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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 Further, the authors managed to identify five bigger fragments of Deml’s unpublished lectures from the years 1929 to 1942.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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