10. 6. od 10:00 hod. v přednáškovém sále ÚČL AV ČR proslovil prof. George G. Grabowicz (Harvard University) přednášku “The ‘Prague School’ of Interwar Ukrainian Literature: How (if at all) Does it Fit into the Canon?”.

Abstrakt:

That there was a “Prague School” of Ukrainian literature is presumably well known to Ukrainian students who have to answer exam questions on this topic (usually by providing a list of names), and the literary scholars who write on this—but it may well be news to Czech literary scholars, or Slavists in general, or, indeed, for Czech students in Prague who also have to answer questions on the interwar period. What is one to make of this dissonance—and why should one care? The issues to be touched upon here are in large measure theoretical or historiographic, of principles and mechanisms of canon formation and how change works in it (why, for example, it is now important for the Czech canon to deal with, i.e., in some fashion incorporate, Kafka). On the other hand, there is the question of still undiscovered connections and formal features (for example in the poetry of Oleh Olzhych, a prominent member of the “Prague School” of Ukrainian literature) that show him and his setting to be much more part of the Prague of the 1920s and 30s than the canon (both Ukrainian and Czech) may have suspected.

Foto Michael Wögerbauer.