Martin Hrdina
Chasm and temple. Metaphors of chaos and order in 1870s Czech poetry
The author of this paper goes back to the 1870s, a time in which European society had to deal with a number of challenging situations – for example, a symptom of this intellectual crisis at the time was considered to be the rising tide of suicide. Hence attention is focused here on writers and their reactions to these crisis phenomena, as they had a direct influence through reading on educated members of society, and so could help to create a way to manage these crisis phenomena. Czech poetry output, represented in this study by Jaroslav Vrchlický and Irma Geisslová, also had to deal with these reflections of the pessimistic Weltanschauung during the 1870s. These authors handled this challenge in various ways, their chosen strategy having an impact on the public reception of their works and influencing their subsequent literary careers.
design by Bedřich Vémola
