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Reconfigurări ale fantasticului în proza central şi est-europeană actuală

Author(s): Catrinel Popa / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 68/2019

In the present article we’ll focus on several novels that attempt at rewriting the recent past of ex-communist countries by bringing into foreground the political. police, an institution that embodied in totalitarian regimes the notion of the absolute Evil. What distinguishes such writings as Dumnezeiţele din Moravia [The Goddesses of Žítková] by Katerina Tučková, György Dragoman’s Rugul [The Bone Fire], and Răzvan Rădulescu’s Viaţa şi faptele lui Ilie Cazane [The Life and Deeds of Elijah Cazane] appears to be the manner in which their authors succeed in conveying a complex, polyphonal representation of the communist past by using fantastic or grotesque elements, instruments that prove their efficiency anytime an irrational reality shatters our values and beliefs

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Изборите на интелектуалеца. Случаят на Вацлав Хавел

Author(s): Slaveya Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2023

The paper analyzes the place and the social roles allotted to intellectuals in post-totalitarian societies, with a special focus on the Czech situation. From the sources relevant to the topic, the choice here falls on Václav Havel’s public speeches since they offer particularly rich study material. Attention is paid to the political, social, and cultural contexts that have served as a stimulus for each of the analyzed texts, as well as the intention, implicit in them, to model the environment in which they are to function. The paper also touches upon the themes of historical and cultural memory, personal choice, the intellectuals’ resignation, and the sense of cultural isolationism, among others.

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„Existuje obludnější a podivnější způsob argumentace?“

Author(s): Marcela Slavíková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2023

Joachim Hübner, a prominent member of the intellectual circle centred around the London-based intelligencer Samuel Hartlib, was highly valued for his varied knowledge and served as a critic in the Hartlib circle. This paper focuses on his scathing review of the first version of Comenius’ Great Didactic, which he inserted in a letter sent to Comenius during November 1639. A Czech translation of Hübner’s critique and the apology he sent in his next letter is included.

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The Male Capital and Its Female Provinces: Ivan Olbracht’s O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian, 1925)

Author(s): Ivana Perica / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

In 1925, St. K. Neumann’s magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian), a novel by the Czech author Ivan Olbracht. Its significance for Czechoslovak political literature of the interwar period is commonly compared to the role Fedor Gladkov’s Cement (1925) played in what was later institutionalised as Soviet socialist realism. However, because the label of socialist realism too quickly draws the reader’s attention to typical elements such as positive heroes and political messages, Anna seems to be difficult to approach without bias. Simultaneously, as the novel represents an evidently more straightforward version of literary activism than e. g. the literary avant‑ gardes, it can also be read as a testament to the gridlocked binarity of sexes and corresponding gender roles, as these were characteristic of both conservative circles and the new communist ethics that were imposed by the Comintern in the late 1920s. Together with these dichotomies, the novel testifies to a solidification of the unbridgeable gap between centre and periphery, capital and province. A careful look, however, reveals an interesting gender, spatial and class dynamic behind this reinforcement – a dynamic far more complex than both the label ‘socialist realism’ and the postmodern understanding of modern juxtapositions of genders seem to suggest.

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Literary History Between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism

Author(s): Bohumil Fořt / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The aim of my study is to compare the views of the concept of literary history by Russian formalists and Prague structuralists, two signifi cant literary theoretical schools of the beginning of the twentieth century. In spite of the fact that both schools are primarily considered literary theoretical, their particular members were involved in a whole scale literary critical investigation – including the area of literary historical inquiry. Indeed, slowely but surely both respective schools became more emancipated in their claim of a general validity of their originally literary theoretical ideas and started to widen the scope of their scholarly interest towards encompassing the concept of literary history. The formalists originally almost dismissed literary history as an unwelcome heritage of the old approach and the structuralists overlooked it due to their initial emphasis on synchronic aspects of literature.

