Pynsent, Robert B.

English

Bohemia - Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der böhmischen Länder

Neue Literatur 211 mask - as a carnevalesque motif and as a deeper expression of chaos (Georges Bataille) - plays a crucial role. Eva Stehlíková examines the ceremoniál and theatrical elements in the Tyrš Sokol gymnastic movement of the 1850s and 1860s. Mojmír Otruba and Miroslav Procházka take the theme further in their contribution on theatrical elements in four stories by J. K. Tyl. As Jiří Dvorský points out in his preface, the relationship between theatre and poli-tics in Bohemia has always been a crucial one. For the Czech obrozenci of the nineteenth Century, theatre was a means of transmitting political opinions; for the writers of the Baroque (Comenius) the world of politics was, conversely, understood and allegori-zed as a theatre. This volume of essays demonstrates that the classical relationship bet­ween theatre and the polis was a powerful vehicle of nineteenth-century bourgeois national self-definition as displayed in the theatre itself and in the theatrical props of the city as a whole. Newark, N . J. A l f r e d T h o m a s Proudy české umělecké tvorby 19. století. Smích v umění [Currents in nineteenth-century Czech art. Laughter in art]. Hrsg. v. Marta Ottlová. Ústav pro hudební vědu ČSAV, Ústav dějin umění ČSAV, Český hudební fond, Československá vědecká společnost pro estetiku, Praha 1991, 283 pp + 58 plates. This volume of thirty-three essays is the ninth volume of a series of proceedings of one of the most important institutions of the Czech "oasis culture" under socialism, the spring Pilsen Conferences run by the Fine Arts Institute of the Czechoslovak Aca­demy of Sciences. The essays concern art, architecture, photography, art-criticism, music, history, psychiatry, philosophy and, mostly, literatuře. The theme is humour and the title Smích was chosen by the organisers, not mainly because of Bergson's or Bakhtin's studies (they are the most frequently mentioned analysts of humour here), but because Czech, like German, does not háve a word for "humor", The Czech word humor suggests the comic, which probably usually belongs to humour, and when people like Milan Kundera or the average Lumpenintellektueller in Prague pub teils one that the Czechs háve a great humour tradition, they mean comic tradition. The distinction is clearest in Old Czech literatuře: Mastičkář(The unguentarius) manifests primarily humor, Tkadleček humour; in the period this volume treats one might say that Herrmann (a stränge Omission from the book) manifests predominantly humor, where Čapek-Chod (treated here only as an art-critic for Světozor) manifests predo-minantlly humour. Jan Lukeš is probably demonstrating his awareness of the pro­blém when he writes, "The laughter of the Czech Modeme is ironie, bitter, even sour; there is truly little humor in it" (p. 209). Zumr in his essay, which concerns mainly Ladislav Klíma, usefully quotes the much maligned (especially by Masaryk and his cronies) critic and aesthetician, Josef Durdík: "Humour can be anything: the fusions of opposites and opposites themsel-ves, Heaven and Hell, repugnance and delectability, a wretched illusion and, again, the essence of the world" (p. 200). That Statement is internally linked with the Judaeo-212 Bohemia Band 33 (1992) Christian mystical tradition which conceives of God as laughing. Jaromír Loužil men-tions the Greek gods' laughing on Olympus (p.14) and Wittlich writes of Hesse's vision of the "supreme geniuses of human creativity", Goethe and Mozart, "laughing with the absolute laughter of immortals" (p. 114). As Zumr virtually points out, Klíma radicalises nineteenth-century solipsism by giving man mystical laughter (and, at the samé time, ironising the mystical): Klima's ludibrionism states that "the world is the game of the sovereign šelf" (p. 202). In this (as in his use of paradox, his apparent rejection of any style of thought but his own, his air of superiority) Klíma may be con-sidered the serious philosopher of dandyism (Mekula fails to understand dandyism in his essay on fin-de siěcle irony), as the culmination of the attempts at analysing dandy­ism carried out by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Baudelaire, Wilde and Klima's contemporary, Artur Breiský. Irony appears also to be a far simpler matter for many contributors here than it has been for anyone since the ironically obfuscatory Schlegel. Aristotle may háve said that irony is "saying the opposite of what one means", and Mekula claims that is what it means today (p.211), but the jungle between that notion and irony in its primary meaning, the Socratic discussion method based on professing ignorance, is invious — at least in a book review. If, however, one ignores the implied discussion contained in the concept, irony, one will find it difficult to distinguish it from "the lowest form of wit". Perhaps Mekula himself is demonstrating a sense of irony when he cites Salda's use of the word, for Salda showed little or no understanding or irony before syphilis drove him to the walking-stick. On the other hand Mekula is sensible to guess at irony in the title of Hlaváčeck's first collection of verse, Sokolské sonety (Sokol