Jaroslav Durych

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Jaroslav Durych (1930)

Jaroslav Durych (born December 2, 1886 in Königgrätz , Austria-Hungary , † April 7, 1962 in Prague ) was a Czech prose writer, poet, playwright, publicist, Roman Catholic theologian and military doctor.

Life

Durych came from a traditionally Catholic family and was supposed to become a priest himself. After he became an orphan at an early age, he first studied at the ecclesiastical seminary in Příbram , but was then excluded for reading forbidden literature ( Ernest Renan ).

He went to Prague and studied there at the medical faculty, from which he received his doctorate in 1913. During the First World War , Durych was a military doctor in the Austro-Hungarian army and served on the front in Galicia and Italy . After the war in 1918 he set up his own practice in Přerov , but soon joined the newly founded Czechoslovak Army, in which he became a colonel until he left in 1938 .

He traveled to Germany in 1925 , Spain in 1928 and Italy in 1932 . In addition to his profession as a military doctor and his literary work, he also edited the magazines Rozmach and Akord . Durych was a literary loner in the interwar period who liked to put forward his conservative views in sharp polemics. At that time he stood against the prevailing left-wing and liberal zeitgeist, which was represented by the majority of Czech intellectuals, and was a pronounced opponent of President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Karel Čapek . Durych represented extreme Catholic positions, stood up for the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1937 and still attacked Čapek in 1938. In November he and Rudolf Medek were elected to the Presidium at the constituent meeting of the National Culture Council (národní kulturní rada). On December 2, 1939, he gave an address on the radio at the opening of the “Month of the Czech Book”. In September 1940 he took part in a trip organized by the Reich Propaganda Ministry for 34 Czech cultural workers and journalists through the German Reich and Holland, which was cannibalized by the press in the Reich Protectorate.

His political attitude weighed on him immediately in 1945 and especially after the communist seizure of power in 1948. Durych was ostracized, his works could not be published. Only after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia is its literary importance recognized again.

Works

Contrary to the prevailing view in Czechoslovakia, he saw the time after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, when the Reformation was pushed back and the Czech state lost its independence, not as a catastrophe, but as a blessing for the country. He welcomed the rule of Catholicism at that time and preferred to deal in his works with the Baroque period, whose sensuality and simultaneous religiosity he was able to masterfully reproduce. His favorite subject is guilt and remorse. He is the most important representative of Catholicism in 20th century Czech literature.

His most important works deal with historical subjects, such as the novel from the time of the Thirty Years' War Bloudění (Errors) or the trilogy Rekviem (Requiem) - three stories that take place in the period after Wallenstein's death . Masopust ( Mardi Gras ) - the story takes place at the time of the Passau invasion of Prague (1611) and finally Služebníci neužiteční (Unnecessary Servants), a four-part cycle about the Bohemian Jesuit Spinola, missionary in Japan and executed there. (The last three parts were published in Rome .)

A very courageous and unusual book was written during the time of his ostracism in 1955, the novel Boží duha (God's Rainbow), which deals with the subject of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, a subject that was taboo at the time, but one from today's perspective the most important contributions to this problem.

In addition to prose, which is the most important part of his work, he also dealt with poetry and drama at the beginning.

Essays

  • Gotická růže , 1923
  • Pližení Německem , 1926
    • Unrecognized by Germany . Translation and epilogue Birgit Krehl. Berlin: Quintus, 2017, ISBN 978-3-945256-74-9
  • Pouť do Španělska , 1929
  • Naděje katolictví v zemich českých , 1930
  • Pližení a pouti , 1932
  • Pláč civilisty , 1937
  • Cesta sv. Vojtěcha , 1940

Poetry

  • Cikánčina smrt , 1916
  • Panenky , 1923
  • Hadi květy , poems and prose 1924
  • Žebrácké písně , 1925
  • Balady , 1925
  • Bezkydy , 1926
  • Píseň milostná , 1928
  • Eva , 1928
  • Básně , 1930

prose

  • Jarmark života , story 1916
  • Cestou domů , short stories 1919
  • Tři dukáty , short stories 1919
  • Nejvyšší naděje , short stories, 1921
  • Tři trojníčky , 1923
  • Smích věrnosti , 1924
  • Kouzelná lampa , 1926
  • Děti , 1934

Novels

  • Na horách , 1919
  • Sedmikráska , 1925
  • Bloudění , also Větší valdštejnská trilogy , 1929
    • Friedland. A Wallenstein novel . Piper, Munich 1933, Herold, Vienna 1950,
  • Rekviem , also Malá valdštejnská trilogy, 3 short stories, 1930;
    • The Walditz Charterhouse . Stories. Piper, Munich 1934; New edition: Zdeněk Bouček (Ed.): Requiem. Small Wallenstein trilogy (translated by Wolfgang Spitzbardt). St. Benno, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-7462-0408-9 .
  • Paní Anežka Berková , 1931
  • Píseň o růži , 1934
  • Masopust , 1938
  • Služebníci neužiteční , trilogy 1940 (literally useless servant - about the Jesuit mission in Japan , which in 1622 with a massacre was stopped).
  • Duše a hvězda , 1969
  • Boží duha , posthumously: Československý spisovatel, Praha 1969; Melantrich, Praha 1991, ISBN 80-7023-083-5 ; Academia, Praha 2000 (reprint of the 1991 edition in the Scarabaeus series, volume 15) ISBN 80-200-0800-4 .

Dramas

  • Svatý Jiří , 1915
  • Svatý Vojtěch , 1921
  • Štědrý večer , 1926
  • Svatý Václav , 1925

literature

  • Jindra Blanka Třiska: Baroque elements by Jaroslav Durych and Vladislav Vančura . Tectum, Marburg 1995, ISBN 3-89608-791-6 (also dissertation at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1995).
  • Tilman Kasten: criticism of historicism versus salvation history. The Wallenstein novels by Alfred Döblin and Jaroslav Durych . Böhlau, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-412-50333-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Konstantin Kountouroyanis: Excursion to the Land of Lost Laughter - A review of Jaroslav Durych's travel story “Unrecognized by Germany” , prag-aktuell.cz , February 26, 2017
  2. ↑ Konstantin Kountouroyanis: The Wallenstein fabric through the ages - A new study illuminates how the historical figure in the works of Alfred Döblin and Jaroslav Durych was received , Prager Zeitung online edition: June 15, 2016 , print edition no. 24, June 16, 2016, page 5
personal data
SURNAME Durych, Jaroslav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech prose writer, poet, playwright, publicist, Roman Catholic theologian and military doctor
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Hradec Králové
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1962
Place of death Prague