František Xaver Šalda (also known as F. X. Šalda; 22 December 1867,

Liberec Liberec (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 108,000 inhabitants, making it the fifth largest city in the country. It lies on the Lusatian Neisse River, in a basin surrounded by mountains. The city centre is well preserved and is pr ...

– 4 April 1937,

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

literary critic, journalist and writer.

Biography

Baptized Franciscus Aloiysius Šalda,Matriční záznam o narození a křtu
/ref> he was born in the family of František Šalda, a postal official, and Marie née Kleiner in

. The family soon moved to

Čáslav Čáslav (; ) is a town in Kutná Hora District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 11,000 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected as an urban monument zone. Administrative division ...

with his father's service, where František graduated from the municipal school and in 1878 went to

to study at the Academic Gymnasium, living at the time with his older brother in Vlašská Street in the Lesser Town. After three years, he transferred to the real

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...

in Žitná Street in

II. He went on to study law but did not finish his studies. In 1910, however, he defended his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in art

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

at the Faculty of

Philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

(taking into account his previously published texts on literary and art criticism).Studenti pražských univerzit 1882-1945
/ref> He habilitated and from 1919 worked as a professor of Romance Literature at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. A serious nervous disease (

transverse myelitis Transverse myelitis (TM) is a rare neurological condition wherein the spinal cord is Inflammation, inflamed. The adjective ''wikt:transverse#Adjective, transverse'' implies that the spinal inflammation (myelitis) extends horizontally throughout ...

) afflicted him from the 1880s; constant pain also affected his critical attitude towards people and reality. Since 1899, partial paralysis of the body also limited his movement. Therefore, he lived alone, and apart from his love affair with Růžena Svobodová, he did not establish any closer relationships. However, he did not avoid friendly contacts in the cultural world. He died unmarried and childless. In his will, he made the Jedlička Institute, an institute for disabled children, his general heir. He wanted his villa to ring with the laughter and singing of its tiny inhabitants.

Literature

He was a co-author of the

Manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

of Czech

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. In 1894-1908 he wrote for the editors of Otto's Dictionary of Czech, German, French and English literature and world painting. He wrote for many magazines (''Literární rozhledy'', ''Novina'', ''Česká kultura'', ''Kmen'', ''Volné směry'', ''Literární listy''), where he dealt with questions and problems of art, literature, culture and politics. From 1925 he published the magazine Tvorba (a journal for criticism and art; interestingly, in the autumn of 1928, at a time when the

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

press was being persecuted, he handed the magazine over to Julius Fučík, who managed it intermittently until 1938).

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Salda, Frantisek Xaver 1867 births 1937 deaths Czech literary critics Czech essayists Czech art critics Czech-language writers People from Liberec Czechoslovak people