Bude třeba vrátiti vás pozemským barvám,
rozestříti nad vámi duhu,
dáti vám jít po kobercích Východu,
opojiti vás krví růží zrozených v ranní rose,
rozlíti do vašich snů omamnou vůni,
rozezníti kolem vás vlnění hudeb
a dáti pít vašim rtům nápoj temných hroznů,
jenž uzrál v ohni poledních sluncí. [1]
Writer and literary critic Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (1871 - 1951) is known in the Slovak art community mainly as a collector of works of art. Some readers may also recall his poetry collections, literary works or journalistic texts for the Czech magazine Moderní revue. However, much less is said about the fact that during his lifetime he became a symbolic support for people with homosexual orientation and later also for the First Republic movement for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Czechoslovakia - for the so-called minorities.
When the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was on trial in 1895 for “sodomy,” Karásek was one of the few people in the Czech lands to publicly defend him. Thirty-six years later, Jana Mattuschová, editor of the magazine Hlas sexuální menšiny, called him “the father of the movement” and “the first fighter.”[2]
Minority Aristocrat
Jiří Karásek ze Lvovice, whose real name was Josef Karásek, was born into a poor bourgeois family in Smíchov, Prague. After graduating from high school, he began studying theology, but did not finish his studies and took a job as a postal clerk. Literature attracted him already during his high school years. Later, together with his high school classmate Arnošt Procházka, he founded the magazine Moderní revue (1894), focused primarily on Czech and French decadent works.[3]
The modern review wanted to write openly about topics that contemporary society had pushed to the margins. Sexuality was undoubtedly one of them. The young authors around the magazine – among them later readers Otokar Březina and SK Neumann – spoke out against conservative morality and social hypocrisy. Karásek contributed poems, prose and essays to the review and co-edited it until its demise in 1925.
The epithet “from Lvovic”, with which he began to sign his name, was supposed to indicate his alleged aristocratic origin. Karásek claimed to be a descendant of the mathematician and astronomer Cyprián Karásek Lvovický ze Lvovic (1524–1574) from the Králové Hradec family, from whom, according to his own words, he also inherited “a poetic longing for the stars”. However, a direct genealogical relationship has not been proven. The epithet can therefore also be read as a gesture of self-stylization: as a way in which Karásek emphasized his own uniqueness and distance from the mediocrity against which decadent modernity so often defined itself.[4]
When he defended Oscar Wilde
The trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895 ended with a sentence of two years of hard labor. The Czech public became more familiar with Wilde and his work through his "affair"; until then he was not very well known in this environment. The scandal also opened the topic of homosexuality in a way that was mostly condemnatory and moralizing. The press wrote about Wilde in the spirit of the ideas of the time: it called him a "depraved beast" and used his "sodomic behavior" as evidence of the artist's alleged moral decline.
In his Memoirs , Karásek admitted that he had a hard time bearing the way Czech magazines wrote about Wild. He decided to react precisely through the Modern Revue : "And I suggested to Procházka that we negotiate satisfaction for the spat on poet, at least among the youth, when the entire Czech public was already angry against Wilde. I therefore suggested that the Modern Revue could publish an entire special issue dedicated to Oscar Wilde. Procházka agreed very willingly and together we edited this sensational issue in June 1895."[5]
The publication of this defensive issue was courageous not only literary but also personal. Karásek himself belonged to the homosexual minority. At a time when homosexual intercourse could be punished as "fornication against nature", he publicly defended a person persecuted for a similar accusation.[6] Moderní revue thus entered Wilde's cause not only as a literary magazine, but also as a space for defending the identity and dignity of the individual.
The dispute over ethics and the right to one's own nature
Wilde's issue of Moderní revue contained Wilde's essay "The Decline of Deception", the first translation of Wilde into Czech, and several defenses on the topic of homosexuality. The issue also included a polemic with an article in the magazine Naša doba , signed under the pseudonym Sursum. It later turned out that its author was Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the future president of the first Czechoslovak Republic. In the text, Masaryk described homosexuality as "paederasty" and "shit" contrary to reason and moral laws. According to him, such acts belonged to privacy. In Wilde's case, however, he argued, private life was reflected in a literary work and its publication brought the "perversion" to the public.[7]
Karásek and Moderní revue opposed this "abstract ethics" with the idea of ethics that should not be dictated from above. It should be based on the "purest being" of man - that is, on what the First Republic minorities later called a natural constitutional characteristic. If homosexual feelings cannot be changed or cured, and if the love act between two adults does not harm anyone, it should not be punished either. Karásek also warned that the criminalization of homosexuality creates room for blackmail. The article could be abused not only against homosexual people, but also against those who were not homosexual, but could be destroyed by the accusation. These arguments were repeatedly repeated three decades later in Hlas sexual menšiny, the first Czechoslovak magazine focused on the queer community of the First Republic.
Exiles of Love
The magazine Hlas sexuální menšiny began publishing in Prague in 1931. Its goal was to defend the interests of "sexual minorities", eliminate prejudices about homosexuality, achieve the abolition of the section punishing homosexual intercourse, and overall "fight for the rights and recognition of sexual minorities."[8]
When Karásek won the State Prize for Literature in 1931, the December issue of Hlas was dedicated to his personality and work. It brought his memories of the creation of Wilde's Moderní revue issue and a selection of poems with homoerotic motifs. Jana Mattuschová (1906 - 2000), writing under the pseudonym sigma, praised him in the article "The First Fighter" for "the unwavering courage with which he embarked on the fight for what others can only despise". On this occasion, the publisher Ján Hladký also recalled the moment when Karásek visited a homosexual establishment after the presentation of the State Prize: "A new arrival enters. 'Master Karásek', murmuring from mouth to mouth. He is the center of attention, congratulators flock to express their joy at the awarding of the State Prize to the Master to this day."[9]
In the homosexual community, Karásek was already a positive role model during his lifetime. Other articles in Hlasa also wrote about him in a similar way . Slovak civil servant and editor of the magazine Imrich Matyáš (1896 - 1974) noted in his memoirs that Karásek "fearlessly and openly stood up for the rights of homosexual love". For the people associated around the movement, this had an encouraging meaning: they felt that they were not alone in their efforts and that they had support in a personality that was also recognized by the wider cultural public.[10]
This symbolic dimension was especially important for the younger generation. For them, Karásek became not only a literary authority, but also proof that a homosexual person can create, think, defend himself and demand dignity in public.
