Ladislav Klíma

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Ladislav Klíma

Ladislav Klíma (born August 22, 1878 in Domažlice , † April 19, 1928 in Prague ) was a Czech philosopher and poet .

Life

Klíma was the son of a trained miller who worked in a law firm. Until 1895 he attended the local high school, from which he was expelled for insulting the Austrian monarchy (he called it the "pig dynasty"). He then attended grammar school in Zagreb , but did not finish it either and went to Prague in 1904. There he led a secluded life and wrote articles for magazines, including Tribuna and People's Rights (Práva lidu). He lived mostly on inheritance from relatives or gifts of money from friends, including the poet Otokar Březina . He died of tuberculosis because of his excessive lifestyle and was buried in Prague's Malvazinky Cemetery.

person

Klíma has been enthusiastic about philosophy from an early age . His own conception is also called existentialism , the basis of which is solipsism , along with voluntarism . He was particularly influenced by philosophers such as George Berkeley (subjective idealism), Arthur Schopenhauer ( pessimism ) and Friedrich Nietzsche (doctrine about the superman ).

By Czech standards he was an unconventional personality in terms of his views and way of life. He loathed the habits of civilization, which he considered superfluous. On the other hand, he experimented with his body (as he himself described it) by subjecting it to excessive alcohol and nicotine consumption.

Works

In addition to philosophical works, he also wrote poetry and a drama , most of which, however, remained in handwritten form until his death and was only printed afterwards. He himself claimed to have destroyed most of his texts because of profanity . His collected works were published by Torst in the 1990s . Another edition of collected works was published in 2005. This book also includes his philosophical diary.

Most successful works

  • The world as consciousness and nothingness (Svět jako vědomí a nic), 1904. The existence of the world depends on individualists. The world is what I want from it.
  • The Sorrows of Prince Sternenhocha (Utrpení knížete Sternenhocha, 1928). The story of a thirty-three-year-old German aristocrat and his significantly younger wife Helga. He admires and hates her at the same time. In the biography, Klíma does not shy away from obscenity, which sometimes borders on perversion. Helga humiliates her husband, commits crimes. The psychologically tyrannized prince lets them starve to death and dies of a bad conscience himself. The work was also performed as a play in German in Austria. Since April 2018 it has been shown for the first time as a modern opera with the title Starry High in the international language Esperanto , with faded-in translations in German, English and French, in the National Theater in Prague.
  • The Solemn Nemesis and Other Stories (Slavná Nemesis a jiné příběhy), 1932. A selection of short stories. The theme is the desire to get to know the secret of life and death.
  • Great novel (Velký román), 1996 (3 parts)

drama

  • Matthias the honest. Fantastic folk amusement play in three acts Matěj Poctivý: Fantastická lidová veselohra o třech dějstvích , 1922. He wrote this drama together with Arnošt Dvořák . In the National Theater it had to be canceled shortly after the premiere because of the audience protests.

Philosophical work

  • Duchovní přátelství , 1905–26
  • Boj o Vše , 1909-17
  • Čtyři listy filosofa Ladislava Klímy , 1916–18
  • Filosofické listy Ladislava Klímy , 1916–19
  • Traktáty a diktáty , 1922
  • Matějovo vidění , 1923
  • Vlastní životopis filosofa Ladislava Klímy , 1924
  • Záznamy extatikovy , 1925
  • Soud Boží: Novela z dob renaissance , 1928
  • Arkanum - Cogitata - Sentence , 1934 - myšlenky vybrané z autorova deníku
  • Mezi skutečností a snem , 1937
  • Edgar a Eura , 1938
  • Kladivo slov , 1938
  • Juvenilie , 1941
  • Čas a smrt , 1970
  • Putování slepého hada za pravdou , 1982
  • Viktorie , 1986
  • Dios , 1990
  • Lidská tragikomedie , 1991
  • Podivuhodné příběhy , 1991
  • Sus triumfans , 1991
  • O Solovjevově etice , 1993
  • Český román (torzo) , 1993

literature

  • Climate Ladislav. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 405.
  • Karel Bodlák : Myšlenkový svět Ladislava Klímy (The Thoughts of Ladislav Klíma), in: Jan Pohořelý (ed.): Ladislav Klíma, filosof - básník . 1878 * 1928 * 1948, Prague 1948, pp. 11–51.
  • Urs Heftrich : Ecce deus aneb Jak se staneme, cím nejsme (Ladislav Klíma a Nietzsche). In: Kritický sborník 17 / 2-3 (1997/98), pp. 53-70 [Czech].
  • Urs Heftrich: Why I am so wise : The Czech poet-philosopher Ladislav Klíma and Nietzsche. In: Literary Studies Yearbook of the Görres Society, New Series, Vol. 39 (1998), pp. 139–163.

Published in German

  • Ludger Hagedorn (Ed.): Czech philosophers in the 20th century , including Philosophical Letters (1916–1922)
  • The sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch , Müller u. Kiepenheuer, 1966
  • The white sow and other prose. Supplement to the magazine Schund und Sünde, No. 15, April 10, 1992 (bookstore at the Kunsthaus, Zurich), contains i.a. a .: Autobiography of the philosopher Ladislav Klima>. Pp. 7-30

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The opera Star High in Esperanto in the National Theater in Prague in English