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Campus novel, traditionally seen as a genre of English and American literature, has recently also gained attention in non-Anglophone literary traditions. The article focuses on campus fiction written in Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian after 1989. It provides a brief introduction to the terminology and classification of the campus novel within the Anglo-American literary tradition, offering a perspective on Central European campus fiction through this lens. It traces its genre hybridity and the dominant genres with which it is associated, such as satire, social detective fiction, historical detective fiction, metafiction, biography, and the Bildungsroman. It also indicates the historical periods in which the genre is set and the traits of the professor as protagonist. While campus satire is a shared feature of Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian literature in response to political change, each national literature emphasizes themes unique to its own literary and cultural traditions. These include the founding of Polish universities, identity and the reassessment of Ukrainian professors’ lives, the ironic treatment of the communist era in Czech and Slovak literature, and metafiction in Slovak literature.

The shifting critical reception of Petra Soukupová’s prose works in the context of the debate over the “literary mainstream” This study examines the way Petra Soukupová’s works of fiction have been reviewed by literary critics from the beginning of her career up until her latest book. While she was seen as an innovative writer after her first books came out, she has subsequently been seen as the key representative of what is known as the “literary mainstream”. Although the discussion over this literary mainstream has been going on among Czech literary critics for several years now, no consensus has been reached over the definition of this label. Hence this study first looks at the concept of the literary maintstream and then examines how it has influenced the critical reception of Petra Soukupová’s fiction.

This article presents a select survey of the rendering of personal names in translation into English from European languages with different scripts from the turn of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. Works of prose fiction were chosen from Czech and Icelandic, which use characters that are not part of the English alphabet. Their original publication dates are from the middle of the nineteenth to the late twentieth century, with translations trailing by years or even decades. The authors of the original works were very well known and in some cases Nobel Prize laureates. This gives assurance that their works attracted good translators and, in some cases, multiple translators. The hypothesis was that over the course of more than a century, there has been a growing tendency to respect the original spellings of personal names in translations – that is, to employ the source language’s script, even when the literary works belong to relatively peripheral European cultures. The explanations for this include increased cultural contacts, the expansion of what has traditionally been called world literature, and internet resources.

The study deals with the relationship between the leading representative of the Bohemian studies in Russia L.N. Budagová, D.Sc. (1932–2022) and the Czech town of Sobotka and to the local festival of language, speech and literature called Šrámek´s Sobotka (Šrámkova Sobotka). Based on an analysis of available sources and literature, it follows the core of the relationship defined by the years 1975–2022. Budagová got to know about the annual festival during an excursion and then she was invited to appear. Between the years 1977 and 2010, she prepared twelve lectures focused on the Czech and Russian literature, the Czech-Russian literary and cultural relations and Russian cultural realities. Her lectures and other texts about the festival are summarized in the book O literatuře and kultuře (Texty pro Šrámkovu Sobotku), published in 2012. Her next book written in Czech Z mého života s českou literaturou (Výbor z česky publikovaných prací) was published in 2021 thanks to a local initiative. It involves twenty works written between the years 1973 and 2020. Furthermore, the study deals with her articles published in the journal Zpravodaj Šrámkovy Sobotky and it analyses short articles, which were published about her there, as well. She received the Sobotka Town Award in 2012 (for a promotion of the town and the Czech culture). There is an entry regarding Budagova in the local lexicon Kdo je kdo v dějinách Sobotecka a Dolnobousovska (published in 2015). Moreover, the study includes basic information about the town and the festival for the better context and it incorporates memories of the author, as well.

The main aim of the paper is to highlight the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality based on selected fiction texts by Czech writers and poets (Zeyer, Fuks, Kuběna, Georgiev). The selected authors represent different historical periods and different currents of opinion. We are convinced that the theoretical part provides a suitable methodological basis for the part of the paper in which we discuss homosexual motives in selected works of the mentioned authors. To sum up, we can state that the explicit expression of homoerotic and other motives is only relevant today; in artistic narratives dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries, these symbols are expressed in a hidden way, and it is up to each recipient to decide whether and to what extent they see them in these narratives. Zeyer could not fully express himself; he was forced to use hidden symbols to be who he felt he was, at least in his works. Kuběna, in the context of the 1970s, treats the topic of homosexuality very openly, he is not afraid of being condemned by society. Fuks´ works are characterized by a considerable degree of autobiography. Despite Georgiev´s clear rejection of faith, a believing homosexual appears more than once in his work. In this paper we try to fill a certain gap in the field of comparative research in works of art and poems by authors who in some way tended to homosexuality because within the Czech context, we have encountered this area of scholarly articles sporadically.

