Od obdivu k zatracení: česká recepce Julese Romainse

Abstract

The article discusses the transformation of the relationship of Czech literature to the French writer Jules Romains, the chief representative of Unanimism, during the 20 th century. In the period before and just after WWI, the emerging generation of authors received him with almost boundless admiration. In the interwar period, he was ideologically aligned with Karel Čapek’s generation and was publicly presented in the Czech cultural environment as the leading representative of contemporary French writing. A turning point came in the autumn of 1938, when, as a proponent of the idea of pacifism, he defended the principles of the Munich Agreement. Romains, originally seen as a friend of the Czechs, became a symbol of the French betrayal. After 1948, Romains’s post-Munich positions were placed in the context of the premises of Unanimism, which, in the perspective of the Marx-ist approach to literature, appeared to be ideologically mistaken because it neglected the agency of class aspects in the dynamics of society. Romains thus fell into the periphery of interest and into near oblivion. Only one-third of his major novel cycle Men of Good Will remains tanslated into Czech.