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How do contemporary Czech authors reflect on what is going in their society? This article considers the work of five Czech authors. Emil Hakl looks at contemporary Czech reality as an outsider. Jiří Hájíček produces subtle accounts of interhuman relations. Jáchym Topol is a provocative experimenter who produces fantasmagoric narratives. All these authors deal also with the traumatised past, Nazism and communism. David Zábranský has been accused of writing the first ever ‘fascist’ novel in the Czech language. Karol Sidon (Chaim Cigan) has produced a highly readable tetralogy which takes place in many different countries and many different eras, even in an alternative reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractLesbian voices and experiences have received little attention in Czech historiography: recent research has concentrated on the modern era from the 1950s. This article deepens our understanding of lesbian lives in interwar Prague. It focuses on two forgotten lesbian novels, Exiles of Love and The Third Sex, which were deliberately suppressed after 1948 by the Communist regime as examples of inferior bourgeois literature. The two authors, Lída Merlínová and Gill Sedláčková, both hailed from Prague’s cultural world (theatre and film) and were active too in the 1930s Czech movement for homosexual reform. Spanning the late twenties to the late thirties, the novels reveal tantalising glimpses of the evolving sub-culture of interwar Prague. Merlínová’s naïve novel of 1929, Exiles of Love, was the first Czech lesbian novel, and it betrayed the 1920s optimism of the ‘Czech New Woman’ who was prepared to challenge gender stereotypes. Sedláčková’s novel, The Third Sex, is a more explicit study from 1937, reflecting the more mature sub-culture but also a cynicism about the chances of homosexual reform. Yet it manages, even more than Exiles, to convey an uplifting and moral message. Indeed, both novels are about lesbian self-knowledge, exploring the scope for same-sex survival in a world where the best solution may be abroad, not in ‘provincial Prague’. In restoring these texts to lesbian literature we recover a range of voices, expressing the hopes and frustrations of some queer Czech women in an unusually liberal era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is about the attempt to literary overcome borders in Central Europe in Jaroslav Rudis's 'railway novel' Winterbergs letzte Reise. The very old protagonist Wenzel Winterberg and his nurse and companion Jan Kraus cross long stretches of the former k.u.k. area on Winterberg's 'last crossing'. In addition to taking actual border crossings into account, the article focuses on examining the abolition of borders through the transformation of concrete places into cultural-literary spaces. In doing so, literary methods such as conversational prose etc. are considered. The recurring motif of the Battle of Königgrätz has a special function in the sense of a collective experience of suffering as a central European founding myth. It also plays a significant role for both protagonists in driving through literary places and in the memory of past border situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces exciting contemporary Czech authors, recent translations into German, and the library event series "Tschechien erlesen", which includes German-language readings and discussions with authors from the Czech Republic in public libraries in Berlin and Dresden. It shares practical tips and advice on sources of information relating to contemporary Czech literature, but also on types of support and subsidies to fund book tours with Czech authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s represented a decade marked by the fall of communism and the emergence of a free and capitalist society in Czechoslovakia (and its successor, the Czech Republic). With the passage of time, the motifs of the decade's memories begin to show in Czech prose; the literary representations of the memory of the 1990s can be usually found, among others, in the works of authors of the young generation who lived in the post-revolutionary period during their childhood or adolescence. In our study, through the analysis of excerpts from novels written by authors from this generation, we observed and characterized the different modes of this collective memory, in which nostalgia predominates, but social criticism and signs of trauma can be found as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of silence to characterize the dominant response of occupied populations during the Second World War recurs throughout post-war European literature and is especially prominent in Czech writing. Interpreting the meaning of this silence therefore became central to Czech efforts to establish a preferred narrative about the German occupation in the immediate post-war period. Through analysis of the motif in more and less well-known works published between 1940 and 1946, I shall map the narrowing understanding of the silence of the occupied from its varied, ambiguous portrayal in the now forgotten first Czech novel about the Occupation, Silences by Josef Horal, to its unequivocal interpretation as resistance in Jan Drda's canonical The Mute Barricade. While this narrowing reflects Tony Judt's notion of a "collective amnesia" necessary for national