Prague

A literary enchantment

It is the eighth century when the prophetess Libuše succeeds her father as leader of the Czech people. Looking out over the Moldau (Vltava) from het fortress Vyšehrad, she has a vision in which she sees a castle from which both towers reach into the stars, rising from the bank at the other side of the river. This castle is to be the centre of a new city: Prague, the Golden City, the city with the hundred towers. The castle itself, the Prague Castle (Hrad, Hradčany) will be the throne of Czech kings and presidents.

The origins of Prague are covered in this semi-magic sphere. Even the early stories, legends and myths blend with Prague’s history, the capital of the Czech countries Bohemia and Moravia, to which Slowakia was also connected after the First World War, a marriage of convenience that lasted until 1993. As the capital, Prague has been the centre of political power as well as art and culture, and thus also of literature throughout the years.

A city of ups and downs

The Czech countries originally formed a kingdom, with close connections to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Highlight of this period was the time when Charles IV was the half-Czech king-emperor of the empire in the 14th century. Prague became an imperial city, which resulted in the build of majestic churches (St. Vitus Cathedral) and other buildings (Charles Bridge) and the foundation of the Charles University (1348).

In the 15th century, the early reformation with Jan Hus was added to these developments, long before Luther and Calvin. However, this reformation resulted in a conflict between the Czechs and their catholic neighbours, a conflict they eventually lost when the (German) Habsburgs took over the power in the 16th century. Hus was burned at the stake and the last protestant ‘bishop’ and famous pedagogue Comenius had to flee the country after 1620 and would later move to Amsterdam. The Czech countries weren’t just incorporated in the Habsburg empire politically, but were germanised as well, making German the official language of the political and cultural elite for centuries.

In the 19th century the Czech people ‘awakened’ and started to fight for their own language, culture and politics. Still, it was not until the First World War that the Czechs (and the Slovak people) would be separated from Habsburg. This marked the beginning of a period of flourishing democracy, led passionately by president Masaryk. The Czech literature thrived as well, shown by the fact that an active avant-garde (Jaroslav Seifert, Vítězslav Nezval, Karel Teige) arose, tightly connected to the European avant-garde.

Unfortunately, new waves of suppression would strike the Czechs: first they became victims of national-socialism and after the Second World War (since 1948) of communism. Eventually, the communist regime came to an end during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 when playwright Václav Havel became president.

A city of two cultures

Not only the catholic Habsburgs brought the German language to Prague, but also the Jews, who had already settled in the city since the Middle Ages. The extensive Jewish quarter, or Jewish ghetto, in Prague impoverished so much in the 19th century that it had to be completely renovated. The German, and often Jewish literature found its culmination in a literary giant with whom Prague is often associated: Franz Kafka (1883-1924). The same German-speaking minority faced difficult times at the beginning of the 20th century, during the republic, and gradually disappeared to the background. During the Second World War, the Jewish community was also physically decimated.

The Czech literature developed strongly in the 19th century, with the work of the romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836) and the prose of Jan Neruda (1834-1891) as absolute highlights. In the 20th century, Jaroslav Hašek’s (1883-1923) ‘The Good Soldier Švejk’ and the works of Karel Čapek (1890-1938) were added to the list. All these writers have a strong connection with the city Prague and their work has contributed to the formation of a national cultural awareness.

After the Second World War, the German minority culture in Prague largely disappeared, but also the Czech literature faced difficult times. The reason was communism and particularly the rejection of books that weren’t written by communist minded writers, resulting in a divided literary community in Prague. During the second half of the 60s, Prague experienced a short period of loosening tensions, preceding the year 1968 of the Prague Spring, though this was immediately followed by another twenty years of icy atmosphere. Many writers emigrated when their publications were banished as soon as they turned on the regime. Amongst those writers were the internationally renowned Milan Kundera (1929, Brno), who found a new fatherland in France, and Josef Škvorecký (1924, Náchod), who founded a publishing house of Czech literature in Canada. Others stayed and formed an underground literary circuit, like the later president Václav Havel (1936), Ivan Klíma (1931), Ludvík Vaculík (1926, Brumov) and Bohumil Hrabal (1914, Brno). Even those who were not born in Prague are frequently still loyal to the city after having lived or worked there.

An important marking point in this period is the manifest Charta 77, which resisted the political repression and sought the support of the civil right movement in Europe. Signing it meant a coming out in terms of political colour and people who did so became victims of new reprimands of the communists. Vaclav Havel was one of the founders of Charta 77.

The various dominations and divisions resulted in the paradoxical character of Czech literature, as if one is living in two worlds or matching two ends to the same story. No wonder that the Czech paradox is inherent to an ongoing search for identity among the Czech population. Philosophical questions on the reality of everyday life are thus integrated with Czech literature and – in the broader sense of the word – culture.

The new generation

After the Velvet Revolution, the new generation of writers was no longer bothered by their parents’ past and chose not to carry the burden of the previous generation. Instead they searched for new ways of writing: the literary experiment (Jáchym Topol), in exotic themes (Petra Hůlová, Marketa Pilátová), in previously forbidden areas (Jan Křesadlo, Svatava Antošová) and in pop culture (Michal Viewegh, Jaroslav Rudiš). Prague maintains to fulfil an important role in the work of numerous writers such as Daniela Hodrová, Michal Ajvaz, Miloš Urban, but the books of Emil Hakl, Patrik Ouředník or Tomáš Zmeškal would also be unimaginable without the extraordinary atmosphere of this city.

The literary life of Prague, which mostly took place in back chambers before the revolution, is currently thriving: a wide range of literary publishers arose, new literary magazines were initiated, literary cafés and stages popped up everywhere in the city and literary festivals were and are organised. All of these developments are evenly new, fresh and exciting. The Czech literature has made an impressive revival internationally at book fairs and international literature festivals. Despite the periods of suppression and former lack of cultural freedom, the Czech literature has always bounced back and through the years Prague has become the literary centre of the Czech Republic.

(Text: Kees Mercks)