Má písmena - Prózy, básně, texty – Součková Milada (2024)

From the intellectual line of Czech literature Under the collective title My Letters, the Czech Library presents a quartet of genre-diverse yet thematically interconnected texts by Milada Součková. The chosen title highlights the central theme of the autobiographical line of the author's work — the act of writing itself. In her prose debut First Letters (1934) — a foundational reservoir of scenes and motifs to which the author will return — writing becomes a medium of memory. An impressive modernist connection of word and image is utilized in the poetic composition Speaking Zone — an apocalyptic vision of the demise of Euro-American civilization — which is published here alongside a reprint of the original private edition from 1939, including linoleum prints by Zdenek Rykra. In the generational novel Founders (1940), the author critically depicted family and interpersonal relationships in the upper echelons of bourgeois society in the early decades of the last century. A cyclical return to the issue of personal memory and its artistic grasp is represented by the unfinished memoir prose Own Biography of Josefine Rykrová (posthumously 1993). The volume was edited by Kristián Suda, Jakub Říha, and Zuzana Říhová, with commentary by Zuzana Říhová.