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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 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.

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.

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 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.

This paper deals with a manuscript from the library of the Regional Museum in Chrudim (East Bohemia) which contains a Czech translation of some of the tales of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’. The manuscript was written at the end of the 18th century in a rather peculiar orthography and belongs to a group of manuscripts which were evidently written by a single person, the painter Josef Ceregetti (1722–1779). The language used in these manuscripts is the literary Czech of that time, with some influence from spoken language. By comparison of the French text of Galland and two contemporary German translations with the Czech text I show that the author seems to have been working with the German translation from the year 1730. The Czech translation was probably intended for a local circle of intellectuals, mainly clerics, and never reached a broader public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

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.

The aim of the paper is to analyze word-order positions of preterite auxiliary forms (AuxP) in the Old Czech prosaic texts from the 14th and 15th centuries, e. g. in Pasionál ('Passional'), in Život Krista Pána ('Life of Christ the Lord'), in Životy sv. Otců ('Life of Holy Fathers'/ 'Vitae Patrum') and in Tkadleček ('The Weaver'/ A Czech version of Ackermann aus Böhmen). The aim of the paper is to detect all possible word-order positions of these auxiliary forms in analyzed texts. The analysis demonstrates that the AuxP maintains some properties of an orthothonic word in several rare cases. However, the overwhelming majority of examples give evidence that the Old Czech AuxP was an enclitic. According to the explored data it seems that the post-initial (2P) word-ordering of the Czech enclitic became established in Old Czech as a prototypical word-order pattern of Czech enclitic forms and that verb-adjacent (VA) word-ordering had a quality relating to style. [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]

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.

In 1936, an anonymous collection of poems entitled 52 hořkých balad vĕčného studenta Roberta Davida ('52 bitter ballades of the perpetual student Robert David') was released in the Prague publishing house Borový. Soon it became clear that the author of this book of ballades (a very strict Romanic form of poems which was made famous by François Villon) must be Vítĕzslav Nezval. Nezval, however, who at that time was the main representative of Czech literary surrealism, denied his authorship for many years. After a short analysis of the work (themes and motifs, poetic form) and a brief overview of its contemporary reception the question will be discussed, why the author of an extremely free literary conception such as surrealism at the same time wrote a rather conventional text using an old and very strict poetic form. As will be shown, Nezval's oeuvre since the 1920s had always been characterized by the co-existence of avantgardistic and non-avangardistic texts. His surrealistic works and the ballades about Robert David are, on the one hand, connected by their playfulness. On the other hand, the mystifying play around the perpetual student was, maybe, determined to prepare Nezval's withdrawal from the surrealist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a selection of case studies, this paper will analyse the phenomenon of selftranslation of literary and scholarly texts in a Czech cultural context. These texts are considered to be phenomena influenced by culture and later also by politics in a nation constituting itself in a German-language educational context (i.a., the poet K. H. Mácha and the historian and politician F. Palacký). This paper also takes the period of the already »founded« political nation into consideration (e.g., the historian A. Gindely, the German Studies specialists Arnošt/Ernst Kraus and O. Fischer) and consequently also the newly arisen Czech state, especially within German Studies and Slavic Studies (J. Polívka, M. Weingart). During World War II the tradition of self-translation became very problematic for many authors (such is the case with the cultural mediator, translator and critic P. Eisner). A »Renaissance« of literary self-translation is reached following the waves of exile in 1948 and 1968, especially however in the migrant literature following 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authority of Goethe as a German national poet and classic was perceived by German and Czech writing intellectuals in Bohemia in a variety of ways. This article focuses on selected examples of the perception of the role of Goethe as a classic in Bohemia in late 19th and early 20th century – e.g. Gustav Karl Laube, Alfred Klaar, August Sauer, Karel Adámek, Arnošt V. Kraus. or F. X. Šalda – and shows partially surprisingly similar motivations for very different assessments of Goethe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the heated debate within and between Czech and German communities in Bohemia at the end of the 19th century over the authenticity of two medieval Czech manuscripts – the Manuscript of the Queen’s Court, and the Manuscript of Green Mountain –, allegedly discovered in 1817. While the fight originated at the time of the manuscripts’ »discovery« in 1817, the struggle resumed in 1886 with far-reaching consequences for an emergent, politically and culturally effective Czech nationalism. In response, German writers such as Fritz Mauthner and Hans Watzlik ridiculed Czech nationalist efforts without themselves being free of exacerbated nationalism and prejudice. It will be shown how this fight for cultural hegemony and the political and textual ambiguities that attended it was closely linked to problems of translation and literary authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study deals with the Czech translation of the text Atala by R. Chateaubriand (1805). In a polemic with older views (especially from Felix Vodička) in the analysis romantic elements from the Czech translation are accentuated. The translator, J. Jungmann, launched a section of the original text, but the parameters of the romantic story of two lovers amidst exotic nature remained. Their concentration on a smaller area of the text reinforce the message of motives of sentimentality. Romantic charater translation stands out in comparison to the older Indian story, Maran and Oynra, which is written in the spirit of rationalism. Translation Atal therefore be evaluated as the first manifestation of Czech Romanticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of the study examines the relations between the poetry of the German expressionist Georg Heym (1887–1912), the Austrian expressionist Georg Trakl (1887–1914), and Czech literature, especially poetry. Both these authors are representatives of early expressionism. Heym is also known in the Czech lands through the translations of Bohuslav Reynek, František Vrba, Ivan Slavík, Ludvík Kundera and Radek Malý. Trakl’s work affected the development of modern Czech poetry through translations by Bohuslav Reynek. Specific and significant manifestations of Trakl’s influence can already be found in the work of Bohuslav Reynek and in the first two collections by František Halas. In varying degrees, the authors have left traces in the poetry of František Hrubín, Vilém Závada and Jan Zahradníček. The echoes of Trakl’s poetry can be heard in the 1960s in the work of the poet Zbyněk Hejda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Czech literature was influenced by idyllization and looks at the Czech poet František Ladislav Čelakovský his books Echoes of Russian Songs (1829), and Echoes of Czech Songs (1839), and his less famous "Selanky" (Idylls), a group of poems that he wrote in the 1820s. These texts represent the transition from traditional idyllic poetry to the modern approach on national idyll, which was the main impulse for the general idyllization of the Czech culture, which then developed into the Obrozeni, the Czech National Revival.

