98 nevertheless, at least Wells did not idealize a society “governed by chance, reckless functionaries and the iron fist of capital” nor by the “Slavic communism of the hungry.”40 Vančura’s first published article from 1928 (which partially drew on his MA thesis of 1925), discussed the philosophy of evolution in the works of H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw. Even though the text is largely descriptive and non-judgmental, Vančura quite clearly disapproves of those aspects of Wells that demonstrate nihilism, religious dogmatism or intolerant and brutal Darwinian materialism. At the same time, he praises Wells’s collectivist and humanitarian aspects: the moments when Wells did not exclude the “unfit” from his utopian designs; when he illustrated that “in the universal scheme of all things, even the smallest particle has its important function. Strength, weakness, virtues and errors are important and they complement one another”;41 when his objective was a harmonious collective synthesis achieved first on the level of culture through education (and only afterwards on the level of the economy).42 In the periods immediately before and after the war, apart from his Structuralist studies, and apart from a number of English textbooks and a factual history of Anglo-American countries (1947), Vančura published translations, including of such less-known authors as Rachel Field, Will Levington Comfort and Younghill Kang. In several brief essays and reviews, he approached literature in a similar way as he did after 1948 – that is, he addressed its content and function rather than merely the 40
41
42
Otakar Vočadlo, “Wellsova Moderní utopie” (A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells), H.G. Wells, Moderní utopie, trans. Ludmila Vočadlová (Prague: Gustav Voleský, 1922) 7. Zdeněk Vančura, “Filosofie vývoje u H.G. Wellse a G.B. Shawa” (The Philosophy of Evolution in the Work of H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw), Příspěvky k dějinám řeči a literatury anglické od členů anglického semináře Karlovy university v Praze / Studies in English by Members of the English Seminar of the Charles University, Prague, Vol. 3 (Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 1928) 6. When Vančura returned to Wells after World War II, he praised similar values, although especially in the preface to the 1959 translation of The History of Mr. Polly, his style was different, more congruent with the official rhetoric. But he still admired Wells’s collectivist ideals, his belief in knowledge and education, as well as his wariness of technology.
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99 form, and he discussed literature as a part of, or even a product of, its environment. For example in his 1929 “American Survey,” Vančura wrote: “Something new is happening in America. Until now, ruthless individualism of American civilization, along with the raw novelty of that continent, did not provide a fertile ground for art.” Only now, the critic continued, are Americans becoming aware of their culture, which they piece together – like Carl Sandburg does his portrait of Lincoln – from “the spring in the prairie, from boastful folk humour, the turmoil of election meetings, and the details of everyday pioneer work; from faiths, prejudices and hopes of the age.”43 To conclude, regarding the first form of continuities considered in Vančura’s oeuvre, I would like to reproduce the words of Břetislav Hodek, who wrote on the occasion of Otakar Vočadlo’s seventy-fifth birthday the following: It may look like a fantastic embellishment of kádrový posudek [an assessment of everyone’s private and public activities made under the totalitarian regime by communist party officials], but it remains to be a fact that Associate Professor Vočadlo was for many years a member of The Workers’ Educational Association and that every weekend, he lectured for free in various industrial towns, for example, to workers on strike in Coalville, textile workers in Bradford, industrial workers in Sheffield, unemployed dock labourers in Birkenhead at Liverpool, and elsewhere.44
Vočadlo, who in the 1940s lectured at Cambridge and who received an honorary degree from the university, was asked to leave The Faculty of Arts in 1950. With the status of a dissenter, his past social activities indeed began to look like a fantastic embellishment (and Hodek’s own embellished account of the facts certainly contributed to it). But my point is that the Structuralists did not live enclosed in their circle. Of course they were critical of many practices in the Soviet Union and later in Eastern Europe as a whole, and they suffered from the dictatorial 43
44
Zdeněk Vančura, “Angloamerický přehled” (Anglo-American Survey), Rozpravy Aventina 13-14 (1929): 162. Břetislav Hodek, “Univ. Prof. Dr. Vočadlo sedmdesátiletý” (The Seventy-Fifth Birthday of Prof. Otakar Vočadlo), Časopis pro moderní filologii, 52 (1970): 212.
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100 measures that governed the system. But they were not indifferent to social injustice and they had their own, somewhat utopian, visions. Moreover, even in methodological terms, the Structuralists were not always exactly Structuralist. In the above-mentioned studies, neither Vočadlo nor Vančura extensively analysed the form of a literary work; instead, they discussed its content, its cultural and pedagogical value, and its position within the greater social whole (rather than within an autonomous literary space). The second form of continuity in Vančura’s oeuvre concerns Structuralism, which he never entirely abandoned. Even in his 1950s study of Whitman, where Vančura claimed that the democratic message of Leaves of Grass could have appeared in another form, his evidence pointed to the contrary. The critic argued that the profound complexity of feeling generated in Whitman the need to search for new forms of expression45 and that he could have hardly achieved the desired objective “in rigid and regular verse.”46 In these passages of his monograph, Vančura went as far as to emphasize the role of the form in the construction of the meaning of Whitman’s poems: “Already the concept of the ‘catalogue’ draws attention to the generic affinity of the listed items as well as to their individual differences.”47 Such observations contradict those that the critic presented elsewhere in the same text. So, even though in his post-1948 writing, Vančura tended to treat literature in accordance with the dominant approach, he found an opportunity to discuss literary form and technique (e.g., in his studies of William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville and especially of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights). Much of his prose, moreover, maintained its past pensiveness and richness; it was picturesque and descriptive, rather than didactic and argumentative. And in thought, even in the articles that include tendentious formulations, Vančura’s voice was consistently notable for its forgiveness, tolerance and the willingness to pay attention to, and to accept, a variety of human experiences and ideas. His entire life seems to 45 46 47
Vančura, Walt Whitman 34. Vančura, Walt Whitman 65. Vančura, Walt Whitman 65.
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