This article is devoted to the issue of the mythologisation of the space of Olšany Cemetery performed by Daniela Hodrová in her trilogy Trýznivé město (City of Torment). The article consists of two parts: the first one is a theoretical introduction about the concepts of myth, cemetery and maze, and the cultural connection between them. The second part contains an analysis of Olšany Cemetery as presented in the trilogy. Hodrová depicts the cemetery as a kind of mythical space which has the nature of a maze, where the living and the dead both share the fate of being prisoners.

The question of the formation of a new type of creator-demiurge in the conditions of culture at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries is considered. Particular attention is paid to the personality of the Czech artist Josef Váchal. The relevance of the study is determined by several factors: firstly, the recent increased interest in Czech literature in Russia and, at the same time, its insufficient representation both in the book market and in the scientific community; secondly, the lack of Russian-language criticism directly devoted to the work and the author’s figure of J. Váchal. Describing the cultural and historical environment in which the creative personality of the artist was formed, the authors of the article refer both to the general European context and directly to the Czech language. It has been established that the work of J. Váchal has a deep connection with the history of his country. In particular, the artist’s reaction to certain moods prevailing in Czech society at that time explains his passion for baroque aesthetics, the cornerstone of his poetics. In addition, Váchal’s biography largely determined the themes and form of his works, so understanding him as a specific personality of the 19th-20th centuries contributes to a more detailed analysis of his work.

The article deals with the role of Jan Hus in utopian constructions of the Czech interwar literature. During this period, a “wave of utopianism” was observed in the Czech Republic, it was utopia (both negative and positive) that became an extremely convenient means for understanding the complex of problems of the young Czechoslovak republic, and at that time the national element was preferred over the social one, which is also characteristic of the Slavic utopia in general. The overwhelming majority of the of utopian works at that time was written by the authors of the second and third-rate, but it is with them the national question comes to the fore, and the simpler and more primitive from an artistic point of view the texts of such authors were, the more clearly they express collective Czech national stereotypes. In such works, Jan Hus appears as a pillar of national culture. First of all, in terms of spirituality, as an inspirer for the construction of a peaceful and just life, where the Czechs finally find their place as a people, tarnished by suffering, and secondly, as an inspirer for military exploits. The greatness of his figure for the Czechs is so massive that it accelerates the utopian fantasies of Czech authors to world (at least cultural) hegemony or helps the world cope with its main enemy — the Germans. The article analyzes the following novels: “Telephone conversation of a Czech with an inhabitant of the planet Mars” (1918) by J. Mičan, “Death of Mankind” (1928) by J. Akana, “Red Vertigo” (1921) by A.M. Tichý, “Yellows against Whites” (1925) V. O. Lučan, “The Millennium of King Matthias” (1931) J. Černoch.

Ecocriticism represents a trend of thought that has been gaining ground in the Czech academic milieu, and thinking about it raises a number of questions at the moment: whether there are any local analogues of ecocriticism, whether it makes sense to transfer the theory to the local context, and what the impact of such transfer could be. The main part of the article is devoted to the different phases of ecological consciousness in Czech literature and illustrates three of them with examples: the Romantic (Mácha, Erben, Furch), the early 20th century (Deml, Neumann) and the 1980s (Páral, Juliš). The conclusion of the article focuses on the question of the awareness of the state in these different phases and its inevitable incompleteness.

Fin-de-Siècle Europe appears in the prose of the Czech poet and writer Jiři Karasek from Lvovice (1871–1951) as a mystical space full of nostalgia and claustrophobia, which force the characters to experience the hereditary involvement of history. This is, for example, how the hero of the novel “Gothic Soul” (Czech: Gotická Duše) feels. The novel shows Prague at the turn of the century as a place where the past is more real than the present. The trilogy “Novels of the Three Magicians” (Czech: Romány tří mágů), inspired by the legends about European “sorcerers”, uses Vienna, Venice, and Prague as magic or decadent territories that affect the characters’ behaviour. Karasek creates urban images with decadent aesthetics by applying special features and techniques. Among them we can highlight the night atmosphere, intentional emphasis on the artificiality of the reality, and the description of the scene with the symbols of decline or decay. Such a subjective view from the eyes of a decadent character can open up a city from a unique perspective, making it possible to distinguish previously unseen details. The image of Prague in Karasek’s works is dual and ambivalent. On the one hand, it is an aesthetically artifi cial decadent Prague and on the other, a mystical, magical Prague. Venice by Karasek is also a decadent city where only the past is alive. With help of Karasek’s prose one can obtain the prism of decadent and “gothic” novels — rather rare and original for Czech literature genres. His works also give us the opportunity to experience the lost atmosphere of pre-war Europe.

