Almost every high school graduate knows him. “You can’t read twenty books in a day job,” says Jirsa, who helps with the sweatshop

I already saw you once during my studies in the Olomouc library, but I didn’t want to disturb you. That’s why I only now have the opportunity to thank you for preparing for the matriculation exam a few years ago.

I’ve been here ever since.

Is this the purpose of making videos about literary works, to prepare “lazy students” for graduation, as you once exaggeratedly mentioned?

It is an exaggeration to say that the purpose is to make money. First and foremost, I’m more of a YouTuber than a teacher. Plus, I don’t really know what the point is, because the content of my videos has changed over the course of six years on YouTube. Originally I was really targeting desperate high school seniors who didn’t have time to read the required reading. But gradually I started to leave this format and two years ago I left it completely. I am more interested in broader cultural issues, such as the period of national revival and the theory of literature.

However, I think that over the years I have worked through basically all the high school graduation staples. In addition, I no longer need to do only book summaries. I want to make more fun videos where I have to read the literature myself to talk about the topic.

You can’t read twenty books on a holiday

How do you remember your graduation from the Czech language?

Very foggy. I have a generally terribly bad memory, which is, admittedly, great for a literary historian. I suspect that I drew Karel Čapek at graduation. This is a pretty cool topic.

Vida, and then you also took the path of journalism, although Čapek himself did not study it as you did. Where did your path lead to bohemian studies, which you now teach at Palacký University?

I studied journalism in Olomouc as a double major along with Czech. Originally, I wanted to be a journalist like you, and since Olomouc journalism was two-field in my time, I chose Czech for it with the argument that a journalist should know Czech. But then I found out that I don’t enjoy journalism, I’m not good at it and I’m not interested. Unlike Czech, which seems to me to be an extremely interesting field. What was originally a necessity, I stuck with. Therefore, after my bachelor’s degree, I studied Czech for two years, a doctorate, and only then did I fly to China for two years to teach general linguistics.

And now, like every year, your videos will be watched by high school graduates, who are just starting their holiday season. How to prepare for graduation as quickly as possible?

In an ideal world, one should never start studying two weeks in advance. On the contrary, he should only repeat what he has learned in four years. If we want to talk about careful students, it is not possible to read all twenty books from the compulsory reading in a fortnight and thus prepare for the high school graduation.

However, if we are going to talk about Czech outside of compulsory reading, the basis is to repeat the didactic tests from previous years, there are already dozens of them on the Internet. But for the oral exam, it is enough to read the mentioned twenty books, nothing can happen to a person. To do this, it is good to review basic poetic devices such as personification, metaphor…

… epizeuxis.

(Laughs) exactly! And again, there is a list of required terms available on the internet, there are not many of them.

How do you even look at concepts that make you wonder what they are for? After all, you come across them yourself when solving didactic tests every year. Do you wonder what you sometimes find there?

I’m usually not surprised. Of course, you don’t need to know what epizeuxis is for your life, I can’t even pronounce the word myself. I don’t even think we should require it of high schoolers. But we should want students to recognize what it is and be able to describe the function of such a turn. One does not need to know what an oxymoron is, but one should be able to tell that the words in the text do not make sense together, and the author was probably trying to achieve a certain effect.

When it comes to didactic tests and concepts such as zeugma or epizeuxis, the concept is always explained in the tests, the high school student just finds it in the text. In my opinion, a high school graduate should be capable of this skill.

To understand literature, to understand politicians

Do you agree with the form of the literary canon from which high school students today choose books for graduation, or should it include other works?

As far as I know, each school can set its own reading canon, it is only necessary to observe the number of books from specific historical periods. I never taught high school, but if I understand correctly, one can graduate today without having read anything by Macha or Erben. This indicates that the works of these authors, Máj and Kytice, are still considered essential texts of Czech literature – and indeed they are. They don’t all have to read them anyway, they have more books in the canon to choose from.

So what should be taught within the subject of Czech language and literature?

Understanding beautiful literature. It doesn’t matter if we use Shakespeare or Dante for this. However, high school students should take away an understanding of artistic texts. Today, there is a lot of pressure to understand the written word, on which even didactic texts are built. But reading fiction is a different skill.

