Abstract
The study recapitulates the development of a professional network, as well as long-standing disputes, among the most prominent representatives of Czech modernism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - F. X. Šalda on the one hand, and Arnošt Procházka and the Moderní revue (especially Jiří Karásek) on the other.
This study focuses in particular on the two initial periods, on the roots of the polemic, and on key moments in the 1890s: that is, on the onset and gradual differentiation of modernist literary creation and criticism in all its forms, on the transformations and extremes of the polemic as the example of a genre whose essence is dialogue and misunderstanding in equal parts. While the polemic is often rife with personal attacks, it also tends to crystallize in a mirror that reveals the collisions and transformations of Czech modern aesthetic thinking, and that illuminates connections and transitions in the field of literary and cultural production.