Yelling into the Silence and its Echos. Czech Shoah Poetry Written till 1960s and its Reception

The literary reflection of the Shoah in Czech war and post-war poetry is very limited. Only a few non-Jewish poets have ever returned to thistheme (e.g. František Halas,Jiří Kolář,Jaroslav Seifert, Jan Skácel, Karel Křepelka, Radek Malý). Additionally, literary “testaments” of Jewish authors (Karel Fleischmann, Pavel Friedmann etc.) resulted in only two collections of poems entirely dedicated to the suffering of the Jews during the Nazi oppression (Ota Reich and Michal Flach). On the other hand, there are several books of poetry about Lidice and suffering of the Czech people during the World War II by Viktor Fischl, Karel Šiktanc, Libuše Hájková, Miloš Vacík and others. After the war there were only Jaroslav Seifert and Jiří Kolář among well-known poets who refered to the Shoah in a more significant way. Seifert created a figure of a Jewish girl, Hendele, in his collection of poems Koncert na ostrově (Concert on the Island), which develops the literary narration of the Shoah. Jiří Kolář referred to the Shoah repeatedly, however, he only had a limited chance to publish his work. As a result of this fact, the reception of Czech post-war poetry about the Shoah is almost absent. In my article, I concentrated on some reviewers’ remarks that have already been published since the war-time and other reflections of this kind such as editions of books by Jiří Orten, Hanuš Bonn, Jiří Daniel. A hypothetical reaction on the Shoah verses by Pick’s cabaret audience or Halas’s anonymous poetic obituary paying tribute to Jiří Orten are rather specific sorts of reception. The critical reflection of Kolář’s work in the context of the mass murder commited during the WW II is exceptional. However, the specific motifs of the Shoah were significantly focused on only in recent years by three foreign reviewers (Leszek Engelking, Hanna Marciniak and Anja Golebiowski). Czech Shoah poems printed or reprinted in Jewish periodicals (e.g. annual “Židovská ročenka”, published since 1954) represent a commemorative function, even though sometimes with informative commentaries. They miss any analytical aspect.The literary reflection of the Shoah in Czech war and post-war poetry is very limited. Only a few non-Jewish poets have ever returned to thistheme (e.g. František Halas,Jiří Kolář,Jaroslav Seifert, Jan Skácel, Karel Křepelka, Radek Malý). Additionally, literary “testaments” of Jewish authors (Karel Fleischmann, Pavel Friedmann etc.) resulted in only two collections of poems entirely dedicated to the suffering of the Jews during the Nazi oppression (Ota Reich and Michal Flach). On the other hand, there are several books of poetry about Lidice and suffering of the Czech people during the World War II by Viktor Fischl, Karel Šiktanc, Libuše Hájková, Miloš Vacík and others. After the war there were only Jaroslav Seifert and Jiří Kolář among well-known poets who refered to the Shoah in a more significant way. Seifert created a figure of a Jewish girl, Hendele, in his collection of poems Koncert na ostrově (Concert on the Island), which develops the literary narration of the Shoah. Jiří Kolář referred to the Shoah repeatedly, however, he only had a limited chance to publish his work. As a result of this fact, the reception of Czech post-war poetry about the Shoah is almost absent. In my article, I concentrated on some reviewers’ remarks that have already been published since the war-time and other reflections of this kind such as editions of books by Jiří Orten, Hanuš Bonn, Jiří Daniel. A hypothetical reaction on the Shoah verses by Pick’s cabaret audience or Halas’s anonymous poetic obituary paying tribute to Jiří Orten are rather specific sorts of reception. The critical reflection of Kolář’s work in the context of the mass murder commited during the WW II is exceptional. However, the specific motifs of the Shoah were significantly focused on only in recent years by three foreign reviewers (Leszek Engelking, Hanna Marciniak and Anja Golebiowski). Czech Shoah poems printed or reprinted in Jewish periodicals (e.g. annual “Židovská ročenka”, published since 1954) represent a commemorative function, even though sometimes with informative commentaries. They miss any analytical aspect

