Laughable Loves and Non-Loves by playwright Viktor Dyk

Description

The study Laughable Loves and Non-Loves by playwright Viktor Dyk looks at Dyk’s drama from today’s perspective, which is no longer bound by interwar or postwar understanding. It looks chronologically at its transformations and fixed points, and tries to approach the strangeness, even bizarreness, of the way Dyk named life and the world. The key to interpreting his work is the way in which the playwright treated the motif of love between a man and a woman. “Janoušek has managed to capture the movement of Dyk’s dramatic (rather conflicting, because conflict-inducing) work against the background of contemporary events and his personal and inner life. The interpretation compositionally mirrors the developmental arc from the playwright’s youth and early work to his tragic premature death and ‘second’ life through the metamorphosis of numerous (mis)interpretations of the work.” (from L. Vodička’s review)

Pavel Janoušek (1956, Prague) graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague (Czech language, art education, theatre and film studies). After finishing his studies (1984) he started working at the Institute for Czech Literature of the CAS, and from 1999 to 2011 he was its director. He is interested in the theory, history and lexicography of Czech literature and theatre, especially drama and prose of the 20th century. He is also systematically involved in literary criticism. He was, among others, the chief editor and co-author of the History of Czech Literature 1945 – 1989, Dictionary of Czech Writers since 1945 and the History of Czech Literature in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the author of a number of works on drama and literature: The Dimensions of Drama, Ivan Vyskočil and His Non-Literature, The Black Cat, The One Who Was: Vladimír Macura between Literature, Science and Play, etc.