Humanities and Modern Culture humanitas Spring 2003

The Field School and the Travel Study Award —Jerry Zaslove

In 2002 The Institute for the Humanities provided two stipends to assist humanities students to attend the Prague Field School. The program is organized through the Office of International and Exchange Student Services and the Humanities Department. In this eighth year of the credit program with Charles University, twenty students were resident in Prague for eight weeks of in-depth study of Central European culture, art and society. The program includes Keir Niccol courses in language, art history, film, literature and Shades of Apprehension political science. In two short essays, Tim Came and —Keir Niccol Keir Niccol— SFU undergraduates and recipients of Driving away from the airport and down an unnamed the stipends—reflect on aspects of their experience highway, more like a byway, the bus veers around a corner into what I surmise to be a suburb. Rolling down the small and their encounters with the contemporary road, I gape at the brown and tan stucco residences on European world and its legacies. Information about either side, trying to glean as much as possible from these first few, crucial moments of fatigue-filtered, jet-lagged this program can be obtained through the Office impression. Rounding the road’s arc, I glance to my left and of International and Exchange Student Services. notice a single slender figure atop a pillar. The pillar’s grey stone culminates in a same-coloured nymph, balancing in Information about the Travel Study Award can be a moment of stride upon one nimble, slight leg. A ribbon, obtained through the Institute for the Humanities. trapped against the motion of her chest, streams behind the figure’s torso, her arms rising above to push the moment—of victory, celebration, emancipation. In fact, it is not at all clear that it is a she; the form of the androgynous body’s willowy limbs plies the light air in a frozen moment of flight. The pillar passes from view, vanishing beneath rising fingers of flora scattered in the yard around the statue. The bus continues its meandering introduction to Prague’s streets, its welcome includes a shake shuddering up from thousands of cobblestones. Another corner, another trance-inducing vision atop the horizon—St. Vitus’s Gothic spires prick the sky, tearing the heavens into a soot black and brown stone cascade of crockets, gargoyles, bowing and falling priests, kings and peasants, all spilling from its rent. The cathedral, surreal and stunning in sudden rearing stasis, seems to be slowly rotating upon a dais, aging aspects appearing in full, each in turn. A moment imbued with old time expires, a new excitement occurs, belying even St. Vitus’s longevity. Jerry Zaslove and Prague Field School students at Rimov The building nears, then disappears, its four corners and in Sumova —“Stations of the Cross” sky-spearing spires are like pillars and pilings demanding eternity of their foundations.

