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Editorial The main topic in this issue of Word and Sense is centred on the year 1918, which in the European and especially Central European contexts marks several anniversaries at once. With regard to contributions in the Studies and Sketches section, this decisive year principally means the end of World War I.As Xavier Galmiche observes in his introduction to the themes of this period, while the First World War seems to fade in the Central European arena with the onset of World War II and subsequent political developments, it remains the ‘Great War’ in France or Britain, an event that is significantly present in the institutional, collective and individual memory. It is precisely this perspective of individual historical agents, their experiences of war and their affective responses that is explored by the articles in this section. Paweł Rodak writes about the diary of Zofia Nałkowska who experienced the war in Warsaw and its surroundings. The records in her diary mediate her sensual perceptions and affective reactions, as well as her reflections on ethics, politics and gender. Nałkowska kept her diary not only during the war but— with some interruptions— throughout most of her life, from 1896 to 1954. The complete edition of the diary (1975–2001) is an important cultural achievement in the Polish context. On the contrary, the war diary of another Polish author, Władysław Broniewski, ends with records from 1921 and blank pages. According to Mateusz Chmurski, the author of the article dedicated to this remarkable text, these pages are an eloquent testimony to the conflicting loyalties and worldviews Broniewski experienced after the end of the war. He described his diary as ‘the dustbin of thought, the tree of knowledge, […] the monkey mirror […], the cinema of my soul’; it is akaleidoscope focused on the reality of war as well as the process of his own identity formation. Magdalena Răduță focuses in her article on the Romanian literary pamphlets ad hominem published immediately after the war (from December 1918 to December 1919) that served as an indictment of political and/or economic war profiteers. She carries out adiscursive analysis of selected articles from the journals Clopotul, Hiena, Însemnări literare and Rampa. The three articles gathered in this section are accompanied by areport by Daniel Baric from the conference Finis Austriae: Fall of the double-headed eagle (October–November 1918) that took place earlier this year in Paris. One of the questions posed by the conference was: When did the war really end? It is evident that its aftermath— political, diplomatic, and material, but also emotional, affective, and world-view— lasted well into the 1920s and is palpable even today. OPEN ACCESS 11 The following five articles are partially linked to the 1918 section in terms of period and theme, partially dedicated to entirely different topics. Markéta Kittlová examines Jiří Weil’s dissertation, supervised by Václav Tille and submitted at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in 1928. The thesis, entitled Gogol and the EighteenthCentury English Novel, was strongly inspired by Russian formalism. Kittlová then follows the path of Weil’s subsequent views of formalism, the Russian avant-garde, and the reality of USSR in the context of his other, predominantly journalistic texts. Along article by Luboš Merhaut presents athorough, abundantly documented analysis ofthe polemic between F.X.Šalda and the authors of Moderní revue from the 1890s to the1920s, following the death of Arnošt Procházka. Merhaut also concentrates on the very genre of the polemic, an important feature of the Czech literary and cultural milieu, whose arguments span from personal diatribes to programmatic manifestos. Michael Špirit, in his editological study, focuses on the complicated situation of the body of surviving texts by Jan Hanč: the author did not date his own work, and even the events described therein do not serve as areliable indication of the time or sequence in which they were written. Here Špirit deals with both the manuscripts and individual— prepared or really published— editions of Hanč’s texts. Olga Pavlova focuses on the genre of dystopian literature, examining famous dystopias (Huxley, Zamyatin, Orwell, Atwood, Weiss, Haussmann…) while focusing predominantly on definitions of the dystopian genre that started to be contrasted with utopia and anti-utopia in the course of the 1950s. She surveys existing theories of dystopia and proposes her own definition of works that form dystopian fictional worlds. The contribution by Kateřina Kirkosová is the most closely related to the social sciences of the whole issue. Inspired by the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, she analyses the promotional activities of several Czech publishing houses from both commercial and artistic poles of the contemporary Czech literary field. In addition to many other interesting findings, she argues that Facebook statuses have an inseparable commercial dimension, but that they also stimulate the appropriation of texts by readers and different manners of reading. The Retrospective section commemorates the approaching 90th anniversary of the birth of Jaroslava Pešková (1929–2006), anotable figure in the field of Czech philosophy, and more specifically in the fields of comeniology and history of philosophy. David Krámský, one of her pupils, recalls her as an engaging teacher. We also reprint the introduction to her book Role vědomí vdějinách (The Role of Consciousness in History, 1997), in which she contemplates the intellectual zeitgeist and compares it to the era of the 1890s, and to authors of the manifesto of Czech modernism. Critical Views brings together five reviews of books about literary-historical topics. Tomáš Hlobil in his review discusses the book Český aslovenský literární klasicismus. Synopticko-pulzační model kulturního jevu (Czech and Slovak Literary Classicism. ASynoptic-pulsational Model of aCultural Phenomenon) and ponders the sources of literary classicism in the region, as well as its theory. In this context, he highlights the teaching of aesthetics and other disciplines in the university, which, due to special and as yet unexplored sources, has escaped the notice of scholars. Jan Malura and Aneta Mladějovská present athorough review of Slovník staročeských hymnografů (13.–18.století) (The Dictionary of Czech Hymnographers, 13th–18th Century) by Jan Kouba. Ladislav Futtera reviews the ground-breaking handbook of German literature OPEN ACCESS 12 SLOVO A SMYSL 30 produced within Czech borders, Handbuch der deutschen Literatur Prags und der böhmischen Länder, edited by Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne, Jörg Krappmann and Manfred Weinberg. Martin Tichý writes about the monograph František Gellner. Text— obraz— kontext (František Gellner. Text— Image— Context) by Lucie Kořínková. Filip Charvát focuses on the annotated anthology Čtení oRichardu Weinerovi. Dimenze (ne) rozumění 1917–1969 (Reading about Richard Weiner. Dimensions of (mis)understanding, 1917–1969), compiled by Petr Málek. Finally, the Translation section of this issue contains atext by German Slavicist Nora Schmidt dedicated to flânerie in Czech literature and culture, including such authors and artists as Jan Neruda, Vítězslav Nezval, Josef Sudek and Michal Ajvaz. In May 2018, her book on this topic was awarded the Otokar Fischer Award. Nora Schmidt’s article is introduced by aLaudatio delivered by Libuše Heczková at the Prize ceremony. And since this is the 30th issue of Word and Sense, the closing section contains abibliography of issues 23–30. Red. OPEN ACCESS