Czech Writer Research Articles

Lost in translation? Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop and its local and transnational reader

Jáchym Topol, who is a Czech writer and poet, has several times emphasized that he does not care about his readers, especially foreign ones who get to read translated versions of his work, as it is not his job to be understood. With the rise of transnational WWII-related literature in the Czech Republic in the last two decades, I explore how his novel The Devil’s Workshop has become an important work in the realm of transnational literature, despite Topol’s peculiar writing style and stance towards his international readers. In my analysis, I explore Topol’s writing style, the novel’s socio-historical context through the concept of difficult heritage and the juxtaposition of Czech and Belarusian WWII narratives, as well as the novel’s local and international reception.

„Aš myliu ir gerbiu visą Čekijos tautą“. Elzės Ožeškienės čekofilinės veiklos pėdsakai, pagrįsti laiškais Edvardui Jelinekui

The article, based on Eliza Orzeszkowa’s letters to Edvard Jelínek from 1881–1896, pre­sents the relationship between the two writers. They were guided by the common idea of vzajemnosti, i.e. promoting cultural activities among the Slavs, aimed at bringing nations together. In this regard, Orzeszkowa undertook many initiatives in cooperation with the Czech writer. The first was an attempt to publish in Polish the work The Fall and Rebirth of the Czech Nation, presenting the history of the Czechs. On the pages of the letters, the project of publishing an anthology works by famous Czech poets and prose writers translated by Czesław Jankowski, Bronisław Teodor Grabowski, Władysław Bełza and Wilhelmina Zyndram-Kościałkowska was discussed. The income from the sale of the publication was planned to be used to rebuild the National Theater in Prague (Národní divadlo), which burned down in 1881. The writer also organized a fundraising for this purpose at the “Orzeszkowa i S-ka” bookstore in Vilnius. The last undertaking was the intention to publish Orzeszkowa’s memories from her stay in Prague – it was to familiarize the reader with Czech culture. Even though some of the discussed plans were already advanced, they were not implemented, mainly due to tsarist decrees. This correspondence is therefore a valuable trace of the Polish–Czech cooperation between writers. The quoted fragments of Orzeszkowa’s letters to Jelínek are in the National Literature Museum in Prague (Památník Národního Písemnictví). They have not been released yet.

Victims of Modernity. The Image of Capitalist Modernisation in Jaroslav Rudiš’s Fiction

In this article, the author analyses the novel The National Valley (2016) by the contemporary Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš. The main argument of the analysis focuses on the concept of modernity and modern subjectivity as outlined by the American philosopher, Marshall Berman, who in his book All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1988) describes modernity as a process of constant changes in reality. The author of the article interprets the Czech capitalist system after 1989 as a process of modernisation that forces certain elements of reality to disappear. Using the tools of semiotics provided by Yuri Lotman (1984), he analyses the structure of space in the novel, whilst also focusing on the issues of masculinity, family relations and subjectivity in capitalist modernity. The protagonist of the novel, shaping his identity in opposition to the current model of modernity, has only limited possibilities of achieving subjectivity. The values he considers important do not fit into the realities of modernity, which means that the protagonist, as well as the milieu he inhabits, is doomed to marginalisation.

Artistic specificity of the image of a woman in the novel K. Tuchkova «Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch»

In the article examines the artistic features of «women's literature» in modern Czech literature. In recent decades, in the literature of various countries, we have observed an increase in the activities of female writers. Feminism and gender studies, which arose earlier, contributed to the formation of the image of a new woman in an artistic work, to the interpretation of events from the point of view of gender. Bozhena Nemtsova and Karolina Svetla, representatives of the last wave of the Czech national movement, started the tradition of «women's literature» in Czech literature. In modern Czech literature, the work of K. Tuchkova occupies an important place. The object of our research is the novel by the modern Czech writer K. Tuchkova «Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch», which is considered from the standpoint of feminist criticism The literary activity of K. Tuchkova is the subject of a complex analysis by Czech literary critics, however, her works have not yet received proper research in Ukraine, and our article is thought of as one of the first steps in this direction. In her novel «Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch» attention is focused on the depiction of acute social cataclysms from a woman's point of view. The novel has a clearly structured composition: it consists of a prologue and five chronologically consecutive chapters. «Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch» is considered in the context of the pan-European artistic trend, taking into account modern feminist studies. K. Tuchkova's prose continues the literary tradition of women's writing that has developed in Czech literature. The central role of female characters, close attention to the role of a woman as a mother, depiction of large-scale historical events from a female perspective, socio-didactic orientation — all this testifies to the high skill of the writer and assigns her a proper place in the modern literary process.