unity and recovery, the marginalization of certain perspectives also presages the broader move in Czech post-war society away from pluralism to nationalist authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on cultural changes that the depiction of land cultivation in Czech ruralism literature (authors like Josef Knap, František Křelina, Václav Prokůpek, etc.) goes through in Modernism. It refers to the impact of political discourse and the influence of media – especially newspapers – at the time. The analysis points to the relevance of how traditionalist literature discourse incorporates modern approaches to agriculture and new modes of representation of the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's theory of minor literature as a starting point, this article moves from their opposition of "major/minor" literatures to their "tetralinguistic" model of vernacular, vehicular, referential, and mythic language. it presents the work of the polyglot poet and Hasidic scholar Jiří Langer to offer a multifaceted view of three distinct contexts: the theoretical discourse of minor literature, the literary milieu of interwar Prague, and the history of gay Czech and Jewish writing. Langer appears in Franz Kafka's diaries and letters over a period of several years as a source of information on Jewish culture, as well as a personal contact to prominent rabbis from the east. Two decades later, langer produced his own remarkable work in Czech, Devĕt bran (Nine Gates, 1937), a popular-scholarly study of hasidic traditions based on his experience in the galician town of Belz. Much of what is known today about Jiří Langer's unconventional life comes from the memoirs of his brother František, published as a foreword for the english translation of the book. However, it was only in recent years that Langer's Hebrew poetry has also become available to English-speaking readers, revealing his linguistic strategies that draw on mystical traditions in the attempt to form a modern synthesis of Jewish homosexual identity. Jiří Langer's literary activity shows Prague as a site of self-definition through multilingualism, rather than the more familiar image of Kafka's "deterritorialization". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip Roth made no secret of his great admiration for the work of Franz Kafka, which ultimately brought him to Prague in the 1970s and fostered his interest in Czech culture. This contribution focuses on the reception of the personality and work of Franz Kafka in Philip Roth's non-fiction writing. The first section focuses on Roth's essential Kafkaesque essay '"I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting"; or Looking at Kafka' from 1973, in which Roth combines an empathetic portrait of his favourite author with a counterfactual vision of Kafka's life, in which the author of the Trial and the Castle did not die of tuberculosis and instead fled from the Holocaust to the United States, where he became Roth's uncle. In the second section, based on Roth's dialogue with Ivan Klíma from 1990, we document how Kafka serves Roth in his reflections on the position and role of the writer in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Czech culture of the turn of the 20th century we can see the phenomenon of the orientalising of the Jewish populace, in which the archetype of the beautiful Jewess (la belle Juive) occupied a significant and somewhat different position. This study examines types of depiction of the beautiful Jewess in travelogues and fictional literature, and divides these tendencies into three types. The beautiful Jewess is construed by means of biblical similes and antecedents, while these often concern heavily eroticised representations that are not based on a biblical template but rather arise out of the imagination of the authors of the 19th century. The erotic subtext plays a fundamental role also in the case of the second tendency, though here the primary precursor is not a biblical figure or narrative, but the fictional character in the story rather represents a unique existence, without direct and determining intertextual ties. This type of beautiful Jewess is characterised by a significant borderline role between the Orient and the Occident, and at the same time in the narratives she also occupies the role of a tragic figure. The final tendency is to conceive the beautiful Jewess negatively, in which the narrative accentuates her use of her beauty in order to pursue her own selfish interests. Among other factors, the study examines modes of the orientalising of beautiful Jewesses, and reflects upon whether they concern positive or negative representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study deals with the thematisation of Jewishness in the inter-war prose writing of four authors from assimilated Jewish families: Richard Weiner (born 1884), František Langer (born 1888), Karel Poláček (born 1892) and Egon Hostovský (born 1908). Whereas the prose of the last-named author has received considerable attention in contemporary literary history, in the case of the remaining authors their Jewishness remains on the periphery of scholarly interest, or is mentioned in works of a synthetic character. A detailed reading of the work of all three prose writers reveals that for them Jewish culture did not represent an essential literary theme, and indeed they barely mentioned