Some have had her for
the Literature on the British Isles I. seminar, others may have had the
pleasure of attending her Romantic poet seminars (for example, two on Lord
Byron and Keats have taken place this semester) and the rest probably do not
even know what she looks like. No matter which category one belongs to; this
interview functions as an introduction to or extension of information about
Professor Miroslava Horová.
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| photo credits: Miroslava Horova |
- Overture
Well, this is my alma
mater so I did my MA here. My subjects were English lit and Norwegian. Then
I continued to do my PhD and I’ve been working at the department since 2008 as
an administrator, the wonderful Czech word ‘tajemník‘. I studied at Bristol and in Kristiansand
and Oslo for a semester each during my MA; then went back to Bristol for a year
in 2010 to do my PhD research. And I’ve been teaching for a year now… So that’s
the short story of my professional life. (laughs)
Was it your initial
plan to become a professor here?
I’ve always wanted to stay in academia, and always
loved the Prague department, but along those lines I have also contemplated going
to Norway and doing my PhD there when opportunities arose, or there was the
possibility of doing my PhD at Bristol at one point, but I liked it here. My
work takes me abroad quite a lot anyway! I used to work in Norway in the summer
for eight years, I used to act as a guide in a cathedral in a seaside town;
that used to be my other life for most of my twenties. Now I’m alternating
between here and England.
Why Norwegian?
Well, I went to see ‘Peer Gynt’ here at the National
Theatre when I was 13 and it was a good production, I liked it. Then I started
reading more Ibsen and other Scandinavian authors, and we had some friends in
Sweden, we went there when I was a little girl. So… yeah, the North, it’s like
a different world really, and I thought why not learn the language? I’ve always
wanted to do two subjects for my MA - French didn’t seem the obvious choice,
German I couldn’t really do. I like all things Scandinavian, (emphasizing the syllables) Scan-di-geek.
Would you find your
mentality now more Scandinavian, English or Czech?
Mine? Who knows! It’s probably some kind of weird mix.
I don’t know. Mentality… (thinks)
Well, I think it depends on personality; national mentalities are some kind of
wild generalizations. I don’t think of myself as Scandinavian, but the people
I’ve worked with, sometimes when they come to Prague they say “Oh you’re so
Norwegian”. I don’t know – I just like the North. My next project will have
something to do with the North, either in English lit or with some Scandinavian
connection, maybe in the Romantic era.
If you could meet any
figure of or from literature, who would it be?
Obviously I’d quite like to meet Byron to see what he
was really like. It’d be an eye-opener somehow, I fear, but why not. Um,
literary figure? Perhaps Miss Havisham. We’d all like to know who Shakespeare
was, and what he was like, wouldn’t we, so that’s another obvious answer. Maybe
any kind of era just to see what it was really, really like… Our views of the authors are based on their letters,
their works but for the ones even more back in time, we don’t know really know
what they were like – we’re only guessing. Oh and I’d like to meet Pushkin, I’d
be interested to see what he was like, that’s the Romantics again for you. And
the Bronte sisters, definitely.
Which one, all of
them?
All of them! Especially together, that must have been
quite a riot. (Smiles)
- On English Romantic Literature
Yes, that is what I am here for, because Martin is the
big Romanticist and Zdeněk also teaches Romantic poetry, but both are otherwise
engaged, teaching in other areas – Zdeněk in Victorian lit and Martin in
American lit and literary theory. I personally did not have any seminars on
Romantic poetry outside of the obligatory one in the 2nd year when I
studied here, there was only Martin’s ‘Romanticism and National Identity’, and
I thought that was a pity. I taught my first seminar here with Martin, on
Keats, a year before you joined, so that was interesting, it was good. But
yeah, I’d like to continue to develop this, possibly with other colleagues, but
everyone is so busy that it’s somewhat difficult (sighs). We are planning to teach a seminar on Shelley next year,
though, with Martin, that would be good. I’d like to do a seminar on the
Romantic legacy at some stage.
Do you prefer
Romantic poetry to novels?
