Czech Literature

- - - with Hana Nichtburgerová.

The article in connection with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the #WeRemember campaign recalls the life story of Holocaust survivor Richard Glazar and his complicated destinies of his testimony about the Treblinka extermination camp.
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Článek ve spojitosti s Mezinárodním dnem památky obětí holokaustu a kampaní #WeRemember připomíná životní příběh přeživšího holokaustu Richard Glazara a komplikované osudy jeho svědectví o vyhlazovacím táboře Treblinka.

To read the full-text of this paper, please, you can request a copy directly from the author.

You can also see:
http://dejinyasoucasnost.cz/archiv/2021/2/richard-glazar-pamet-treblinky/

The article deals with the song postil Písně na epištoly a evanjelia nedělní a sváteční (Songs on the Epistles and Gospels for Sundays and Feast Days), written down during the 1570s by the Utraquist priest and follower of Luther Valentin Šubar Lanškrounský and printed during the second decade of the seventeenth century by Jiří Hanuš Lanškrounský z Kronenfeldu and relatives Jan Schumann the Elder. There is a comparison of all five preserved specimens: a manuscript copy (V B 7) and a printing (K16012) from the National Museum Library, two printings from the Education and Research Library of the Pilsen Region (K16012 and K16014), and a printing from the Strahov Library (K16012). Mainly on the basis of chronograms, it has been determined that the previously stated dating of the printed editions was incorrect. The supposedly lost prose "Summas" are found in a specimen dated to 1612, which is the only one also containing a foreword by Valentin Šubar and seven uniquely preserved Easter songs.

Author of the entry on Jazzová sekce [Jazz Section]

- - - Main editor of the book: Michal Přibáň
- - - Author´s team of the book: Eduard Burget, Petra Čáslavová (Loučová), Michal Jareš, Veronika Košnarová, Zuzana Malá (Říhová), Michal Přibáň, Alena Přibáňová, Andrea Vítová, Dominik Mačas, Milena Šubrtová

This book´s topic is publishing houses in the humanities and social and cultural journalism. Listed alongside entries for the most significant companies are so-called regional publishing houses, including those active in the Czech diaspora. The individual entries contain information about the history of each firm, commentary on its published output, and clearly organized bibliographic information. This publication is the most thorough treatment to date of postwar publishing activity in Czechoslovakia from the perspective of literary history.

This article discusses the options that narrative and language have in their attempts to capture or describe traumatic experience and death. It concentrates on two prose
texts by Karel Čapek, Obyčejný život and Povětroň, and the first phase of Freudian psychoanalysis, pointing at generally distinguishable limits and distortions that arise when narrative and language come in contact with trauma and death. Contrary to the current trend within „trauma studies“, the article does not deal with autobiographical records of traumatic experience. It rather tries to point out that thinking consistently about the connection between memory, language and trauma tends to blur and question the  traditional distinction between fiction (understood as a work of imagination) and autobiography (taken as a description of real events). It also tries to show that psychoanalysis arrives, explicitly and implicitly, at a similar conclusion. The last part of the article poses the question what the resulting  relationship between the outside (narrated, written story) and the „inner“ experience is like, and to what
extent the structure of this dyad can also be questioned.

The following paper is based on the concept of literature and mediality of memory (Astrid Erll) which deals with the function of literary texts in creating and maintaining collective memory. Using these methodological incentives, it focuses on the determination and characterization of ways in which Czech literary works co-create and preserve the memory of the 20 th century Hlučín Region, as well as, vice versa, the ways involved in suppressing some layers of memory and oblivion. The area described is selected, inter alia, because of its discontinuous and multi-layered memory influenced by geopolitical changes in Central Europe. The study thus provides a more detailed view of how artistic literature, as a medium of collective memory, can function within the phenomena of the so-called abused memory and memory work (Paul Ricoeur).

Mikuláš Štraus is mainly known as a publisher of newspapers and leaflets after the Battle of White Mountain. The article builds on the analysis of the decorative material used by his printing workshop and provides some new conclusions concerning the illustrations of four books published by Štraus: a German translation of Hájek’s Kronika česká [Bohemian Chronicle], Barthold’s hymn-book Hymnorum sacrorum, Luython’s mass-book Liber I. missarum and the verse adaptation of an Old German legend published under the title Sumovní kronika. It identifies some illustrations as the work of the remarkable illustrator Jan Willenberg and thus indicates the wide range of motifs used by this hitherto undervalued artist.

