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The article deals with the notion of precious stones as a unit in the early medieval Christian imagery. This idea was repeatedly echoed in the coeval writings of important Christian scholars such as Augustine of Hippo, Bede the Venerable or Hrabanus Maurus. Rather than considering the symbolism of individual types of precious stones, the article focuses on the precious stones as a unified medium that had the quality of being varied, symbolizing the perfect diversity of believers and virtues coming together in the unified Church of God. At the same time, the article draws attention to the same notion of precious stones functioning as a diverse unit that was captured in the bejeweled medieval objects such as reliquaries, altars or book covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the versions of the Finnish vernacular Ballad of the Death of Bishop Henry (Piispa Henrikin surmavirsi), there are several unclear parts. The part consisting of the Bishop's instructions for his coachman where to hide and from which place to observe his death is one of them. In one of the versions, the Bishop first mentions a stone as a hiding place, however, immediately realizes its unsuitability. Thereafter he suggests an oak tree (along with a horse in one of the versions). In diverse versions, there is also a dichotomy between listening and watching. The verse kun ei kilpiä kivessä ('there is no shield in the stone') is clearly an etymologizing adaptation of the folklore verse kirves kilpesty kivehen / kivestä (the axe rebounded from the stone / slid off the stone) from the epic cycle on Väinämöinen. Putting a stone in contrast with a tree, and transplanting a folklore verse about a stone as an agent of a serious injury into the context of a shield has a symbolic motivation: the medieval Christian symbolism operating with the axiological scale between the inanimate (the stone) and animate (the tree, the horse) matter, and the Christianized part of the Finnish folklore attributing the mere hearing/listening to the devil (Hiisi etc.) and the seeing/watching to God. Thus, the Bishop's instructions might be comprehended in three ways, all of them interconnected with concern for the hagiographic testimony: as an effort for the sake of the witness' survival, as an effort to find the proper place for observation of the sacrifice, and finally as an effort to maintain the proper axiological position to pass on the testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenia bishops of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches published a pastoral letter in November 1924 to respond to the fact that some members of these churches were members of communist, socialist or progressive organizations that rejected belief in God, criticizing the churches from atheistic positions and striving to create a secular society. The socialists, in an effort to expand their membership and electorate, went so far as to formally present themselves with Christian symbolism, which was supposed to deceive Catholics in a difficult social position and attract them to their ranks. The bishops reflected on this fact and, through the Pastoral Letter, explained to the members of their churches the destructiveness of socialist and progressive theories and recommended that they leave antiCatholic organizations. Those Catholics who deliberately failed to take their teachings and warnings into account had to expect that the church would not administer certain sacraments to them. The publication of the Pastoral Letter provoked a fierce reaction in socialist and progressive circles as an attack against the state, its constitution and laws, the government and the democratic system that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The Pastoral Letter and its authors, the Catholic Church, the Holy See and Czech and Slovak political Catholicism were violently attacked by journalists and it triggered a press affair. Subsequently, the question time of German Social Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a government crisis solved not only by the government, parliament, and political parties, but also by the so-called Pětka (Committee of Five) as the supreme body of Czechoslovak politics. The search for a way out of the government crisis showed that the socialists, especially the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, did not want to defend their own ideology in the case, but used the publication of the Letter to pressure the Czechoslovak People’s Party, which, as part of the government coalition and the Švehla government, hindered the solution of the issue of regulating the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. They wanted to force a change in its attitude by acting tactically with the idea of a minority government without the participation of the Czechoslovak People’s Party. However, the Czechoslovak People’s Party’s leaders handled the difficult situation it found itself in due to pressure from its coalition partners and the Catholic Slovak People’s Party and the Prague radical wing of its own party formed around Rudolf Horský, thanks to the prudent policy of its chairman Jan Šrámek. Although it agreed to negotiate a regulation of the relationship between the state and the churches, it defended the membership of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in the governing coalition, agreed to prosecute only those priests who manifestly violated the law and defended the right of bishops to act independently in public within the limits of the law. The article analyses and evaluates the attitudes and behaviour of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces the concept of mnemopoetics, i.e., how songs are composed to be remembered, how they are shaped by oral memory as only the songs worth remembering were preserved by the community. After a brief discussion of ‘memory of the body’ (cf. Saussy 2016), the author introduces the formal mnemopoetic features (role of incipit, genre, rhythm, dialogue, incremental repetition, strophic arrangement, etc.). In the second part, he focuses on the semantic mnemopoetic role of incipit parallelism, which announces what will happen next in the song-story (cf. Andersen 1985; Marčok 1980; Bartmiński 2016). He then analyzes the first part of Jan Poláček’s song-collection from Moravian Slovakia (Slovácké pěsničky, 1936) and distinguishes nine main groups of songs with the incipit parallelism variously announcing: 1. erotic desire, 2. courtship, 3. longing for marriage, 4. an obstacle in the way of love, 5. a sinister omen leading to a bad outcome, 6. disappointment, 7. parting, 8. death; and 9. joyousness. For example, the image of ‘running water’ in the first verse suggests an unhappy development in the love affair portrayed by the song. The study further verifies the validity of six most prominent identified announcements on the broader material of František Sušil’s (1860) classical collection of Moravian folksongs. As suggested by fieldwork introduced in the study, traditional singers from Moravia and western Slovakia are