The article proposes a hypothesis that traditional imagological concepts are no longer sufficient for interpreting the current and recent “imagological situation”. The authors argue that given the significant changes in the geopolitical ordering of the world in the post-imperial period, it is necessary to expand and internally categorize the terms to capture a more nuanced way of looking at the “other”. The article provides a summary of existing approaches and suggests innovations, particularly in making a careful distinction between the self-image of the internal and external, and the disaggregation of the “meta-image” into several layers. The authors point out that imagological research needs to consider that the ethnic identity of the recipient is not unambiguous, which problematizes the interrelation of “us” and “them”. Additionally, in post-imperialism, there is an unravelling of the former bipolar perception. The authors trace the image in the context of concepts such as image, stereotype, and brand. The essay aims to analyse the manifestations of the emerging neo-imperialism, which returns to the traditional contrasting delineation of “our” and “the foreign”. It also examines the factor of evaluation and the question of fictionality. The effectiveness of the new approaches is demonstrated in a Russian-Czech comparative analysis of selected novels by Vladimir Sorokin and Jáchym Topol. The authors perceive the current geopolitical processes as an opportunity for improving the imagological methodology and imagology as an effective tool for interpreting the contemporary world.

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.

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.

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.

Was Ignác Cornova’s contribution to Czech-language literature only that of a historian? In the 1770s and 1780s he also happened to be the most acclaimed poet in Bohemia. Of the many reactions to Cornova’s work from German and Czech writers, this study focuses on Nábožné písně pro ka­tolického měšťana a sedláka k veřejným a domácím službám božím (Religious Songs for the Catholic Townsman and Countryman for Use in Public and Domestic Divine Service, 1791) by Václav Stach, with a verse dedication to Cornova. It emphasises that under the Habsburg monarchy the genre of religious songs and hymns was also a platform for forming a new readership and literary public, providing a ve- hicle for writers such as Michael Denis, Ignaz Cornova, Johann Peter Hofmann and Václav Stach himself for creative experimentation and a mutually beneficial communication of their work to the public. In this context, our study examines the conceptual and aesthetic links between Stach and the poetic models of Ignác Cornova.

The annual conference “Slavic World: Community and Diversity” is a good platform for young researchers from different universities and research centers, both domestic and foreign, where they can share their scholarly achievements with colleagues and talk about their own vision of a particular problem related to the study of the diversity of the Slavic world. In 2021, the section “Literary Studies. The History of Culture” comprised three thematic blocks: “Cultural and Literary Relations”, “Poetics of Literature”, and “Literature and Art of Poland”. The moderators were Anetta F. Bagaeva, Natalia A. Lunkova, Evgeniia V. Shatko, and Denis G. Viren. The reports presented and their subsequent discussions are evidence of the lively interest of the scholar audience in the stated problems. Both the audience and the organisers expressed the hope that regardless of the online and in-person format of the conference, high-quality, international-level research on the literature and art of Slavic countries will continue.

This article deals with the history of Czech children’s and juvenile literature and its tradition in both national and European contexts. It examines foreign authors (French, German, Russian, English, American, and some others) and their works translated into Czech that played a significant role in the Czech literary scene. The rediscovery of Czech folklore in the 19th century coincides with the revival of the national culture and restitution of the language as reflected in fiction and poetry. The development of literature for children and youth owes much to translations. In the 19th century, Jules Verne was the must read for children and so was Antoine de Saint- Exupery in the 20th; his Little Prince has undergone multiple editions. The second part of the study examines contemporary children’s and juvenile literature by comparing the situation on the book market in France with that in Czech Republic. The analysis focuses on two novels for young people that present young characters who have to cope with different crises and help ill people they love (Céline Lavignette-Ammoun and Ivona Březinová). The essay’s conclusion, based on the polls among children and young people as well as on literary criticism, shows that neither the theme nor the approach of the authors or the preferences of the readers in the two countries considerably differ. This is due to the fact that juvenile literature knows no borders as it gives preference to the interplay of fantasy and imagination. What characterizes contemporary juvenile literature, however, is its openness to the hitherto tabooed themes as well as its interest in the relation between the sameness and the otherness.