The Tragic Nature of the Joke. The Joke Vs. The World in Two Days

Abstract Two of the novels which are deeply related to the experience within the limits of the totalitarian regime in the Eastern blocs are The Joke, by the Czech writer Milan Kundera, and The World in Two Days, by the Romanian writer George Bălăiță. Both Kundera and Bălăiță present in their novels the stories of individuals who pay the price of their destiny for the mistake of deviating from the imposed norms. Even if these two works present differences at the level of the narrative style, The Joke falling mainly within the modernist one and The World in Two Days in the postmodernist one, having allegorical characters, they have a series of common elements at the content level. Thus, the two novels propose a common theme, which reveals the collapse of a sacred world that falls prey to individuals obsessed with controlling other individuals’ lives.

How to Talk about the Loss of Maternal Love: The Case of Tereza Boučková’s Novel The Year of the Rooster

The aim of this article is to explore the way in which the literary voice expressing the experience of the loss of maternal love can be constructed. In the Western cultural mainstream, the notion of the sanctity of the mother-child bond strongly prevails, which results in the normative expectation of mothers to identify entirely with the maternal role. Deliberations are based on the analysis of the autobiographical novel Rok kohouta by Czech writer Tereza Boučková. The article tries to answer the question whether providing testimony about such a painful experience is more difficult, or perhaps easier, in the case of adoptive mothers

Zapatrywania ekonomiczne Václava Havla w kontekście bezpieczeństwa gospodarczego i geopolitycznego Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. Część 2

The work presents the profile of Václav Havel (1936-2011), a famous Czech writer and playwright, dissident, anti-communist activist, one of the co-authors of Charter 77, the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992), and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). This article aims to present the economic views, not of an economist, but of an eminent Czech statesman and a leading representative of Central and Eastern Europe popularized during his tenure as President of the Czech Republic.

Gustaw Morcinek a Vojtěch Martínek

The author of the expert article, who is a long-time researcher of literature on the Czech-Polish borderland, deals with the comparison of two writers from the wider Ostrava region – Gustaw Morcinek, who was born in Karviná and became a writer writing in Polish, and the Czech writer Vojtěch Martínek, a native of Brušperk near Frýdek-Místek. The comparison is based on biographical and substantive (fictional) or thematic aspects. In part, the author follows up on the impulses given by an older, typologically tuned comparative study of the studies of the Brno Polish rechearcher Krystyna Kardyni-Pelikánová, which was printed in the newspaper for the Polish national minority in the wider Ostrava region – Głos Ludu in 1975. We also note Polish sources that deal with the writer Gustav Morcinek in the context of regional Silesian literature, but also Polish national literature, such as Witold Nawrocký’s 1972 monograph about the writer, who was connected for a long time with his stay in the Silesian town of Skočov. Since the situation in the literary context of the Czech-Polish borders and in the area of wider Ostrava has changed relatively significantly since 1975, in addition to supplementing information and their sources, it was necessary to approach the current qualitative aspects of the reception of the works of both mentioned writers.

Zapatrywania ekonomiczne Václava Havla w kontekście bezpieczeństwa gospodarczego i geopolitycznego Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. Część 1

The work presents the profile of Václav Havel (1936-2011), a famous Czech writer and playwright, dissident, anti-communist activist, one of the co-authors of Charter 77, the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992), and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). This article aims to present the economic views, not of an economist, but of an eminent Czech statesman and a leading representative of Central and Eastern Europe popularized during his tenure as the president of Czechoslovakia.

The View of a Foreigner: Soviet Life and Soviet People in Artistic Reception of Jiri Weil

In the following study an attempt was made to analyze the image of the Soviet world, reflected in the novel by the Czech writer Jiří Weil “Moscow — the border” (1937). This image is unique in many ways, since its creator was the author, who, being in 1933–1934 an employee of the Comintern in Moscow, was a direct participant and observer of Soviet reality in the mid-1930s. It was his personal experience that gave a rare opportunity to consider many details of the Moscow Soviet life, as well as those processes and phenomena that covered the Soviet life of the aforementioned period. In addition, Weil’s powers of observation allowed him to make numerous and very valuable observations on the psychology of Soviet people, to recreate a gallery of the most striking types of “Soviet people”.

