The first volume of the Nota Bene series is the book Stůňu touž nemocí. Julius Zeyer a Jan Lier v zrcadle vzájemných dopisů/I am Ailing with the Same Illness. Julius Zeyer and Jan Lier as reflected in their letters (ed. Petra Ježková). The compilation of letters from 1883–1900 is a unique testimony, essentially completing the image of the social, cultural and artistic milieu in the Czech lands in the late 19th century. It depicts the deep friendship of two artists, intellectuals and sceptics with the vocabulary of their self-reflection – malcontents.
Discontentment and annoyance altered with a despondent descent of both friends are not only the signs of their sensitive and critical personalities; artistic self-stylization in the role of lonesome fighters, which helped them identified with the image of a romantic artist-expatriate, is typical for the generation of Czech literary parnasism resisting the parallel onset of realism and naturalism in art. The correspondence also proves that they were not isolated backgrounds as it is listed in simplified textbook constructs. In this regard, the relationship of both writers (and of Zeyer, in particular) to Zola, or Ibsen, is symptomatic.
Shared despect for contemporary moralistic, narrow-minded and nationalist criticism, which found a new epicenter in Moravia in the eighties, does not say anything about the lack of national awareness of neither respondent. Just on the contrary, their uncompromisingly anti-Habsburg attitudes is yet another contribution to the complicated image of the times then. Zeyer calls the affiliation to Austria, which was committed to people’s memory by journalism, the “illness as disgusting as syphilis.” The shared focus of the correspondence is Vienna as a quintessence of all kinds of affiliation to Austria as well as the loyal attitude of the Czech political and cultural representation and the pro-Habsburg character of Czech celebrations and institutions. The collision between the ideological understanding and pragmatic deeds also applies to the writer (mostly Lier, who is less dependent economically and socially).
The same applies to the escalated criticism of the Czech National Theatre as it is described in the letters until one of the writers becomes jointly responsible as the dramaturge of the National Theatre. Then we can trace the mutual change in the relationship between the National Theatre and Zeyer – playwright.
The book was compiled and edited by Petra Ježková, additional essays were written by Michal Fránek, P. Ježková and Eva Stehlíková; illustrated by Petr Štefek.
The book has been published by the Arts and Theatre Institute as its 724th publication.
ISBN 978-80-7008-392-5, 304 pages.