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.

The article focuses on comparative analysis of aesthetic philosophical concepts of Czech and Russian symbolism at the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century. The attention is predominantly paid to interpretation of selected theoretical studies and essayistic work by Czech and Russian followers of decadent-symbolist and symbolist aesthetics. In this article we are showing inner connections in genesis of aesthetic-philosophical system, which, in context of East and West-Slavonic literatures, represents gradual heading from decadent-symbolic aesthetics to broader trans-cultural syntheses. Above all, we follow gradual and fluent evolution from the concept of autonomous model of beauty to the principal of theurgy, which understands art as a cosmogonic power. In the first decadent-symbolist phase, Czech and Russian literature were carried by overcoming the reality by refusing of materialistic existence and by the way to spiritual visions and dreaming. The world of art had become a defence of clear aesthetic values, transcendent desire and metaphysical dream with sense of secret of human life, found in extra-sensual sphere of spiritual world of human. In aesthetic theories of both, Czech and Russian followers of decadent-symbolist aesthetics, we can find gradual tendencies to overcome decadent approaches to the integral understanding of the work of art as a high phase of symbolism. However, that was fully defined later by next art generation who started understanding art creating in its broader meaning as theurgy, using the words of the Russian philosopher V. Solovjov. Work of art and essayistic work of followers of this this phase of symbolism is represented by the idea of theurgy, idea of art which possesses mystic power, the idea of “all-human” art together with cognitive act. Art is seen mostly as a complex way of thinking and understanding of the world and the way of existence there. As the most important thing it was operated with finding of new perceptive ways and expressing and reaching the state of existence when the artistic images would not only evoke the impression of beauty but, at the same time they would work as the means of cognition.

Autofictions and memoirs about growing up in late socialism have proliferated in Czech as well as in other postsocialist Eastern European literatures. These retrospective texts are often tinged with nostalgia and infused with irony and humour. Two of the most popular texts of this genre in the Czech Republic are Irena Dousková’s autofictional books Hrdý Budžes [B. Proudew] and Oněgin byl Rusák [Onegin Was a Rusky]. The Czech author writes about growing-up in a non-conformist family dealing with everyday life in socialist Czechoslovakia. After discussing Dousková’s books as autofiction the article will take a closer look at the poetics of childhood autofictions and their contribution to cultures of remembering socialism in comparison to autobiographies. It will discuss the ways how writing about childhood creates a specific socialist identity through scarcity, ingenuity, and working with/against restraints and the way humour is used to transmit difficult memories.

This study clarifies the events that led to the appearance of the word 'robot' in world culture and shows the international reception of the work of Karel Čapek R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which caused a deep transformation of the robot into a mechanical anthropomorphic creature. All the author's texts dedicated to the topic are translated into Italian for the first time, and primary sources which testify the resonance that R.U.R. received in Italy have been republished.

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 omitting 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

The paper presents a stage in the life of Jaromír Šavrda (1933-1988), a writer, editor, journalist, dissident, the period of his trial in 1979. The way the „reception“ of the books and samizdat volumes was conducted by the State Secret Police is examined. The paper builds on archive materials made available for the first time (Jaromír Šavrda´s inheritence is stored in Ostrava City Archive), it goes through the materials, indictments, it quotes from extensive judgements. It focuses on non-literary pseudo-assessments of the books and samizdat volumes, which were confiscated during a police raid in Šavrda´s place and used to bring charges against him. Another variant shows a process of criminalizing literature, excluding and removing writings from literary communication.

World wars have left an indelible trace while they lasted as well as in times after them. In Czech culture and literature one of the common ways of adapting to political regime changes is using humour in literary works. The paper focuses on three novels by famous Czech novelists: The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal and The Joke by Milan Kundera. By using humour as dominant literary discourse, the authors created marginalised characters, (anti)heroes who, despite living at different times, disarm the war. Nuanced irony, black humour, sarcasm and grotesque reveal the true face of wars and restraints of (post)war ideologies – Austrian imperialism, Nazism and socialism by treating them as absurd. Timelessness of pacifism which these works promote makes these books appealing to readers even nowadays.