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There is a path in the woods. It twists the essences of nature amidst the ‘Lesser Town’, the Prazkyhrad palace and breaks, sometimes forgetting achievement of ‘Man’ infused this forever descends from on high, at its splintered twigs in its wake. A stone movement. Soft and waif-like human centre the ancient heart, St. Vitus. This wall or bench mark distance. In the forms appeared like darkling visitations area of Prague has existed for over a dark, it’s more the filtering orange among the various other artful denizens millennium in some form or another. city glow that defines movement. The of Prague. St. Vitus was built during many years of path staggers between concrete and additions from the fourteenth century The androgynous, non-aggressive, yet broken stone dirt. To the left, walk two to the twentieth. As a monument, it still celebrated figures hundred forty metres. Looming black is less ambiguous in its intention to hearken to several enduring aspects metal on stone; the path widens like honour God than some of the more of Czech culture. First, a consistent a river skirting an obstinate boulder. obscure and camouflaged aspects of attention to convoluted and involved The moment of passing the bulk Prague monuments. Yet details are ornament: filigreed metal guardrails, lasts longer; it nearly appears but inevitably elided as only portions of spectral faces emerging from stones of slowly, immense with uncertainty. stories are told, and the great mass of many ages, building facades draped with Stepping back to perceive its whole, history remains absent from tourist spilling stone bouquets. The second, not stepping in water, I gaze in boroughs, fully satisfied with their concentrated incomprehension. The iconic representations of a city’s cultural trees’ shadows play across a heavy memory. Some systems of knowledge beard and fierce eyebrows. There As a monument, [St. Vitus] remain inherently arcane and allow are men moving in the forest some is less ambiguous in its us the Kafka-esque experience of distance away. intention to honour God than the blindness of negotiating cultural remnants without explanation. The Further along, descend left, then right some of the more obscure greatest historical legacies inevitably then left, a fence draws attention to and camouflaged aspects succumb to the future’s reduced and a sprawling palace. There are large, fabricated vision of the past. abundantly foliaged trees standing of Prague monuments. Yet like ponderous sentinels. Between details are inevitably elided Visitation and Reprise still shafts lurks a chimera—four legs as only portions of stories There are two places in Prague where beneath a tilting chassis. Golden and I returned numerous times. One is eastern European, the car is a Trabant. are told, and the great mass central, the other relatively peripheral Thousands of these were filled with of history remains absent —peripheral in the sense of lying on refugees of Communism—people from tourist boroughs, fully the historical outskirts of the old and fleeing East Germany after the curtain new towns, rather than miles from the fell on the era of ‘Normalization’. Legs satisfied with their iconic Centrum. Both places endure as crucial of emigration—automobiles only representations of a city’s sites of the tangible manifestation of ancillary to what still was a massive, cultural memory. the ’ cultural memory. One is human exodus to a mythologized frequented by thousands of visitors, west. the other is largely deserted. Both sites warrant a significant mention in any Catching (up) on History a refusal to engage in the aggressive account of local history, yet only one is Assigning some term to these symbols of domination, supremacy, presented to foreigners as representative monuments would come later; varied and imperialism so characteristic of of the city. These two locations carry descriptions of convictions gripped other major European centres. Instead, their own respective monuments, each in frozen forms, the eras traversed modestly proportioned structures containing a complex and contested by epochs elapsed—these and other culminate in a lowly undulating story, ostensibly commemorating the matters meted upon marble, granite red roof vista. A hundred spires rise same thing—the historical moment of and copper. I did not at first know but above the roofs of Prague, but never the . Yet a profound difference would soon understand the defining in a triumphal surge. The stewards of exists between the two. The former was qualities of the Art Nouveau style of Bohemia have long borne a humble the site of two monuments, one that painting, statuary, architecture and and beautiful creative urge. no longer remains, having been torn more. During the late nineteenth St. Vitus Cathedral is as much and more to the ground. The latter site contains century heyday of the Czech National to Prague than the ephemeral pillar one monument bearing at least two Revival, a general sense of prosperity angel. It is a different testament to the meanings merged in metal. and progress pervaded at least the creativity of this small Slavic nation. more affluent classes of Bohemia, Here, the weight of holy responsibility The first is Staromestske Namesti, Moravia, and Europe at large. The soaks the ancient stones. Angling the Old-Town Square, and the heart post-Romantic ideal of capturing down into the Mala Strana, Prague’s of Prague to many. 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seventeenth century, and the continued domination of Hapsburg hegemony. In A hundred spires 1918, following the announcement of the collapse of Hapsburg domination in the rise above the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a throng of Czechs took the square and toppled the column that had become a focal point of roofs of Prague, so much resentment. Both figures in the square occupied but never in a immensely important places in Czech consciousness. Both still signify as contested and intricate symbols triumphal surge. (the does continue to resound in the minds of some, The stewards of and its former base is still marked in the cobblestones of the square). However, the monuments’ more potent Bohemia have signification has at times overwhelmed the subtler points for some. The apparent contrast of Hus, representing long borne a