Kniha byla vydána v Praze roku 1990 / The book was published in Prague in 1990.

Anotace / Annotation:

Bohatě dokumentovaná publikace o dějinách české knihy od středověkých počátků do r. 1949.
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A richly documented publication on the history of the Czech book from medieval beginnings until 1949.

Studie pojednává o estetice absence a zárodečně postmoderních strategiích uplatňovaných v povídce Richarda Weinera „Prázdná židle“ (1916), a to jak z hlediska narativní analýzy, tak na základě východisek filozofie médií a vizuální antropologie. V první části studie je osvětlena Weinerova diskurzivní strategie fingování, jež vykazuje společné rysy s postmoderní metafikcí a způsobuje cézuru mezi tím, co text říká a co skutečně dělá. Druhá část analyzuje ironizaci afektivního i tematického centra povídky a přináší nový pojem „dianarace“. Třetí část odkrývá intermediální afinity prázdné židle s portréty Vincenta van Gogha (1888) a zakladatelským dílem konceptuálního umění Josepha Kosutha (1965).
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This paper deals with the aesthetics of absence and pre-postmodern strategies as carried out in the short story “Prázdná židle [Empty Chair]” (1916) by Richard Weiner. Drawing on the methodological fusion of narrative analysis, media philosophy, and visual anthropology, I argue that Weiner’s text offers a specific “portrait of absence”, which is able to intensify the subject despite its physical non-presence. In the first part, Weiner’s discursive strategy of feigning, revealing common features
with postmodern metafiction and producing a rupture between what the text says and what it does, is explained. The second part analyzes an ironization of its affective and thematic center while bringing forth a new concept of “dia-narrative”. The third part explores the main figure of the empty chair in its intermedial relations with the portraits of Vincent van Gogh (1888) and the founding work of the conceptual art by Joseph Kosuth (1965).

Modern vulgarisms are becoming more and more common. Also in the literature, where they constitute a full mean of expression today. However, their application in literary works constitutes a challenge for the translator, who must take a decision to what extent she or he should be faithful to the original simultaneously not to invade the convention adapted in language, to which they translate. Specific problems connected with the translation of vulgarisms from Czech into Polish – as implemented obecná čeština, strong relation of the overtone to the context or misleading similarity of vulgar formulations Polish and Czech – were explained on the example of the novel „Jezioro” [The Lake] by Bianca Bellová.

The aim of this study is to set out a relevant contextual framework for interpreting poetry published on (Czech) Instagram. The author looks at the material under study from a number of perspectives, including generational, economic and especially media perspectives, ultimately finding adequate contextualization outside the Framework of literary discourse and actually within the aesthetics and communication practice of Instagram, while drawing key methodological inspiration from the reflections of new media theorist Lev Manovich. In conclusion, Instapoetry is characterized as a paraliterary phenomenon situated on the margins of the literary system, combining elements of literary and Instagram aesthetics and guided by hybrid economics principles.

The article attempts to outline the "genre field" of cyberpunk. It is argued that several aspects have to be taken into consideration when the field is being mapped out. In the specific case of Czech cyberpunk it is the way science fiction in general is conceived in society (both by fans and academic discourse), the level of knowledge as far as its Anglo-American counterparts are concerned, the position of computer technology within society, the publishing opportunities, and the pressure from other sub-genres of the fantastic. All this and more amounts to what the article labels as "subgenre" and concludes that, at least in the case of science fiction, a genre involves not only a reservoir of aesthetic and plot devices, but above all it is to be viewed as a culturally specific sedimentation of a historically specific cultural situation.

