(Kolektivní) paměť v exilové poezii Antonína Brouska

Collective memory of a community is the background of the individual perception of reality and it shapes the capacity of the individual to understand the world around. This relation which is fundamentally connected to the mother tongue as the medium of communication gets disputable in the moment of emigration. An exiled writer has to face a decision whether to adhere to the mother tongue or to accept the language of the new community. Nevertheless, the loss of the original community is likely to cause certain damage to his hitherto existing self-concept, and further positioning inside the previous (or the new) community, as well as their collective memories, have major impact on the new “migrant” identity of the writer. Antonín Brousek decided to adhere to the mother tongue in his poetry, he drew inspiration from Czech collective memory and referred to it in most of his exile writing. To what degree were his self-concept and the related leitmotiv of solitude in foreign environment shaped by this decision, I demonstrate in the present paper.