Utjecaj čeških violinista u Sloveniji i Hrvatskoj do 1920-ih godina

The ethnic territories of Croatia and Slovenia have always been transitional geographic zones that were open to various kinds of cultural and musical migrations and meetings of various musical traditions. One of the most important groups of immigrant musicians was the Bohemians that appeared in Croatia and Slovenia towards the end of the eighteenth century. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1920s, about ninety musicians (violinists) originating from Bohemia were active as violin teachers, orchestra members (concertmasters and conductors), and military music directors that significantly shaped musical life in several cities and towns in Croatia and Slovenia. The most important group of these was the Prague violinists (violin alumni of the Prague Conservatory), whose representatives Václav Huml and Jan Šlais were the founders of the Zagreb and Ljubljana violin schools, respectively.Etnički teritoriji Hrvatske i Slovenije uvijek su bili tranzicijska zemljopisna područja koja su bila otvorena za razne vrste kulturnih i glazbenih migracija i susreta različitih glazbenih tradicija. Jedna od najvažnijih skupina imigrantskih glazbenika bili su Česi koji su se pojavili u Hrvatskoj i Sloveniji krajem osamnaestog stoljeća. Od početka devetnaestog stoljeća pa sve do 1920-ih najmanje devedeset glazbenika (violinista) podrijetlom iz Češke djelovalo je kao učitelji violine, članovi orkestra (koncertni majstori i dirigenti) i ravnatelji vojnih glazbi koji su značajno oblikovali glazbeni život u nekoliko gradova i mjesta u Hrvatskoj i Sloveniji. Otprilike deset posto njih bilo je aktivno na oba područja. Najvažniji razlog njihove migracije bio je ekonomski. Nakon što su teško pronalazili posao u svojoj domovini, koja je bila prenapučena visokokvalificiranim glazbenicima, bili su prisiljeni preseliti se u područja koja su bila u glazbenom razvoju i kojima su kvalitetni glazbenici bili nužno potrebni. S druge strane, vojni glazbenici putovali su sa svojim pukovnijama posebno u hrvatske zemlje, gdje su se neki od njih nastanili i nastavili glazbenu karijeru kao civili. Učitelji violine javljali su se na natječaje u novinama diljem austrijskog carstva; u početku su bili imenovani učiteljima glazbe uglavnom u Ljubljani, Karlovcu, Rijeci i Varaždinu. Bili su to široko obrazovani glazbenici, koji su mogli predavati teoriju glazbe, pjevanje i razne instrumente, uključujući violinu. Najvažnija skupina čeških violinista bili su praški violinisti (učenici Praškog konzervatorija). Prvi od njih pojavili su se u hrvatskim zemljama već 1830-ih, ali u Sloveniji ne prije 1870-ih. U Hrvatskoj su u početku djelovali kao ravnatelji vojnih glazbi u Puli, Bjelovaru i Osijeku, ali većina ih se preselila u Zagreb 1890-ih. U Glazbenom zavodu imenovani su učiteljima violine te kao koncertni majstori, članovi orkestra i dirigenti orkestra Narodnog kazališta. U Sloveniji su od kraja devetnaestog stoljeća bili među prvim učiteljima violine u Glazbenom društvu u Ljubljani i ograncima u Novom Mestu, Celju, Kranju, Trstu i Mariboru. Jedan od najvažnijih praških violinista prve polovice dvadesetog stoljeća nesumnjivo je Václav Huml (1880–1953), koji je školovao generaciju sjajnih zagrebačkih violinista iz šire regije, koji su ostvarili međunarodnu karijeru širom svijeta. Zbog toga se danas smatra osnivačem zagrebačke violinističke škole. Od 1920-ih, drugi praški violinist, Jan Šlais, obučavao je prvu važnu generaciju slovenskih violinista u Ljubljani, od kojih su neki nastavili studij violine s Humlom u Zagrebu. Više od stotinu godina češki su violinisti uvježbavali generacije violinista i nekih drugih glazbenika, izvodili suvremeni glazbeni repertoar, preuzeli vodeću ulogu u razvoju komorne glazbe i bili ključni faktor u razvoju orkestara i u Sloveniji i u Hrvatskoj

Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art

This book traces the influence of the changing political environment on Czech art, criticism, history, and theory between 1895 and 1939, looking beyond the avant-garde to the peripheries of modern art. The period is marked by radical political changes, the formation of national and regional identities, and the rise of modernism in Central Europe – specifically, the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the creation of the new democratic state of Czechoslovakia. Marta Filipová studies the way in which narratives of modern art were formed in a constant negotiation and dialogue between an effort to be international and a desire to remain authentically local

Vop\v{e}nka's Alternative Set Theory in the Mathematical Canon of the 20th Century: Author's Translation from Czech

