Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and Prague. Perspectives of intellectual entanglement
The workshop focuses on Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and his stay in Prague (1924-1932) as an example of intellectual entanglement in 20th century Central Europe. When living in Prague, Čyževs’kyj was simultaneously involved in the Ukrainian and Russian émigré communities. He taught at the Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute as well as in the Ukrainian Free University and was a member of the Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society. At the same time, he participated in work of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the Philosophical Society at the Russian Free University. Interwar Prague was a place of intercultural intellectual exchange and entanglement, where several traditions of thinking came together or were confronted with each other – a configuration which was true for differing political positions as well. Particularly striking in both respects is Čyževs’kyj’s relationship towards his co-member in the Prague Linguistic Circle, Roman Jakobson.
Čyževs’kyj’s involvement with Slavic (including his too often neglected work on the Ukrainian and Czech) literatures and cultures did not stop when he left Prague for Germany (where he stayed in Halle, later Cologne and Heidelberg). Of special interest is his life-long interest in Baroque literature, and above all his studies of Czech and Ukrainian Baroque (the latter being itself a phenomenon of entanglement). One can also mention here his lesser known studies on Slovak literature. As an émigré scholar, he developed and spread his ideas within Slavic studies in Western Academia and supported his colleagues in Czechoslovakia, whose works could not be published under socialism.
Taking Čyževs’kyj’s involvement in intersecting communities in interwar-Prague as a starting point, the workshop will combine literary theoretical and literary historical as well as philosophical and philosophical-historical approaches on this phenomenon of intellectual entanglement.
The workshop is funded by German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Heisenberg Professorship Programme (University of Münster) and by the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship “Images of science” in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968 (Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences).
