Jakobson's "Czechoslovak" editions : (on dissimilar textual approaches to the "Czech" and "American" editions of Moudrost starých Čechů)
Vol.19,No.2(2016)
Abstract
Keywords:
Czech structuralism; exile polemics; the Czech and American re-edition
Pages:
137–143
This paper describes two different editions of Jakobson’s Moudrost starých Čechů [Wisdom of the Old Czechs], a controversial book originally published in his American exile in 1943 as an undisguised demonstration of his “anti-German” attitude, espousing his ideology of “Czechoslovak” patriotism as engaged in the struggle against Nazism. The new Czech edition authored by T. Hermann and M. Zelenka represents an extensive critical monograph adding reconstructed annotations (omitted in the original) and supplementing the original text with the value- diversified exile polemics (Moudrost starých Čechů. Komentovaná edice s navazující exilovou polemikou. Praha – Červený Kostelec: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i. – Pavel Mervart Publishing House 2015). The American edition published in Jakobson’s Selected Writings, Volume 9, Uncollected Works I–II (ed. J. Toman, The Hague – Paris – New York: Mouton publishers 2013–2014) then may boast of including a reprint of this text at the end of the second volume, but without annotations and any interpretational study, which make an objective and unbiased interpretation of Jakobson’s attitudes as a person and scholar in the 1940s, and later in the century, virtually impossible.
Czech structuralism; exile polemics; the Czech and American re-edition
137–143
