Publication details
Pozdrav svobodné vlasti : diskursivní analýza Mahenovy básně reagující na 28. říjen 1918
| Title in English | Greetings to the free homeland : discursive analysis of a poem by Mahen written in response to the events of 28 October 1918 |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The text presents a discursive analysis of a single poem by Jiří Mahen published in direct connection with the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. After the analytical part of the discursive analysis, the text arrives at the central discursive model found in the poem under study. The constructed relationships between the actors of the poem are closest to life in an apiary (homeland), in which everything revolves around the queen-mother (mother-homeland as a personified homeland), with worker bees (faithful citizens), or even trumpeters (non-faithful citizens). "Bee mother (-own)" is in the center of all attention and at the same time occupies all the space claimed by us-group, ie Czechoslovaks or Czechs. This discursive model seems to be very advantageous in a situation where all the forces of the members of the I-Group need to be mobilized in favor of an emerging state that does not yet have clear borders or anchors in Europe, and whose future may be uncertain or problematic. Another function of this discursive model is to obscure real social contradictions within the we-group by emphasizing the common social interests of individual social strata, and of course the conflicts between them, by emphasizing a common national goal. The discursive model of the apiary with the queen-mother in the center thus had a clearly socially harmonizing (conservative) character. At the very center of the queen-mother, one can imagine contemporary political, economic and cultural elites with the dual role of leaders, ie those who are at the forefront of the struggle - in this case national for the nation state - but also those at the epicenter of survival as Elias Canetti thought of her in his book Mass and Power. The discourse of the apiary with the queen-mother in the middle - that is, with the leaders and elites - thus ultimately strengthens the privileged position of these elites and leaders, supplying them as queens-mothers nimbus donors and maintainers of the family sacrifice in the form of bodies as building material forming walls, behind which leaders or elites (longer) "survive". This in itself is a somewhat absurd, even grotesque, poem created by a former anarchist rioter. |