Photo by Eryn by Holbrook Photo the struggle against foreign rule, and the Statue on the , Prague. Marian Column, standing as a victorious humble and finger counting off centuries of rule, and most famous buildings—the Tyn constituted a disagreeable juxtaposition Church and another small medieval for the likes of Franta Kysela-Sauer and beautiful creative building with vaulted windows and Jan Hasek. In this instance, the major slanted façade, leaning upon the clash of significations could be resolved Palace—near by is ’s father’s through the demolition of the offending urge. store, the town hall and its Orlej—the element (whether the monument should astronomical clock. Dominating the have been destroyed and the importance to the Zizkov monument are a result centre of the square is the of leaving ‘offending’ vestiges as a of changing historical perspectives monument, sculpted by Ladislav Saloun memento mori of past regimes is an and ideologies, as is the case in Old- in 1915. It is an ovoid statue, with a altogether different discussion). Not all Town Square. Atop one of Prague’s number of figures in various postures, connotative contradictions are so easily prominent hills, a massive rider and generally surrounding the tallest and resolved. steed loom before a stark, mausoleum- most prominent figure of Jan Hus. The The Zizkov monument serves as my like building. Jan Zizka was the Hussite statue was erected to mark the 500th second place of intrigue. This site now army general who fought against the anniversary of the religious dissident’s sits outside the radius of frequent tourist encroaching Catholic Hapsburg forces death at the stake in Konstanz. Hus was a and native visits, though not because and won against all odds at Vitkov Hill. religious reformer and Czech nationalist, it is very far from the Centrum. Nearly Recognized later as a nationalist hero, and those surrounding him represent six hundred years ago, when the battle the Zizkov (combining his name and that other persecuted Czech nationals, of Vitkov Hill—as the mound was then of the hill) monument was conceived including those ruined during the Thirty called—occurred, it was on the outskirts during the time of the Czech First Years’ War two centuries later. of the, then, much smaller Prague. Republic, after 1918. It was to be erected Across from Hus, falling directly beneath Foreigners do not miss this location before the Second World War but was his gaze for three years, stood a ‘Pillar because of distance, although there is delayed for various reasons. Not until the of Our Lady’. Known as the Marian no easy way to access the hill from the communist government was in power Column, the monument was erected in direction of most tourist activity—only after 1948 did the monument, created 1650 to commemorate the victory of the a walk up a steep hill with no real by sculptor Bohumil Kafka years before, Hapsburgs’ ejection of the Swedes at the indication of what path to pursue. actually reach its current site. end of the Thirty Years’ War. However, in Likely, most foreigners do not reach this The great irony of the monument is that, time it gathered other layers of meaning. location because they are not directed though the figure of Zizka is recognized By the end of the nineteenth century, here by the local Czechs, who themselves in a similar way to Hus— defender many Czech nationalists perceived rarely visit it. of Czech national culture against an the pillar as a reminder of the stifling The reasons for the Czech aversion oppressive foreign hegemony —the of Czech nationalist culture in the Zizkov monument is not. When the – 59 – massive equestrian figure rose on the Humanities and Modern Culture

