Historická perspektiva v literární kritice — k proměně kritického psaní Arna Nováka v desátých letech

The paper focuses on some aspects of Arne Novák’s practice of criticism in the 1910s, especially on the issue of applying a historical perspective while judging contemporary literary production. The transformation of this perspective in the confrontation with newborn avant-garde concepts (completing the vision of a better future with the appraisal of past-time literature, above all the Czech poetry of the second half of the 19th century) is the corner-stone of Novák’s traditionalism. The performed analyses indicate, nevertheless, that the proclaimed program of the return to the tradition does not establish the ‘traditionality’ as a particular demand laid out in the reviewer’s practice; it is rather the foreknowledge that the tradition is just happening in the contemporary Czech literature.