it whatsoever. An exception relates to the abundant references to anti-Semitism in Karel Poláček's cycle of novels about the provincial town, which can be explained among other factors by the aggravated political situation in the second half of the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a comparative article. Mainly three Kafka short stories are studied, as well as one by Albert Camus. In them, the authors chose as their central themes art and life of the artists. The aesthetic similarities found are exposed throughout the article; the conclusions emphasize that there are differences in ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jakub Deml is stereotypically labelled as a "Catholic poet". Therefore, his temporary involvement in the progressivist, anti-clerical Sokol ("Falcon") movement caused, and it is still causing, an embarrassment for many interpreters. The present article does not apply any normative criteria. Instead, it attempts to describe the way Jakub Deml realizes his "ressourcement", namely: how does he combine certain Christian cultural motifs and symbols, which he has kept from his "pre-Sokol" period, with the "new" Sokol system of signs, values, and authoritative names? In the following step, the role of Greek antiquity in Deml's four "Sokol" books (1923-1926) is analysed. Antiquity was crucial for the Sokol ideology, particularly for Miroslav Tyrš, the founder of Sokol, who was celebrated by Deml in a hagiographic way. Antiquity only holds, however, a surprisingly limited place in Deml's relevant texts. The list of explicit "Greek" motifs appears to be quite short. Deml shares with Sokol ideology, however, certain values, viewed by them (as by other progressivist movements) as stereotypically "Greek" and implicitly anticlerical (but not anti-Christian): personal freedom, earthliness, a healthy body, an emotional relationship to a specific local community. Deml's Sokol involvement did not last long. After several years, it ended with a dramatic break. Nonetheless, it provides an important literary testimony to the intellectual and spiritual openness of Czechoslovak society in the early 1920s, making such unexpected encounters possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of minor literature (based on Kafka's hybrid identity in Prague) is applicable to the complex case of Czech and Slovak-Romani writing, including fictional portrayals of the Roma. The Irish-American writer Colum McCann's Zoli, published in 2006, features a Slovak-Roma woman who becomes an acclaimed poet under the Communist regime, only to be cast out by her community and forced into exile. Two years later, Irena Eliášová (a Roma writer born in Slovakia who lives in the Czech Republic) published her novel Our Settlement (Naše osada), a far more affectionate view of the Roma society of her childhood. Both writers walk an uneasy balance in presenting Slovak-Roma culture from both insider and outsider perspectives. In McCann's case the intention of bringing one of Europe's most misunderstood minorities to anglophone readers struggles to avoid cultural appropriation, while Eliášová's use of multilingualism negotiates the power dynamics between Czech, Slovak, and Romani. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a companion piece to Laura Janda’s article in the same volume. Using some of the rich and varied literary and philosophical allusions in Lucemburská zahrada (e.g. Plotinus, Hölderlin, Kitaro, Husserl, de Mandiargues, Ladislav Klíma), as well as his personal correspondence with Michal Ajvaz from 2017–18, the author attempts to explain why the Yggur language was invented and what it is doing in the novel. Also included are the reasons as to why this explanation can only be of limited nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul, the protagonist of Michal Ajvaz’s novel Lucemburská zahrada [The Garden of Luxembourg], has his life upended by a single typo. An accidental combination of letters brings Paul in contact with the mysterious Yggur language that exerts an inexorable transformative power. This article demonstrates how Ajvaz has engineered Yggur to wield its power over Paul, thereby showing the reader that potent messages can be embedded in seemingly random patterns. I reveal that Yggur is a “real” language and that it is possible to interpret it, despite the obvious (and probably intentional) shortcomings of the documentation presented by the author. I argue that further important factors in the spell of Yggur are the facts that it is an apriori constructed language (not transparently derived from any known language) and that it is, with a few minor exceptions, typologically normative for a human language. This article details the genius of Ajvaz’s creation and addresses the reason why the author went to such pains to create something that most readers will never bother to make sense of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on artificial language in the strict sense of the word in Czech literature. Topics discussed include parody of the poetic language of the nineteenth-century Lumír school; using plentiful poetic and archaic expressions; the magical properties of lunar gravitation; Moon language, encumbered by lexical archaisms, archaisms concerning inflection and poetisms; and also mentions about the compilation of neologisms.

