Published on 6 September 2016
Dr. Václav Brtník was a literary historian, poet, critic and editor, a member and executive for many years of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society, and finally also a curator of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Library and Museum. He was born on 3 April 1895 in Karlín in Prague, and died also in Prague on 14 February 1955.
Václav Brtník was born on 3 April 1895 in the Prague suburb of Karlín, into the family of a clerk in the local savings bank, Antonín Brtník, and his wife Karolína (Karla, nee Mulačová). He was christened Václav Jan Antonín on 15 April 1895. He got his Christian name after his grandfather on his father’s side, who came from an old family of farmers from Blevice, where he also ran an inn. Václav’s sister, Anna Marie Brtníková-Petříková (1 November 1896 - 24 October 1980), became a prose writer, playwright, columnist, translater and member of radio staff.
After elementary school, Václav Brtník studied at two secondary schools in Prague: The Second Royal and Imperial Higher Czech Grammar School in Truhlářská street; and from 1905 the Royal and Imperial Grammar School in Křemencova street (called Křemencárna), from which he graduated in 1913. He continued in Slavonic studies at the Czech Philosophical Faculty of Charles and Ferdinand University in Prague, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy on 26 November 1917, majoring in classical philosophy and ancient history on 13 July 1916 and minoring in philosophy on 10 November 1917, and defending his dissertation on Jaroslav Vrchlický’s Czech Trilogy.
Due to war-time events, he was conscripted after completing his university studies, and served in Salzburg. He was, however, super-arbitrated the same year (1917) and released from the Austro-Hungarian armed forces. In the school year of 1917/1918, he worked in Prague as a college teacher; and after the foundation of Czechoslovakia, he was employed at the Public and University Library (from mid-1930 the National and University Library), based in the Clementinum in Prague, where he remained until his retirement in 1950.
The lifelong passion and professional scholarly interest of Václav Brtník from his student years was the character and work of the Czech writer, poet, playwright and translater Jaroslav Vrchlický (1853-1912). Thanks to Brtník’s friend and longtime director of the Public and University Library, the poet and epigon of Vrchlický, Dr. Jaromír Borecký (1869-1951), between 1922 and 1923 the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences deposited in the library sixty five boxes containing the library of Jaroslav Vrchilický. It numbered (after the first inventory) 7,693 volumes, which were soon to become a part of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Museum, which in tun was handed over to the library for "temporary keeping" by the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society.
The Jaroslav Vrchický Museum will be installed as an imitation of the interior of the poet’s study and will be joined to the poet's library, which the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences passed to the university library in Prague [...]. A specially selected committee, consisting of the members of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society and the director of the Public and University Library, will make sure that the look of the museum's interior corresponds as closely as possible to the look of Vrchlický’s actual study as arranged towards the end of his life, in his last abode in Prague […]. The administration of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Museum will be delegated to a particular member of the Prague library staff, who will if possible be an active member of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society and who will also be responsible for managing and running the poet's library...
The Jaroslav Vrchlický Museum was opened to public on 5 April 1923. Václav Brtník became the museum’s custodian. This was probably one of the first literary museums in Czechoslovakia which was frequented by numerous professionals as well as the public. On the initiative of Jaromír Borecký, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, the estate of the famous Czech poet, writer and journalist Svatopluk Čech (1846-1908) was received from his sister, Zdeňka Čechová. After the reconstruction of Clementinum between 1927 and 1929, the newly installed museums of the two Czech greats were opened to the public in the autumn of 1929 on the premises of the former archbishop’s seminary. Besides the private libraries of the two writers, the museums contained manuscripts, furniture from their homes and works of art. The Jaroslav Vrchlický Museum remained in the Clementinum under the curatorship of Václav Brtník until 1941.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Brtník devoted himself to his work in the Clementinum (for example, the inventarization of Jaroslav Vrchlický's library) and the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society (for example, the compilation of his collected works); for some time, he was the Society's only executive. In addition, he published his own poems, articles, scholarly essays and reviews. On the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Vrchlický’s birth, the National and University Library together with the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society organized an exhibition on his life and work, which ran from 13 February to 6 March 1938. On the initiative and with the significant participation of Václav Brtník, who also gave literary lectures in connection with the exhibition, two thousand exhibits were installed in the Clementinum Mirror Chapel, and within its three-week duration the exhibition was visited by 9,000 people and received recognition from the Czech and foreign press.
