DOI article:
II. Utopias and Revivals
DOI article:Toman, Jindřich: Medievalism in Czech progressivist culture: notes on the perseverance of a totalizing gesture
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51723#0177
ding - something that lasts” (ibid.). Vančura’ s approach
is typical in that it is based on the idea that medieval
art can háve a Contemporary quality and that much
of this quality rests upon the presence of a unifying
gesture - the presence of discipline and style. For
Vančura, cultivation of the legacy of medieval lan-
guage was a worthwhile and important enterprise.
Among other places he instantiated it in his Markéta
Lazarová (1931), a prose work inspired by the life
of medieval robber knights in Bohemia, and in his
voluminous Images from the History of the Czech
Nation (1939-1940), a project designed as an intel-
lectual response to the German attack on Czecho-
slovakia. Both of these books exploit a highly styli-
zed Czech, full of artificial archaisms.
The fact that Vančura regarded medieval poems
as capable of addressing a reader in 1927 is crucial
for our understanding of the sentiment of the inter-
war period. The constructive force that Vančura saw
in the stylistic unity of medieval poetry was still feit
as an exempláry source of inspiration despite the fact
that the larger part of the “style” discussion was al-
ready far behind. Before 1914 the question of whether
modem times had style, and if so, what were the adé-
quate means of expressing it, was extensively abused
in environments as different as turn-of-the-century
Vienna and Italian Futurism, but the problém retained
some of its attraction even after the war. As late as
1922, KarelTeige, the driving force behind the Czech
avant-garde, did not hesitate to see in proletarian art
a potential for a ”new socialist Gothic” (Teige 1922,
18). He based this attribute on the idea that the pro-
letarian idea would finally supply the epoch with
a new style - for him, the “new socialist Gothic”
implied not only a new social vision but also slo-
hovost, the presence of style.
That Vančura should be sensitive to matters of
form in medieval lyrics is not surprising. In a number
of theoretical Statements he defined his credo as the
struggle for form (zápas o tvar). This struggle was
part of a culture of craftsmanship, and it was essen-
tially congruent with the construction of modern
society in which artistic création did not merely strive
for the organizational unity of the work of art, but it
also aimed at a subordination of all domains of work
to the “needs of life” (see Holý 1990). The image of
an overall subordination to overriding goals (just like
a Catholic “convergence in a single point” and me-
dieval “discipline and harmony”) provides a common
perspective for all the labels that seemed initially
confused.The image is also the base of a profoundly
totalizing gesture.
II
Vančura was by no means isolated among the
Czechs in his effort to project a culture in which
everything was lawfully subordinated to a single
homogenizing perspective. A prominent social phi-
losopher and advocate of alternatives to démocratie
society, the Brno-based philosopher Josef Ludvík
Fischer ( 1894-1972), was active essentially along the
same lines.
In developing his conception of culture and so-
ciety, Fischer concluded that European culture had
been philosophically and culturally dominated by
mechanistic-scientistic concepts, and politico-eco-
nomically by capitalism. While Vančura was projec-
ting a culture in which “workership” (dělnictví)
would give style to a styleless society, Fischer saw
the alternative in what he called a "synthetic” socie-
ty, a new cultural formation in which things and ac-
tions would hâve a genuine, unalianated sense. (In
Czech, the term is skladebná společnost, “synthetic
society.” The now uncommon adjective skladebný
echoes such prewar usage as in skladebné léky “syn-
thetic drugs,” now also obsolete.)
Fischer’s foremost concern was to liberate the
West from the legacy of mechanicism and capita-
lism, two major sources of social and cultural dis-
jointedness. In his view, Steps in the right direction
had been taken in a variety of scientific disciplines.
He thus highly valued certain traits in Driesch’s Neo-
vitalism and in Gestalt theory which prompted de-
parture from the Weltanschauung of the previous
epoch:
The concepts of the whole and Gestalt are now
advancing in the place of the old mechanistic un-
derstanding of the atomistic and summative nature
of organic and psychic objects and the mono-causal,
meaning-free nature of their relationship. These con-
cepts form organic and psychic realms in a non-
mechanical and meaningful way. (Fischer 1929, 48)
Fischer is in general critical of science which is
conceived of mechanically and in which reality ap-
167
is typical in that it is based on the idea that medieval
art can háve a Contemporary quality and that much
of this quality rests upon the presence of a unifying
gesture - the presence of discipline and style. For
Vančura, cultivation of the legacy of medieval lan-
guage was a worthwhile and important enterprise.
