Prague: The Czech Republic's “Dear Little Mother”

Abstract

photos: logan webb notebook Prague City Profile Cities are like oceans: their ebbs and flows offer glimpses of their depths, providing contrasts between what we know and what they’ve yet to reveal. Similarly, Prague’s staccato bursts of modernism are juxtaposed against its wonderfully intact feudal atmosphere, creating a delicious sense of fluidity between medieval and modern. Often referred to as the city of a thousand spires, Prague’s simultaneously idyllic and austere landscape hosts the Prague Writers’ Festival (www.pwf.cz) each spring. Since its inception in 1991, the festival has sought to bring together the minds of great authors—often Nobel, Pulitzer , and Booker Prize recipients—and readers to encourage cross-cultural discussion. Proposed in the late 1970s, the festival began as a rather small poetry reading in London before relocating to Prague’s Valdštejnský Palác (Wallenstein Palace ), the home of the Czech Senate. How could the Czech Republic’s Golden City not be the perfect location for thousands of literature lovers to convene? From housing numerous royals, to hosting the world premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, to what would have been Adolf Hitler’s home had his efforts been successful, Prague’s rich history is ubiquitous. Prague’s connection to the literary world doesn’t end with the writers’ festival. The city is peppered with literary cafés and antikvariats (used bookstores) stacked high with decades-old volumes. These locales are sure to satisfy even the most insatiable hunger for Czech literature, including, of course, the works of Prague’s most famous son, Franz Kafka, whose influence haunts every obscure alleyway, from cobbled street below to ascetic spire above. One of the most popular you-gotta-be-lost-to-find-it literary haunts is the Tynska Literary Café just beyond Old Town. Concealed in a meandering alley, Tynska’s walled courtyard sits just beneath the twin spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, providing a hidden nook for reading, writing, and drinking. A city of contradiction, Prague is simultaneously warm and stern, soft and severe, no doubt leading Kafka to write, “Prague never lets you go . . . this dear little mother has sharp claws.” Logan Webb is an art student at the University of Science & Arts of Oklahoma. The Czech Republic’s “Dear Little Mother” What to Read at Tynska Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors Myla Goldberg, Time’s Magpie Franz Kafka, The Trial, tr. Breon Mitchell (Schocken Books, 1998) Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, tr. Michael Henry Heim (HarperCollins, 2004) Gustav Meyrink, The Golem, tr. Mike Mitchell (Dedalus, 2011) Jáchym Topol, City Sister Silver, tr. Alex Zucker (Catbird Press, 2000) Logan Webb November–December 2014 • 5 ...