Due to the new political situation under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the restrictions imposed on Czech scholars and readers regarding the use of the National and University Library (renamed in August 1941 the Provincial and University Library), the declining interest of the public in the Jaroslav Vrchlický Museum, and other obstacles (for example the “shortage of premises”) […], after the agreement of the managing organizations (the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society) with the director of the National University Library, Dr. Jindřich Hrozný, the museum was moved out of Clementinum on 12 March 1941 and placed temporarily in the hall of the College of Arnost of Pardubice (in Prague 2, Voršilská street). The new (third) installation was again performed by the current custodian of the library and the museum collections, the author of these lines [Václav Brtník]. The National and University Library could no longer provide any premises for the museum, as they were needed for its own purposes, nor allow access to the museum. The Ministry of Schooling and National Education gave its full approval for the museum's relocation [...] The museum’s books and manuscript may for now still be used in the specialized reading room of the National and Universtiy Library… The new social and cultural situation resulting from the occupation, the decrease in membership, the loss of income from state subsidies, and the first and second declaration of martial law, resulted not only in the actual cessation of the museum's activites, but also in the restriction of the activities of the Jaroslav Vrchlický Society.
The Nazi occupation brought not only huge losses to Czechoslovak librarianship1, but also a personal tragedy for Václav Brtník which would have an effect on his life in the post-war period, when he was investigated concerning his membership of the activist collaboration organization Czech League against Bolshevism (CLB)2 on suspicion of committing an offence under presidential decree No. 138/1945 Coll., on the punishment for certain insults to the national honour (called small retribution decree).
On 27 March 1944 Václav Brtník wrote on his application to the CLB a short (mandatory) statement declaring his “anti-Bolshevic beliefs”, which was published in a shortened and modified version in the Protectorate press: On my father’s side, I come from an old Czech farming family, who held fast for centuries to the family farmland. As a librarian, literary critic and writer, I am in constant contact with Czech literature. I passionately love my country and I feel greatly for Czech culture. This is why I am strictly against anything that threatens it. I have learned thoroughly the Jewish-Bolshevic ideology and practice, and I see the greatest enemy of our nation in global Judeo-Bolshevism. This is why, despite not being politically active, I proclaimed years ago, in spoken and printed word, as a good soldier, to belong to the ranks of fighters against this ideology, and I firmly remain one. His application created outrage in the Clementinum. After the war, Brtník was expelled from Máj, the association of Czech writers. This was announced publically in the media, and the library’s longtime employee was ordered not to come to work for the time being.
In his testimony to the court, Václav Brtník described the circumstances of his joining the CLB. He defended himself by stating that the CLB was a non-military and virtually meaningless organization which he joined under pressure from the occupation authorities, like many other personalitites of public life at the time. He also claimed that by doing so, he prevented the entire Máj association from having to join: “I was one of the first in the committee firmly to oppose the entire organization joining the League, when the question emerged. Máj never did join the League. I firmly declare: I have never paid the League a penny in membership fees, I have never agreed to give any propagandist talks, I have never printed a line in its favour or interest […]. My conscience is therefore clear concerning the League: forced membership was nothing but a record on paper. The printed quotation was never intended for printing, and it would never have been written had I known that my words would by misused for incomplete and imprecise quotation. He voluntarily stood before the “cleansing commissions” of Máj and the Smíchov branch of Sokol, where he lived. The arguments of his defence were accepted – Máj accepted him again as a member and he was also allowed to return to work. However, the Works Council of the National and University Library recommended the Ministry of Education to halt his career’s progress temporarily, and despite the mentioned justification it referred the case to the Central National Committee in Prague, whose investigation committee decided to stop the criminal proceedings on 6 February 1947. The case was re-examined after the February events of 1948 under Act no. 34/1948 Coll., on revisions of criminal proceedings in certain cases of insults to the national honour. The revising investigation commission of the Central National Committee in Prague also terminated the criminal proceedings on 17 June 1948. In 1950 Václav Brtník was superannuated, and on 14 February 1955 he died after a long-term illness.
