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Josef Skvorecky is one of the most significant representatives of the Czech writers who published their works in the exile. Josef SkvoreckyВ’s constant interest in the development of Czech society in recent decades is, among other things, the source of his work The Life of Czech Society, which is the subject of interest in this article. The book is a living testimony to a relatively recent period that was very difficult for the Czech nation. The analysis of the work makes it possible to follow SkvoreckyВ’s mastery...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the connection between existential philosophy and the literary work of particular authors. In the first part, it will focus on the work of Egon Hostovsky, who belongs to the typical representatives of existential prose. Due to his Jewish origin, Hostovsky was forced to stay in exile at the time of the occupation of Czechoslovakia, but he felt very dissatisfied and never came to terms with his destiny of the emigrant. His feelings became the basis for his existentially oriented ...

The paper deals with the foreign reflection of the work of Jaroslav Seifert, a Czech poet who belongs to the so-called semi-official “grey zone” and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The analysis is based on two essays by Igor Hajek, a distinguished exile critic, included in the collection of Hajek’s literary essays, which was published in Czech translation in 2007. In the first of these articles, Hajek reminds foreign readers of the confined atmosphere of the 1950s, when many authors lost the oppor...

The paper aims to map the roots of the Unity of the Brethren, a religious movement whose origins date back to reform religious thinking represented, e.g. by John Wycliffe in England. The text mentions the key moments in the history of the Unity of the Brethren, notices the influences and contacts with Martin Luther in Germany and later Jean Calvin in Geneva and focuses on the development trends within the church itself. It especially points out the trend towards humanistic traditions of education, scholarship, lit...

Igor Hajek belongs among the personalities who played an essential role in presenting Czech literature abroad. The paper aims to illustrate his work reflecting his viewpoint of two important books by Josef Skvorecky, namely The Cowards, a novel capturing the atmosphere of the last days of the Second World War, and The End of the Nylon Age, a novella set in the world of the fading glory of the post-war Czechoslovak democracy, and shows the clash of two worlds, which is SkvoreckyВ’s favourite topic. HajekВ’s origina...

In this paper, the authors would like to focus on the importance of the translation of the Kralice Bible (named after the village of Kralice nad Oslavou in Moravia where it was printed), whose third and most famous edition was published in 1613, for the development of the Czech language and culture at the time of the Renaissance. The first part of the paper outlines the situation in Europe in the 16th century, during the Humanism and Renaissance period, when the emphasis was put on the importance of translating th...

In this paper I am going to focus on the work of the Czech writer Karel Capek, who lived in the first half of the 20th century, as it was perceived by the Czech exile literary critics and Western scholars specialized in Czech studies. This author enjoyed great popularity in Britain in the period between the two world wars, but his works had gradually fallen into oblivion over time, perhaps except for his play RUR, which enriched the English language with the word robot, and the novel War with the Newts. I am going...

In my paper, I will focus on the reception of Vaclav HavelВ’s plays among Czech literary critics who lived in exile. Among others, it was Igor Hajek who analysed them in his two treatises, in a review of the collection of plays related to the character of Ferdinand Vanek. Igor Hajek (1931-1995), a Czech exile literary critic, belongs to personalities who have played a significant role in the presentation of Czech literature abroad. He lived in British emigration since 1969 and his name in Czechoslovakia was on the...