Notes of an “outsider”: Jiri Weil on mass education and the book boom in Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s

The article deals with the journalistic heritage of the Czech writer Jiří Weil, dedicated to the cultural life of the USSR in the 1920s – 1930s. In particular, his essays and reports published from 1923 to 1936 in various Czech publications and devoted to cultural and educational policy, the role of books in Soviet society, the erudition of Soviet readers, their literary tastes and priorities are analyzed. This corpus of texts is introduced into Russian scientific circulation for the first time. When analyzing them, an attempt is made to identify the main thematic blocks that are significant for the Czech writer, and the specifics of the addressee are also taken into account – the Czech readership, who knows little about the USSR, but has a certain level of expectations formed (most often by Western media). The conclusion is made about the difficult position of Weil, who, on the one hand, being a communist and a correspondent of left-wing publications, was under the influence of communist ideology, and on the other hand, he tried to realize his own, purely individual view of things, which in many respects anticipated the depiction of Soviet reality in his fictional prose of the second half of the 1930s, in such novels as “Moscow-border” (Moskva-hranice) and “Wooden Spoon” (Dřevěná lžíce).

Motyw zarazy w „Guwernantce” Vladimíra Macury

The main goal of this article is a recreation of the dramatic events in Prussian Wrocław in the 1840s during the cholera epidemic in Vladimir Macura’s novel The Governess. The Czech writer’s work is not only a short history of the epidemic in Wrocław but also a psychological study of the community in the face of the threat. The chronological framework of these considerations are the years 1845–1852. During this period, poet, university teacher, and widower František Ladislav Čelakovský married Antonia (née Reiss) in Prague. Soon after the wedding, the married couple arrive in Prussian Wrocław, which will soom be overcome by the plague. The disease is a unique situation in the life of both Antonia and František and the inhabitants of Wrocław, a borderline of sorts. In Macura’s literary world, the plague functions as a metaphor for an identity crisis and, simultaneously, as a means of overcoming it, becoming a stimulus for introspection, and thus for better recognition of one’s place in the world. He accompanies the Čelakovskis during family crises, disasters and historical turning points described in the article. It is a sign of the end of a particular world accompanied by “the great dying.”

НЕВІДОМИЙ ДОКУМЕНТ ПРО ЧЕСЬКОГО ПИСЬМЕННИКА ПЕТРА КРШІЧКУ

The publication presents an unknown manuscript dedicated to the work of the Czech poet, translator and teacher Petr Ladislav Křička (1884-1949). Its author is the P. L. Křička’s wife Anna Křičková. The document, written at the request of the Ukrainian Czech language literature scientist, professor of Lviv University V.A. Motornyi, tells us about individual pages of the Czech writer’s life, the beginnings of his creative biography, memories of his study years at school and at the Sorbonne University of Paris, etc. A special place in this material is given to the role of P. L. Křička’s personal contacts with famous figures of Czech culture of the first half of the 20th century, their influence on his talent as a writer.

The genre of ballad in cinematic discourse (the cinema ballad “Wild flowers“ (2000) by the Czech director F. A. Brabec)

The objective of the article is to analyze the specifics of cinematic interpretation of the ballads from the collection “A Bouquet of Czech Folk Legends” (1853), written by a famous Czech writer and folklorist K.J. Erben, in the film by F.A. Brabec “Wild Flowers” (2000) within the concept of genre continuity. Methods of research: comparative method, method of intermedial and receptive analysis. Novelty of research: the issue of intermedially oriented genre continuity is investigated for the first time within the discourse of Ukrainian Literary Criticism. Conclusions. The cinematic text of the director F. Brabec fully preserves and conveys all the basic codes of the genre of literary ballad: the preciseness of the narrative, the depth of disclosure of life, the severity of the situations described, the limited personosphere, the dramatic and unexpected denouement. Therefore, the above texts are perceived as short “concentrated tragedies”. In addition, the director broadens the main text of the ballads, supplementing each plot with a backstory; he actively applies montage and film trails, as well as reduces time parameters, fragments and dialogues, at the same time preserving the main content of the original. Particular emphasis in the research has been laid on the fact that each ballad, reproduced by means of cinematic language (“Bouquet”, “The Water-Goblin”, “The Wedding Shirts”, “Lady Midday”, “The Golden Spinning Wheel”, “Daughter’s Curse”, “Christmas Eve”), is presented as a completed independent text and is regarded as an indispensable part of the holistic author’s concept.

