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Some Unknown Březina-Related Manuscripts in the Jakub Deml fund in the LA MCL in Prague
Iwashita, Daniela ; Kořínková, Šárka
Otokar Březina, both as a man and a subject, belongs among the central constants of Deml’s entire work. In spite of this, however, Deml’s Březina-related manuscripts have not yet undergone proper examination. This article reports on the authors’ research into Deml’s texts on Březina which had to be retrieved, identified and reconstructed from eight mislabelled and disorganized boxes in the Jakub Deml fund in the Literary Archive of the MCL. The entire collection of manuscripts compiled includes two further boxes of material labelled as “fragments of My Testimony about Otokar Březina”. The authors therefore succeeded in assembling almost the entire manuscript of My Testimony (representing 97% of the approximately 1,000 numbered pages). Both the manuscript structure and parts of the typeset proofs testify to the gradual genesis of the book in four separate sections, and also throw light on the significance of certain changes (e.g. that the integrative as well as subversive part of the work – namely the marginal commentary – came into being only after the printing of the manuscript). Further, the authors managed to identify five bigger fragments of Deml’s unpublished lectures from the years 1929 to 1942. Above all, the article discusses the text of a lecture (59 preserved pages) given by Deml in Velké Meziříčí in 1929, which at the time caused considerable scandal and led to Deml being prosecuted for lèse-majesté against the then Czechoslovak President, until now it had been known only from secondary sources and citations. From the manuscript of the lecture it is clear that Deml had cited not only Březina’s criticism of Masaryk’s philosophy but also his praise of the President’s moral leadership while in office. At the same time the lecture represents the very first version of Deml’s conclusion to My Testimony about Otokar Březina. Two other significant fragments are: first, a fragment (83 preserved pages) of a three-hour lecture, given by Deml in Brno in 1931 and dealing with Otokar Březina’s life and philosophy, and, second, a fragment from 1942 which discusses, among other things, the significance of contradictory statements in Březina’s conversations and letters, which, according to Deml, Březina himself did not consider an integral part of his work.
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Martyrs of Silence
Čiháková, Barbora
This contribution builds on Jan lopatka’s thesis that there is a connection between Jakub Deml and Jan Hanč. It describes various resonances between the respective poetics of the two authors and also reflects on their differing approaches and assumptions, which to some extent can be traced back to differences in historical context. In conclusion the study points out that the authors’ respective works are essentially guided by the same principle of composition, namely the idea of being engaged in writing a single, continuous and unified book.
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The Genesis of Texts by Tasov Children on the Motifs from DemlʼsMy Friends
Čiháková, Barbora ; Fleglová, J.
The authors describe the genesis of following poetic texts created by pupils of the Primary School in Tasov in response to motifs from Deml’s My Friends. These texts were written during the Flowers of Tasov workshop which took place before the Deml conference and was organized for the Tasov children by the Dobrá Čeština association together with the NGO Slepíši in Tasov and students of the College of Creative Communication (VŠKK) in Prague.
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Zdeněk Rotrekl and Jakub Deml: Nature, Soul and Spirit
Zizler, Jiří
The study considers Jakub Deml’s relationship to land and landscape as spiritual phenomena and parts of the divine order that demands both co-existence and co-operation. It also points out the contradictions inherent in the image of nature in Zdeněk Rotrekl’s work, which is seen here as a unique complement to Deml’s ecstatic vision.
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Two Sources on Jakub Deml’s relationship with T. G. Masaryk
Podaná, Barbora
The contribution describes two sources that can deepen our understanding of the relationship between Jakub Deml and T. G. Masaryk. The first consists of an official file on the legal prosecution of Jakub Deml located in the archive of the President’s Office: the file contains not just court documents from the 1930 court trial of Jakub Deml but also the President’s approval of the prosecution, a transcript of a phone call by Karel Čapek, a further testimony on Březina’s remarks, a ministry of Justice application for presidential pardon and other documents underlying the President’s change of mind and his ultimate decision to stop the prosecution. The second source of information comprises nine books by Deml (which contain seven handwritten dedications to Masaryk from the years 1927–1935) and a single book dedicated to President Edvard Beneš in 1938. These sources are to be found in the as yet uncatalogued depositions in the library of T. G. Masaryk.
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Jakub Deml as Remembered by Josef Jelen
Burget, Eduard
In 1998 the Catholic priest, poet and journalist Josef Jelen published his memoir Jeden z prokletých (One of the Damned) in an attempt to justify his position and views in the years of the so-called normalization. In the memoir Jelen tends to emphasize his friendships with a number of influential writers: the most important of them would have been Jakub Deml whom Jelen continued to visit in Tasov into the 1950s. at the beginning of the 1960s Jelen resigned from the priesthood and shortly afterwards became a secret collaborator of the Communist State Security.
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Poslední Šlépěje by Jakub Deml, or Deml in Samizdat
Loučová, Petra
This study introduces the so far unknown samizdat selection of Deml‘s poems entitled Poslední Šlépěje (The Last Footprints, 1982), put together and published by Josef Veselý and Bohumil Macháček in the South Bohemian JITROcel samizdat edition of Jiří Dinda. This volume represents the first edition of Deml‘s late versified social commentaries and its challenges the established literary-historical view of Deml‘s last satirical poems which until now have been known from Jiří Kuběna‘s arrangement. The second and more extensive part of the study reviews the history of publication of Deml’s works as well as the research on Deml carried out in Czechoslovakia in the years 1948–1989, focussing primarily on semi-official publications and samizdat editions, including journal articles and papers published in proceedings.
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