Publikacija SEP 2011 - Vilenica

In the middle of my life after the year 2000, between 2005 and
2008 to be more precise, I had the opportunity to teach Czech language
and literature at a secondary school.
My seventeen-year-old students had slightly amended the definition
of poetry, which I quoted at the beginning.
“Poetry is something that is not written by everybody, and still nobody
reads it.”
Let us put this rather sophismatic statement aside and express it in
the form of an SMS: “Poetry is zilch, zero, nothing, bullshit…”
Yet, since the insolent prose of seventeen-year-olds won’t change as
long as our planet will keep on turning, the exaggerated statement of
my classmate at seventeen actually strongly resonates the judgement of
these contemporary heralds of youthful truth.
It’s only the intensity of the statement that is greater. And if we
take a closer look at this absolute slogan and contemplate these young
existentialists, thrust into the adult world – which because of all of the
tradeoffs, detours, and ass kissing rightfully can’t be likeable to anyone
with a young heart – we realise that this absoluteness and that definition
are their means of conveying Something to us.
Well, even Hitler, when he burned books on the pyre, was conveying
the message that the literature of the Manns and the Remarques was
damn important. A gesture is an act as well!
“Blasphemy is the opposing side to the yearning for God,” as was
written by F. X. Šalda, a literary critic who had helped the Czech literary
rebels, anarchist Fráňa Šrámek and Franta Gellner, to immortal
fame. He managed to do the same for the later generation of Vítězslav
Nezval and Jaroslav Seifert.
If the young limit themselves in relation to poetry thusly, then the
reason for such a strong reaction must be some monumental action, a
mysterious primeval force, which in this world of still comprehensible
frustration and worshipping of the Golden Calves – known as designer
cell phones, jeans, the all-present pop culture, the lies and half-truths of
on-line nicknames, and intentional stultifications, marketing scams and
complicated levels of virtual reality – still works with the hard skull of
Goethe’s bust, or with the witty refinement of Shakespeare’s blank verse,
respectively.
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