Nová rada k starým sporům Šorm, Martin
Česká literatura,
2020, Letnik:
68, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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The poem Nová rada (New Council) written by Smil Flaška in the 1390s has an extensive interpretative history, thanks in particular to the fact that it has always been found attractive not only by ...literary scholars but also historians. In previous research it has served primarily as an illustration of political history, and to a lesser extent as testimony to late medieval intellectual literary culture and poetics. Research
into the poem has primarily sought proof of its link with the era and the reign of Václav IV rather than the meaning of the work within the preserved context, i.e. in manuscripts from the latter half of the 15th century. This study first presents the manuscript context of New Council. It then analyses evidence on the ways of perceiving New Council in humanist literature, while polemicizing against the previous research
interpretations of the intertextual links between New Council and literary works of the 16th century. A presentation is also made here of the variously inspiring perspectives of research during the 19th and 20th centuries, with the emphasis upon the central
interpretational approaches which the author subsequently expounds in detail. The extraordinary scribal framing, thanks to which transcriptions of the poem consistently record the precise date of origin, the title of the work and the name of the author, is perceived within the context of late medieval cultural revisits to preHussite times. At the time the poem was demonstrably being transcribed and read, it clearly functioned not as an exclusive lesson for the upper classes or as criticism of the king (sophisticatedly hidden within an allegory), but as a long-tried-and-tested “edutaining” text that was accessible to recipients from various social groups. While an approach based on associating the poem with a critique of Václav IV is not entirely demonstrable and inappropriately closes the text off from interpretation, interest in its meaning at the time and the material context of its preservation shows it to be part of the more broadly available intellectually educational and entertaining literature. The main aim of this study is to present New Council as a representation of the polyphonic created world, wherein the animals are not merely a source of learning for man as representative symbols, but also in themselves, thus compelling the recipient to enter a space between man and animal, relinquish the misleading categories of allegory,
irony, satire and moral teaching, and submit to the actual subjective effects of God’s word coming from non-human mouths. The animals’ utterances in New Council are based on religious teaching and lead to a transformation of the recipient’s conscience and perception.
The text titled “Neruda as Josef Barák’s editor? A survey of Neruda’s editorial practice based primarily on the example of Adolf Heyduk” sets out to examine the hypothesis that Jan Neruda had a hand ...in the editorship or authorship of poems signed by Josef
Barák, thus examining the conclusion of the study by Petr Plecháč and Jiří Flaišman: “Barák’s problem: Neruda from the standpoint of contemporary stylometry” (Česká literatura No. 5/2017), who deduced that there was a textual similarity between the
two authors and attempted to explain it in terms of the theory that Jan Neruda was involved in editing or co-authoring his work. The present text analyses Jan Neruda’s editing practice during the 1859–1860 period on the basis of a comparison of newly discovered manuscripts of poems by A. Heyduk, V. A. Crha, E. B. Kaizl and J. V. Jahn with printed material in publications edited by Neruda, particularly in the first annual volume of the journal Obrazy života (Images of Life, 1859) and in the book edition of Heyduk’s Básně (Poems, 1859). On the basis of this analysis and the critical determination of constraints emerging from the available archive material under analysis, the author characterizes Jan Neruda’s editorial work, concluding that it does not form a basis for the hypothesis that Neruda made decisive alterations to the text of the poems by Josef Barák resulting in a change in stylometric indicators.
This study focuses on literary and film representations of the “King of Šumava” and associated narratives (state border guards and people-smugglers), examining
the links between individual works and ...their period context and media. Attention is also focused on the intertextual “communications” interconnecting works and the relations between the individual Šumava King characters to their real-world prototypes. Emphasis is placed on film analysis and the eponymous novel Král Šumavy (King of Šumava) together with the post-revolutionary prose works Smrt Krále Šumavy
(Death of the Šumava King) and Návrat Krále Šumavy (Return of the Šumava King). The concluding section articulates both the contrasting and the shared features of individual representations, which are often closely associated with the period in which any given work was written. To summarize, none of the works under review goes against the paradigm of its era, so that we may generally categorize those written
before 1989 as the Communist Šumava King anti-myth (people-smuggler characters who play exclusively negative roles), while the later ones, referring to the inhumanity of 1950s totalitarianism and the need to fight against it, may be categorized as the
post-Communist Šumava King myth.
Mojmír Otruba: Autor — text — dílo a jiné textologické studie. Edd. Michal Kosák a Jiří Flaišman. Praha, Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR 2018. 204 strany.
This study deals with the Sources of Faith anthology dating from 1943, which contains fifteen short stories that came out top in a competition titled New Tomorrow. The aim was to publish texts that ...were meant to depict life in the Protectorate in the
spirit of Nazi propaganda. It was initiated by activist journalist Rudolf Novák, who had been assigned to the Leopold Mazáč publishers by the Nazi authorities in the
summer of 1942. The competition was entered primarily by younger authors who had not previously published, or who had only published unsophisticated prose works of popular fiction. The only fairly well-known contributor was Vojtěch Rozner. Although these stories had literary ambitions, none of them achieved a very high literary standard. This study focuses in particular on describing and interpreting the
motifs and subjects of Nazi propaganda which occur more or less implicitly in these texts. Almost omnipresent is the subject of the „New Europe“ and its construction. These stories often present the motif of children as the builders of the new world. Two texts also include an anti-Semitic element characterizing a racially pure Nazi Europe. This construction also involves the subject of workers’ labour and social
justice: workers are better off in the New Europe, they work happily in a comradely collective and their work is valued appropriately. Several stories also attempt to
interpret recent events in an activist spirit: the social contradictions of the First Republic, its collapse and the creation of the Protectorate. The issue of what was
known as the new Czech patriotism remained vague. While activist journalists and propagandists conceived it to be identification with a united Nazi Europe, the
authors of the stories under analysis stressed the motif of pragmatic defence of the nation and the longing to live to see a better future. No competition of this kind was ever repeated in subsequent years, so Sources of Faith remains a unique attempt to create a Czech activist literature.
