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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]

Argues that Czech nationalist playwright and fiction-writer Gabriela Preissové's work complicated the prevalent 19th-century myth of the Czech nation as a homogeneous and endogamous community. Comments on Preissové's characters; Background of Preissové's interest in women's issues; Information on Preissové's drama "Gazdina roba."