Literary periodicals

"Cultural" periodicals in the Czech Republic (and earlier in Czechoslovakia) have always been in thrall of the socio-political situation: along with historical developments the pendulum of their course has swung between periods of flowering and periods of stagnation. While Normalization under the Communist regime oversaw the publication of only a few literary periodicals − and these were heavily censored − and samizdat or "exile" periodicals were available to a very limited readership, the revolution of November 1989 brought in its wake a publishing boom. Periodicals previously banned began to appear legitimately; a range of titles from the 1960s was revived; the daily press devoted much attention to book production. It was not long, however, before many of these literary publications were defunct − this time for financial reasons; meanwhile, the dailies refocused in order to address the building preference in society for commercial culture. At a time when even the most widely respected cultural magazines were facing bankruptcy, it was mooted that all literary periodicals merge to form a single, state-subsidized publication. This plan to unify came to nothing; in fact, subsequent developments in the field made clear a need for greater diversification and plurality.

Since the 1990s a range of smaller periodicals − often of regional character - have come into being; these have reacted to the domestic literary trends of the time and provided a forum for new and established authors alike. There are several periodicals with nationwide coverage (e.g., Tvar, Host, Literární noviny) and a number of smaller, regional or special-interest journals, some of which suffer from inadequate distribution. (For a description of periodicals published solely on the internet, see elsewhere on this site.) Coverage of the arts in the dailies is gradually improving: once again they produce supplements for the arts and literature. (There was a long period during which Právo's Salon was the only such supplement to address contemporary literature.) Nowadays it is also possible to find interesting articles and reviews in magazines with a more general, current-affairs-based profile (e.g., Reflex, Respekt): these are not included in the digest below. There are also publications for a professional readership (e.g., Naše řeč [Our Language], Slovo a slovesnost [Language and Literature], Logos), which address literature via their own fields: these, too, are excluded from our digest for reasons of space. Nevertheless, the digest includes not only literary and literary-scholarly periodicals but also reviews with a more general profile whose meditations on literature we consider to be of value.

Jan Nejedlý