Vop\v{e}nka's Alternative Set Theory can be viewed both as an evolution and as a revolution: it is based on his previous experience with nonstandard universes, inspired by Skolem's construction of a nonstandard model of arithmetic, and its inception has been explicitly mentioned as an attempt to axiomatize Robinson's Nonstandard Analysis. Vop\v{e}nka preferred working in an axiomatic theory to investigating its individual models; he also viewed other areas of nonclassical mathematics through this prism. This article is a contribution to the mapping of the mathematical neighbourhood of the Alternative Set Theory, and at the same time, it submits a challenge to analyze in more detail the genesis and structure of the philosophical links that eventually influenced the Alternative Set Theory.Comment: This is the author's translation into English of her paper published originally in Czech. 14 page

Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art

This book traces the influence of the changing political environment on Czech art, criticism, history, and theory between 1895 and 1939, looking beyond the avant-garde to the peripheries of modern art. The period is marked by radical political changes, the formation of national and regional identities, and the rise of modernism in Central Europe – specifically, the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the creation of the new democratic state of Czechoslovakia. Marta Filipová studies the way in which narratives of modern art were formed in a constant negotiation and dialogue between an effort to be international and a desire to remain authentically local

BOHEMIAN VOICE: CONTENTION, BROTHERHOOD AND JOURNALISM AMONG CZECH PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 1860-1910

This dissertation examines elite and popular consciousness among Czech speakers in America during their mass migration from Bohemia and Moravia, the two Habsburg crownlands that became the largest part of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Between 1860 and 1910, their numbers increased tenfold to almost a quarter-million, as recorded in the United States census, and to over a half-million with their children. That was almost one-twelfth of their population in Bohemia and Moravia. In the same half-century, a stable group of men made Czech-language journalism and publishing in America. They included Karel Jon�? in Wisconsin, V�clav ?najdr in Cleveland, Franti?ek Boleslav Zdr?bek and August Geringer in Chicago, and Jan Rosick� in Omaha. Students of the first Czech-language secondary schools in Bohemia, they came to the 1860s American Midwest in their twenties and modernized a print culture launched by bricklayers and tailors. They also became leading voices in what the subtitle calls contention and brotherhood among their countrymen. Contention formed the three large camps, subcultures and allegiances?liberal/Freethinker, Catholic and Socialist. Brotherhood denotes the forms of association and security that made the fraternal benefit societies the largest and most durable platforms for Bohemian identity and advocacy in America. The dissertation uses Czech-American newspapers from the period, historiography and new archival sources from both sides of the Atlantic to more closely examine definitive episodes, personalities and institutions among Bohemians while they formed important urban and rural communities in American society from New York to the Great Plains

Eroticism, Identity, and Cultural Context: Toyen and the Prague Avant-garde

This dissertation situates the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902-80), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, within the larger discourses of modernism and feminism/gender studies. In particular, it explicates Toyen's construction of gender and eroticism within the contexts of early twentieth-century Czech feminism and sex reformism, the interwar Prague avant-garde, and Prague and Paris surrealism. Toyen's interest in sexuality and eroticism, while unusual in its extent and expression, is intimately related to her historical and geographic position as an urban Czech forming her artistic personality during first a period of economic boom, avant-garde optimism, increased opportunities for women, and sex reformism, and then a period of economic crisis, restriction of women's employment, social conservatism, and tension between the subconscious and the socialist realist. Toyen's ambiguously gendered self-presentation, while again unusual, needs to be considered in light of her enthusiastic reception within three predominantly male avant-garde groups (Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism). I stress that the social and cultural environment of her childhood and youth created an atmosphere that enabled her to pursue lifelong personal interests and obsessions in a manner that was unusually public for a female artist of her generation.As a case study of one artist working within a specific avant-garde movement, this project contributes to critical re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde. This intervention in the history of surrealism makes its intellectual contribution by changing our perception of the movement, giving vivid evidence of the Prague group's difference from and influence on the Paris group, and presenting a more complex and nuanced view of women's role in and treatment by surrealism.This dissertation employs a mixed methodology that combines investigation of historical context with aspects of feminist, psychoanalytic, iconographic, and semiotic approaches. No previous study of Toyen or the Czech interwar avant-garde has been done in this manner

