Word, Voice, and Medium: On the Aesthetic-Ideological Character of Jan Čep's Radio Essays During the Cold War
Abstract
This article examines a book of speeches and essays by the Czech poet and novelist Jan Čep (Meditations, CDK, Brno 2019), which he broadcast on Radio Free Europe (RFE) in the period afer the communist coup in 1948 and afer his emigration from Czechoslovakia, the texts of which he would later publish in a series of exile periodicals (Nový život, Svědectví and Proměny) in the years 1953-1966, and 1969. At the same time, the author seeks to understand Čep's work as a whole during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and to elucidate the relationship between the author's fctional and non-fctional texts of this period, tracing their possible intersections and mutual signifcation.
It also explores the broader context of Čep's critique of Marxism as an indoctrination ideology from Stalinist countries, with an aim to better understand the place and role of the poet in Soviet totalitarian and Western liberal societies, the specifcs of transformation and intensifcation of Čep's initial aesthetic views in the 1950s and 1960s, and fnally Čep's own refections on his own position as an exiled poet actively seeking to embolden fellow citizens in his homeland who remained captive to totalitarian power.