Even if the limits of language do not fully represent the limits of the world—to paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein—language and thinking are our filters, our means, to perceive the world. If language divides the world into different chunks, literature at its best aids us in perceiving alternative chunks, real or fictive, of various realities and in thinking beyond the confines of language [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Czech literature was first recognized in Japan in the 1920s and early 1930s. Among literary works published during this period, which were few in number and mostly second-hand translations from English or German, three books - one play and two novels - require special attention. Karel Čapek’s dystopian play R.U.R., originally written in 1920 and first staged in 1921, was translated into Japanese in 1923 and became the first major work of Czech literature ever introduced in Japan. Just like in other parts of the world, the play attracted attention of both critics and readers. Several other translations were published soon after and the play was also successfully staged in Tsukiji Shōgekijō Theatre in 1925. A few years later, in 1930, Japanese translations of two other essential works of the inter-war period Czech literature were published – Jaroslav Hašek’s acclaimed antimilitarist novel The Good Soldier Švejk and Ivan Olbracht’s socialist novel Anna The Proletarian, a book which is now almost completely forgotten. The main objective of this paper is to explore the relation between the literary concepts adopted and constantly argued by the critics and writers of the Proletarian Literature, predominant literary movement at that time, and the reception/interpretation of foreign literary works, in this case works of Czech literature. Based on the analysis of the newspaper advertisements, book reviews and other related texts this paper shows that the reception was determined by the concepts and notions the Proletarian critics valued and that the leftist literary critics tended to emphasize those elements of these literary works they considered to be conveying the Proletarian ideals. On the other hand, Olbracht’s Anna The Proletarian, a novel praised by its translator Ichiko Kamichika as a must-read for every proletarian woman, was targeted by Japanese censorship for its radical political thoughts and was eventually published with large parts of the text censored. Consequently, this paper concludes that Czech literature introduced and translated in the inter-war period was interpreted in different ways and valued for different reasons than it was originally in Czechoslovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bohumil Hrabal (1914--1997) is widely considered among the greatest innovators of 20th century literature. He belongs to the Czech literary canon and has been a celebrated writer all around the world since the 1970s. Given Hrabal's long timespan of production--basically from the 1940s to his death--during decades of critical changes in Czechoslovakian history, politics, culture and society, both the reception and the scholarly approaches to his texts have several times featured misunderstandings and misinterpretations when dealing with the definition of many aspects of his writing. He did not choose exile, nor did he support the cultural policies of totalitarianism, he kept publishing his works despite being subjected to censorship, but also took part in the circulation of prohibited literature through samizdat editions. I will try to analyze some aspects of such a fluid and complex issue from what I think to be the strategic concepts of history, interpretation, and nationality in order to understand if it is possible to re-define the role and works of authors like Bohumil Hrabal in the study of twentieth century literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Czech writer Petra Hůlová' s representation of Mongolian women in All This Belongs to Me in an effort to discuss possible epistemological dangers involved in such cross-cultural representation of Asia by a european writing self. Through a close reading of the text, the paper explores how the represented five Mongolian females from one family are invariably subsumed under the strong patriarchal ideology of their Mongolian society. This representation of Mongolian women's oppression is then discussed in the historical context of orientalism, which has excessively exaggerated patriarchal culture of Asia and Asian women's oppression. Examining strategies Hůlová adopts to resist mere exoticization of Mongolian culture, the paper considers whether Hůlová' s cross-cultural representation presents chances for opportunities for readers outside of Mongolia to expand the horizon of their eurocentric world view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Czech Literary Bibliography comprises a set of bibliographical records which reflect cultural journalism and specialist texts on Czech literature. The aim of the contribution is introduction to a new project of the Institute of Czech Literature: The Czech Literary Internet. The project has extended our sources to excerpt platforms, web pages and electronic magazines whose content is not easily searchable through classic search engines. It turns out that this resource illustrates the professional debate on literary events and development and, in particular, brings new information