Friendship: community instead of isolation
From 1932, Karásek joined the editorial staff of the magazine, which was already published under the name Nový hlas . He also figured in the preparatory committee of the Czechoslovak League for Sexual Reform. Its ambition was to approach issues of human sexuality based on modern scientific knowledge, not prejudice and moral condemnation.
In the same year, he became chairman of the educational association Přátelství. The association was established for people who, for various reasons, did not have their own family background, and was supposed to be a place where "we will be one big family by ourselves". He organized lectures, theater performances, dance parties and trips for members of the homosexual community. On March 13, 1932, the members of the association also viewed Karásek's collection of paintings; Karásek himself provided them with an expert explanation.[11]
In addition to theme evenings, networking events and a cultural program, the association also held Karásek lectures. However, the successful beginning was soon followed by a lull. It can be assumed that there was more interest in social and entertainment events than in the regular organizational work that the association's life required.
Nevertheless, Karásek already in 1932 perceived a significant social shift in the position of the homosexual minority in Czechoslovakia. This was contributed to by educational activities, the greater visibility of the movement and undoubtedly also Karásek as a literary and intellectual authority. However, the expected reform in the legal field did not take place. The article punishing homosexual intercourse was not abolished.
At the end of the 1930s, the well-established networks of educational homosexual associations in Europe were disrupted by World War II. Even post-war Czechoslovakia did not bring immediate change: the new criminal law of 1950 continued to punish same-sex intercourse. Karásek did not live to see the abolition of general criminalization of homosexuality in Czechoslovakia. He died in Prague in 1951 of pneumonia, almost forgotten.[12]
However, its significance does not disappear from this story. Karásek remains important not only as a decadent author, collector and literary critic, but also as a person who, in a time of legal and social threat, opened up space for a different language about love, dignity and minority. The rainbow in his poem was not just a decoration. It was an attempt to return to people the colors that society denied them.
Literature
Lishaugen, Roar. "The uncertain season of other literature. The fate of the Voice of the Sexual Minority magazine." In: History and the present, no. 12, 2007. Available at: http://dejinyasoucasnost.cz/archiv/2007/12/nejista-sezona-jine-literatury-/
Seidl, Jan. From the dungeon to the altar. Emancipation of homosexuality in the Czech lands from 1867 to the present. Brno, 2012.
"Jiří Karásek from Lvovice: Memories. An unusual look at well-known and forgotten personalities of Czech decadence." Available at: https://vltava.rozhlas.cz/jiri-karasek-ze-lvovic-vzpominky-neobvykly-pohled-na-zname-i-zapomenute-8403578
Footnotes
- An excerpt from Karásek's poem "To the Exiles of Love" from the collection Sexus Necans (1897) about the experience of love among homosexual people.
- Lishaugen, Roar. Uncertain season of other literature. The fate of the magazine Hlas seksualnošiny. In: History and the present, no. 12, 2007 [online, cit. 8 October 2021]. Available at: http://dejinyasoucasnost.cz/archiv/2007/12/nejista-sezona-jine-literatury-/
- In 1921 he became director of the library of the Ministry of Posts and director of the Postal Museum and Archives in Prague.
- Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic: Memories. An unusual look at well-known and forgotten personalities of Czech decadence [online, cit. 11 October 2021]. Available at: https://vltava.rozhlas.cz/jiri-karasek-ze-lvovic-vzpominky-neobvykly-pohled-na-zname-i-zapomenute-8403578
- Cited by: Seidl, Jan. From the dungeon to the altar. Emancipation of homosexuality in the Czech lands from 1867 to the present. Brno, 2012, p. 83.
- In the Criminal Code of 1852, which applied to the territories falling under the Habsburg Monarchy, including the Czech lands, homosexual relations were covered in Sections 129 b) and 130. According to them, homosexual relations fulfilled the essence of the crime of "fornication against nature" and the punishment was a heavy prison sentence of one to five years.
- It is not clear why Masaryk, known for his progressive views on feminism and his efforts to point out several “discords” in Czech society, including anti-Semitism, took a less liberal stance on other variants of human sexuality. Based on his argument, it seems that he did not have deeper professional knowledge on the subject. It remains questionable whether his position changed over time and to what extent he would have entered into further, qualitatively different polemics with representatives of the First Republic movement for the decriminalization of homosexuality. See: Seidl, cited work, pp. 81–83.
- Seidl, Jan. From the dungeon to the altar. Emancipation of homosexuality in the Czech lands from 1867 to the present. Brno, 2012, p. 501.
- Ibid., pp. 86–87.
- Manuscript memoirs of Imrich Matyáš, private archive of the author.
- Seidl, Jan. From the dungeon to the altar. Emancipation of homosexuality in the Czech lands from 1867 to the present. Brno, 2012, p. 205.
- The general criminalization of homosexuality in Czechoslovakia was abolished in 1961.
