Krocení nestvůr nevědomosti

Dominik Melichar

The „learned society“ Societas incognitorum eruditorum (SIE) represented a unique and at the same time closed community of people who were not going to put up with the cultural and educational dictates of the totalitarian regime of the so-called normalizing Czechoslovakia.

Beyond legality, they created a free environment for the dissemination of knowledge across disciplines: from literary science or aesthetics to physics, mathematics or theology to mass transport or the Olympic Games e. g. Programmatically, they applied to the first learned society in the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Enlightenment Societas incognitorum eruditorum in terris Austriacis. However, they enriched the scientific orientation based primarily on polemics as a necessary part of the mechanism of self-education and cultivation with a gaming aspect and recession. The backbone of the present volume is the article bibliography of the samizdat journal Acta incognitorum, which SIE published more or less monthly for almost thirteen years (1976–1988). It is not only the longest published and completely preserved Czech literary samizdate periodical from the period up to 1989, but also a unique source representing unofficial culture from an extremely personal perspective. Dominik Melichar’s introductory study analyzes the activities of the SIE and follows the development of the discussed topics and the polemical environment created on the pages of Acta incognitorum thanks to the unusual variety of genres, including, in addition to fiction, essays and journalistic texts, also diary entries, capturing the social life of the members of the SIE.