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Podníceno Durychem. Příspěvek ke slovosledu a slohu české prózy

Author(s): František Kopečný / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

František Kopečný wrote a study entitled “Podníceno Durychem. Příspěvek ke slovosledu a slohu české prózy” (Stimulated by Durych. A contribution to the research of word order and the style of Czech prose) for the samizdat anthology Jaroslavu Durychovi k sedmdesátým narozeninám 1956 (To Jaroslav Durych at the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 1956), arranged by Vladimír Justl, an editor and the student of Kopečný. The text has not been published anywhere else. In the study, Kopečný summarizes current findings concerning mutual relation between word order and semantic structure of utterances and he exemplifies them with the use of the quotes from Durych’s proses. He also points out certain identical features of artistic prose and colloquial speech.

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„Všechny stromy jsou plaché“ – několik poznámek k tvorbě Petra Borkovce pro děti a mládež

Author(s): Luisa Nováková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2023

This study notices several aspects of Petr Borkovec´s work dedicated to children and youth in the context of the author´s work for adults. First, it focuses on the motifs of the everyday things in his poetry. Their connection with human life appears to be essential. Secondly, this study draws attention to the spiritual level of Borkovec´s description of nature and the things and perceives it as close to the spirituality of Francis of Assisi. Thirdly, it emphasizes the magical dimension of Borkovec´s poetry. And in the end, the study takes a closer look at the book Modrá agáve.

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Notes de lecture

Author(s): Anne DURUFLE,Mircea Iorgulescu,Jan VLADISLAV,M. D. GHEORGHIU,Matei Vişniec,Edgar REICHMANN,Ion Pop,Sebastian Reichmann,Thomas BAZIN,Dan Culcer / Language(s): French Issue: 01/1991

Review of: Voyages à l’Est (Récits), Balland-Maison des Écrivains, 1990 PlOTR SZEWC, L’Evanescence des choses Traduit du polonais par Éric Morin-Aguilar Éditions Noir sur Blanc, 1990 Ludwik Flaszen, Le Chirographe Traduit du polonais par Adrien Le Bihan Editions La Découverte, 1990 La Poésie tchèque moderne Anthologie rassemblée par Petr KRAL Belin, 1990 Quinze poètes roumains Choix de Dumitru Tsepeneag, L’Extrême contemporain, 1990 Lena Constante, L’Évasion silencieuse, trois mille jours seule dans les prisons roumaines La Découverte, 1990 Gregor von Rezzori, Mémoires d’un antisémite Traduit de l’allemand par Jean Dusay L’Âge d’Homme, Paris, 1990 Claude Karnoouh, L’Invention du peuple Chroniques de Roumanie Arcantère, « Essais », 1990 JlRI WEIL, Un auteur à découvrir Alexandre Papilian, Des mouches sous un verre Albin Michel, 1990 Helene Carrere D'Encausse, La Gloire des nations ou la fin de l'Empire soviétique Fayard, 1990 J. M. Rymkiewicz, La Dernière Gare Traduit du polonais par Véronique Platte Laffont, « Pavillons », 1989

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Bohumil Hrabal and Umberto Eco: Ad Usum Delphini?

Author(s): Wojciech Soliński / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2023

This short article came about as a result of the surprising observation that two writers who differ in their backgrounds, education, professional activities, and who are generally associated with works aimed at an adult readership, at some point directed several works to a children’s audience. This episodic activity of an academic lecturer and prose writer creating himself as a poet of the outcast resulted in narrative works with characteristics of fairy tales. Three “professorial” fairy tales by U. Eco are described here as modern philosophical poems on the side effects of human civilization. Two animal fables by B. Hrabal (animals speak with a human voice in them) are a bitter reverie on the attitude of humans to animals, on the situation of farmed animals (meat, skins, etc.) and the questionable future of hunting. The article closes with a list of “animal” works by the Czech writer.

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Havel Phaëton Žalanský v souřadnicích pozdního humanismu

Author(s): Jan Malura / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2024

This study focuses on the work of Havel Phaëton Žalanský (1567–1621), a highly prolific author of religious and moralistic works in the first quarter of the 17th century, analysing his output within the framework of current research into humanism in the Czech lands. It examines the genre principles, typical contemporary themes and characteristic imagery of Žalanský’s treatises as well as the use of humanist and classical pretexts. Havel Phaëton Žalanský is a standard author from the late humanist period, but his particular features include a leaning towards the Calvinist Reformation and distinctive eschatological ideas and examples from history, while his texts have a polemical slant and are stylistically characterized by a departure from the higher style of what is known as Veleslavín Czech.

