Lužanská mše I. - Vita Brevis – Stýblová Valja (2021)

A novel about the life of Josef Hlávka, an outstanding architect, patron, founder, and first president of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In a psychologically sensitive narrative, Valja Stýblová focuses on the beginning of Hlávka's career, when he made a name for himself among significant European architects at a very young age and undertook adventurous journeys for knowledge and to realize his own projects to Italy, Western Europe, and Western Ukraine, where he built a monumental residence for the metropolitan of the Eastern Church in Chernivtsi. For this reason, he also delayed his marriage to Marinka Čermáková for a long time, as if he feared that great love would divert him from great architecture. Hlávka had a deep, almost fateful relationship with his mother. She never doubted his talent and always encouraged him to pursue bold plans that might have seemed megalomaniacal had he not realized them in an incredibly short time. Perhaps he succeeded also because his educated and wise father taught him to doubt and seek a more realistic path to artistic expansion through his ironic criticism. It was his father who reminded him of the Latin phrase ars longa, vita brevis. Art is eternal, but life is short.