(Laughs) Ah,
that is a really hard question! I like both; I have favourite novels from
various centuries really, and poems, too. I specialize in Romanticism and
that’s what I am primarily here to teach. Though I would love to do a seminar
maybe next year on contemporary British lit, based on novels, not poetry.
There’s experimental lit thanks to Louis and David V, and Colin does Scottish
novels, and sci-fi and children’s lit, to complete the contemporary British
fiction we teach in elective seminars. My favourite when I was a student was
Soňa’s seminar on contemporary British women writers.
Many have been introduced
to Romanticism by studying Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” or Shelley’s “Ode to
the West Wind” in some English literature class. Do you recall the first poet
or poem you read from this era?
My very first Romantic poem? I… I think it was “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, Keats, and
it would have been at the English College in the 1st year. We had
this collection of poems called “Touched with Fire.” A terrible name, but it
was a great mix of famous poems and this was one of them. And obviously I read
“Ode to the Nightingale” shortly afterwards for my IGCSE and then read more for
the IB.
I like that format [of the IB], actually. The one
disadvantage of the British system is that you get to know very few texts in
comparison with the syllabi we teach here, but you learn them very intimately. So you do, I don’t
know, three plays per year, Shakespeare plays, for instance. We did King Lear, Macbeth and Much Ado about Nothing. Yes, it’s all
A-level stuff, so it’s not your most sophisticated analysis, it’s about characters,
themes and just what they teach at that stage of education, but you get to
learn passages by heart and work with the text intimately. And here, because of
the syllabi, we sometimes, not always, don’t have time to look closely at the
text – I’m a fan of close-reading. When I first started here (a long time ago
now), I remember Martin Hilský’s seminars that were kind of luxurious in that
aspect, as we read one play per semester, line by line - I enjoyed that a lot.
Which figure of the
Romantic period do you identify yourself with?
(Laughs)
Yeah, I looked at that question and thought how embarrassing it’ll be! Well,
obviously Byron is the one closest to my heart. Besides the obvious exception
of misogyny that’s nearly always there in some form and to some extent in the
19th century, I identify with Byron’s sense of irony. I couldn’t
dedicate my, how many years - a long
time in any case - to researching one author and his works if it were someone
who didn’t make me laugh, too. I love his sense of humour, his irreverence, and
his worldview, his sense of basic education that these days is mostly lost,
because we are no longer trained in Classics, in Greek and Roman literature and
history.
Do you like
attention? Because he did.
Uuum (laughs)
I wouldn’t say I’m a diva! Byron was a bit of a diva, certainly. Well, I like
the performance of reading – but it’s not like we all prance about in black
cloaks at Byron conferences. Any conference is a kind of performance in
generalized terms – you have to perform your paper, because no matter how
brilliant the paper is, nobody will pay attention if you don’t perform it well.
Drama and poetry especially are meant to be read aloud – or performed - I
believe in that strongly. When I read my quotations, the text comes to life.
You can call it a bit theatrical, but I think these texts deserve to be
performed. Otherwise I’m not an attention seeker. I like making people laugh,
though.
- On Byron and Conferences
Yes, well I’ve been going to Byron conferences for
seven years now. I have my crowd there and it’s always nice to see the same
people, with some variables, every year. We have a big annual Byron conference
that travels around the globe; it went to Lebanon two years ago, last year to
London and this year Georgia. I’m not going to Georgia, unfortunately, because
I am going to Glasgow for the First World Congress of Scottish Literature.
Martin Procházka and Colin Clark are going, too, and one of our MA students and
my friend, Johana Poncarová. So that will be quite big – and different too, as
I’m on the sci-fi panel.
But yeah, the Byron conference I organize in England,
the spring one, which is always the first May weekend – I’ve been organizing
that for two years now and it’s got a regular crowd and I’m happy about that.
We were at Newstead Abbey this year which was brilliant – Byron’s ancestral
home that he didn’t really live in much.
Oh, the family
estate?
Yeah - he sold it very soon after coming of age. I mean,
it was in such a bad state, it’s huge, the roofs were falling in, there was
water everywhere – it was more of a stables than a stately home. He and his
mother did not have the large sum of money needed to repair it. But yeah, it
was nice to be there a month ago – it’s a nice venue, lots of resident
peacocks, and dogs running around because people come there to enjoy their
weekend, go to the park, see the grounds, the lake, the gardens, you know.
