Čtyřhlas Terézy Novákové – Svadbová Blanka (2013)

The family correspondence of Teréza Nováková, written over a span of forty years, has never been made accessible, although especially the letters exchanged with her son Arne Novák provide numerous new insights into her creative direction, spiritual background, and personal emotionality, deepening the generally known image of this writer. The correspondence also sheds new light on the circumstances of Arne Novák's life and multifaceted work, and his development from the individualistic premises of a representative of the late 19th-century generation to a conception of Czech literature that values traditional literary values. The insight into the private and creative life, where the son's world of a proud individual clashed with the world of his mother, who was rooted in the intellectual atmosphere of the preceding century, broadens into a profound capture of the contemporary literary atmosphere and the cultural and socio-political contexts of the time. A part of the book, which presents a reader-friendly 'story' in the form of a collage of letters, includes a CD-ROM that features a selection from 1,338 letters of Teréza Nováková, Arne Novák, Josef Novák, and Theodor Novák, accompanied by an extensive commentary apparatus and allowing for convenient searching.