The starting point for this reflection on the poetry by Honza Krejcarová are two proposals by Roman Jakobson about obscenity. According to Jakobson, function is the ‘fundamental and intentional organizer’ of a text and the crucial marker or attribute of its ‘poeticity’. Jakobson demonstrates this on the example of the diaries by Mácha, i.e., autobiographical texts, which for him acquire a poetic function. Their obscenity is acceptable for him not on a cultural-historical, but poetological basis. Jakobson rehabilitates the poetic function of obscenity, but at the same time passes up the opportunity to demonstrate the functional difference between poetry and prose, lyrical and autobiographical genres. This reflection on the function of obscenity in Krejcarová’s poems V zahrádce otce mého (In My Father’s Garden, 1948) and in her letter to Zbyněk Fišer (Egon Bondy) and Julie Nováková (probably from 1962) is based on the double meaning of obscenity as an erotic, bodily function and as the basic existential attribute of an infamous, disreputable and/or insignificant person. Through this doubleness, Honza Krejcarová unexpectedly alludes to obscenity in the work by Božena Němcová. Finally, this reflection looks closely at the poetological difference between Krejcarová’s poetic texts and her letters as examples of the autobiographical genre. In addition, it shows how Krejcarová’s poetry, by turning around the relationship between the metaphor and the metonymy, creates a poetry of total realism.
Egon Bondy’s poetry, fiction, and even philosophical essays contain a lot of factual remarks, both explicit and anonymous (albeit quite transparent), on the woman he met by the end of 1948 and with whom he was in a love-affair for many years. However, Honza Krejcarová seems to have inspired Bondy in a number of other cases. Some fictitious female characters in his literary work are likely to be shaped by the image the poet had created about his ‚femme fatale‘. On the other hand, Krejcarová’s own literary heritage is comparatively modest in its scope. The voluminous ‚letter to Egon Bondy‘ (1962), together with the memoir biography on her mother Milena Jesenská are very important among her works. In the letter, she expressed the gist of her aesthetics and ideas; only in her private correspondence — contrary to her works of fiction published in the sixties — could she write openly, without the interference of any censorship and self-censorship.
The first part of this paper tries to examine how and why Honza Krejcarová happened to turn into a mythic figure of Czech underground. The second part discusses the question, why the real person and authoress is ignored by this very myth and — even more — is not met with reception in literary history.
Even though the anthology Jewish Names, often called the beginning of Czech alternative culture, was published in 1995, several central questions concerning this seminal collection from the early 1950s remain unclear: Who initiated it, when was it assembled, and what is its connection with the causa of the ‘Trotzkyites’ in Prague and later anti-semitic show trials? Answers can be found if one appreciates the pivotal role of Honza Krejcarová in this unique project. The article connects dots between Czech history during the Protectorate when young Honza witnessed her mother Milena Jesenská’s resistance activities, and the late 1940s of Stalinist Czechoslovakia when the State Security started surveilling and persecuting Krejcarová. Based on archival studies the article argues for the parallelism between secret service practices (interrogation, the revealing of names in the form of denunciation) and automatic surrealist writing techniques. Drawing on the example of the name of the Author it analyses the paratextual structure of the anthology connected to its literary models, mainly from France. Jewish Names is a rich collection of fictitious ‘Jewish’ pseudonyms attributed to real Czech writers, stressing the vulnerability of the literary intelligentsia, their mineurité. And it is this paratextual construction which can be considered as the most daring and auto-referential aspect of this illegal publishing project. The article reveals problematic aspects of the chosen path of pseudonymy and anonymity. Changing or omitting one’s name is a common trait of female biographies, complicating the attribution of authorship. The article shows how pseudonymy takes its toll on an existential, gender, political, and historical level — precluding until today the proper names from entering Czech literary history.
JavaScript jest wyłączony w Twojej przeglądarce internetowej. Włącz go, a następnie odśwież stronę, aby móc w pełni z niej korzystać.