Viennese Japonismus and Modern Allegory in the Work of Gustav Klimt

This dissertation examines Viennese Japonismus and modern allegory in the work of Gustav Klimt. One of the paradoxical ambitions of Vienna’s early visual modernists was the creation of a new art that would, nevertheless, revive the essence of tradition, creating a collective aesthetic that crossed national and historical boundaries. Klimt and his close collaborators, like Josef Hoffmann, and artists engaged in the broader context of central Europe, like Emil Orlik, believed that Japanese art presented a viable path toward a universal, modern visual language. This conception arose from layers of exoticism, primitivism, Orientalism, and genuine encounter with old and new Japanese art. The questions I address are: How did the historical cultural problem of the fracturing Habsburg Empire inform the aims of artistic reformers from the 1860s through the foundations of the Secession and Wiener Werkst.tte? How did the inescapable question of Austrian identity in the arts encourage eclecticism and the emergence of new paradigms like Japonismus? How did the multifaceted layers of international Japonism inform Viennese artists’ mindful selections and emulative reinventions of Japanese aesthetic principles? In the particular case of Klimt, how did the visual tradition of allegory, which was foundational and persistent in his oeuvre, shape his pursuit of a truly modern art for and of his age? Lastly, how did Klimt’s serious and lengthy engagement with the arts of Japan inform his modernization of allegory? Building on institutional histories, historiographies, critical reexaminations of Austrian visual modernism, the model of “Vienna 1900,” and the works of Klimt, I argue that Klimt did not simply adorn allegory in the new cloak of Japonismus, he aimed for coalescence and a unity that would establish a new modern paradigm. This examination engages with areas of inquiry opened by German/Austrian-Asian studies, scholarship on cultural transfer and exchange, and new explorations into world\u27s fairs, international Japonism, and the Meiji arts. It is the first monograph to study the inter-relation of Japonismus and allegory in Klimt’s art

In the Middle of It All: Prague, Brno, and the Avant-Garde Networks of Interwar Europe.

This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of what has come to be widely called the “historical avant-garde” (Bürger) of the interwar period to incorporate lesser known—but equally important—sites of literary and artistic production in Europe from outside the western canon. In the Middle of It All: Prague, Brno, and the Avant-Garde Networks of Interwar Europe shows how a group of leftist Czech artists, writers, architects, and actors, led by Karel Teige, engaged dialogically with peers at home and around Europe in the 1920s. The networks that Devětsil built, and how it built them, can be observed today in the remaining letters, travel accounts, and publications of its members. These are the media around which this dissertation is organized, in its consideration of both the private and public avant-garde. By presenting the published manifestos and theoretical texts of the avant-garde in situ—considering the design of the periodicals in which they appeared, any images that might appear besides text, and what authors were included together in an issue—this dissertation adds both to previous close readings of the texts under consideration (Zusi), as well as seminal work that has stated convincingly the need to introduce the study of ephemeral, printed matter and its design into a history of the avant-gardes of the early Twentieth Century (Drucker). The theoretical frame within which networks are located and analyzed draws from the Social Sciences (Luhmann) as well as Post Colonial Studies (Buck-Morss, Mohanty, Pratt), Periodical Studies (Ardis, Brooker and Thacker, Philpotts, Scholes and Wulfman) and epistolary theory (Altman, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, MacArthur). Utilizing such an interdisciplinary model, this dissertation reveals that the outcomes of the interwar exchange described have had a wide reaching impact, not only on art production and intellectual output in then Czechoslovakia, but also with regard to that region’s influence around the European continent. Through a series of case studies that take the Czech avant-garde of the 1920s as its focus, this dissertation points out and challenges gaps in our popular, western-centric understanding of the European interwar avant-garde, and resists long held notions of center and periphery.PhDSlavic Languages and LiteraturesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133350/1/mlforbes_1.pd

Reclaiming a Golden Past: Musical Institutions and Czech Identity in Nineteenth-Century Prague

This dissertation explores the relationship between nineteenth-century musical activity in the Czech lands and Czech identity. The objectives of this study are to examine the history of significant musical institutions and organizations established during the nineteenth century, to analyze performance repertories for these entities, and to explore how the activities of these institutions are related to other components of Czech identity. I begin by investigating significant Czech identity markers that existed prior to the nineteenth century. These include a sense of cosmopolitanism established during the reigns of the Holy Roman Emperors Charles I and Rudolf II, a priority on religious reform and tolerance linked to the Hussite period, and a sense of cultural deprivation stemming from the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War and the Counter-Reformation period. These foundational elements of Czech cultural identity provided the framework for the national revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which was based in Enlightenment ideals, and for the nationalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Using three categories of artistic institutions as case studies—opera venues, including the Estates Theater, the Provisional Theater, and the National Theater; the Prague Conservatory and related music schools; and the amateur arts organizations Umělecká beseda and Hlahol—I examine the motivations for establishing these organizations and analyze their performance repertories to better understand how the contemporaneous idea of “Czechness” influenced and was influenced by these musical activities. The history of these entities and their performance repertories demonstrates that musicality was a meaningful aspect of Czech identity long before nationalist composers brought international attention to the Czech lands, and that in the communities involved with Czech musical life a stronger emphasis has frequently been placed on artistic identity than ethnic or nationalist identity