on culture in regions and popular literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using close reading of Kundera's texts, Jan Čulík argues that many arguments in Milan Kundera's literary works are deliberate provocations. Kundera's approach is undoubtedly related to post-modernism, although he used his mystification techniques long before the arrival of postmodernism, as early as in the Stalinist 1950s when he published fake quotes from Lenin in official Stalinist publications. In Jan Čulík's view, it is the purpose of Milan Kundera's systematic use of false facts, distortions and disrupted logic to warn his readers against against the unreliability of words and human communication. Kundera seems to argue that the world in its complexity is basically unknowable and the only thing that is left for us is, in despair, in our ignorace of what is going on around us, to carry out pranks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study maps the influence of the Gothic mode in the Czech postmodern prose, especially in the novels published at the turn of the millennium: it primarily concerns books by Václav Vokolek, Miloš Urban and Jan Jandourek. Through analyticalinterpretative probes into these texts are demonstrated the main possibilities of the Gothic mode and consequences of its implementation in the contemporary Czech literature: distortion of the perspective and blurring of the individual identity, instability of the setting, expression of civilizational and existential fears. The study illustrates capturing of the key Gothic themes in the analyzed works of fiction and also the specific transformation and modification of these topics within individual author poetics. Special attention is particularly given to specifics of the setting, often combining typical Gothic topoi, which may be part of seriously intended opposition of the sacral and the profane, or they can also be presented as exposed cliché sceneries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, literary censorship has been a focus of scholars not only in terms of literary history but also as a specific literary-theoretical problem. Czech literary studies entered the new discourse on censorship in 2015 with an extensive two-part monograph on censorship and social regulation of Czech literature between 1749-2014, published by the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. This study follows upon the above-mentioned project, in particular the research mapping censorship mechanisms after 1989 in Slovakia. It draws from the theoretical works of Pierre Bourdieu, who sees censorship not exclusively as a legal authority that sanctions and punishes, but as a field that behaves similarly to the market. In this sense we can talk about a socially authorized discourse rather than censorship. The study includes some censorship "cases" from post-1989 Slovakia (concerning the authors Martin Kasarda, Peter Pišťanek and Dušan Taragel) that have been seen as efforts by certain religious groups to regulate cultural and literary processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana (Exposition on the Revelation to St.John), written by Jakoubek of Stříbro, is the most extensive theological treatise written in Czech during the period of early Hussite radicalism at the beginning of the 1420s. With this work, Jakoubek attempted to put Czech on an equal footing with Latin within the theological reformist discourse. This study examines the character ofjakoubek's Výklad, its significance in the context of Bohemian Latin and Czech theological discourses, and its impact on later, mainly Latin, works. It also establishes that we are not dealing with a later translation, but that Výklad na Zjevenie was originally written in Czech. Jakoubek in this text constructed a counterpoint to the radical apocalyptic visions rooted in diverse exegetical approaches. The focus of his attention - polemically and propagandistically - was primarily the reception of the Eucharistic Communion sub utraque specie. Jakoubek's commentary later influenced Hussite theological thought, one of the clearest examples being the Latin Expositio super Apocalypsim written by the Táborite theologian Nicholas of Pelhřimov in 1429-1430. Nicholas adopted not only Jakoubek's exegetical method but also some of his approaches to the polemical themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author looks at Havel's The Power of the Powerless in the context of Czech twentieth-century political fiction and the criticism that his writing and political activity has received. He also introduces other works, essays and plays, by the author that aid the assessment of statements made in The Power of the Powerless. The last quarter of the article discusses Havel and New Age ideas and endeavors to look at The Power of the Powerless in that light, but also to understand how a person who argued most of his life against the elements of ochlocracy in his own country could in spiritual matters become something of an ochlocrat himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The paper focuses on the topic of humor in literature, its development, its theoretical concept, as well as library applications. It defines this phenomenon, follows its historical development, but primarily focuses on its current perception and place in the Czech literature. Presents a basic overview of the representation