Among other places he instantiated it in his Markéta
Lazarová (1931), a prose work inspired by the life
of medieval robber knights in Bohemia, and in his
voluminous Images from the History of the Czech
Nation (1939-1940), a project designed as an intel-
lectual response to the German attack on Czecho-
slovakia. Both of these books exploit a highly styli-
zed Czech, full of artificial archaisms.
The fact that Vančura regarded medieval poems
as capable of addressing a reader in 1927 is crucial
for our understanding of the sentiment of the inter-
war period. The constructive force that Vančura saw
in the stylistic unity of medieval poetry was still feit
as an exempláry source of inspiration despite the fact
that the larger part of the “style” discussion was al-
ready far behind. Before 1914 the question of whether
modem times had style, and if so, what were the adé-
quate means of expressing it, was extensively abused
in environments as different as turn-of-the-century
Vienna and Italian Futurism, but the problém retained
some of its attraction even after the war. As late as
1922, KarelTeige, the driving force behind the Czech
avant-garde, did not hesitate to see in proletarian art
a potential for a ”new socialist Gothic” (Teige 1922,
18). He based this attribute on the idea that the pro-
letarian idea would finally supply the epoch with
a new style - for him, the “new socialist Gothic”
implied not only a new social vision but also slo-
hovost, the presence of style.
That Vančura should be sensitive to matters of
form in medieval lyrics is not surprising. In a number
of theoretical Statements he defined his credo as the
struggle for form (zápas o tvar). This struggle was
part of a culture of craftsmanship, and it was essen-
tially congruent with the construction of modern
society in which artistic création did not merely strive
for the organizational unity of the work of art, but it
also aimed at a subordination of all domains of work
to the “needs of life” (see Holý 1990). The image of
an overall subordination to overriding goals (just like
a Catholic “convergence in a single point” and me-
dieval “discipline and harmony”) provides a common
perspective for all the labels that seemed initially
confused.The image is also the base of a profoundly
totalizing gesture.
II
Vančura was by no means isolated among the
Czechs in his effort to project a culture in which
everything was lawfully subordinated to a single
homogenizing perspective. A prominent social phi-
losopher and advocate of alternatives to démocratie
society, the Brno-based philosopher Josef Ludvík
Fischer ( 1894-1972), was active essentially along the
same lines.
In developing his conception of culture and so-
ciety, Fischer concluded that European culture had
been philosophically and culturally dominated by
mechanistic-scientistic concepts, and politico-eco-
nomically by capitalism. While Vančura was projec-
ting a culture in which “workership” (dělnictví)
would give style to a styleless society, Fischer saw
the alternative in what he called a "synthetic” socie-
ty, a new cultural formation in which things and ac-
tions would hâve a genuine, unalianated sense. (In
Czech, the term is skladebná společnost, “synthetic
society.” The now uncommon adjective skladebný
echoes such prewar usage as in skladebné léky “syn-
thetic drugs,” now also obsolete.)
Fischer’s foremost concern was to liberate the
West from the legacy of mechanicism and capita-
lism, two major sources of social and cultural dis-
jointedness. In his view, Steps in the right direction
had been taken in a variety of scientific disciplines.
He thus highly valued certain traits in Driesch’s Neo-
vitalism and in Gestalt theory which prompted de-
parture from the Weltanschauung of the previous
epoch:
The concepts of the whole and Gestalt are now
advancing in the place of the old mechanistic un-
derstanding of the atomistic and summative nature
of organic and psychic objects and the mono-causal,
meaning-free nature of their relationship. These con-
cepts form organic and psychic realms in a non-
mechanical and meaningful way. (Fischer 1929, 48)
Fischer is in general critical of science which is
conceived of mechanically and in which reality ap-
167