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.

The article examines vampires in Czech Decadent literature as polyvalent symbols that stand simultaneously for culture as a vampiric force and for decadence as a poisonous and infectious phenomenon. Vampires can also be associated with homosexuality, particularly in the work of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. In addition, they represent the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had been draining the blood of Bohemia for centuries, leaving Prague a “dead city”, as well as the Czechs’ resistance to their subaltern status through a poisonous entropy that destroys not only the oppressors but also Czechs themselves. As such, Czech vampires have their counterpart in barbarians, who threaten to destroy the empire from without.

The article focuses on Milan Kundera’s works from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, particularly on Poslední máj (The Last of May) in the versions of 1955 and 1961, and Kundera’s first Art of the Novel (Umění románu), a study on the works of Vladislav Vančura, finished in 1959. The article argues that these works are interesting not only from the point of view of Kundera’s then Marxist-Leninist political stance, but also with respect to genre theory and practise as it can be retraced in his writing before the appearance of the famous novels of the mid-1960s. The article demonstrates that the relationship between lyricism and the novel in these early works exhibits many features which are to be found in his later work. The novel takes up a privileged position — albeit with a different and more explicitly political, party-bound motivation, representing the “great epic” required by “the people”. The article also contains reflections on Kundera’s role in the Czechoslovak Stalinists cult of Julius Fučík, related to the genre issues mentioned insofar as Fučík is placed by Kundera in the same category as Vančura in the first Art of the Novel.

This article presents a research project on the history of mentalities in Czech culture of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The project analyses textbooks for the teaching of Czech literature for secondary schools. It focuses in particular on the excerpts from the literary works and analyses their potential for the learners to acquire cultural and historical knowledge as well as personal skills. These excerpts are conceptualized here as Denkbilder, a term that has been used repeatedly in German literature studies recently to define short prose texts that stimulate imagination as well as reflection. Responding to the high number of literary works from world literature in the Czech textbooks analysed for the project, this article addresses the contrasting presentations of one classic of German literature, Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). It illustrates how a single literary work can be presented in different ways in literature textbooks, offering the learners different approaches for relating to the text and activating their cognitive and imaginative resources.

Fairy tales by two Czech authors — J. Černický and A. Mikulka — are used to consider the problem of modification of the author’s fairy tale genre in the modern Czech literature. On the one hand, writers take into account the traditions of the 20th century Czech author’s fairy tale, which was developed by many other Czech authors. In Mikulka’s works, elements of folklore fairy tale are interpreted based on the principles of surrealism, grotesque, language game, and nonsense literature. On the other hand, modern author’s fairy tale interacts with the genres of legend, myth, parable, and literary phantasy (Černický).

Games with time, memory and history: About the prose of Milada Součková 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. Gry z czasem, pamięcią i historią: O prozie Milady Součkovej W artykule omówione zostały wybrane opowiadania czeskiej pisarki awangardowej Milady Součkovej. Autorka szkicu przedstawia interpretację stałych motywów w twórczości tej pisarki, takich jak motyw pamięci i historii, jako swoistej klamry ujmującej pisarstwo Součkovej. Kolejnym aspektem artykułu jest wskazanie na funkcjonowanie wątków związanych z konkretnymi wydarzeniami historycznymi, stanowiącymi tło do zaprezentowania tzw. historii alternatywnej, łączącej się z mikroświatem przedstawionych postaci.

Ladislav Mikeš Parízek’s books, articles and lectures had a large impact on the image of the Congo as it existed in communist Czechoslovakia from the 1940s till the 1970s, but this Czech traveller and writer has almost been forgotten. Through an analysis of his works and of reviews of these works published in newspapers of the 1950s, the nature of the African discourse as it was created in communist Eastern Europe, as well as the (mis)use of this discourse by the ruling party, is revealed. Special attention will be paid to the illustrations accompanying his books, articles and lectures.

The focus of the paper is the analysis of the story about the courtesan Komurasaki and the samurai Shirai Gonpachi. The story, recurring in Japanese literature, appears also in Czech literature – the writings of Juliusz Zeyer – and in Polish literature of the turn of nineteenth century. The analysis will focus mainly on two works: Wacław Sieroszewski’s Miłość samuraja and Władysław Reymont’s Komurasaki. Żałosna historya o pękniętem porcelanowem sercu japońskim.