of literature associated with humor in the library collections of selected institutions and subject him to the topic of bibliotherapy and bibliopedagogy as manifestations of social and educationally oriented contemporary librarianship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the anthology Jewish Names, often called the beginning of Czech alternative culture, was published in 1995, several central questions concerning this seminal collection from the early 1950s remain unclear: Who initiated it, when was it assembled, and what is its connection with the causa of the 'Trotzkyites' in Prague and later anti-semitic show trials? Answers can be found if one appreciates the pivotal role of Honza Krejcarová in this unique project. The article connects dots between Czech history during the Protectorate when young Honza witnessed her mother Milena Jesenská's resistance activities, and the late 1940s of Stalinist Czechoslovakia when the State Security started surveilling and persecuting Krejcarová. Based on archival studies the article argues for the parallelism between secret service practices (interrogation, the revealing of names in the form of denunciation) and automatic surrealist writing techniques. Drawing on the example of the name of the Author it analyses the paratextual structure of the anthology connected to its literary models, mainly from France. Jewish Names is a rich collection of fictitious 'Jewish' pseudonyms attributed to real Czech writers, stressing the vulnerability of the literary intelligentsia, their mineurité. And it is this paratextual construction which can be considered as the most daring and auto-referential aspect of this illegal publishing project. The article reveals problematic aspects of the chosen path of pseudonymy and anonymity. Changing or omit- ting one's name is a common trait of female biographies, complicating the attribution of authorship. The article shows how pseudonymy takes its toll on an existential, gender, political, and historical level -- precluding until today the proper names from entering Czech literary history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the correlations between the domesticating/foreignizing strategies applied by the translator within her interpretation and the impact of these strategies on readers' interpretation of the target text. This process is analysed on the basis of surveys concerning the Czech translation of the Yiddish fable Der lokh fun beygl und meshene kneplekh by Eliezer Shteynbarg. The surveys are aimed at the following related questions: 1. which options does the translator have to make his/her interpretative steps transparent for the readers; 2. to what extent is the interpretation of the target text homogenous resp. heterogeneous; 3. which interpretative patterns do the readers of the target text develop to preserve intratextual coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses selected short stories by the Czech avant-garde writer Milada Součková. The author presents a brief interpretation of certain primary themes in the writer's work, such as the themes of memory and history as a kind of framework of Součková's writing. Another aspect of the article indicates subjects related to specific historical events that constitute for Součková a backdrop for presenting so-called alternative history which is combined with the microcosm of the characters in her stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become difficult to evaluate and gauge the extent of the ever-expanding Czech literary web. This article focuses on analyzing the current status of the Czech literary web and associated online repositories. For purposes of this article, the author examined twenty open access Czech sites whose subject matter is Czech literature. Out of these twenty websites, the author analyzed five sites in great detail. The data for the analysis was extracted initially in December of 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sketches activities in the field of utopian studies in the Czech Republic (with some references to the Slovak context). It begins as a brief venture into Czech utopian literature and literary criticism. Subsequently, it provides examples of research and activities carried out in other disciplines, in order to illustrate that utopia continues to preoccupy a multitude of Czech and Slovak writers, critics, filmmakers, and architects, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the integration of beer and beer drinking in cultural products like literary works in the Czech Republic. Also cited are the beer references made by author Bohumil Hrabal in his works of fiction and non-fiction, the inclusion of beer in the film adaptations of Jiri Menzel, and some movies like "Larks on a String" and "Closely Watched Trains."

