Editorial (en)

Editorial The editorial team has put together these two volumes of Slovo asmysl as atribute to literary historian and editor Jiří Brabec (born October 28, 1929) on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Simply put, there are few in the field of Czech literary studies that have left such an important and uninterrupted legacy, despite all the twists and turns of the second half of the 20th century and first decades of the 21st century that Brabec has lived through. Many of us— members of the editorial team of Slovo asmysl as well as authors who have contributed to the issue— were influenced by Brabec as ateacher, and he continues to collaborate with many of us on various projects that spark the fire of discussion in our field, pose crucial questions concerning methodology, and help to prepare solid, expertly edited sources for further research. We decided to celebrate Brabec’s birthday in two volumes: aspecial issue containing his complete bibliography, from the beginnings of his career until today (Slovo asmysl. Bibliografie Jiřího Brabce 1951–2019) put together by Michael Špirit, Jiří Flaišman and Michal Kosák. Issue 32 of Slovo asmysl then keeps its regular structure and brings together— especially in the Studies, Sketches and Retrospective sections— several texts that elaborate on awide range of themes and methods from Brabec’s own scholarly work, in terms of both content and methodology, alongside other texts that deal with subjects that are further afield of Brabec’s academic interests. What all these texts have in common is the expression of gratitude, wishes of good health, and eager anticipation of many more fruitful discussions, at official academic gatherings or over aglass of wine, that are critical for the full expression of the life of our discipline. The Studies section contains four articles. In the first section, Michal Topor focuses on apeculiar topic: how the philologist and art critic Richard Meszleny (Messer) viewed the work and personality of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Of particular interest are Meszleny’s interpretations of Masaryk’s portraits. The contribution that follows is unique not only by virtue of its length but also for the way it relates to Jiří Brabec. Petr Málek has chosen the year 1929 and named it ‘the year of Weiner’s The BarberSurgeon’. Through the web of relations that connects this to other important works, Málek tries to reconstruct the tissue of meanings within individual texts, but also within the bigger context of this phase of modern and avant-garde poetics. The article by Josef Vojvodík also draws on aparticular literary text to follow the paths of literary OPEN ACCESS 15 and cultural models, relationships and allusions. He concentrates on several poems from the collection Alla Romana (1966), published by Milada Součková while in exile. Rome becomes here an architectural and cultural palimpsest, as well as aspace of intensified sense perception and emotion. The last of the articles, by Marie Škarpová, focuses on the largely neglected topic of Czech Rorate chants, part of the ritual of morning Votive Mass in honour of the Virgin Mary. The author contrasts the considerable interest given to this topic in the field of musicology to an uneven presence of the chants in literary studies, despite their role in the formulation of anational discourse. In Sketches we have collected six essays on Roman Ingarden’s literary theoretical thought and its contexts. In this section Czech theory returns— after acertain hiatus— to Ingarden’s ontological model of literary work, connecting his ‘places of indeterminacy’ with various contexts that are more (Jan Mukařovský, Felix Vodička and the Prague School, Wolfgang Iser and reception aesthetics, etc.) or less (analytic philosophy of language, contemporary neuroscience, etc.) obvious. Three authors are preoccupied specifically with the relation of Ingarden to the Prague School: Petr A.Bílek asks if Mukařovský has really ‘read’ Ingarden, and concentrates mainly on his relation to Ingarden’s conception of meaning; Dobromir Grigorov analyzes several texts by Mukařovský from Mácha’s jubilee year 1936, and demonstrates how Mukařovský deals with the question of reception in these essays, drawing on René Wellek’s critique of Mukařovský and contrasting Mukařovský’s texts with Ingarden’s approach; David Skalický meditates on the utility of Ingarden’s and Vodička’s view of reception in the contemporary context. Vladimír Papoušek draws on the theory of speech acts and contemporary analytic philosophy of language to consider the literary text as apeculiar universe founded on the performative act, auniverse that perhaps cannot be adequately described by Ingarden’s phenomenological concept of filling in the blank spaces. Martin Kaplický examines Ingarden’s and Iser’s concepts of the interaction between the literary text and its reader, with the question: how similar (or different) are they? Vlastimil Zuska focuses on the initial stage of aesthetic experience in two of Ingarden’s key concepts, drawing toward quality and entry emotion, for which Ingarden provides only rough sketches. Zuska presents amore thorough explanation, drawing on phenomenology as well as contemporary neuroscience, with the conclusion that the two approaches, at certain points, are remarkably similar. The archive section is amajor feature of this issue of Slovo asmysl, not only by virtue of its size but also because it contains three separate topics. The first Retrospective, prepared by Jan Wiendl, is an abundantly annotated selection of diaries written by Karel Teige during his youth, from 1918 and 1919. Libuše Heczková has selected ashort text by Marie Pujmanová from the journal Přítomnost (1925) in which the author describes her visit to abrothel in Paris. Libuše Heczková has provided an introduction for the article in which she deals with ‘la garçonne’ (acolloquial term for the liberated women of the time) in relation to Pujmanová’s peculiar writing style. The third part of the archive section presents asummary and an edited collection of documents related to the 4th congress of the Czechoslovak Union of Writers in 1967. In the Critical Views section, Ondřej Koupil reviews acollection on Jesuit culture dedicated to Josef Vintr, Josef Vojvodík focuses on abook by Adam Bžoch about Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, Ladislav Futtera writes about the new extensive seOPEN ACCESS 16 SLOVO A SMYSL 32 lection of articles by Kurt Krolop, and Blanka Činátlová concentrates on Jakub Češka’s book on Bohumil Hrabal. The section also contains areport from the XIV.Prague Interpretation Colloquium dedicated to fictional worlds by Enrico Terrone. For the Translation section, we have chosen several chapters from The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (2016), abook by Maggie Berg and Barbara K.Seeber. The authors criticize the current corporatization of universities and the resulting demand for speed and efficiency that has rapidly come to dominate university culture, noting how little these principles contribute to either research or teaching. Much has been written about this topic, especially in the English-speaking world, but the authors present an argument here that is inspired by the slow movement, leading them to offer specific ideas and techniques that might help professors and their students build an environment where real critical thought can flourish. The section also includes ashort essay by Miroslav Petříček on the forms of knowledge presented at the Faculty of Arts in Prague and which in many respects is an example of the kind of thinking that is more and more lacking in the academic milieu. Red. OPEN ACCESS