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Das literarische Schaffen Karel Fleischmanns im Konzentrationslager Theresienstadt

Author(s): Jarmila Škochová / Language(s): German Issue: 1/1982

The article is devoted to the physician, painter and writer, Karel Fleischmann (1897-1944), and his literary works from the Terezin concentration camp-ghetto. It includes some examples of Fleischmann’s prose translated into German (“A Day in Terezín“ and others). Examples of his poetry are published in their original Czech version and translated into German.

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La figure du labyrinthe entre philosophie, art et littérature

Author(s): Diego Scalco / Language(s): French Issue: 37/2024

The aim of this article is to draw analogies between the Prisons by Piranesi and The Castle by Franz Kafka in the light of the figure of the labyrinth. In these specific cases, the architectonics (as a pseu- do-arrangement of perspective planes) and the plot (as a factitious connection between action sequences) enclose the illusion of depth and the impression of duration in the vicious circles of the lines of rupture and of the missed events, respectively. The Piranesian ato- pic topic (from atopos, « out of place ») and the Kafkaesque apraxic practice (from apraktos, « inconclusive ») are both based on unsurpas- sable antinomies and, in this particular respect, seem to revive Zeno of Elea’s paradoxes of motion and Diodorus Cronus’ aporia of beco- ming, which Gottfried W. Leibniz considers to be two labyrinths.

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Dopisy Egona Hostovského Sigurdu Hoelovi

Author(s): Martin Humpál / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2024

This article presents the hitherto unknown letters the Czech writer Egon Hostovský (1908–1973) wrote to the Norwegian writer, critic, essayist, editor and translator Sigurd Hoel (1890–1960). These letters date from 1949–1956 and are preserved in the National Library of Norway in Oslo. Not only do they provide interesting information about Hostovský’s efforts to publish his works in Scandinavia, but they also testify to a close friendship between the two writers. The article also presents two letters by Graham Greene (1904–1991) which are also preserved in the file containing Hostovský’s letters in the Norwegian National Library.

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Groza i wyobraźnia / groza wyobraźni

Author(s): Józef Olejniczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1-2/2023

A sketch dedicated to the relation between the categories of horror and imagination. Its author interprets the relation in question by resorting interchangeably to The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz, and The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan. In each of those works lead protagonists experience horror in a different way. Gregor Samsa noticed that after changing into an insect he lost the possibility of communicating with humans; Witold from Cosmos becomes terrified by the inability to comprehend and put into order a world deprived of any sort of an authority capable of introducing order, while Pashka from The Orphanage experiences horror in a real world – faced with war and threat, imagination ceases to be necessary. The context of those micro-interpretations is a reflection on the source of the functioning of horror in modern and postmodern pop culture, confronted with the tragic events of the twentieth century and contemporary times.

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ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ РОМАНТИЧЕСКОЙ ТРАДИЦИИ В ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЯХ Г. МАЙРИНКА И Г. Ф. ЛАВКРАФТА

Author(s): Maria I. Timoshkina,Natalia Gennadievna Sharapenkova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 5/2024

The relevance of the article lies in conducting comparative analysis of the works of one of the brightest representatives of the Prague literary school, Gustav Meyrink, and a prominent American fantasy writer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who influenced the modern “horror literature”, from the perspective of them using and transforming the techniques and motifs of the Romantic tradition. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is grounded in the works of foreign and Russian scholars in the field of literary studies, as well as the texts of the studied authors – Meyrink’s novel The Golem and Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness” and his short story “The Music of Erich Zann”. The study revealed the traditional images and motifs of Gothic literature (for example, motifs of fear, horror, and mystery borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe’s works, among other sources), closely intertwined with the Romanticism poetics and forming the unique fantasy fiction of both writers. A special emphasis in the article is placed on the transformation of the techniques of Romantic duality and doppelgangers, the opposition between the herodemiurge and philistine society, as well as the idea of creativity as a higher force opposed to chaos and death (in comparison with the same motifs in Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s texts). The research findings suggest that the transformation of the Romantic tradition in Meyrink’s novel is manifested through immersing into psychoanalysis, as well as into occult and spiritual teachings, practiced by the writer in order to explore his inner “self”. Furthermore, it is revealed that after encountering the otherworldly forces Meyrink’s hero experiences a metamorphosis, overcomes the “golemic” in himself, and discovers the true higher reality. By contrast, in Lovecraft’s works, skillfully combining horror and science fiction, romantic heroes (scientists, travelers, musicians) descend to chaos, spiritual powerlessness, and disappointment in the comprehension of the universe during their “romantic” pursuit.