The classic question: “Who will it benefit?”

If one understands John Milton or William Shakespeare, that is, if one can read between the lines and understand hidden meanings, one will also be able to read between the lines of politicians’ speeches and propaganda. For that reason, it is desirable to maintain the reading of classical literature. Moreover, it can be combined with teaching media literacy.

So would you recommend authors like Milton and Shakespeare for reading fiction?

Milton is already taller than a girl, Shakespeare is ideal. As complex as it is literature, it can be read superficially and the reader will understand how the writer uses metaphors. For young students interested in literature, I would recommend starting with classic entertaining canonical authors. For example, The Master and Margaret by Mikhail Bulgakov is at the level of contemporary sitcoms. At the same time, it is a deep and multi-layered book. Henryk Sienkiewicz, Dante Alighieri, Niccolò Machiavelli are also worth reading. Considering the age of his works, Karel Hynek Mácha is also a good read among Czech authors. Julius Zeyer is also a good choice.

Should a high school diploma in Czech language and literature be compulsory? Students will certainly discuss this. After all, some people are better at mathematics, while others are better at Czech.

I like Czech, so I think it should be compulsory. However, I somewhat believe that students should choose for themselves what they want to study. I would also hardly be able to get through gympl if a high school diploma in mathematics, chemistry or physics was compulsory. But the current form, in my eyes, focuses more on the Czech language and understanding the text than on literature.

The Wandering Ideology of Jordan Peterson

Motivational literature is also popular…

Yes, fashion waves change. Sometimes it’s Nordic detective stories, then cookbooks, cookbooks for non-cooks, currently it’s motivational literature. I suppose it’s the current corporate culture that causes it. People are trying to learn how to survive in their workplace and deal with others. Alternatively, how not to burn out and not go crazy in today’s world. But it depends what we mean by motivational literature.

For example, the work of Jordan Peterson.

You see, in this case I’d say it’s a different category. Peterson mainly targets young men lost in the world and trying to find authority. It will confirm their own thoughts that they have not been able to formulate so far. After all, I criticize Jordan Peterson a lot. His advice in the book of 12 rules for life is good, but at the same time he wraps it in a sly and quite dangerous ideological ballast. At the same time, Peterson is the most influential person in the current discourse in the campaign against postmodernism, which he completely misinterpreted and essentially identified with Marxism. Which is an oxymoron.

If I’m not mistaken, postmodernism fought against metanarratives, original stories and ideas. Which is Marxism.

Exactly. Postmodernism mocks all schools of thought, such as Marxism, but also liberalism. But Peterson became famous for equating postmodernism with neo-Marxism, in addition to his misunderstanding of contemporary philosophy. I have no sympathy for him, although I recognize that he helped a lot of people find solid ground under their feet. But the first advice in the book “clean your room” is genius, I admit that. Where else should a person start putting his life in order than in his own room?

When we talk about fighting, after the strikes of university teachers and after the December shooting at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague, the humanities became a target. I noticed that you also addressed the topic of why we need the humanities on YouTube.

Yes, this fight has been around forever. I feel that a large part of society associates the humanities with extreme leftism through absurd shortcuts, which is not true. You and I have spent the last few years in academia, and I think we’ll agree when I say that academia and its leadership are definitely not left-leaning.

At the same time, I think people think the humanities are easy because you only need to read a few books. A third reason is that the humanities are not exact. They have far more potential to get confused. Whenever an election poll is wrong, we hear that political science is useless. In the humanities, we try to get as close as possible to the truth, while for us the truth may not even exist, unlike mathematicians and other fields. But mathematicians would correct me that it is more complicated.

We would need a three-hour lecture to explain it, but we need the humanities to understand how society works, to find connections common to people across history. Quite often, important historical moments were decided by factors related to the humanities, not exact ones. Moreover, they are often criticized by people who consider themselves patriots. At the same time, without the national revival – which arose from language and literature – and people interested in the humanities, there would be nothing to report as patriots, because the Czech Republic would not even exist.