The Soviet World of the 1930s in Czech Literature: Jiřн Weil and His Novel Moscow — the Border

This article considers the work of the Czech writer J. Weil (1900–1959) and, in particular, his novel Moscow — the Border (1937) in a broad cultural and historical context. Weil’s fate and work were closely connected with Soviet Russia. Like other leftist Czech intellectuals, Weil was attracted by communist ideas and interested in the new Soviet Russia which claimed to rebuild the world. Weil’s relationship with the Soviet state was not easy — having gone to work in Moscow in 1934, he was already repressed in early 1935 during Stalin’s purges, and at the end of 1935 miraculously returned to Prague. The clash with Soviet reality was unavoidable. As a result, the Czech writer captured the complex impression of what he saw and felt in the USSR in his novel Moscow — the Border. The novel was one of the first (if not the first) works of fiction dedicated to the Soviet reality of the 1930s; it sees Soviet life from the perspective of foreign characters trying to find their place in Stalinist Moscow, following the second five-year plan. Their fates in the novel, on the one hand, demonstrate possible ways of interacting with the Soviet world, and on the other hand, reveal the deep contradictions of the Soviet state. In his novel, Weil does not try to give an unambiguous assessment of the Soviet system; the artistic form of the work allows the author to avoid direct assessments and conclusions and convey the complexity of the Soviet reality of the 1930s. In Czech criticism, the novel caused and still causes controversy; it is given different, often opposite assessments, largely determined by the political and cultural situation.

Специфика "языка военного обихода" и ее отражение в художественном тексте (русско-чешские параллели)

In given article, the object of our attention is the cases of citing the so-called military language). The use of these textual units as one of the means of creating irony has an obvious intertextual correlation. One of the basic functions of using elements of the military language, as in any work of military subjects, is to create an effect of authenticity of what is happening. In turn, the tradition of using such elements as a vivid figurative expressive means established in Czech literature was laid by J. Hašek in his novel “The Good Soldier Švejk”. Many of his followers, in particular, the Czech writer J. Škvorecký, the Russian author V. Pukhov and many others have largely adopted this method of Hašek, developing it, having used various and heterogeneous in its character ways of playing on such elements, depending on the context. The authors “compensate” for the monotony and stylistic dryness of the language of military commands and reports with a variety of situations, most of them initially comic, where such elements can create unexpected collisions than enhance the comic effect. The main types of the citation of the elements of the military (army) language, including units of the so-called “Army folklore”, and their stylistic and pragmatic role in the structure of the work of fiction are being examined.

Loss of Home and Loathing Nostalgia in the English writing of Central and Eastern European Exiles

Writers who are forced into exile by a hostile government tend to suffer from the grievances of loss and deprivation. They either divorce themselves completely from their former home country or they look back in nostalgia. After 1989, leaving central and eastern European homes was not only a free decision, but could also be an act of liberation. Leaving had not been an easy option before the Iron Curtain had come down. Changing one’s language and writing in English represented this act of liberation. Creating a new memory (e. g. Eva Hoffman) and a literary persona in the language of globalization and cosmopolitanism meant to look back and to discover the new at the same time. This article investigates this tension by reading writers who have published books about both their former home countries and their new English-speaking environments. Loathing nostalgia in the creative process of writing has helped authors, such as Bulgarian Kapka Kassabova and Miroslav Penkov and Czech writer Jan Novak, to imagine new spaces of cosmopolitan belonging without being in denial about the places of their childhood thus redefining the concept of eastern Europe altogether.