Folklore research in the Czech Lands was properly institutionalized on academical level in the late 1940 and early 1950 when Department of Ethnography at the Charles University and Institute for Ethnography and Folkloristics at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences have been established. However, this period was also marked by relatively strong political pressure on the field, resulting in narrowing of research themes and exclusion of theoretical and methodological perspectives alternative to dogmatic Soviet Marxism (or, rather, Marxism-Leninism). The study argues that in the study of prosaic folklore (and verbal folklore in general), the situation was remarkably different, mostly because of strong tradition of comparative research and importance of international contacts of Czech folklorists (such as Karel Jaromír Erben, Jiří Polívka, Václav Tille or Jiří Horák) since the second half of the 19th century. Since the late 1950s, Czech folklorists such as Jaromír Jech or Oldřich Sirovátka were actively participating on international folkloristic projects, sometimes as the only ones from the Eastern/Soviet Bloc (such as ISFNR Legend Commission, or ISFNR and SIEF congresses held in Czechoslovakia in 1966). The field has also been in touch with contemporary developments of theory and methodology in folkloristics, resulting of several important studies published abroad (in the West) and continuing interest of international folklorists in Czech(oslovak) research, especially one done in the 1950s and 1960s and influenced by Russian (Proppian) formalism, functional structuralism, semiotics, or historical study of folktale and legend in general. This period of international cooperation ended because of political reasons in the early 1970s, resulting in isolation and partial decline of importance of Czech folkloristics which lasted to the beginning of the new millenium.

This essay traces the work of Taulero Zulberti as a translator and pro-moter of Czech literature. The story of Czech-Italian cultural exchange during the 1920s and 1930s, which was carried out in a variety of magazines and periodicals, is undoubtedly a relevant, even if secondary, topic. Yet it has received little attention in the context of Italian Slavistics. Zulberti, subsequently known for his work as a jour-nalist, remains a practically unknown figure as mediator of Czech culture in Italy. This represents the first thorough survey of his extensive output, based on analysis of such magazines as Il Brennero, Il Secolo XX, and Le opere e i giorni. Zulberti’s career is particularly significant as regards Josef and Karel Čapek, and it is through his translations that their stories first appeared to the Italian public. He would atten-tively follow their careers at least throughout the 1920s. The obscurity surrounding Zulberti’s work is due in part to the kind of texts he published, preferring short pieces that rarely reached the size of a full-length article, with the unique exception of Karel Čapek’s The Makropulos Affair, the author’s first published volume in Italian.

Auch wenn die kulturhistorische Entwicklung von Tschechen und Deutschen über die Jahrhunderte von Rivalitäten in dem von Bergen umschlossenen Land Böhmen geprägt war, so ist am Beispiel der Entwicklung der Märchen zu erkennen, wie viel beide Bevölkerungsgruppen in der Erzähltradition inhaltlich lind stilistisch miteinander verbindet. Auch die „Sprachgrenze“ wurde in der Vergangenheit nicht nur mental ebenso bewältigt, wie verwandtschaftliche Bindungen den Scheitel des Habichtsgebirges, diesseits und jenseits des „Glatzkogels“, überwanden. Dies macht besonders der zauberhafte Hintergrund der Großen Doktoren-Geschichten deutlich.
Für CAPEKS und PREUSSLERS Geschichten kann, Walter SCHMITZ folgend, gleichermaßen festgestellt werden, dass sie die Tradition in lebendige Gegenwart des Erzählens übertragen, sie die Landschaft der Heimat in einen Raum der Geschichten verwandeln, der jedem zugänglich ist.

Ivan Klíma, un bambino a Terezín – racconti dal campo –

I racconti autobiografici dello scrittore ceco Ivan Klíma qui proposti sono un contributo alla commemorazione del settantacinquesimo anniversario della liberazione dei campi di concentramento nell’Europa Centro Orientale da parte dell’Armata Rossa.
L’autore ha vissuto l’esperienza della guerra ancora bambino come prigioniero nella città fortezza di Terezín, il campo destinato allo smistamento degli ebrei per i campi di sterminio ad est, e vi rimase per circa quattro anni, fino a quando l’Armata Rossa non giunse anche qui a liberare i pochi sopravvissuti. I racconti della raccolta affrontano il tema del valore dell’amicizia (Benjamin), dell’arte (Il professore), della solidarietà femminile e della famiglia (La signora Heda), e della vendetta letteraria rispetto a una vergognosa ingiustizia della storia (Mengele). I racconti sono legati da alcuni passi che lo scrittore ha dedicato all’esperienza della guerra nel suo grande romanzo autobiografico Il mio secolo pazzo, per il quale ha conseguito il premio nazionale ceco Magnesia Litera nel 2010.

