The Mystifications of a Nation: The Potato Bug and Other Essays on Czech Culture

ISBN-13: 9780299248949 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 150 str.

Vladimr Macura; Hana Pichova; Craig Cravens

Opis

A keen observer of culture, Czech writer Vladimir Macura (1945 99) devoted a lifetime to illuminating the myths that defined his nation. The Mystifications of a Nation, the first book-length translation of Macura s work in English, offers essays deftly analyzing a variety of cultural phenomena that originate, Macura argues, in the big bang of the nineteenth-century Czech National Revival, with its celebration of a uniquely Czech identity.
In reflections on two centuries of Czech history, he ponders the symbolism in daily life. Bridges, for example once a force of civilization connecting diverse peoples became a sign of destruction in World War I. Turning to the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, Macura probes a range of richly symbolic practices, from the naming of the Prague metro system, to the mass gymnastic displays of the Communist period, to post Velvet Revolution preoccupations with the national anthem. In The Potato Bug, he muses on one of the stranger moments in the Cold War the claim that the United States was deliberately dropping insects from airplanes to wreak havoc on the crops of Czechoslovakia.
While attending to the distinctively Czech elements of such phenomena, Macura reveals the larger patterns of Soviet-brand socialism. We were its cocreators, he declares, and its analysis touches us as a scalpel turned on its own body. Writing with erudition, irony, and wit, Macura turns the scalpel on the authoritarian state around him, demythologizing its mythology.
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Spis treści

Introduction Peter Bugge, Aarhus University Preface Caryl Emerson, Princeton University Where Is My Home Mystification and the Nation Dream of Europe Prague The Center The Bridge Michurin The Potato Bug The Spartakiad The Metro The Death of the Leader Minus-Stalin Symbol With a Human Face Renaming The Celts Within Us