Some Reflexions on Jan Čep’s Short Stories in Exile

This article focuses on the six short stories that the Czech writer Jan Čep wrote during his exile in France, when he fled the new Czechoslovak communist regime after 1948. These texts are as follows: Les Tziganes [The Gypsies], which was written in French and published in the journal Terre humaine in 1952, Tajemství Kláry Bendové [The Secret of Klára Benda], Před zavřenými dveřmi [In Front of the Closed Door], Ostrov Ré [Ré Island], Květnové dni [Days of May], and Tři pocestní [Three Pilgrims]. These short stories are interesting for several reasons. First of all, they present a changing point in Čep’s themes, for they take place during the more recent events – the Second World War and the arrival to power of the communist regime, – and evoke a humanity who has been destroyed. The existential drama of the individual, which had previously been predominant in Čep’s work, is now extended to the entire human community. Fear has separated people from each other, and every genuine personal relation has become impossible. What’s more, language is incapable of bringing together human beings. True communication implies a form of silence, in which God can speak to the heart of man, and where the possibility of communion with the others still exists. At the same time, Čep’s characters have to face this recent history, which obliges them to make a choice, in particular as far as exile is concerned. As a consequence, a new form of anguish appears, and is superimposed on Čep’s original one. It gives rise to a feeling of guilt over those who stayed in Czechoslovakia, especially his mother, but also confronts Čep with the inability to write, since he doesn’t manage to find a publisher in France and can no longer write in Czech. As a “pilgrim on the earth”, he endures his suffering and the suffering of the world united to Christ, in communion with Him. Eventually, these later short stories represent a transition for Čep, and reveal that he accepts, as painful as this decision can be, to abandon fiction and to engage in the genre of essay, above all for Radio Free Europe. He will thus manage to give hope to people who suffer behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, while expressing his intimate concerns in a very personal way.

ЧЕСЬКИЙ ПИСЬМЕННИК АЛЕКСЕЙ ПЛУДЕК У ЛИСТАХ ДО УКРАЇНСЬКОГО БОГЕМІСТА ВОЛОДИМИРА МОТОРНОГО

Personal letters of the Czech writer, of the middle of the second half of the twentieth century Alexej Pludek (1923–2002) to the Ukrainian scholar-slavist, literary scholar, professor of Lviv University Volodymyr Motornyi (1929-2015) are presented in this work. The issues, given in the letters are considered on the background of the specifics of the development of the literary process in Czechoslovakia in so-called “normalization period”. There are also issues related to the creation of individual works by the Czech writer and further evaluation of them by Czechoslovak and foreign literary criticism. Problems related to the history of the creation of individual works of the Czech prose writer and their subsequent assessments by Czechoslovak and foreign literary critics are also covered. Special attention is paid to the place of Serbo-Lusatian themes both in V. Motornyi's literary studies and in A. Pludek's literary work. The presented letters cover the 70s – 90s of the last century, which were the period of particularly active socio-political and creative activity of Alexei Pludek. Alexei Pludek, whose literary debut took place in the 1940s, was a Czech writer, politician, playwriter, editor and public figure whose works were especially popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The author is known primarily for his novels on historical themes, as well as works in the genre of science fiction. Volodymyr Motornyi (1929–2015) was a Ukrainian scholar, professor of Slavic philology at National Ivan Franko University of Lviv, author of numerous works on Czech and Serbo-Lusatian literature as well as on Czech-Ukrainian, Lusatian-Ukrainian and Czech-Lusatian literary and cultural ties.

«THE MAKROPULOS AFFAIR» AND THE THINKING ABOUT LONGEVITY AND THE SENSE OF LIFE

The paper deals with the play, written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek «The Makropulos Affair». The play is analyzed in the context of philosophical search of the time of its emergence. Particularly, I. I. Mechnikov’s essays concerning longevity and accompanying it the sense of life matters are observed in the paper. Also, the author makes the comparative analysis of the ideas, represented by the K. Čapek’s play and by the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw’s theatrical work «Back to Methuselah», in which the ideas of longevity and the sense of life were raised. These works were published almost simultaneously, and both authors were influenced by Mechnikovs’ views. The points of contact and differences in authors’ positions are observed. The paper represents modi of actualization of longevity and the sense of life issues in the contemporary culture by the examples of the musical «The Recipe of her Youth» and the case study from the Julian Baggini’s popular philosophy guide «The Pig that Want to Be Eaten». We can agree with the Baggini’s idea that the sense of life is not defined by the numbers of years, but by their fullness with contents and the desire to use them in full.