The first part of the study is concerned with the rhythm of the reception of Klíma’swork: from the anniversary of his death, through the “Golden Sixties” and his cult inthe underground to present-day editions. The second part of the study takes the briefexample of two versions of the story Řeč oblohy (“Language of Sky”) to analyse thevisual rhetoric of Klíma’s poetics and the importance of his diaries. Writing diaries ishere interpreted after Philippe Lejeune as an anthropologicallly conceived practice.Multilingualism and typography enable us to examine the function of the raster of Klíma’s poetics of composition (as conceived by Boris Uspensky). Here it is possible to define its three “rules” (apparent equivalence, “ontological” initial letter and visualhierarchization) and to show the most conspicuous feature of Klíma’s texts – neologization or, more precisely, “tautologization” of the philosophical terminology. All of the strategies serve the same purpose: to keep the distance between the life and viewpoints of the author and others. What is more, comparison of the two versions enables us to expose the common autobiographical basis of Klíma’s philosophical and literarywork. The polyphonic composition of the texts becomes a labyrinth which is built by the author for himself. The world which ought to be consciousness, turns into nothing. Besides, strictly diaristic (chronological) and auto-referential entries can be understood as a form of constant returns to the first meeting of oneself as an author (in otherwords, as a diaristic pact). On this occasion, it is possible to emphasize the importanceof meteorology for Klíma’s work. In this way fragments of destroyed verbal philosophy, this desperate struggle with the world with all its outdated thought (and especially outdated speech), participates in creating the melancholic beauty of his prose. And in the end the symmetrical development of the diaries and Velký román (“Great Novel”) enables us to observe mutual supplementing against the background of the traumatic recollection of the writer’s attempts at suicide. Indeed, the rhythm of the diary entries is a repetition of the above-mentioned reflections on suicide, of the Great Novel and of numerous heroic models. When understanding Klíma’s aim as an attempt to express in literature the existential situation of an individual on the margins of society, then the“illogical logic” gains a sense of profundity as the answer to modern alienation. Klíma’s Diaries sound like “drafts of his life”, or rather “a life in drafts”.

Česká literatura 2015/1, s. 49-72.
Studie se věnuje teoretickému vymezení a definici žánru autobiografie, který tradičně stojí na pomezí mezi fikční a faktuální literaturou. Za výchozí si bere práci Philippa Lejeuna a jeho koncept tzv. autobiografického paktu, který blíže rozebírá. Postupně analyzuje jednotlivá kritéria, kterými Lejeue autobiografii vymezuje, a na příkladech z české i světové literatury ukazuje propustnost hranic mezi autobiografií a dalšími žánry. Na textu Gertrude Steinové Vlastní životopis Alice B. Toklasové jsou v závěru prezentovány možnosti experimentování s žánrovými konvencemi a důsledky, které z toho plynou pro literární teorii.

This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective  (Albanian, Czech, Polish Gothic) but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange – exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre’s gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.

The anthology Čtení o Janu Nerudovi (Writings About Jan Neruda), subtitled Utváření obrazu (The Creation of an Image) presents a mosaic portrait of one of the most important figures of the second half of the nineteenth century: the writer and journalist Jan Neruda (1834–1891).The book brings together thirteen texts from 1864 to 1942, thus covering the first eight decades of the resonance of Neruda’s oeuvre. On the one hand it presents critical essays and portraits published during the author’s life (Vilém Kienberger, Karel Sabina, Servác Heller, Jakub Arbes and J. V. Sládek), on the other more comprehensive attempts at grasping Neruda’s persona and work written after his death (Eliška Krásnohorská, Jaroslav Vrchlický, Arne Novák, Miloslav Hýsek, F. X. Šalda a Karel Polák). The anthology’s framework consists of two essays by Felix Vodička and Albert Pražák that were written for a collective publication entitled Kniha o Janu Nerudovi (Jan Neruda: A Book). Although the book was being prepared for publication in 1941 (to mark fifty years since the death of Jan Neruda) by the publishing house Čin (Act), it never saw the light of day. The unpublished encyclopaedia was meant to be the culmination of several decades of research of the first generations of Neruda scholars – for this reason these texts act as the anthology’s lynchpin, binding it together. The texts have been selected with the intention of covering the chosen time period as evenly as possible, as well as capturing the variety of Neruda’s activities (poet, prose writer, journalist, playwright). Arranged chronologically, they allow the reader to observe the progressive formation of views on Jan Neruda and his oeuvre. The anthology includes a foreword by the editor that gives an outline of the transformations and directions of Neruda scholarship from the 1850s to the 1940s, as well as a bibliography. The bibliography comprises a list of Jan Neruda’s publications alongside an overview of the author’s collected writings and a list of selected literature about the author.

