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Jakub Deml is stereotypically labelled as a "Catholic poet". Therefore, his temporary involvement in the progressivist, anti-clerical Sokol ("Falcon") movement caused, and it is still causing, an embarrassment for many interpreters. The present article does not apply any normative criteria. Instead, it attempts to describe the way Jakub Deml realizes his "ressourcement", namely: how does he combine certain Christian cultural motifs and symbols, which he has kept from his "pre-Sokol" period, with the "new" Sokol system of signs, values, and authoritative names? In the following step, the role of Greek antiquity in Deml's four "Sokol" books (1923-1926) is analysed. Antiquity was crucial for the Sokol ideology, particularly for Miroslav Tyrš, the founder of Sokol, who was celebrated by Deml in a hagiographic way. Antiquity only holds, however, a surprisingly limited place in Deml's relevant texts. The list of explicit "Greek" motifs appears to be quite short. Deml shares with Sokol ideology, however, certain values, viewed by them (as by other progressivist movements) as stereotypically "Greek" and implicitly anticlerical (but not anti-Christian): personal freedom, earthliness, a healthy body, an emotional relationship to a specific local community. Deml's Sokol involvement did not last long. After several years, it ended with a dramatic break. Nonetheless, it provides an important literary testimony to the intellectual and spiritual openness of Czechoslovak society in the early 1920s, making such unexpected encounters possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Czech exile authors turn to ancient inspiration after 1948. The antiquity often serves as a projection of exile situation (Odysseus) or as pars pro toto of traditional European culture, perceived by the exile writers as their defense wall. Ivan Jelínek (1909-2002) moreover originally transformed ancient inspirations at motivic level. He sings praises of ancient godesses and heroines as archetypes of Virgin Mary. Sacred womb represents the central topos of Jelínek's comparison between Greek mythology, Catholicism and poetically transformed personal experience. Also, Jelínek calls his poems “odes”, referring to the ancient genre celebrating sacred subjects. He applies this principle of ancientCatholic comparison and this genre in numerous volumes, following his travels across the Mediterranean. Gradually, his poetry becomes a sort of “travelogue” in the tradition of Grand Tour. In the final phase of his literary work, the Catholic motifs recede. The antiquity, instead, continues to be used as poet's basic cultural matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Czech Catholic authors turn to ancient inspirations at the end of the 1960's, after twenty years of exclusion from literature (Václav Renč, Kiement Bochořák, Vladimír Vokolek, Josef Kostohryz). The antiquity often serves as a "neutral" visual and imaginary space that does not arouse suspicion of communist censors, but in which Christian worldviews, that cannot be expressed directly, can be projected disguisedly, and more or less enciphered. Josef Kostohryz (1907-1987) moreover originally transformed ancient inspirations at motivic and versological levels. At the motivic level, Kostohryz is concerned with the themes of fate and evil in the world. His books of poetry from the 1960's to 1980's depict the world as a scene of metaphysical drama of the powers of chaos against the powers of order. The powers of order are symbolized by female characters whose names refer predominantly to the antiquity - Parca, Ariadne, Eurydice, Muse, Medusa. The subject holds fragmentary conversations with them. Through these conversations and partly through mutual anagnorisis finally all these characters fuse in understanding that it is all about one character only - about one "stern image", about the symbol of Fate. Parca, the foreteller of fate, occupies a central place. The motif of Parca also bears an aspect of irony regarding the poet's own literary beginnings linked to "poésie pure" in the spirit of Paul Valéry, for whom Parca was an emblematic figure. At the versological level, Kostohryz is inspired by ancient metre. He does not accept them as ready-made models, but uses them as an inspiration for his own versological experiments with which he had started even before he turned to antiquity - when his main source of inspiration was the verse of Otokar Březina. In Kostohryz's books of poetry one can find regular inspiration by the elegiac distich, by hexameter and in some cases by other forms (Sapphic strophe). However, Kostohryz makes his verse of hexametrical cadence shorter or longer by one or even two feet. His aim is not to imitate ancient metre, but to find a "narrow path" between formal freedom of the avant-garde and rigidity of neoclassical poetry. His verses oscillate between the syllabical principle and the tonal principle, between the orality of Březina's style and the "Antique" declamation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]