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.
Jaroslav Haek is a Czech writer most famous for his wickedly funny, widely read, yet incomplete novel The Good Soldier Schweik, a series of absurdist vignettes about a recalcitrant WWI soldier. ...Haek-in spite of a life of buffoonery and debauchery-was remarkably prolific. He wrote hundreds of short stories that all display both his extraordinary gift for satire and his profound distrust of authority. Behind the Lines presents a series of nine short stories first published in the Prague Tribune and considered to be some of Haek's best. Based on his experiences as a Red Commissar in the Russian Civil War and his return to Czechoslovakia, Behind the Lines focuses on the Russian town of Bugulma, taking aim, with mordant wit, at the absurdities of a revolution. Providing important background and insight into The Good Soldier Schweik, this collection by a writer some call the Bolshevik Mark Twain is nevertheless much more than a tool for understanding his better-known novel; it is a significant work in its own right. A hidden gem remarkable for its modern, ribald sense of humor, Behind the Lines is an enjoyable, fast-paced anthology of great literary and historical value.
This article considers the Czech cliché 'the heart of Europe' and its sentimentalization. It ends by linking the Czech heart with another nationalist symbol, the heart-leaved linden. The article ...derives the nationalist symbolism of the heart from medieval Saxon mysticism and its descendants, the Baroque cult of the Sacred Heart, taking in Cupid and his arrows on the way. Sources from the seventeenth to the twentieth century include belles-lettres, but also political writing from the Romantic historian Palacký to Václav Havel.
Jaroslav Haek is a Czech writer most famous for his wickedly funny, widely read, yet incomplete novel The Good Soldier Schweik, a series of absurdist vignettes about a recalcitrant WWI soldier. ...Haek-in spite of a life of buffoonery and debauchery-was remarkably prolific. He wrote hundreds of short stories that all display both his extraordinary gift for satire and his profound distrust of authority. Behind the Lines presents a series of nine short stories first published in the Prague Tribune and considered to be some of Haek's best. Based on his experiences as a Red Commissar in the Russian Civil War and his return to Czechoslovakia, Behind the Lines focuses on the Russian town of Bugulma, taking aim, with mordant wit, at the absurdities of a revolution. Providing important background and insight into The Good Soldier Schweik, this collection by a writer some call the Bolshevik Mark Twain is nevertheless much more than a tool for understanding his better-known novel; it is a significant work in its own right. A hidden gem remarkable for its modern, ribald sense of humor, Behind the Lines is an enjoyable, fast-paced anthology of great literary and historical value.
This article traces the changes in two novels, Zdenňka Bezděková's Říkali mi Leni and Marie Majerová's Bruno, made once the Communist-Party regime in Czechoslovakia was firmly established. For ...example, German paedophilia is changed to bullying in Bezděková and pre-war Czech political antisemitism deleted from Majerová. In both works Czech nationalist misoteutonism is changed into internationalist Communism. The author pays close attention to changes in language and style in both works. Though Majerová's novel seems no longer to be read, Bezděková's remains standard reading for adolescents, and in the twenty-fi rst century continues to be read with its somewhat rabble-rousing afterword by the novelist Karl Nový. The essay demonstrates how children can be made into things rather than people for the sake of a political ideology.
The lengthy concluding essay of a special issue on, "Bohemia 1945," mulls over various aspects of the subjects discussed in the earlier essays & examines the events & the writings that influenced ...actions & attitudes that were prevalent in 1945 & its aftermath. The new mythologization of the Munich Agreement that accompanied the Soviet liberation of most of Czechoslovakia & the powerful position of the Communist Party are addressed, along with Czech anti-German & pro-Nazi writing, the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism, the Prague Uprising, & the expulsion of the Germans. Distinctions are pointed out between popular myths & those perpetuated by politicians. Other matters discussed include the Czech Communists' view of nationalism as a negative bourgeois force; conceptions of the Germans as the Czechs' longtime enemies; Czech attitudes towards the West; & the Czech "martyr complex." Special attention is given to the politics of literary representations of the Uprising, the expulsion of the Germans, & Communist Party anti-Semitism that led to the show trials of the 1950s. J. Lindroth
Jaroslav Hašek is a Czech writer most famous for his wickedly funny, widely read, yet incomplete novel The Good Soldier Schweik, a series of absurdist vignettes about a recalcitrant WWI soldier. ...Hašek-in spite of a life of buffoonery and debauchery-was remarkably prolific. He wrote hundreds of short stories that all display both his extraordinary gift for satire and his profound distrust of authority. Behind the Lines presents a series of nine short stories first published in the Prague Tribune and considered to be some of Hašek's best. Based on his experiences as a Red Commissar in the Russian Civil War and his return to Czechoslovakia, Behind the Lines focuses on the Russian town of Bugulma, taking aim, with mordant wit, at the absurdities of a revolution. Providing important background and insight into The Good Soldier Schweik, this collection by a writer some call the Bolshevik Mark Twain is nevertheless much more than a tool for understanding his better-known novel; it is a significant work in its own right. A hidden gem remarkable for its modern, ribald sense of humor, Behind the Lines is an enjoyable, fast-paced anthology of great literary and historical value.
Explores aspects of the Czech "National Revival," the process of the Czechs forming a "modern nation" through a Fichtean moral revival, a period the author describes as lasting from 1774 to 1848, ...through the analysis of four studies, published between 1948 & 1999 & two other works published in 1997 & 2001, including the following: (1) Felix Vodicka, Pocatky krasne prozy novoceske (The Beginnings of Modern Czech Literary Prose 1948); (2) Julius Dolansky's Stopami buditelu (In the Footsteps of the Awakeners 1963); (3) Vladimir Macura's Znameni zrodu (Birth Sign 1983); (4) Miroslav Hroch's Na prahu narodni existence (On the Threshold of National Existence 1999). The cultural value of the Czech language is emphasized as well as the threat that big business poses for the Czech language & literature. The four historians of the revival studied here are reacting in varying degrees to T. G. Masaryk's Ceska otazka (The Czech Question 1989 1895). All of the books reveal that issues of the National Revival & Masaryk are still current & reflect a sense of crisis & a mistrust in the Czech capability to achieve democracy as well the Western concept of democracy tied to the market. L. A. Hoffman
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