Lesní eseje

by Josef Kroutvor

Eseje a texty z česko-rakouského pomezí a Šumavy.

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2019

Reviews

[Bára Hudečková · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tuhle knížku jsem si rok šetřila a četla jí po kouskách. Pocta Novohradským horám (a trochu i Šumavě), umělcům, co tu tvořili, lidem, co tu žili, přírodě, lesům, kopcům. Stesk a smutek nad tím, že krajina kvůli vysídlení zpustla a odešli lidi, kteří k ní měli vztah. Genius loci popsán tak dobře, že knížka přímo vybízí k tomu vyrazit na všechny ty místa. Hodnocení možná ovlivněno tím, že místa znám z dětství a jsem z jihu Čech, ale tím spíš bych tam hned jela zase!

[Zuzana Kolouchova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hned po prvních stránkách jsem měla jasno - letos na čundr jedu do Novohradskejch hor. Četla jsem bez dechu ty eseje, útržky z autorova chození po horách, po zaniklých místech, po zničený zemi kolem bývalý hraniční čáry, po lesích okolo, který jsou zatím nezničený a srdce mi divně bušilo. Takovej ten pocit, kdy víte, že je něco správný a spřízněný. Hodně krásný úvahy i příběhy. Už koukám do map kudyma by to šlo, nervózní z objevení něčeho tak blízkýho, co zatím neznám.

[Michal Pivarči · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All that remains of the old Šance is the huge stone wall that once gave the settlement its name. Each stone had to be picked up by a man and placed with the others, to find a suitable place for it. This wall, now moss-covered and blending into the forest, was built over generations. And it was not a wall against anyone, it was not built by Germans against Czechs or by Czechs against Germans, even though it lies on the border. The stones were carried out of the fields by people to plant a few rows of potatoes and oats.

What is missing is the courage to remember, the desire to tell stories, the old inns and roads that lead somewhere. Not hiking trails, not roads, but paths that take us through a living landscape. What is missing are the landlords who would restore the character of the cultural landscape to the Nové Hrady (Gratzen) borderlands. There is a lack of awareness of tradition and context, a lack of holy columns and chapels, a lack of respect for human work and home."

--

The extraordinarily beautiful Czech-Austrian border has a special place on my world map, comparable perhaps only to the Czech-Moravian border and its Litomyšl. And if it didn't, this unedited collection of essays, poems, and memories would make me want to go there as soon as possible and fall in love with it. It is a tribute to Novohradské hory (the Gratzen Mountains), Vitorazsko (Weitraer Gebiet) and Šumava (the Bohemian Forest), their ancient and recent, Czech and German, but in any case disappeared, inhabitants and artists, Váchal, Klosterman, Stifter, Kubin.

And it is also a longing for the vanished places and for the old times before the war, before the displacement, before the decay, demolition and desolation, when only nature remained, beautiful indeed, but without the spirit of what the old farmers took with them. It is there that Sláma's film Shadow Country (Krajina ve stínu) takes place, and it is ultimately the passages about our Germans' last glimpse of their home that are the most powerful. When Wenzel Jaksch, to whom we owe so much, looks across the Iron Curtain in Nové Hrady (Gratzen) borderlands around 1960 to the places of his youth, he sees only destruction and decay. A few years later, Johannes Urzidil, our precious native, does not recognise his once beloved Šumava (the Bohemian Forest) and finds only a wild and disappearing landscape.

--

"It is a misconception that the closure of the border area has helped nature and given it peace to develop on its own. The soldiers have done more harm than good, they have not protected, cared for or had any relationship with the landscape. The forbidden area had been turned into an isolated piece of landscape or a training ground. The landscape accompanies man and he can treat it well or badly. Wilderness, too, is a cultural concept and should not be confused with a wild and neglected landscape. Absolute wilderness does not exist in Europe; the border forests of Nové Hrady and Šumava were co-created by man - he cleared, built roads, planted avenues and spruce forests, and created landscapes.

Boulders, scrubland, marshy pastures, flood-damaged floodplains, nooks and crannies overgrown with nettles have nothing in common with wilderness. The wild, as the wilderness advocate David Thoreau wrote about it, deserves respect, but the uncultured, pillaged military landscape inspires only pity and a sense of bewilderment. One only has to look to neighbouring Waldviertel to see the difference! We can hardly consider the managed Austrian border landscape to be artificial; the balance between human activity and nature is maintained here. On the Czech side, we admire as 'wilderness' a certain jocular charm in the chaos of unnaturally human places.

[...] The Novohradské hory, like other places in the Czech borderlands, is a landscape marked by historical trauma, nationalism and ideology. In this landscape, it is necessary to be silent, to respect the traces of former settlements and to think. The remnants of vanished villages and solitudes are part of this forbidding landscape and should not be destroyed and removed like our bad conscience. The memory of the landscape is much deeper than the memory of man; the past cannot be erased from the memory of the land, as we have seen over the past many decades..."

[Blanka Novotná · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tohle je krásná kniha a natrefila jsem na ní v samoobslužné prodejní knihobudce kdesi mezi Dobrou Vodou a Horní Stropnicí při našem prvním čundru v Novohradských horách. Znamení! V knížce jsou krátké i dlouhé eseje, příběhy z Novohradských hor, trochu i Šumavy, mnoho historie a vzpomínek na dobu Bukvojů i zavřené hranice. Je to nasáklý melancholií a já jsem jen brouzdala po mapě a koukala na všechny ty místa, co jsou v knížce popsány. A chci tam na čundr znovu a taky chci prozkoumat rakouskou stranu, všechny ty vesničky a kostelíky. Vlastně mě to přivedlo na myšlenku, že bych si před každým čundrem měla přečíst nějakou knížku z toho kraje a pak to putování bude ještě mnohem zajímavější.

[Marta Pelagia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tahle kniha me spolehlive dostala. Nadherne obrazy Novohradskych hor, poetika, smutek i pokoj.
Moc moc jsem ji chtela nedocist :-)
Clovek se dozvi nejen o prirode, ale i o lidech, co tam zili, jejich zvycich a radostech. Jejich remeslech.
Vrele doporucuji.