световната

At the end of 1961, a "panorama" of contemporary literatures in the world was published, very luxuriously published in Paris in French by the well-known publishing house Hachet. The book is included in a series entitled "From the World", edited by Jean-Claude Hubert, with a foreword by the famous French essayist Roger Caillois, director of the Department of Literature and Art at UNESCO. "Contemporary Literatures in the World" is a collective work, carried out with the cooperation of twenty-one writers, among whom are the names of prominent French critics and connoisseurs of foreign literatures.

Defining the concept of "world literature" can hardly be achieved without effort and polemics, as it probably seems to many who are accustomed to it. It is indeed not easy to give a decisive answer to questions such as: which are the literatures that have managed to impose their achievements as conquests of the entire human society; what guides a development that runs through the entire history of mankind; what are the ingredients, criteria and drivers of the process that merges the achievements of folk and national literatures into one and at the same time fertilizes folk and national literatures; and so on.

Recently, in the Smetana Hall of the National House in Prague, a closed VI International Congress of Slavic Scholars was opened. Nearly two thousand of the most famous Slavic scholars in the world and as many guests had the opportunity, over the course of a whole week, to communicate in debates from the stands or in intimate conversations on the ancient streets and parks of Prague; to exchange scientific considerations and thoughts, searching for the great truth about the past and present life of the Slavic peoples, about their spiritual closeness with other non-Slavic peoples, about their common civic quests and spiritual aspirations, about their closeness in everyday life, in language, in verbal folk and personal creativity... And this great conversation about the peculiar fate of Slavism, which began again in the same hall approximately four decades ago at the First Slavic Congress (1929), is constantly expanding and deepening. More and more participants are making their modest contribution; More and more Slavic scholars are presenting their insights and discoveries, their themes and aspirations, solutions, hypotheses and concepts into scientific circulation... Sometimes - successfully defended and scientifically argued, and sometimes without analysis and based on random signs, without a deep knowledge of the facts and based on data devoid of any scientific systematics.