Die entzauberte Idylle.

The anthology Die entzauberte Idylle. 160 Jahre Wien in der tschechischen Literatur (The idyll deprived of its magic: 160 years of Vienna in Czech literature) was put together as part of a project following the publication of Wien als Magnet. Schriftsteller aus Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa über die Stadt (Vienna as a magnet: Writers from Eastern, Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe on Vienna), ed. by Gertraud Marinelli-König and Nina Pavlova, Austrian Academy of Sciences Publishing House, Vienna 1996. The publication looks at the more recent Czech literature from the first half of the 19th century to the 1990s and covers works in which Vienna is a theme. The overall aim was to reconstruct the Czechs` idea of Vienna and its transformation over the decades on the basis of works by the most renowned Czech writers and to juxtapose and question it - within the available space - with texts by less prominent authors and authentic biographical descriptions. Despite a considerable heterogeneity of the material both in genre and in length, a text corpus with quite coherent themes and motifs emerged in which objective reproaches raised against Vienna on the basis of personal experiences of unjust treatment - discrimination on nationalistic and social grounds - as well as emotional projections were balanced with their respective relativizations. The text corpus consists of novels, travel accounts, poetry, memoirs and literary articles and also contains samples of a naive and folkloristic literature written partly pro domo. Differences in length were deliberately accepted in order to develop and bring out the Czechs` idea of Vienna in as many facets as possible and with respect to the most different walks of life and social strata. The text excerpts by a total of 40 writers appear, with few exceptions, in chronological order and are all preceded by short biographies and a characterization of the author`s work. A critical apparatus containing notes for further reference completes the book. For the information of - mainly Czech - readers not familiar with Viennensia, topographic references were generally commented on. In her preliminary remarks, the editor analyses the reception of Vienna in Czech literature in its entire range, from the point of both a literary critic and a literary historian, bringing it into perspective before the background of cultural history. The study A Historical Look at Czech Vienna by Monica Glettler provides an introduction to the social historical aspects. By examining Vienna as a topos, this anthology constitutes (from the Czech point of view) a contribution to imagology. It reveals the process of formation and retraction of stereotypes and furnishes valuable insights into the social historical problems of foreign immigrants coming to look for work as well as into the problems of integration in a historic perspective. Since it concerned with reviewing and reappraising a chapter of history as well as of literary history that has remained largely unknown and certainly unreflected in Czech thought, it can also be considered a contribution to improved mutual understanding between the two nations. From a comparatistic perspective, the anthology gives insight into themes which are quite specific to Vienna but have been largely left aside in Austrian literature although Czechs constituted a high percentage of the Vienna population until 1918.