Many Czech exile authors turn to ancient inspiration after 1948. The antiquity often serves as a projection of exile situation (Odysseus) or as pars pro toto of traditional European culture, perceived by the exile writers as their defense wall. Ivan Jelínek (1909-2002) moreover originally transformed ancient inspirations at motivic level. He sings praises of ancient godesses and heroines as archetypes of Virgin Mary. Sacred womb represents the central topos of Jelínek's comparison between Greek mythology, Catholicism and poetically transformed personal experience. Also, Jelínek calls his poems “odes”, referring to the ancient genre celebrating sacred subjects. He applies this principle of ancientCatholic comparison and this genre in numerous volumes, following his travels across the Mediterranean. Gradually, his poetry becomes a sort of “travelogue” in the tradition of Grand Tour. In the final phase of his literary work, the Catholic motifs recede. The antiquity, instead, continues to be used as poet's basic cultural matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to evaluate and address the limits of an existing approach to the analysis of the thematic concentration of text. To overcome these limits, the article proposes and applies both a modification of the measurement of thematic concentration – known as secondary thematic concentration and proportional thematic concentration – and methods for their statistical testing. The results show that the modification, as well as the application of the proposed tests, enhances the possibilities for analysing the thematic characteristics of text. The article uses 20 Slovak texts of the same genre written by one author. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study focuses on Bronislav Wellek, Adolph Donath, Camill Hoffmann, Oskar Wiener and Otto Hauser and their translations and articles on modern Czech literature published in the German journal Aus fremden Zungen (1891-1910). This fortnightly established by Joseph Kürschner dealt exclusively with foreign literature. Its openness to all kinds of literary currents and little-known minor literatures was unique within the system of German literary journals. A comparison indicates the key role played by mediators. The primary requirement for their activity was multilingualism, and it turns out that in the case of all the figures under consideration, language did not necessarily have the nationally symbolic significance ascribed by politics, and their identity basically did not depend on their use of one language or another. The progress and success of this mediation was not just decided by the literary standard of the translation, but all five translators were concerned to improve the standard of translation, as well as to change the approach to translation in general. The choice of text and its succeeded publication was determined by the involvement of the mediators in the Czech and German literary context. Hence Bronislav Wellek focused primarily on translations and interpretations of poetry by Jaroslav Vrchlický and J. S. Machar, whom he knew personally and who also introduced him to their own literary and intellectual circles. It was thanks to Vrchlický that he printed his translations in Eduard Albert's anthologies Poesie aus Böhmen (1893-1895). Machar was responsible for other translations, e.g. Hilbert's drama Vina, which Hermann Bahr was to help promote in the German-language sphere. Between 1896 and 1898, Adolph Donath attempted to build up his position as mediator between the Moderní revue circle and some representatives of Viennese modernism (e.g. Karl Kraus, Peter Altenberg and Felix Rappaport). For Aus fremden Zungen he translated an impressionistic short story by Luisa Ziková Bílý květ (White Flower). In a fivepart series and an accompanying study modern Czech prose (J. Zeyer, V. Mrštík, F. X. Svoboda, J. K. Šlejhar and R. Svobodová) was presented by Camill Hoffmann and Oskar Wiener. Their mediation activities were based on direct relations with Prague Czech authors of the youngest generation, on whom Hoffmann also focused in his articles for other German journals, though in Aus fremden Zungen he was concerned with surveying the modernist work of the 1890s. Samples of Czech prose were followed on by translations from modern Czech lyric poetry (O. Březina, A. Sova, K. Hlaváček and V. Dyk) written by Otto Hauser. This polyglot and translator from numerous languages was a different kind of Viennese mediator. In contrast to Wellek and Hoffmann, Hauser was only in sporadic correspondence with Sova and Březina. His literary assessment of their poetry was based on his broad knowledge of contemporary European poetry, including minor literatures (such as Danish, Dutch and Croatian) and as such is of importance. These examples show that literary mediation is a complex rapprochement of variously defined and construed contexts, which have their reflected and unrealized limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to trace the reception of selected Shakespearean performances in theatre reviews published in period newspapers in terms of critical response embedded in a broader social and political context of the Shakespeare festival held at the National Theatre in Prague in 1916. The Festival was arranged to celebrate the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death. As seen against the backdrop of the Great War, it was understood not only as a great theatrical achievement, but most importantly as a presentation of the Czech national self-awareness and identity. It furthermore attempted to strengthen the autonomy of the Czech theatres and demonstrated the Czech pro-Allied sympathies. Using period theatre reviews anchored in the historical background and framed within the theoretical context of reception aesthetics, this article aims to reveal and interpret some of the elements underpinning selected Shakespearean performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]