Abstract
This paper is based on the eight-verse nursery rhyme by poet Jiří Pištora (1932-1970) Lapkové (Highwaymen), which was directed against the 1968 Russian occupation. When it was printed in Mateřídouška (1970), it was immediately castigated by aggressive rhetoric in Rudé právo as subversive "anti-Soviet propaganda" which was made "all themore dangerous" by the fact that it "abused" young readers.
The "small form" of the nursery rhyme had substantial, and for Pištora fatal, consequences, which resulted in his suicide, astheoppressive atmosphere of "normalization" first descended. In connection with the problematic, but influential and still much-debated theory of "simple forms" expounded by the Dutch art historian and literary scholar André Jolles (1874-1946), the question is examined here of the extent to which "small forms" are formative or have a form-determining disposition which can develop an explosive potential under unfavourable social-political circumstances.
In line with the "explosion in culture" theory developed by Yuri M. Lotman, an accompanying feature of this conception of explosiveness is unpredictability, which is naturally associated with a certain risk.