Josef Šafařík’s Sedm listů Melinovi in Context

The article considers the Safarik's only book, 'Sedm listu Melinovi' (Seven Letters to Melin) in its context. Josef Safarik (1907-1992) was a philosopher from Brno, Moravia. When the work came out in 1948, its reception was hampered by the Communist takeover in late February of that year. Unlike other scholarship that has considered this work in relation to the generation of Václav Havel (who admired it considerably), the present article considers the work in relation to the Czech aesthetics of the 1930s and 1940s. It compares Safarik's views with those of the writer-critic F. X. Salda (1867-1937) and the novelist-aesthetician-critic Bohumil Markalous (1882-1952), and demonstrates that Safarik's 'Sedm listu Melinovi', rather than being an isolated phenomenon, was part of the intellectual tradition of engaging in debate with the left-wing Avantgarde. The article is followed by two previously unpublished letters from Safarik to Markalous.