above Prague, it was accompanied Zizka sits astride his steed, bandage over it was possible to remove one of the by a number of aspects provided one eye and mace raised above head, vestiges. At Zizkov, the Czech and Soviet by the Communist regime. In fact, ready to charge Prague. Not far away ideological pasts are imprinted into the the entire place has the feel of a stands the massive television tower, also same edifice. It is impossible to tear one Communist cathedral, for in the erected by the Communists. This giant down without the other. There is irony conception of the site, a great deal grey finger points heavenward in an in the current perception of the Zizka was borrowed from the rich legacy absurd defiance of the rest of Prague’s monument. Zizka was as committed of Prague architecture. For example, low-lying, almost rural landscape. This to resisting Catholic hegemony as Jan on the doors of many European impression of a megalomaniacal urge to Hus was, albeit following the by-then cathedrals, panels of relief characters dominate the landscape, physical and prescribed Hussite ideology, rather than depict religious tales, or accounts mental, also resides within the Zizkov pursuing a radically new reformation like of the building of the cathedral, monument. Hus. Zizka was appropriated, along with or some pope’s coronation. The the Hussites in general, for the purposes ‘Communist Cathedral’ presents of legitimating Communist ideology. His a history from the Hussites to the figure became an icon of the dominant, Communists in square reliefs on the oppressive ideology for the Czechs. This great copper doors standing behind In the Old-Town Square, the is exactly what Zizka’s own idol, Hus, had the equestrian statue. The limited Jan Hus monument and the tried to challenge and that he himself view afforded a visitor indicates a contended. The question still remains, simple historical progression from Marion Column stared each however, whether it serves any positive the Catholic-fighting Hussites, other down for three years, end to destroy reminders of the past, to the events of the twentieth a juxtaposition of Czech even when they are painful. century leading to the installation of the Czech Communists, with and Hapsburg supremacy. Return and Reprise no account of the four hundred There it was possible to Asked to reflect upon my time in Prague, years in between. The Soviets had a remove one of the vestiges. I did not initially know how to respond. habit of invoking a highly reduced, Then, insight developed, arranging narrow view of history to legitimate At Zizkov, the Czech and a narrative of various refractions their presence in . Soviet ideological pasts are and angles of incidents to create a The building itself was initially imprinted into the same complete(r) story. Reflections of Prague proposed as a mausoleum for the means taking what was learned there remains of the ’s edifice. It is impossible to tear and holding it up against what surrounds first president T.G. Masaryk. It was one down without the other. me here, in Vancouver. I am now treating hijacked by Czech Communists, who the surrounding elements of , instead interned the mummified architecture, urban planning differently. remains of Communist leader Specific differences have been called Klement Gottwald (the first “workers’ to my attention in the ways ‘we’ and president”), no doubt a tip of the hat The monuments of Old-Town Square ‘they’ may view similar artifacts. In this to Lenin. and Zizkov ostensibly hearken back to particular moment, of course, it is ‘we,’ moments of Czech nationalist potency. the Vancouverites, ‘they’, the Czechs. In appropriating the figure of Zizka Yet their current import and the and constructing a monument respect each receives are very different. Vancouver has its local monuments—the covered with overtly Communist Hus was the ‘original’ dissident, cenotaph at Victory Square, some sentiment, the state created a highly predating even Martin Luther in his invisible or appropriated totem poles. conflicted cultural monument. work to reform the church, and holds Then, there is the Grandview Park Although the statue was originally a more powerful place in the Czech , and down at around 70th and conceived and assembled long imagination. However, this is hardly Oak, a nondescript park has pegged in its before the arrival of the Red Army, enough to eclipse the importance corner a small stone pyramid, solely to its location was meant as a shrine of Zizka, who took up the cause two bear a placard revealing the place as the to Communism. Many Czechs centuries later. Perhaps the answer is historical site of a ‘midden’. Present at associate Zizkov with this later in the different way the two places bear almost all of these and other monuments manifestation, rather than its the history of the cultures that have and statues in Vancouver, are plaques, original conception. Adding to the passed over Bohemia. In the Old-Town placards, written treatises remarking general convolution of sentiment Square, the Jan Hus monument and upon the commemorative moment is the overall size of the hilltop the Marion Column stared each other frozen in the bulk of stone an attentive memorial. A sense of aggression and down for three years, a juxtaposition of observer stands at the foot of. The text violent power exude from the site as Czech and Hapsburg supremacy. There may provide biographical information,

