Existence a ten, kdo omdlívá ve V(v)ěci Makropulos, Tažení stínů (moderny) a v Duchu (středoevropské) země // Existence and He, Who Faints at The Makropulos Affair, The Campaign of Shadows (Modernism) and The Spirit of the (Central European) Land

Abstract

This study is concerned with the swooning as one of the characteristic motifs of modernism, arising from a period of reflexive attention. First it will examine this in the dramas of Arthur Schnitzler Zug der Schatten and Frank Wedekind’s Erdgeist, then will turn to the demarcated realm of Central European Modernism (with support from Moritz Csáky’s characterization of Zentraleurope) as located in the works of Karel Čapek. Janáček’s libreto The Makropulos Affair comments on the basic polemics in whose background are shown the crucial importance of the motif of fainting in the overall construction of Čapek’s early works.