Archives R Us

Shawn and I had made plans, some time back, to wade through the uncatalogued papers of one of the big Communist cultural figures together. We weren't sure what we would find, and there were over 80 boxes to deal with, but the Archiv AV ČR had kindly granted him access to them and he persuaded the archivist that I be allowed along on this adventure, so today was my introduction to this archive and fond.
As it happened, not only did we find a nice stash of E.F. Burian materials (not, perhaps, urgently needed for either of our dissertations, but interesting all the same), and a gigantic pile relating to the sainted Julius Fučík (he who once had a Metro station named after him; I am inclined to think that, considering he was murdered by the Nazis and did not personally perpetrate totalitarian offenses, the Metro station could have kept his name), but a thick mass of stuff relating to Nezval, which included an envelope of items relating to his 1938 attempt to dissolve the Prague surrealist group.
While I had seen some of the news clippings in their original settings, I had not seen the Rudé Pravo coverage nor some of the other items. It was pretty exciting.
More Nezval memorabilia awaits me tomorrow, along with whatever lurks in box 8.

Filed under:
Prague Czech Nezval surrealism research