Jiří Karásek (ze Lvovic) Decadence flourished in the Czech lands more than anywhere else in central and eastern Europe under the auspices of the decadent journal The Modern Revue (Moderní revue), founded in October 1894 by Arnošt Procházka and Jiří Karásek on the model of the leading French decadent-symbolist journal Mercure de France and journals edited by Anatole Baju, particularly Le Décadent. The movement’s themes of despair, impotence, and frustration found especial resonance among the Czechs, who had been striving in vain for decades to gain greater rights within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Procházka and Karásek edited The Modern Revue, the most significant and widely known Czech modernist journal, until Procházka’s death in 1925. The two writers headed the decadent movement, with Procházka writing chiefly manifestos, reviews, and theoretical and polemical essays promoting the new movement, and Karásek publishing decadent poetry, drama, and prose as well as non-fictional works, including criticism, polemics, and theoretical essays. Karásek continued to devote himself to decadent themes through the 1920s, well after the movement had expired elsewhere. He was by far the most prolific Czech decadent writer, and by many accounts, the best. Karásek (later known by the pseudonym Karásek ze Lvovic) was born on January 24, 1871, into a poor family in Prague. He was fascinated by death and decay from a young age, and these decadent themes naturally became integral to his fiction. Several of his siblings died in childhood, and in his memoirs he writes that he used to go to their graves in the Lesser Town Cemetery and communicate with their souls. His father also died suddenly in 1890. He completed high school and began to study theology at Charles University in Prague, but soon dropped out, doubting his vocation as a Catholic priest. He then decided to become a teacher, but lacked the financial resources necessary to complete the requisite studies. Regretting that he could not devote himself entirely to literature, in 1892 he became a civil servant in the postal services. In 1896 he was promoted to Imperial and Royal postal assistant, and in 1921 he became the director of the Postal Museum and Archives, retiring in 1933. Thus Karásek, like T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, and Joris-Karl Huysmans, worked full-time in a professional clerical position while devoting all of his free time to literature. While lack of resources and the consequent inability to become a full-time writer or at least work in a more fulfilling capacity were frustrating, the sense of despair that is so prevalent in Karásek’s fiction stemmed in large part from his homosexuality. He experienced same-sex desire in a society that did not accept it and enforced laws against homosexual acts. Karásek felt obliged to keep his feelings to himself until he courageously published the first openly homoerotic poetry in his 1895 collection Sodom, in connection with his journal’s courageous defense of Oscar Wilde, who was then on trial for homosexual acts. Sodom was confiscated and destroyed by the authorities. Karásek himself faced police investigation, but was not charged with any crime. Karásek’s later trilogy, Novels of Three Magi (1907, 1908, 1925), features erudite homosexual characters steeped in the occult sciences, inspired by stories of magic and alchemy surrounding Rudolf II, Czech King and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Karásek also became one of the first political defenders of homosexuality in the early twentieth century.
Karásek began to study French language and literature in 1884, when his schoolmate Procházka introduced him to the French naturalists and symbolists. Karásek started with Zola and his naturalist school and the critics Paul Bourget and Hippolyte Taine, and he soon discovered Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Henryk Ibsen, Victor Hugo, and Anatole France. In July 1892 he made his literary debut with a critical article on Walt Whitman, followed by articles on German modernism. In 1893 he was amazed by his first encounter with the work of the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski, whom he considered a model decadent. Procházka and Karásek soon began to collaborate with Przybyszewski, who was based in Berlin and had close associations with German and Scandinavian modernists, including the artist Edvard Munch. Returning to Krakow in 1898, Przybyszewski became editor of the Polish avant-garde journal Życie (Life) and established a close working relationship between the Czech and Polish avant-gardes. Starting in 1896, Karásek’s new position within the postal system required him to travel regularly to Vienna. According to his memoirs, he met a very cultured young count there, a diplomat, with whom he fell in love. Karásek describes his lover as an aristocrat descended from Czech nobility and resembling Des Esseintes of Huysmans’s Against Nature, and he says that this friend introduced him to many Viennese noblemen and writers, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Inspired by Viennese salons, Karásek began to dress as a dandy, and Procházka soon followed suit. According to Karásek, his lover encouraged him to expand his art collection, which he had begun in 1893. He gradually acquired a large number of works, supplemented by gifts and donations, and he opened his collection to the public in 1924. Karásek’s popularity began to wane as new movements gradually began to take the place of decadence after the turn of the century. Nevertheless, he continued to write prolifically through the 1920s and build up his art collection, which became one of the largest in Europe. He was increasingly drawn to Catholicism, and many of his later works may be described as Catholic legends with decadent elements. He even co-edited a Catholic literary journal from 1918 to 1921. The occult also figures prominently in his twentieth-century works, and he edited an occultist journal from 1923 to 1925. In 1921 he was promoted to director of the Postal and Communications Ministry and began to collect materials for the Postal Museum. After his retirement in 1933 he published little, and he died in 1951.
