COURAGE

connecting collections

The novel “The Invalid Siblings” (Invalidní sourozenci, 1974) is one of the most important works by the Czecho-Slovak poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and “guru” of the Czechoslovak underground, Egon Bondy (real name Zbyněk Fišer, 1930–2007). Marcel Strýko, a Slovak philosopher and dissident, compared the dystopian novel to “a catechism of the Czechoslovak underground”. The novel, which was completed in February 1974, presents a vision of the moral and ecological crisis of a totalitarian society in the distant future. The plot takes place around the year 2600 on the last piece of land surrounded by rubbish. After this last area is also flooded, only the “invalids” (intellectuals, outcasts from totalitarian society, reminiscent of underground dissidents) survive on an improvised raft. The sequel to “The Invalid Siblings” was Bondy’s novel “Afghanistan”, written in 1980. At first “The Invalid Siblings” was published in 1974 as a samizdat volume. The novel was also published in exile by Sixty-Eight Publishers in Toronto in 1981. After 1990, the novel was published several times in (the former) Czechoslovakia. The novel has also been published abroad.

A manuscript of the novel was bought by the Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) in 1986 and is now part of the Egon Bondy collection deposited in the Literary Archive of PNP.

Bovver boots, which Renata Przemyk wore during her performance on stage in 1989 at Jarocin festival, are the artist’s donation for the Polish Rock Granary. This type of footwear has become an iconic element of Jarocin image and was adopted by Polish rock fans as a symbol of dissent and rebellion. Although usually associated with punk apparel, bovver boots were used frequently outside this milieu, as illustrated by the case of Renata Przemyk who had little to do with punk music.

Born in 1966 Renata Przemyk started her career in her teens in Eksperyment and Rewizja jazz-rock bands. In 1988 she had her first performance at the 24^th Festival of Students’ Songs in Cracow, and a year later at the same festival she won with her band Ya Hozna the Grand Prix and the journalists’ award. After that she was invited to perform at Jarocin, where she has been twice before – in 1984 and 1985 – as a participant. Her performance proved to be a huge success: the punk audience reacted enthusiastically, as the band used accordion, double bass, and a style quite unlike any other regular performer at the festival. This concert marked a breakthrough for Renata Przemyk’s future career.

The Polish Rock Granary dedicated particular attention to the role of women in the history of Polish rock music. Without question Przemyk is one of the most prominent Polish alternative rock stars of the 1980s. Simultaneously, the bovver boots she donated also remind of the particular importance of fashion in youth culture of the late 1980s, which involved searching for unique garments in markets and bazaars, as well as modifying cloths and sewing i.e. crafts that allowed to create one’s own, individual, and original look.

This recording shows Vladimír Boudník and his friends in an associative play on destroyed walls of Prague, completing stains in plaster with his drawings. The film was shown at a number of underground events even after Boudník’s death. The film was shot by Jaromír Pergler. The transfer to VHS was created in the 1990s. Since then, the film has been shown in the permanent exposition of Czech art in the National Gallery in Prague. The original reel is missing.

The manuscript of the article deals with Brandt's reminiscences on his role in composing and signing of Declaration on the Name and Status of Croatian Language in March 1967. He described the anxiety among the leaders of Matica Hrvatska when the text of the Declaration had been published. Besides his own role in this matter, he also stressed that Matica Hrvatska liberated itself from the secret policy in the time of the so-called liberalization of Titoism in the 1960s. From Brandt's point of view, the central personality of Declaration was Professor Ljudevit Jonke, who worked in the Croatian Language Department at the Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb. In the end, Brandt recounted the destiny of Declaration’s creators, who were expelled from Croatian scholarly and cultural life just as he was him after the suppression of the Croatian Spring in 1971.

Brandt already wrote this manuscript in 1986. In the introduction to its public publication after democratic changes in Croatia in 1990, he described the political and social circumstances which prompted him to write this text. Namely, he felt that it was necessary to adequately respond to Serbian intellectuals from the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts and their “Memorandum,” which called for the transformation of Yugoslavia into the centralized state under the control of its largest federal member, the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Brandt then attempted to propose an initiative to the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts in Zagreb so that it would respond to the Belgrade “Memorandum” and publish it in the media. However, Brandt did not find any collaborators there for this initiative, so that he began to write a line-by-line critical response to the postulates set forth in the “Memorandum.” His essay, under the title “Antimemorandum,” written in 1986, could not appear publicly until 1990, for Brandt thought that if he dared to publish it in the Socialist Republic of Croatia of the time, such a move could have led to his arrest. 

This review was written after January of 1970, when the Central Committee of League of Croatian Communists attacked the unitarism of Miloš Žanko, who, in the Serbian newspaper Borba, characterized the entire activities of Matica Hrvatska as “chauvinistic nationalism.” Brandt dissociated himself from Žanko's objections, remarking as the vice-president of Matica Hrvatska that its members and organizations did not waver in their belief in “democratic and self-management socialism,” nor forsake the struggle for “the equality, brotherhood and unity of the Yugoslav people.” Brandt's generation wanted to exploit the reforming momentum of socialism from the end of the 1960s, to promote the Croatian national movement and the renaissance of national culture in the context of the one-party dictatorships and the ideological monopoly of Communist party. 

Gábor Klaniczay traveled to Paris for the first time in 1967, when he spent one year in the city. This journey was followed by more. During his travels, he collected an array of different material: leaflets, proclamations, and posters about alternative cultural life and student movements. These documents reveal the kind of ideas, trends, performances, and exhibitions he was interested in at the time. This particular item is a leaflet of Bread and Puppet Theater’s performance in Paris, entitled “Notre résurrection américaine.”