In the article, selected vernacular (Polish and Czech) mediaeval hagiographic songs (Legenda o svatém Prokopu, Legenda o svaté Kateřině, Legenda o svaté Dorotě, Pieśń-Legenda o świętej Katarzynie, Legenda o świętym Aleksym, Pieśń o świętej Dorocie, Pieśń o świętym Stanisławie, Pieśń o świętym Jopie) are analysed in the context of the elements used and characteristic of oral works. The study draws attention to fixed epithets, formulas and “oral themes” repeated in the texts. It is emphasised that the visible “compilatory feature” of the discussed texts does not prove their unoriginal nature but their functioning in the oral circulation of literature.

The goal of the article is to draw the basic outline of the transformations of the ballad as a genre in Czech literature in the second half of the 19th century. The material is the book editions of poetry from the year 1850 to the beginning of the World War I. The method is the synoptic-pulsating approach to a literary work of art as a dynamic process within which various discourse tendencies are configured and modified. The result is a preliminary model of Czech ballad transformation in that particular period of time: the genre happened to be in the magnetic field of Romanticism represented mainly by Erben´s Kytice (Bouquet). A number of modifications occurred in the course of time, Romanticism´s genre rules became gradually more and more relaxed, especially those related to the role of plot and dynamic motifs; one of the tendencies even inclined to parody of the traditional Romantic principles of the ballad (Mašek, Hašek). At the same time the ballad was penetrated by essential features of other literary discourses such as Parnasism (Hálek, Vrchlický), Naturalism (Sládek, Šimáček) or Decadence (Jan z Wojkowicz, Lešehrad). The transformations did not take place in a linear way, within an imaginary causal „evolution“, where individual stages would „overcome“ the previous ones, but they overlapped in synoptic dynamics. The main contribution lies in the actual proof of the thesis about the nonlinear, synoptic character of transformations of a key literary genre in the 19th century, which helped establish Romanticism and has always been so attractive for readers it has stayed vital in spite of the discourse transformations.

Circus as parody of communism. Gargling with Tar by Jáchym Topol This article deals with humanism in Jáchym Topol’s novel Gargling with Tar (Kloktat dehet, Prague, 2005). The Czech writer’s perspective is close to the concepts of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who claims that the Romans were not only the authors of the idea of humanitas but also the inventors of bloody games such as circuses. In Topol’s novel, the circus is a holistic political project. The novel refers to the ideas developed in Russia in the 1920s, when a large number of circus theories and artistic manifestos were formulated. The circus was then officially recognised as the most important form of social entertainment (together with cinema) and it gained religious, aesthetic and political functions. By using the grotesque, fantasy and parody (Czechoslovakia as a giant circus), Topol’s novel creates an alternative narrative about the Prague Spring and “normalisation”. New meanings for notions such as progress, revolution and community are also revealed. Cyrk jako parodia komunizmu. Powieść Kloktat dehet Jáchyma Topola Artykuł analizuje pojęcie humanizmu w powieści Kloktat dehet Jáchyma Topola (Praga 2005). Czeski pisarz jest bliski koncepcji Petera Sloterdijka, który pisał, że Rzymianie oprócz idei humanitas stworzyli także krwawe igrzyska – cyrki. W powieści Topola cyrk to projekt polityczny, w którym widać wyraźne nawiązania autora do koncepcji formułowanych od lat dwudziestych XX wieku w Związku Radzieckim, kiedy cyrk (obok kina) propagowano jako najważniejszą gałąź sztuki łączącą wszystkie grupy społeczne. Wykorzystując groteskę, fan­tastykę, ale przede wszystkim parodię (figura wielkiego cyrku socjalistycznego) autor Kloktat dehet buduje alternatywną historię Praskiej Wiosny i czechosłowackiej „normalizacji”, w której nowych sensów nabierają pojęcia postępu, rewolucji i wspólnoty.

The only translations from any Slavic literature that the Czech literary classic Jan Neruda published as independent texts are two decasyllabic poems by a little known Croatian poet Hugo Antolković who wrote under the pseudonym Ugoje Gjorgje Ognjanić. This paper brings information on Antolković’s life and his small poetic opus, and places Neruda’s translations of his poems in the context of Neruda’s first public expressions of interest for the South Slavic epic poetry and general South Slavic topics, that culminated at the end of the 1860’s and in the 1870’s.