typically aware of the ‘second’ meaning in songs, and this awareness of song symbolism helps singers — and readers — not only to remember songs better, but to do them justice when interpreting them. More broadly, the study represents a contribution to the methodological analysis of symbolism in traditional song lyrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her text, the Czech ecumenical theologian and pastor of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church addresses the issue of how to understand conspiracy theories in contemporary discourse and why those types of conspiracy theories that are under the umbrella of Christianity or another religion pose a special problem. It describes the relationship between conspiracy theories and violence, the process of forming the "enemy" and the danger of misusing Christian symbolism for these purposes. It shows how conspiracy theories can lead to and serve as justification for violent action, and how they encourage the creation of vicarious victims and their persecution. It looks in detail at two examples of conspiracy theories and their violent consequences in our own time: the protests against covid restrictions and vaccination, which grew into the intimidation of "enemies"; and the formation of the "enemy" in the Russian ideology of "traditional values", which became a significant part of the anti-Western conspiracy theory justifying the war in Ukraine. It shows that conspiracy theories are not innocent, reflects on the possibilities of preventing and overcoming the consequences of conspiracy theories, and emphasizes the need to seek and find traces of the common good that actively counteract the increasing polarization of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between the poetic works of Otokar Březina and its translations and interpretations by Emil Saudek. The aim is to put Saudek's interpretations of Březina into the context of mysticism, neomytologism and neovitalism of the early 20th century modernism, the philosophical background of which Saudek knew very well. It can be said that in Saudek's translations, criticism, and readings of Březina an ideal symbiosis of a translator and/as interpreter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the legacy of Teodor de Wyzewa's reflexions on Wagner/Wagnerism and their substantial impact on French Symbolist writers. The requirement to actually overcome national boundaries and pertaining ideologies has been a major step in seeking to open up French literature towards major foreign influences. It has also contributed to shape and define modernism, albeit in a rather conservative and largely neo-classical fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article consists in a thorough analysis of various Czech translations of the early poems of French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The main difficulties arise from Mallarmé's omnipresence in Czech literary culture, together with a tendency to adapt his poetry to fit the mood of changing historical contexts and expectations. Many Czech poets -- some of the most prominent -- have dealt with Mallarmé's poetry, and its influence cannot be limited to a simple matter of translation. Among other things, it has thoroughly permeated Czech poetry in a specifically political way, as we see for example with Hrubín's historic address to the Convention of Writers in 1956. The overall aim of this paper however is to present a detailed examination of two Parnassian poems by Mallarmé as translated by F. Dohnal, E. Lešehrad, K. Èapek, V. Nezval, F. Hrubín, O. Nechutová, V. Mikeš and J. Pokorný. Based on a series of observations that have mainly to do with semantics, prosody and the translators' overarching strategies, the authors come to the conclusion that the early Czech translations depend too much (if not word-for-word) on the French originals, and on Parnassian poetical principals. A sensible change comes with K. Èapek. It is, however, F. Hrubín, himself an acclaimed poet, who offers the most convincing translation, at least if we take into consideration such traditional or conservative criteria as precision and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary history commonly grounds itself in the heritage of philosophical positivism. It is not only its predilection for facts, but also a belief that the facts themselves can provide for the contours of syntheses and concepts of major styles and genres. The era of symbolism marked the renewed interest in philosophical hermeneutics, and, consequently, the realization that empirical knowledge is structured by a ground of a-priori assumptions (the rehabilitation of "prejudice"). This ground gave rise to a series of major concepts, the best known of which are Ferdinand Saussure's "langue" and "parole", but there are many more of similar pairs: Viktor Shklovsky "story" (fabula) and "plot" (syuzhet), Jan Mukařovský's "semantic gesture" and "structure", or Yury Tynianov's "tightness of a verse line" and "syntax". In the field of philosophy it is Arnold Toynbee's pair of terms "challenge" and "answer". Husserl's concept of "Lebenswelt" is the most important explication of this approach in philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motif of a beautiful drowned girl or, generally, a young woman related to the water environment has appeared in European art since antiquity. The crucial turning point in the approach to the figure of a girl tragically related to the water element came with Shakespeare's Hamlet: it features the strong female character of Hamlet's lover Ophelia, who goes mad and tragically drowns after the Prince's refusal. Her death became a popular subject in the field of fine arts and literature, with its popularity culminating in emotionally charged eras; i.e. Romanticism and, later, Symbolism and Decadence. J. A. Rimbaud's poem Ophelia had a far-reaching influence on German poetry where the motif of a drowned girl became a frequent subject. This relationship was initiated by the translation of Rimbaud's poems into German by Karl Klammer. The paper examines his influence on the poems of the expressionists Georg Heym, Georg Trakl, and Gottfried Benn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to describe the literary processes in the era of symbolism and the following decades it is important to realize that next to the avant-gard movements there is also the trend of the „anti-modern modernism” (Milan Kundera). Against the emancipatory ideas of the avant-garde (following in the line of European Illumination) there is the continuation of Romantic cosmic visions. The author sees Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Platonov, and Marina Cvetaeva as rare representatives of this line in Russia. They see the Russian Revolution as a cosmic element (rather than a political event), the human being as torn between the perception of the immediate data of consciousness, and the feeling of cosmic movements. The implications of this vision are examined in more detail in the works and poetics of Marina Cvetaeva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]