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The Image Base of Fairy Tale Formula in the Structure of Folklore Text (Based on Russian, Slovak, and Czech Fairy Tales and Their Translations)

Author(s): Oleh Tyshchenko,Marianna Figedyová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

The article presents a comparative analysis of fairy tale texts from the perspective of their structural, semantic, pragmatic, as well as linguistic and cultural features. Verbal and semiotic code of fairy tales has been reconstructed on the basis of their bidirectional translation (translation of Folk Russian Tales by A. Afanasiev into Slovak and Czech and Slovak and Czech fairy tales translation into Russian). The article considers initial, middle and final fairy formulas ones proceeding from the archetypal structure, value and semantic dominants, as well as concepts of folklore texts (transformations and variants of plots and allomotives, typology of images and names of fairy tale characters through the lens of V. Propp, S. Neklyudov, E. Novik and others’ views). The units are described both in terms of their equivalence, figurative structure, and possible translation transformations, as well as ways of transferring culture-specific elements and pragmes into foreign cultural folklore and semiotic space. The approach applied in the article presupposes cultural and semantic reconstruction of the predominant conceptual spheres actualized in fairy tales, particularly the ones of giving, the Way, ‘us’ and ‘them’, happy end and marriage, oppositions of the living and the dead, functions of fairy tale loci, such as emptiness, chaos and cosmogonic representations associated with them. The research analyzes modal, temporal, and syntactic characteristics of fairy tale formulas, lexical and semantic substitutions, as well as compensations and equivalents in the target text.

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Целов поезије – ишчитавање додира пољског, чешког и српског песништва

Author(s): Nina V. Stokić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2024

Review of: Јелена Марићевић Балаћ, "Ка осмеху Европе: савремено српско, пољско и чешко песништво у компаративном кључу", Нови Сад: Академска књига, 2023, 296 стр.

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Dimenze nezáměrnosti: Jan Mukařovský — Julia Kristeva — Georges Didi-Huberman

Author(s): Piotr Gierowski / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2024

This article focuses on the concepts of intentionality and unintentionality introduced into the semiotics of the Prague Structural School by Jan Mukařovský. These terms are considered in the context of two other conceptual pairs: 1) the semiotic (le sémiotique) and the symbolic (le symbolique) by Julia Kristeva; and 2) the visual (le visuel) and the visible (le visible) by Georges Didi-Huberman. These concepts, created on the basis of French humanities, can be treated as a development on and complement to Mukařovský’s aesthetic theory.

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Pohyblivé kánony. Češi ve světě aneb kam s migrační literaturou?

Author(s): Alfrun Kliems / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2024

In this paper, Brigid Haines’s remarks on the Eastern Turn of German-speaking literature will be considered in questioning the Czech literary canon concerning what is known as migration literature. Foremost among my working analyses will be terminological differences between migration literature, the poetics of nomadism, writing between worlds, as well as general observations on switching languages and multilingualism among Czech writers. Not least, the authors under study present the difficulties for literary scholars, at least those that operate with classification systems, in allocating works of national literature in whose language or under whose conditions they have not been written.

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Kundera’s warnings are still relevant today

Author(s): Adam Reichardt / Language(s): English Issue: 05 (57)/2023

Interview with Samuel Abrahám, Slovak intellectual and editor in chief and publisher of the Slovak journal Kritika & Kontext, by Adam Reichardt.

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