Roman Jakobson: Moudrost starých Čechů - Komentovaná edice s navazující exilovou polemikou – Zelenka Miloš (2015)

The book Wisdom of the Old Czechs, subtitled The Eternal Foundations of National Resistance, published in 1943 in American exile, occupies a unique place in the work of Roman Jakobson (1896–1982). The literary-historical interest here transcends into an openly manifested ideology of "Czechoslovak" patriotism, which effectively engages in the national resistance against Nazism. Although it is Jakobson's most extensive work on Bohemistics, it has never been republished and has become a blank spot in the knowledge of his oeuvre, more of a legend than a recognized fact. At the time of its publication, it attracted considerable attention and sparked tumultuous reactions ranging from enthusiastic support to outright rejection. Therefore, the new annotated edition of the work is accompanied by the main contributions from the exile debate, in which significant figures from Czech politics, science, and culture participated: Stanislav Budín, J. L. Hromádka, Adolf Hoffmeister, Jiří Voskovec, Eduard Goldstücker, and Otakar Odložilík. The debate about Jakobson's book replaced the long-missing domestic discussion and foreshadowed many of the post-war controversies regarding the new orientation of Czechoslovak society. It thus forms a little-known part of the discussions about the so-called Czech question and the meaning of Czech history from the perspective of engaged thinking...