son-nets) even if one has to be careful because of the poeťs entirely unironic disquisitions on gymnastic exercises. Certainly the title, like the contents, of his third collection, Mstivá kantilena (Cantilena of revenge), is ironie. The ironie concerns the paradoxical (not the samé as saying the opposite of what one means), and Wittlich discusses the paradoxical as the essence of humour - not humor - in his essay on Zola, Manet and others (see particularly, p. 111). Shandyism epitomises humour (and irony), and Grebeníčková's discussion of Shandyism (sternovství) in Mácha and, to a degree, in the neglected J. J. Langer, is one of the liveliest essays in the volume. Probably thousands of essays háve been written on Mácha, but very few of them deal with Mácha as an essentially humorous writer. A writer who saw existence as grimly awful as non-existence, whatever he did with Lori back-stage, can only be fundamentally humorous (ironie) or, perhaps, a political extremist, a revolutionary. In humour (not humor) melancholy comingles with laughter (Grebeníčková, p.22), though, psychologically laughter may be release from melan­choly, if one suggests, as Jiří Růžička does, that melancholy is roughly equivalent to depression. Nevertheless, when "laughter" does consitute release from depression, the melancholy (in a non-medical sense) surely lurks in the wrinkles of the laugh. As long as that laughter is not manic. Depressive melancholy, Růžička writes, contains strong elements of guilt and punishment (p. 96), of a conscience out of joint. Melancholy is "imprisonment, isolation from what we are fond of, what we love [...] Melancholy deprives one of freedom and love. [...] laughing is made possible by liberty and the opportunity to be together with what we are fond of" (p. 97). Laughter comes with the Neue Literatur 213 re-tying of old bonds, the retrieving of old loves (p. 98), a restructuring of conscience (P-99). That is closely linked, with another aspect of humour, one Čornej touches on in his perceptive, funny essay on the myth of nineteenth-century Czechs as descendents of the Hussites, a myth which he reminds us was also particularly strong after World War I (he does not mention "legionary literatuře" nor, perhaps more important, Arnošt Dvořák's just prewar Husité - nor Pekař as an antidote) and in the 1940s and 1950s. He does not see a generál subsidence of the myth until the 1980s. Laughter is not only a product of reunion with what one loves. One laughs at what one loves; the old risus paschalis has been sorely lacking in mainstream Czechs' self-perception (Čornej is par­ticularly interested in the period from the 1860s). Cech's pan Brouček may be a comic figuře but the author's picture of the Hussites is essentially so deadly serious that it amounts to kitsch. The kitschification of the Hussites continued right up to authors like M. V. Kratochvíl; just as the kitschification of the obrany jazyka českého (defen-ces of the Czech language, in Balbín, but mainly in the early Revival) may be seen in Karel Capek's essay mMarsyasorI'ila.r'sNarodnouřeč(Pohleddoočíl979). Humour is anti-kitsch; humor often ist not. Other essays in the volume are valuable primarily for their information and analysis of that information: Macura on Klacel's long essay on humour; Lorenzová on the 1840s Prague periodical, Für Kalobiotik, and on Antonín Veith's callobiotic retreat for intellectuals, Liběchov; Dousa's account of the bourgeois and official Prager's retreat to Pilsen in the Austro-Prussian War; Kořalka on Czech stereotypes of Ger-mans and German stereotypes of Czechs; Krejčová on Vojtěch Rakous and Czech antisemitism in the 1890s; Ottlová and Pospíšil on the translations and adaptatious lea-ding to the libretto of Smetana's Dvě vdovy. Pomajzlova's essay on Josef VáchaFs Krvavý román (Penny dreadful) and trash lite­ratuře does not go far enough in decidíng what Váchal was actually up to. Nevertheless the essay is important because it is sober, does not evince the Váchal mania which until after the "velvet putsch" lived mainly underground in Czechoslovakia. It seems fitting to end this review of a generally rewarding volume on comic phenomena and humour with Váchal, occultist, parodist, messianist, who saw Hitler as the saviour of the Czechs from a degenerate Masarykian plutocracy (O té nebožce zpěvy paterý [Five canti on the deceased one, 1941]), and who died of a heart attack when the Communist authorities awarded him the title, Meritorious Artist. London R o b e r t B. P y n s e n t Sobkova, Helena: Tajemství Barunky Panklové [Das Geheimnis der Barunka PanklJ. Horizont, Praha 1991. Im Verlag Horizont ist in diesem Jahr ein sehr solides, mit Sachverstand geschriebe­nes, dabei aber pikantes Buch von Helena Sobkova mit dem o. g. Titel erschienen. Die Autorin geht darin der Frage der Herkunft von Božena Němcová nach, der schon eine 

Proudy české umělecké tvorby 19. století. Smích v umění [Currents in nineteenthcentury Czech art. Laughter in art]. Hrsg. v. Marta Ottlová

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Proudy české umělecké tvorby 19. století. Smích v umění [Currents in nineteenthcentury Czech art. Laughter in art]. Hrsg. v. Marta Ottlová

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