The Folk Is Dead, Long Live the People! On the New and the Old in Czech Marxist Poetism

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

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Výsledek na webu

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

The Folk Is Dead, Long Live the People! On the New and the Old in Czech Marxist Poetism

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

In this paper I explore the avant-garde’s approach to popular culture and tradition, through the example of the Czech “poetist” movement, as conceptualized by critic and typographer Karel Teige, by poet Vítězslav Nezval, and by literary historian Bedřich Václavek. The Czech avant-garde, like most of its international counterparts, was convinced that institutions like art and literature had outlived their historical function, as had capitalist society and the bourgeois understanding of “the nation” and “the people.” But their work also illustrates how the wholesale rejection of these institutions and concepts overlay a more complex view of cultural legacy and the traditions of working masses. While the Czech poetist movement had no need for literature and believed that rural folklore was a thing of the past, it saw “poetry” as an essential aspect of human expression, which needed to be liberated from earlier constraints, becoming a new art of the people. Nezval demonstratively drew on “low” genres, writing gothic novels and imagining surrealist carnivals. Teige championed the circus and urban street culture as a “new folk art.” And Václavek traced the circulation of modern poetry and songs, making the case that new folklore was continually emerging as the culture of emerging classes which would replace the old. This complex interplay of new and old, I argue, offers a model for the prefiguration of a new world that still might survive the end of this one.

Název v anglickém jazyce

The Folk Is Dead, Long Live the People! On the New and the Old in Czech Marxist Poetism

Popis výsledku anglicky

In this paper I explore the avant-garde’s approach to popular culture and tradition, through the example of the Czech “poetist” movement, as conceptualized by critic and typographer Karel Teige, by poet Vítězslav Nezval, and by literary historian Bedřich Václavek. The Czech avant-garde, like most of its international counterparts, was convinced that institutions like art and literature had outlived their historical function, as had capitalist society and the bourgeois understanding of “the nation” and “the people.” But their work also illustrates how the wholesale rejection of these institutions and concepts overlay a more complex view of cultural legacy and the traditions of working masses. While the Czech poetist movement had no need for literature and believed that rural folklore was a thing of the past, it saw “poetry” as an essential aspect of human expression, which needed to be liberated from earlier constraints, becoming a new art of the people. Nezval demonstratively drew on “low” genres, writing gothic novels and imagining surrealist carnivals. Teige championed the circus and urban street culture as a “new folk art.” And Václavek traced the circulation of modern poetry and songs, making the case that new folklore was continually emerging as the culture of emerging classes which would replace the old. This complex interplay of new and old, I argue, offers a model for the prefiguration of a new world that still might survive the end of this one.

Druh

O - Ostatní výsledky

CEP obor

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OECD FORD obor

60401 - Arts, Art history

Projekt

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Návaznosti

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Rok uplatnění

2024

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů