Współrzędne czasu i miejsc
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Date
2016
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Instytut Filologii Słowiańskiej UAM, Wydawnictwo PRO
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Abstract
This collection of twenty studies entitled The Coordinates of Time and Place
builds upon the book monograph Coordinates of Time (2003) which was
published at the Regional Studies Centre University of Ostrava. This examined
region, regionalism and regional literature along with its connection with the
depiction and the matization of home and the sense landscape of childhood. The
inspiration for continuing with the project has been the in creased in terest in the
area of re search within the frame work of the humanitarian sciences which takes
into account the “new regionalism” and newly formulates a thesis on authenticity,
cultural memory and the memory of place, identity, local an choring, roots and
cultural traditions. This collection of the new est literary inspirations is divided
into eight basic thematic and topical parts which relate, however, to one an other.
They are either defined in terms of social- cultural, in the form of depicting literary
(textual) space and spatiality, or upon the basis of similar ar tistic and social
platforms. Apart from the territorial and ethnographic per spective (Czech Up per
Silesia) and the sociological per spective which takes into account, for example,
biographical elements, taking into consideration political, historical and
literary-historical circumstances. It repeatedly recalls the phenomenon of cultural
memory which includes both the individual memory as well as the collective and
historical; not neglecting of course the media, genre and the intertextuality in the
widest sense.
The first chapter entitled New regionalism – theoretical and methodological
assumptions contains theoretical reflections about the research on the regional
literature.
The second chapter entitled Ethnographic Filiation, contains a study on the
mining oral legends in the Ostrava region – the Karviná area as preserved in
regional literature. This is a specific legacy which can no longer be developed in
a living fashion as the over a hundred-year-old mining tradition in the Ostrava
region has come to a close. Stories and legends connected with the discovery of
coal, with its back-breaking work underground, has paradoxically only been
preserved in adaptations aimed at children and young people. The first study in the
second chapter and the final eighth chapter are linked with one an other as they
deal with the collection of poetry by Petr Motýl Where Coal Goes to Sleep which
reflects on the social situation turning point in the Ostrava region at the turn of the
century in volving unemployment, emptying of people and the land scape, hope
lessness, communication crisis and defects in basic human relation ships.
The region-forming element continues, however, to be folk sources and
approaches which have been preserved in folk legends and have been revived and
at times supported institutionally in various stages of development of regional
literature and culture. The fol lowing study in the second chapter divides the
connection to folk culture from the perspective of function (the creative element
of folk culture, folk culture serving its creators), but with out neglecting its
psychological and social links, the influence of individual memories as life
enhancing sources (Josef Strnadel). The deep link to, for example, one’s an cestors
and homes thereby penetrates into the art production linked with the oral folk
culture. The interest in writing in dialect is not merely an ethnographic expression
or a mere distinctive mark of naivety in the sense of authenticity and en tertainment, but is actually an expression of regional autonomy.
The following chapter en titled Short Life Recapitulations consists of an
interpretative study of the works of three authors of the middle generation in the
Ostrava region (Karel Vůjtek, Václav Chytil, Marie Vosiková) who incorporate
distinctive signs of human existence into their fictional land scapes. The motif of
land scape and home in the poetry of Karel Vůjtek or the depiction of home in the
lanes lined by linden trees in the short stories by Václav Chytil serve to recall the
universal or even archetypal view of a family nest or as Bakhtin would say “the
organizing force” through which one perceives one self and evaluates one’s life.
The stories of M. Vosiková are not, in contrast, regionally an chored but in stead
work with more of a mental map and spatial memory as intellectual potential. The
remarkably constructed fictional world of the author’s short stories does not
containany as pect of provincialism and cancertainly not be labeled as merely
reading for women.
The core of the collection The Coordinates of Time and Place is chapter four
Seeking Out an Individual, National and Social Identity which is the longest and
which is the matically linked with the tumultuous history of the Czech territory of
Upper Silesia and Central Europe in the 20th century. It contains specific features
given by historical time and territorial affiliation in fluenced by political power
relations. Stories and events are retrospectively in cluded here demarcated by
World War II, linked in terms of space with the regions of Ostrava, Hlučín and
Jeseník, and dealing in terms of nationality with the Czech, Polish and German identity (“Was ser polnisch”, “Prajzáci”). This is linked in terms of meaning with the seeking out of one’s own identity which is strengthened on a local level, linked with concrete places and homes, to the landscape or the area which they view as home. Interpretative attention will also be paid to familyties and relations as they
are perceived amongst the old est generation, including the exile experience (Ota
Filip) along with the need on the part of the youngest generation of authors which
cannot rely on their own authentic memories, but which asks questions as to who
their ancestors actually were. The young est generation of authors (Petr Čichoň,
Eva Tvrdá, Jaroslav Rudiš), drawing primarily from archive documents or the
recollections of period wit nesses, is freed from ideological or formal stereotypes
(see the comics trilogy with the cult hero Alois Nebel).
The fifth chapter entitled Regionalism in the Post-Modern Situation deals
with the satirical love story novel by Miroslav Stoniš and the detective stories of
Nela Rywiková. Both authors demonstrate affinities in terms of a thorough
knowledge of the region, the regional history of art, culture and literature. Both of
them place their plots into regionally significant locales (the Beskydy Moun tains,
Ostrava) reflecting on a historical sector which is linked with the post-industrial
phase of towns and regions and the disintegration of established social, religious,
historical and cultural values. Both transcendes tablished views concerning
regionalism and approach their readers in a different fashion by means of play or
code. Stoniš chooses a tone of radical irony, electing to call into doubt everything
which used to be considered holy (honour, honest work, religious faith) in line
with post-modern destruction. Nela Rywiková with a touch of adventure reveals
how the proportion between the moral and immoral, between the legal and illegal
is being relativized at present.
The chapter Poetic Reflections on Place and Land scape focuses on the poetry
of poets who entered the literary scene after the Velvet Revolution. Bogdan Trojak
and Petr Hruška along with Petr Motýl and the prose writer Jan Balabán rank
among the most significant post-revolution writers. They are linked by a post-revolution
geopoetics, with the “Silesian myth”, with Ostrava, with an intimate and
shared artistic sphere. Regional literary research has to respect the polyphony
evoked by their activities in relation to the magazines Welles, Landek, Modrý květ
(Blue Flower) in literary clubs, gatherings, literary get-togethers and authorial
readings which consisted of original work not only written in Czech but also in
Polish and in Slovak, with out it being viewed as art by national minorities.
The chapter On Memories, Recollections, Referential and Self-Referential
Codes consists of an analysis of Balabán’s post humously published novel Ask
Dad which contains the essence of generational and existential delimitations in
a concentrated form.
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Keywords
Czech literary, Regional Studies, Petr Motýl, Karel Vůjtek, Marie Vosiková, Ostrava region, Václav Chytil, Nela Rywiková, Miroslav Stoniš, Ota Filip, Petr Čichoň, Eva Tvrdá, Jaroslav Rudiš, Bogdan Trojak, Petr Hruška
Citation
Urbanová S., Współrzędne czasu i miejsc. Poznań, 2016, s.283.
Seria
Bohemica Posnaniensia. Commentationes;fasc. 15
ISBN
978-83-63090-92-0