'They will envy that Michna of yours' or Creation of the Czech Baroque Library in the Correspondence of Antonín Škarka and Dmitrij Tschizewskij : A Chapter from the History of a Scholarly Collaboration Straddling the Iron Curtain

Abstract

The article presents the surviving scholarly correspondence of Antonín Škarka and Dmitrij Tschizewskij from 1939-1972. This correspondence testifies to the fact that both scholars, despite the impossibility of meetings in person, were able to establish and develop remarkably intensive and fruitful collaboration in the field of Czech literary history.

Within the 1960s, they even managed to create a unique publishing team across the Iron Curtain. Thus, the surviving correspondence of A. Škarka and D.

Tschizewskij provides unique information about some of the principles of scholarly communication across the Iron Curtain and about the contemporary problems and limits of the operation of the humanities on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Keywords

• scholarly correspondence
• Antonín Škarka
• Dmitrij Tschizewskij
• Baroque studies
• Czech studies
• humanities
• Iron Curtain
• editology