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dates and times, or recount some struggle, victory, loss, or advance. More undertaking alone. In a place such as long-since-invisible mark of a now- powerful is the interpretation of a thing Prague, the path to knowledge of a decimated society. How many of internalized by the viewer, rather than civilization’s customs and creations these monuments would make sense vaguely recalled or always confronted winds and often forks. Choosing to to me without their attendant text? anew upon observing an educational pursue one avenue of cultural memory How much do I understand of them placard. ultimately leads back to another intrigue anyway? Living always around them, briefly avoided. The journey is never local statues tend to blend into the Continuing Footprints dull, but frequently bewildering because urban scenery: while easy landmarks The city of Prague has been called a of the sheer amount of historical weight for meeting, they seldom sustain “shrine to complexity.” Passing through that resides within each artifact, piece of topics of conversation. the region once contained by the ancient architecture, or monument. city walls, a visitor encounters an There are many, many more statues When the residents of Prague walk out of overwhelming array of cultural stimuli. and monuments in Prague than the Centrum on Vitezna Ulice, over the Embarking upon an understanding Vancouver. Stumble down one Legii Bridge and into Mala Strana, they of a foreign culture is an immense corner, round a square or up and recognize several levels of signification alley, there’s bound to be some errant in the recently installed “Memorial to stone countenance peering after you. the Victims of Communism” by Olbram Public space abounds in a way never Zoubek. The monument is located very understood in modern urban Canada, The monument is merely a close to a portion of the ‘Hunger Wall’, and in every square is a central figure, decorative stopper atop the commissioned by Charles IV in the fountain, or other forget-me-not. Next past’s decanter. Of course, fourteenth century. (The King ordered to the sheer abundance of ornate the extensive town wall constructed stonework, the most noticeable virtually none of the tourists during a time of poverty, when the extra difference—perhaps aside from in this highly visited region of work helped a legion of languishing basic stylistic considerations—is the Prague know more than one labourers. The name derives from the absence of edifying accompaniments. necessity from which the wall arose, While there may be some epitaph or two of the palimpsest layers and the malaise it countered.) A large scrawled (warning of the folly of in any public edifice. Perhaps Soviet Star, prior to the fall of the Eastern abandonment, betrayal, and strife), this leaves the statues open to Bloc, was set directly upon the site of nothing is provided of the knowledge the current monument. Nearby is the necessary to comprehend the figures more interpretation. city hall, once surrounded by Russian before one, their proximity and pose tanks, emblematic of the Stalinistic relative to one another, and all other Communism dominating the city and possible historical, lyrical, or mystical considerations. But the Czechs do not ignore their city, or its history. Rather than indicating a loss of knowledge, the absence of explicatory placards testifies to the higher general level of cultural memory common among the Czechs. The dearth of textual footnotes marks the expectation that position, form, content, and the stories of each monument will be known by those to whom the monuments should signify— namely, Czechs qua Czechs. The stone-still stolen moments of history laboriously erected in Prague were not conceived as drawing cards for the tourist set. Monuments bear immense import; hailing the ever- present population of the place they are immersed in, demanding that the Eryn by Holbrook Photo mind return once again to that site of A street in Prague.

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nation. Zoubek has a style of sculpture allows for the appearance of clearer widely recognized in the Czech Republic. schisms and ruptures in meaning. It Another level The touches of Giacometti and Rodin is appropriate that there be, for the can be felt in the disfigured cast of the Czechs, a greater awareness of the of meaning memorial’s five figures. duplicity of history, of victory and the dominance of aggressor states and Zoubek began a rise to prominence as their ideologies. In Sabine’s paintings always an adversary of the soon-to-be-toppled in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Soviet regime; his work signified the Lightness of Being, another level of emergent force of a people in slow revolt. meaning always emerges through the emerges Ten years later, he takes commissions Czechs’ stories of their statues. from banks and is counted by some as ‘too popular’ (mainly by the academics— through the always the ones to niggle over fine points). These and other questioned and Czechs’ stories questionable aspects of the sculpture are considered and are factored into the reality that not everyone who lived of their statues. in Prague under Communism wants a statue commemorating the victims of Communism. For some, it dredges up old hurts, opens willfully buried wounds. And perhaps not everyone is convinced to the same degree that Communism is the Antichrist—after all, a quarter of Czech voters elected a Communist parliamentarian in the 2002 election. All or some of these factors are known by Czechs and, with the exception of the first point, often experienced first hand. Internalization is not necessarily something that needs to be worked upon; living through some history is enough to generate sediment that will collect internally. The monument is merely a decorative stopper atop the past’s decanter. Of course, virtually none of the tourists in this highly visited region of Prague know more than one or two of the palimpsest layers in any public edifice. Perhaps this leaves the statues open to more interpretation. Maybe even the Czechs never settle on only one interpretation of their own memories. This is not so different from the conflicted understanding of symbols that occurs in North American society. Except, perhaps, the lesson appears in stark contrast in Prague due to the marked difference of the Soviet and Hapsburg ideologies from the Czech. The loud discrepancies between political world views, next to the comparative invisibility of ideology in North America,

Keir Niccol and Tim Came

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