Abstract
This study charts the generation producing Czech Catholic literature that came onto the scene after 1945. Between 1945 and 1948 it enjoyed a relatively conflict-free reception from the older Catholic generation and contemporaries outside the Catholic milieu.
It had access to the Vyšehrad journal and the support of Catholic critics from the older generation. This generation more or less accepted the chief landmarks of postwar Catholic culture in Vyšehrad: the Slav orientation, the positive attitude towards socialism and the generational turnover.
Two members of this generation aspired to the position of leader and spokesman: Ivan Slavík in Prague and Zdeněk Rotrekl in Brno. However, after 1948 this generation was excluded from literature and its members experienced various twists and turns in life and literature (prison, various shades of the "grey zone", various forms of collaboration with dissidents and in the case of Josef Jelen even "conversion'' to normalization literature).
As a literary historian, Ivan Slavík has attempted to reconstruct this generation retrospectively and to also include such figures on the fringes as Ivan Diviš and Ladislav Novák. On the other hand Zdeněk Rotrekl is also engaged in literary history, but he focuses more on reconstructing the older Catholic generation rather than his own generation.
Hence in this respect we might refer to a "Slavík generation". As a result this generation appears to be neglected in all the reconstructions and rehabilitations, as it is overshadowed by the older "classic" Catholic generation and the intellectually bolder generation of Catholic-oriented dissident authors.