Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk v českých diskusích o literárním realismu

Abstract

Literary historians have hitherto generally adopted the idea suggested by some contemporary critics that literary realism only really established itself in the Czech lands around the mid-1880s, particularly in connection with Russian literary criticism and discussions over the work of Émile Zola. The aim of this study is to present a more precise description of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s position in Czech discussions over realism, thus contributing not so much to knowledge of the origins of Czech thinking on this literary phenomenon, as to that of censorship, which was one of the symptoms of the transition being made by Czech intellectuals from the Classicist-Romantic tradition to modern thinking. The first part considers the paradox between what the sources tell us and what history tells us in the evaluation of the realistic nature of the novel by Václav Vlček Zlato v ohni – Gold in the Fire. Masaryk's argument, which endeavoured to cast doubt on the prevalent views that Vlček's novel was a work that realistically represented the Czech world at that time, is viewed by the present study in terms of Masaryk's aesthetic views, taking into account the context from which they emerged. The study not only presents fairly precise findings on the connections and differences between Masaryk's views of realism and those of the previous generation of Czech literary critics, but it also indicates that rather than being a conflict between different conceptions of realism, in this case it was more a symptom of the forthcoming conflict between the rising generation of writers and those already established in Czech literary life.