In addition to his work as a librarian, museum custodian and member of the society, Václav Brtník was also active in the fields of bibliography and poetry; he wrote poems and reviews, prepared various editions and engaged in the field of the history of literature. His pseudonyms and codes were: Fin-fin, Tram; Bk, btk, -btk-, Btk., drb. a vb.
V.[áclav] B.[rtník]’s work in the field of the history of literature is characterized by his positivist commitment to biographical and bibliographic detail, his regard for development, manifested in chronological research into the subject, strong interest and an afinity with life and work. B.[rtník] was a traditionalist who preferred literature clearly associated with the destiny of nations, their needs and literary traditions. His main scholarly interest, coupled with the pathos of his defence, concentrated on the work of J. Vrchlický. Apart from this, he studied authors writing in the styles preceeding the modernism of the 1890s, and devoted great effort to the attempt to reveal the distinctive tone of epigones (in particular those of Vrchlický).
Václav Brtník’s activities in the field of the history of literature resulted in the publication of several informative overviews of the developemnt of Czech literature, from Lumírovci to the present day (for example, Jaroslav Vrchlický, Czech Literature during and after the War, Masaryk and Fiction and Poetry), which also served him as tools for his reviews, in particular those in the literary weekly Zvon between 1915 and 1941 and the magazine Venkov (from 1917 on). Between 1926 and 1928, he was a co-editor of the Literární rozhledy magazine.
Among Brtník's editorial output are Thám's Básně v řeči vázané (Songs Bound in Speech, 1916), Jaroslav Vrchlický’s Letters to Sofie Podlipská (1917), The Collected Works of Jan Lier (1920), Jindřich Šimon Baar: Collected Works - Fiction (1923), Bohumil Brodský and his Literary Work (1927), Bedřich Frída: Young Years of Jaroslav Vrchlický (1931), Correspondence of Jaroslav Vrchlický and P. Jan Blokša, Jindřich Šimon Baar: Paní komisařka: chodský obrázek z doby předbřeznové (The Commissioner: Pictures from Chodsko from the pre-March period - 1938), and together with Jaromír Borecký and Bohuslav Knoesle, A selection of literary works and studies relating to the work and person of Jaroslav Vrchlický (1942).
From the time of his studies, Václav Brtník’s work on the history of literature was inextricably linked to his poetry. “Influenced mostly by Neruda’s Prosté motivy (Simple Motifs) and the poetry of Vrchlický, B.[rtník] soon developed a certain kind of stereotypical style of love and nature lyricism, using regular rhythms and strophes; the song-like character of his verses helped the author to overcome his sorrows and anxiety and mature towards the brightness of life and reconciliation.“ Some of his published collections of poems are Písecké písničky (Songs from Písek, 1914), Za padlým kamarádem: Památce L. Ludvíka (For a Fallen Friend: In Memory of L. Ludvík, 1914), Noci (Nights, 1915), Křemenem o křemen (Flint on Flint, 1922), Pod hostinným přístřeším (In a Welcoming Shelter, 1930), V červáncích: Kniha lásky (1931), Stovka: epigramy politické, literární a jiné (1932), V tříšti světel (1932), In memoriam (1933), V májové besídce (Pavilion in May 1933), Zde mohlo bydlet štěstí…: Kniha melancholická (Here, Happiness Could Have Lived…: a Melancholy Book, 1933), Včera i dnes (Yesterday and Today, 1933), Cestou z hor (On the Journey from Mountains, 1934). He also wrote a puppet play for his son Jiří - Jirka, kocour Felix a Kašpárek (Jirka, Felix the Cat and the Joker).