Příběh svatého Václava – Dvořák Otomar (2024)

The story of Prince Václav, the heir, the holy protector, and the eternal ruler of the Czech lands, continues to fascinate us even after more than a millennium. It is encoded deep in our blood; even though we may not perceive it in our everyday lives, we subconsciously gravitate towards it, and in moments of anxiety, when our national existence seems threatened, we turn to it with hope. The creative tandem of Otomar Dvořák and Josef Pepson Snětivý attempted to reconstruct Václav's life and place his actions in broader international contexts. The authors state: "Take our story as just one of the possibilities. However, it is based on the maximum available data; the rest of the story is a product of our creative imagination. Not, however, aimless and boundless. Some of the hypotheses, even published by renowned historians, seem absurd to us: for example, that Václav was accidentally killed during a drunken brawl, or that he never existed and his character was created as a Christian counterpart to the pagan god Svantovít. On the contrary, we tried to be as serious as possible; we wanted to understand the thinking of people at that time, to empathize with their feelings..." Otomar Dvořák composed his story as a documentary novel, a fictionalized narrative interspersed with factual data, quotes, and...