The article describes the argumentative structure of justifications, which are typical responses to reproach (criticism). The reproach is generally based on a deviation from common norms. The justification attempts to achieve a different, positive evaluation of an action by referring to another norm, which the speaker presumes has validated his or her behavior. The justification succeeds when the other speaker accepts the justification. The author argues that the argumentative structure can be a syllogism . The paper also examines argumentation schemes in Russian and Czech literature.

The article discusses the transnational orientation of literature in Eastern Europe and the scholarly challenge this poses in the process of analysis. The author suggests that new methods of analysis must be identified, focusing on the Jewish-Czech poet J. M. Langer, whose work begs questions concerning the readership of multilingual authors and the literary identity of the author him- or herself. Furthermore, the author examines the historicism of Europe and its influence on national literary historiographies.

The article offers a literary criticism of "Anděl," or "Angel Station," by Czech writer Jáchym Topol. The subject matter of the author's writing deals with the period in Czechoslovakia after 1991, when Communism collapsed, on a thematic, linguistic, and structural level. The thriller deals with the quest for happiness in difficult times, transforming into an allegory of salvation. The paper demonstrates how allegory is created through certain poetics of transposition, by displacement of characters in time and space.

The article discusses the development of Czech elegies and their evolution from Thám's and Puchmajer's almanacs to the sentimental works of František Turinsky. Particular focus is given to the poetry of Karel Hynek Mácha, whose work was influenced by German, English, and Polish romanticism and who is considered the chief exemplar of Czech romanticism in opposition to the idyllic style of the literature of the Czech National Revival. The author also reviews the efforts of poet Jan Kollár in composing a national elegy.

On December 25, 1911, Franz Kafka reflects in his diary on Jewish and on Czech literature. This article focuses on Kafka's approach to Czech literature which has been much less looked at than the author's approach to Jewish literature. I would like to argue that Kafka reflects on his role as an author rather than analyzing the history of Czech literature itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the question of the value of literature written in the Czech language, whether there is a readership for such works either in Europe or the world at large, and what the consequent role of the world-language translator is. Specifically examined are three strategies of Czech writers to engage in written cultural exchange, including forced originality, the attempt to write easily translatable "European-type novels," and avoidance of the Czech language or its linguistic incorporation of expressions from other languages.

The article presents a literary criticism of Karel Hynek Mácha's poem "Máj," which is considered a significant contribution to 19th century Czech literature. The author argues that the theme of "madness" in Macha's "Máj" is a central one. In addition, the theme of childhood appears to be a key component of this epic poem. The author analyzes how the two themes connect with each other and focuses on childhood as a place of refuge for the madman and central figure Vilém, noting that he returns to the place of his childhood in order to flee death.

The article presents a report from the November 11, 2016 Bohemicum Dresdense conference on Czech fairy tales held at the Schloss Moritzburg castle in Dresden, Germany. Topics of presentations delivered included the fairy tale film "Aschenbrödel in Böhmen", old Czech translations of the tales in "1001 Nights" by painter Josef Ceregetti, and the fairy tales of Josef Stefan Kubín.

The article presents a report from the 7th Bohemicum Dresdense conference on the history of the Czech Bible in the Dresdner Staats-, Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek library in Dresden, Germany on October 25, 2013. Topics of presentations delivered included the grammar employed in the Czech Bible, translations of the Bible into Old Czech, and synonyms in the Kralitz Bible.