Manuscripts of Czech writers and records of their plight at the hands of state security police in the former Czechoslovakia are on display at the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) as part of the Contemporary Czech Literature Exhibition.
The exhibition, titled “Typewriters Can Also Sing,” is a collaboration among the NMTL, the Museum of Czech Literature and other cultural institutions in the Czech Republic. It features rarely seen manuscripts and documents of Czech writers from the 20th century, as well as translations of Czech writers’ work in Chinese.
During the “Normalization” period from 1968 to 1987, in which the former Czechoslovakian regime aimed to restore the political situation before the Prague Spring in 1968 and preserve the status quo, writers were closely watched by the state security police, and their works were banned by the government, the NMTL said.
Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature
As such, many writers continued writing by going underground or fleeing to other countries, it said.
Typewriters played an important role in Czech literature, as Czech writers typed up manuscripts and had them secretly published to avoid a crackdown from the authoritarian regime, the NMTL said.
“The title of the exhibition shows a poetic imagination of Czech underground literature. The words that were typed out became melodies that inspired people to pursue freedom and democracy,” it said.
Items that are on display in the exhibition were borrowed from the Museum of Czech Literature, Moravian Library, Moravian Museum and other institutions.
Many of items in the exhibition are displayed in Asia for the first time, including Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal’s typewriter and manuscripts, audio books by writer Milan Kundera, security police records of writer Ivan Klima and books published by 68 Publishers, a Toronto-based publishing house that was founded by Czech expatriate Josef Skvorecky and his wife, Zdena Salivarova, in 1971 to publish books by Czech and Slovak writers whose works were banned in the former Czechoslovakia.
For the exhibition, the NMTL also showed a copy of Taiwan’s Tomorrow magazine published in 1930, in which The Insect Play — written by Czech playwrights Karl and Josef Capek — was translated into Chinese by the magazine’s founder Huang Tien-hai (黃天海). Prior to the exhibition, the copy was stored in the archived section of the National Taiwan Library.
The exhibition opened on Dec. 6 and is to run through March 2 next year.
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