The paper discusses the issue of (national/ethnical) cultural heritage and the conflict between hegemonic politics of memory and collective memory of cultural/ethnic minority based on the example of Silesian tetralogy by Eva Tvrdá, a writer tied to the Hlučín Region. Some of novels characters betray their families and community choosing to assimilate into Czech or German society, yet find full assimilation impossible, and identity cannot been reestablished. The constant feeling of being empty and incomplete becames a heritage, which Tvrda‘s characters pass down to the next generation.

This catalogue provides in Czech and Dutch the first survey of a history of the reception of Dutch and Flemish literature in Czech translation. This reception starts around the year 1840.

The booklet divides the reception in four major periods: 1) Translation production between 1840 and 1918, 2) the production between 1918 and 1948, 3) the period 1948-1989 and 4) the period after 1989. For every period a couple of central translated writers have been chosen.
The first period can be subdivided into translations of pre-modern literature (till the end of the eighties of the 19th century) and the decades of first translations of modern literature. In the first sub-period, the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883) is a central person, as well as Eduard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli, 1820-1887). In the second subperiod the focus lies on Louis Couperus (1863-1923), Frederik van Eeden (1860-1923), Hélène Swarth (1859-1941) and Stijn Streuvels (1871-1969).

The second period of the Interbellum may be subdivided into three parts: the twenties, represented here by the first Flemish uni-versity rector August Vermeylen (1872-1945) and the internatio¬nally very renown Felix Timmermans (1886-1947); the thirties are sym-bolized by Willem Elsschot, and the forties – mainly the years of the occupation of the Czech lands by the Third Reich – by Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971), Ernest Claes (1885-1968) and Gerard Walschap (1898-1989). The period immediately after the War, 1945-1948, showed a relative ‘translation boom’ (here represented by Madelon Székely-Lulofs, 1899-1958).

The third period is that of the Communist regime. During the fifties, just a few translations were published. This subperiod is represented here by Johan Fabricius (1899-1981). In the sixties, we see the beginning of the work of Olga Krijtová. The chapter of this period focuses on the writer of rural novels Antoon Coolen (1897-1961), the modern poet and writer Remco Campert (born 1929) and the periodi-cal Světová literature (World Literature). During the repression of the Prague Spring, the period of the so-called ‘normalization’, the youth writer Miep Diekmann, the Flemish magic realist Johan Daisne (1912-1978) and the most important Flemish writer of the 20th century Hugo Claus (1929-2008). The eighties showed translations of the Caribe writer Sonia Garmers (bron 19833) and of the Dutch prosaic writer Harry Mulisch (1927-2010).

The newest period is illustrated by twelve authors: the Flemish Dadaist and expressionist Paul van Ostaijen (1896-1928), the writer of the generation of the roaring sixties Jan Wolkers (1925-2007), the surrealistic writer Cees Nooteboom (born 1933), the representative of the ‘Nix generation’ Arnon Grunberg (born 1971), the grand old lady of Dutch literature Hella S. Haasse (1918-2011), the writer of historic novels Arthur Japin (born 1955), the great post-war novelist Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995), two representatives of the most recent generation Gustaaf Peek (born 1975) and Annelies Verbeke (born 1976), two writers of the ethnic non-Dutch group of authors, Hafid Bouayya (born 1970) and Kader Abdolah (born 1954), and finally the translation of the homosexual writer Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924).

The book is finished by a conclusion, a bibliography and a catalogue of exhibited translations. All exhibited books are part of the library of the Chair for Dutch Studies of Palacký University; some of them are originating from the library of Olga Krijtová.