Bibliography and Translations Poetry Collections Zazděná okna (Walled-Up Windows), 1894. Sodoma (Sodom), 1895 (confiscated). Kniha aristokratická (The Aristocratic Book), 1896. Sexus Necans: Kniha pohonská (Sexus Necans: The Pagan Book), 1897. Hovory se smrtí (Conversations with Death), 1904. Sodoma (Sodom), 2nd ed., 1905. Endymion, 1909. Ostrov vyhnanců (Island of Exiles), 1912. Písně tulákovy o životě a smrti (A Vagrant’s Songs of Life and Death), 1930. Poslední vinobraní: básně z let 1932-1938 (The Last Vintage: Poems from 1932-1938), 1946. Novels Bezcestí (Pathlessness), 1893. Mimo život (Beyond Life), 1894. Romány tří magů I: Román Manfreda Macmillena (Novels of the Three Magi I: The Romance of Manfred Macmillen), 1907. Romány tří magů II: Scarabeus (Novels of the Three Magi II: Scarabeus), 1908. Zastřený obraz. (The Veiled Picture), 1923. Romány tří magů III: Ganymedes (Novels of the Three Magi III: Ganymede), 1925.
Novellas and Short Story Collections Stojatí vody (Stagnant Waters), 1895. Legenda o melancholickém princi (The Legend of the Melancholy Prince), 1897. Gotická duše (A Gothic Soul), 1902. Lásky absurdné (Absurd Loves), 1904. Posvátné ohně (Sacred Fires), 1911. Obracení Raymunda Lulla. (The Conversion of Raymond Lulle), 1919. Zlatý triptych (The Golden Triptych), 1919. Legenda o Sodomovi (The Legend of Sodom), 1920. Legenda o ctihodné Marii Elektě z Ježíše (The Legend of the Venerable Maria Electa of Jesus), 1922. Barokové oltáře (Baroque Altars), 1922. Dafnino hoře (Daphne’s Grief), 1926. Genenda, 1928. Boží převozník (The Ferryman of God), 1928. Pražské Jezulátko (The Little Jesus of Prague), 1930. Plays Hořící duše (A Burning Soul), 1899. Apollonius z Tyany (Apollonius of Tyana), 1905. Sen o řísi krásy (Dream of the Empire of Life), 1907. Cesare Borgia, 1908. Král Rudolf (King Rudolf), 1915.
Critical, Theoretical, and Polemical Essay Collections Ideje zitřku: Henrik Ibsen-Walt Whitman (1894-1898) (Ideas of Tomorrow: Henrik IbsenWalt Whitman (1894-1898)), 1898. Renaissanční touhy v umění: Studie kritické 1893-1898) (Renaissance Longings in Art: Critical Studies 1893-1898), 1902. Impressionisté a ironikové: Dokumenty k psychologii literární generace let devadesátých: Kritické studie (Impressionists and Ironists: Documents on the Psychology of the Generation of the Nineties: Critical Studies), 1903. Chimaerické výpravy: Kritické studie (Chimerical Excursions: Critical Studies), 1906. Umění jako kritika života (Art as a Critique of Life), 1906. Anonymní dopisy čili affaira “pěti spisovatelův” (Anonymous Letters, or “The Affair of the Five Writers), 1910. Jan Neruda, 1911. Tvůrcové a epigoni (Creators and Epigones), 1927. Tryzna za básníkem Karlem Hlaváčkem (In Commemoration of the Poet Karel Hlaváček), 1930. Cesta mystická (The Mystical Way), 1932. Memoirs Ztracený raj (Lost Paradise), 1928. Vzpomínky (Memoirs), 1994. Translations English Lodge, Kirsten, tr. Solitude, Vanity, Night: An Anthology of Czech Decadent Poetry (Prague, 2008). Selected Poetry. Urban, Otto M. In Morbid Colours: Art and the Idea of Decadence in the Bohemian Lands 1880-1914. Prague, 2006. Several poems, poorly translated, scattered throughout this art history book. Vidal, A.F., tr. Genenda (s. l.), 1951.
Wilson, Paul, ed. Prague: A Literary Companion (San Francisco, 1995). Chapter 10 of A Gothic Soul. Spanish Ulbrich, Rolf, tr. La conversión de Raimundo Lulio. Mayurqa 5 (1971). http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Mayurqa/article/view/117498/148687 German Demetz, Peter and Marek Nekula, tr. Fin de siècle: tschechische Novellen und Erzählungen (Munich, 2004). The Legend of the Venerable Maria Electa of Jesus. Rothmeier, Christa, ed. Manfred Macmillens Roman. Die entzauberte Idylle: 160 Jahre Wien in der tschechischen Literatur (Vienna, 2004). http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/?arp=x-coll6dd25/s327-331_lvovic_roth.pdf Short excerpt from The Novel of Manfred Macmillen (translator not indicated).