CZECH LITERARY CRITICISM FROM THE EXILE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The paper deals with the exile view of Czech literary criticism in the past decades, reflected in two essays: one by Igor Hajek, and the other one by Kvetoslav Chvatik. Igor Hajek (1931�1995), a Czech literary critic, who went to exile in 1969, played a significant role in presenting Czech literature abroad. Kvetoslav Chvatik (1930�2012) was a Czech philosopher, aesthetician, art historian, and literary theorist. Hajek taught at universities in the English-speaking world, while Chvatik worked in a German-speaking environment. Two periods are covered and compared in the paper: the first period, the period of pluralistic democracy and the resulting cultural structure when the literary criticism contributed to the fact that Czech literature reached the European level, and the period after February 1948 when the ruling ideology started to interfere in the development of literature. Two completely contradictory conceptions are described showing the radical changes that took place in literary criticism after 1948. The text looks at the role of literary criticism in an era when plurality of opinion is possible, and at the impact of the suppression of freedom of speech on the work of literary critics. It also shows how the process of the shift of literary criticism towards its true function in the spirit of democratising tendencies had gradually won its way.