Families, kids, picnics. We had lovely weather as well, and we’re going back
there next year, so I’m very happy about that.
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| photo credits: news.experiencenottinghamshire.com |
What happens exactly
at these conferences?
Well, I as the organizer do my welcome speech, and I
mostly chair sessions and make sure everything works and everybody feels good.
This year, I was also promoting the latest issue of Litteraria Pragensia on Byron and Italy that I co-edited – there
are some fine essays there, even if I say so myself. Sometimes we have some
sort of performance on the night before the conference; we usually read a Byron
text before dinner, which is always fun.
How so?
Well, the delegates volunteer and we do an impromptu
performance – we circulate the text a week or so before the conference. That’s
maybe why I like this particular conference so much, and Byron conferences in
general – it’s slightly more fun
maybe? It’s academic but you have a lot of people who are not trained
academics, who just like Byron and are an odd mixture of Byron Society members:
lawyers, enthusiasts, historians, quite a few eccentrics, too… It’s rigorous,
but it can also be more relaxed; we have an ex-actor who has this trained voice
and when he delivers his lines, it’s something else. So we have these readings
before the conference that I organize now, and we do readings of various Byron
texts, depending on the topic of the conference. About ten people, a group
reading in front of an audience before proceeding to dinner (laughs). The Vision of Judgement in particular, which is this great
satirical text about King George III sneaking into heaven, was a great success,
we acted it out more than a little bit, it was fun.
So there’s a
conference theme every year.
Yes, yes, you have to have one. To center the papers around a common theme,
make it coherent. We had, let me see… for instance ‘Byron and Religion’, ‘Byron
and the Gothic’, ‘Byron at the Theatre’, ‘Byron in 1812’, when Childe Harold was published, ‘The
Romantic Byron’ and this year it was ‘Byron at Home’. The big Byron conferences
have loftier titles, like, um, ‘Byron and Latin Culture’ or ‘The Poetry of
Politics and the Politics of Poetry’. Then you have even bigger conferences
uniting Romanticists from around the world – BARS (British Association for
Romantic Studies) or NASSR (North American) or GER (German) – I went to Munich
last October for ‘Romanticism and Knowledge’.
Most know about
Byron’s scandals, like his affair with his half-sister Augusta.
Well, the problem is that his life as we know it is a
kind of construct because he performed
being Byron, and it eventually backfired, obviously. The interesting question
is, where is the truth? Some scholars believe that Byron never had an affair
with Augusta, he just led people to believe that, because he got pissed off and
thought “You think I’m bad, I’ll show you bad.” For me it’s not so vital
whether it happened or not. Some people again claim it’s all a smoke-screen to
hide his homosexuality. Byron certainly was bisexual. But yeah, there are many
conspiracy theories about Byron, as one would expect. The trick is to
appreciate the poetry, not wallow in scandal, though.
- Shortly on Czech Literature and its literary scene
Yes, well, we had Czech lit at the ECP, but again it
was the British system where we got to know a small collection of texts that we
learned to know intimately. A fine collection of classics, none older than the
19th century, though, because that wasn’t our module. Generally
where translations are concerned, I opt for English rather than Czech, don’t
ask me why. But these days, because of time or lack thereof, I have time to
read only newspapers - and Czech poetry, I still do read poetry; both stuff
that comes out now and the Czech classics, I like them a lot.
Do you follow
magazines like Vlak or Psí Víno?
Yeah, absolutely! With it happening here [at the
faculty], it’d be a pity not to. (laughs)
Did you go to this
year’s Microfestival?
At this time of year, with the May Byron conference
that I organize, it’s a pity I often cannot make it there for the whole thing,
things clash. But I made it for some of the final night this year, in K4, and I
enjoyed it very much.
- Briefly on teaching
Yes, yes, that’s a temporary arrangement, probably,
because Helena (Znojemská) is on maternity leave. I am enjoying that a lot,
actually; it’s been a long time since I’ve swum in those waters, so to speak.
It’s only frustrating that there is so much to cover, you need to make choices.
