Durychhalten! Vzájemná korespondence Jakuba Demla a Jaroslava Durycha

Jakub Deml, Jaroslav Durych, Šárka Kořínková (ed.), Vladimíra Staňková (ed.), Daniela Iwashita (ed.), Eliška Müllerová (ed.), Eva Lauberová (ed.), Barbora Petrů (ed.)

The eighth volume of The Correspondence of Jakub Deml presents a collection of 286 letters exchanged with Jaroslav Durych. They cover two separate periods, 1906–1909 and 1916–1930, with supplementary material from the 1940s/1950s.
The volume is divided into two books. The first contains the letters themselves, with foot notes that provide translations of foreign passages or identify personages. The second book adds an extensive commentary and the editorial apparatus, as well as Durych’s occasional articles on Deml and his work.
The literary-historical commentary by Šárka Kořínková and Vladimíra Staňková places the two writers in a wider social and historical context. It starts by describing their collaborative translations for Josef Florian’s publishing house, their own writings and their views on the literary and social issues of the day. It also captures the first significant disputes between them, based on their diverging conceptions of the Catholic faith and their respective views of the poet Otokar Březina. In the second period, Deml and Durych exchanged letters most intensely at the beginning of the 1920s. The commentary describes their collaboration on Deml’s Footprints and sums up the reasons for its breakup. Finally, the commentary discusses their sharp public polemic provoked by Deml’s My Testimony About Otokar Březina (1931). Their stormy relationship only settled in the postwar period.
The editorial apparatus comprises endnotes that give more detail on the artworks, publications and institutions mentioned in the letters, trace quotations to their sources and provide the required background. There is also a name index with basic biographical data, an editorial note and a detailed list of all available letters. The volume further contains a selective list of primary and secondary sources, the facsimiles of the authors’ respective handwriting, and also photographs of Jaroslav Durych with his family, taken by the Náměšť photographer Ondřej Knoll.