Abstract
The essay is a commentary on the diaries of Karel Teige. This edition of the diaries of Karel Teige, one the most prominent personalities and key organiser of the Czech avant-garde, presents a set of records spanning he period 1912-1925, following the artist's life from age twelve o twenty and his subsequent travels abroad.
He also comments on Teige's correspondence of that time, ponders over various artistic and artistic-political life of his generation. The diaries also plainly document the background and context of Teige's political radicalisation, which greatly influenced many friends and companions of his generation; the diaries of 1922 and 1924, for example, written of his trips to France and Italy, as well as he diary, most notably, from the autumn of 1925, when he travelled with the Czechoslovac delegation to Moscow and Leningrad.
Describing his stay in the Soviet Union, Teige shares rather uncritically in the enthusiasm of the builders of the nascent communist state - and attitude typical of pro-communist Western visitors to the USSR during that period.