Still, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, especially because I can return to Donne, my big
favourite. And doing the Sonnets (or any Shakespeare) is always a treat.
Are you thinking
about doing a seminar on something else than the Romantics?
I’d quite like to do something on W. B. Sebald, do you
know him? (I shake my head) He was a
German author, writing and working in England, he died in 2001. He wrote these peculiar texts (novels, short stories),
memory, nostalgia and history all interweaving. For example, his last novel, Austerlitz, written in German
originally, like all his texts, translated into English. It’s a fictional
history of a guy set against the background of 20th century European
history, especially WW2, and the narrative brings us to Prague, among other
places. Do you know Utz by Chatwin?
It’s not the same but it has the same kind of intrigue, retracing someone’s
history which is a fictional history but it tries to retrieve the fragments of
somebody’s personal story, and the impossibility of that effort, ultimately,
the evanescence and unknowability of it all, and I’d quite like to do a seminar
on novels that do that - contemporary British stuff, McEwan, Barnes.. So that’s
one possible way to go.
- On writing and languages
Apart from writing
various academic essays and organizing conferences, do you write creatively –
like poetry, short stories?
My cheeky answer is: who doesn’t? My serious answer –
no, I don’t write novels or stories, I don’t have the time or the urge, which
usually means you lack the talent; sometimes I write a poem or two. It’s not a
serious venture, though, just a therapeutic thing; basically, it’s usually when
I’m not in a good mood. I find it relaxing, liberating… But I have no intention
of ever coming out as a poetess (laughs).
What languages do you
speak (actively, passively)?
Norwegian, English, Czech obviously, Slovak if I
practice, and then French and German passively. I guess you can add the other
two Scandinavian languages, Danish and Swedish, to the passive list too. I like
the melody of Swedish a lot, it’s much softer than Norwegian.
Finnish?
Well, that’s a whole other world, that. The only word
I know is the word for cream which I believe is “smetana” – it’s either
imported from a Slavic language or it’s a joke, I don’t know.
Do you ever feel
tired of words?
Usually happens when you need to write a paper or
submit something. It’s more of a structured-thought block when I’m tired… I
believe in structured argument, that’s what we do here; I mean, everyone has
ideas but you need to structure them to give them coherence, meaning. I think
that you and your and my colleagues can relate that when we’re tired, sometimes
Czech goes away and English stays, or the other way round. Sometimes I find
myself sitting in front of the telly in England, speaking in Norwegian and the
person next to me just nods and says “Yeah, now what language was that?”
- Concluding questions
Well, it’s complicated – back when I was studying, you
had a 5-year MA, with an exam after the first three years called postupová zkouška. The problem was that
if you for some reason just passed the exam but didn’t continue your studies,
you didn’t get any diploma. This has been modified, thank goodness, by the
introduction of the BA/MA divide. So I didn’t write a BA thesis. I think we had
to write a long essay, though, and I think mine…was…on… It was either
Shakespeare or some American lit… Yes, it was Faulkner, I like Faulkner. The
essay had a very poncy title, it had Latin words in it – something like then
and never, tum et nunquam, about the
American South living in the past, not moving on from the defeat of the Civil
War. It’s something I used to be interested in, still am.
MA thesis?
Oh, that was Byron! Byron from then on, Byron, Byron.
What are your plans
for the summer?
Ah! Well, I’ll be in England, working on a couple of
articles – the usual - catching up with work, research. I’d also like to go on
holiday somewhere where I can swim, Greece perhaps, but that’s mostly in the
land of neverwhere as yet. And I’m hoping to read all those books I got for
Christmas and the one I got from the teachers as thanks for the Early Modern IP
Erasmus programme that I help Martin Procházka to organise.
Where do you see
yourself in three years – ideally and realistically?
Well, I’m contracted to teach here till then, 2017, so
I know I’ll be here for sure. Swimming regularly, that’s another long-term
plan. (thinks) Realistically here,
ideally also here, but with frequent trips to Venice, that would be brilliant!
Italy in general, but Venice in particular. To have a project that would take
me there for research, that would be just swell (smiles dreamily).
Anna Hupcejová
