Prolific Faltering in F. X. Svoboda‘s Prose and Its International Context
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Revue des Études Slaves |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/slave.2011.8107 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/slave.2011.8107 |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | Prolific faltering ambivalence chronicle conservative and modernist tendencies emblem of Prague hidden potentials |
| Description | The author of the present article deals with the early prose work of the Czech writer F. X. Svoboda (1860-1943) standing on the boundary between realism and modernism, between conservative, retrograde tendencies and artistic innovations. His genre orientation on the chronicle reminds us of the similar tendencies in various European literatures including Slavonic, German, English and Scandinavian. On the other hand, he absorbed new psychological trends from late realist creations, sometimes he even returns to pre-romantic, sentimentalist structures. From this standpoint he represents the core of the Czech literature of his time with the permeation of different literary currents compared with the miracle of classical Russian literature which has stood close to West-European cultural area since the era of Peter the Great. The emblematic function of Prague and of the Czech village together with the depiction of complicated neurasthenic characters linked with the Czech 19th-century national revival and the modern orientation on more or less decadent social moods with the accentuation of sexual motifs make Svoboda’s early chronicles The Florescence (Rozkvět, 1898) and The River (Řeka, 1903-1905) a model example of the contradictory situation of the Czech literature of that time and the hidden, but promising artistic potentials. |