Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and Prague: Perspectives of Intellectual Entanglement

Wutsdorff, Irina

Abstract

The thematic block ‘Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and Prague: Perspectives of Intellectual Entanglement’ with contributions by Renate Lachmann (Konstanz), Josef Vojvodík (Praha),Irina Wutsdorff (Münster), Roman Mnich (Warszawa), Patrick Flack (Fribourg) and Maxim Demin (Bochum) goes back to a workshop with this title that took place at the Masaryk Institute and Archive of the CAS in Prague from 18–20 January 2024. The workshop focussed on Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and his stay in Prague (1924–1932) as an example of intellectual entanglement in 20th century Central Europe. When living in Prague, Čyževs’kyj was simultaneously involved in the Ukrainian and Russian émigré communities. He taught at the Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute as well as in the Ukrainian Free University and was a member of the Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society. At the same time, he participated in the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the Philosophical Society at the Russian Free University. Interwar Prague was a place of intercultural intellectual exchange and entanglement, where several traditions of thinking came together or were confronted with each other — a configuration which was true for differing political positions as well. Taking Čyževs’kyj’s involvement in intersecting communities in interwar-Prague as a starting point, the workshop combined literary theoretical and literary-historical as well as philosophical and philosophical-historical approaches to this phenomenon of intellectual entanglement.

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