for continuity overcoming the dualism of art and life. Secondly, the attention is focused on the dual character of mirroring in Borecký’s key concept. Subsequently, the network of standards, norms, and criteria that a rational critical debate about the meaning and value of the work of these extraordinary figures always presupposes is described. Finally, the author conceptualizes the nature of “strange works” in terms of one of the contemporary definitions of art, the American philosopher Alva Noë’s concept of artworks as “strange tools.”

The Conception of Space in Two Late Nineteenth-Century Writers, Thomas Hardy and Josef Karel Šlejhar

Author(s): Zdeněk Beran / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

The famous English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy and the little-known Czech short story writer Josef K. Šlejhar share a similar position in literary history, both being frequently, and rather inaccurately, discussed in the context of European naturalism. Though being partly influenced by the same ideas as the French naturalists, they both developed an individual mode of representation, especially in the way they structure the space of their fiction. The present paper attempts to analyse their approach and to demonstrate the fundamental difference of their conceptions. The prevailing form of space in Hardy is structured landscape where the nodal points are loci characterized by specific semantic density determining the issues the major characters are confronted with. Contrary to this, Šlejhar’s conception tends to present space as an exteriorizing projection of his characters’ situation, very often representing a moral dilemma of an individual or a community; due to this his space is less structured but more intense, deriving its meaning from the character, while in Hardy the process is reverse. The principal focus of the paper is thus on the semantics of the interaction between character and its environment or circumambient space.

TO THE INSECT AND BACK: FROM FRANZ KAFKA’S “THE METAMORPHOSIS” TO TWO REVERSAL REPLICAS: HARUKI MURAKAMI’S “SAMSA IN LOVE” AND IAN MCEWAN’S THE COCKROACH

Author(s): Dimitrie Andrei Borcan / Language(s): English Issue: 26/2021

This study tries to connect two replicas of Joseph Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” Haruki Murakami’s “Samsa in Love” and Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach to their complex inspirational source through a number of features, insisting on the significance of the Samsa name as a possible derivative of the Hinduist Samsara, viewed as sufferance, death, rebirth as reincarnation. In this respect, the two contemporary stories may be reversal sequels to Kafka’s novella. The study analyses the sources of surrealist parodic humour and tragic nonsense in these pieces of fiction, their use of names and interpersonal relationships between the characters, the dialogues.

„Černá kůže – ta je přece levnější než gumové boty.“ Reprezentace kolonialismu v cestopisech Jiřího Hanzelky a Miroslava Zikmunda

Author(s): Anna Chejnová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 01/2023

The study deals with representations of colonialism in the travelogues by Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund. The main reason behind writing the text is the specific position of Czechoslovakia within the post-war colonial discourse and the fact that although Hanzelka a Zikmund are a famous pair of Czechoslovak travellers, such an analysis of their travelogues has not yet been carried out. The study aims to answer the question of how Hanzelka and Zikmund represented colonialism in their texts and what these representations say about them and the social environment from which they set out into the world. These representations are mostly associated with criticism of capitalism and were deployed to highlight the positive qualities of socialist regimes and to delineate the differences between the world of the so-called West and the world of the East. Today the label 'West' usually carries rather historically progressive connotations but Hanzelka and Zikmund tend to present quite the opposite, which creates an interesting difference between how they presented themselves outside their travelogues and what is recorded in their work. Indeed, the popularity of these authors in contemporary historical memory is linked, among other things, with their anti-communist attitudes and subsequent persecution (for example, the ban on publishing in their later years). The study also addresses the issue of the applicability of the concept of Orientalism to societies that were not direct participants in expansive colonial ventures.

First English monograph on Czech broadside ballads

Author(s): Markéta Skořepová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This paper contains following book review: Fumerton, Patricia, ed., Kosek, Pavel, ed. a Hanzelková, Marie. Czech broadside ballads as text, art, and song in popular culture, ca. 1600-1900. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, [2022], ©2022. 468 stran. ISBN 978-94-6372-155-4.