Great Eliotesque poem ON THE TALKING ZONE BY MILADA SOUCKOVA

The core of this article is a long poem MluoicIpdsmo [Talking Zone], published in 1939 by Czech Modernist poet Milada Souckova (1899-1983). Through Souelova's writing, the abyss between Czech avant-garde and Czech Modernism with its references to English modernism is revealed here. This article offers a contextualization of the genre of zone within Czech Modernism while analysing SouCkova's large poem as a specific form of English modernism. Through a detailed examination of Sounova's poem Talking Zone and Eliot's The Waste Land this article reveals the parallels between her writings and the writings of the leading modernists. The first section examines the influence on the poem of radio, both in terms of its thematic register and its form. It then goes on to analyse the dominant thematic discourses of the poem which are also key themes of the genre of zone in the 1930s in the Czech context (these are defined in the article as museum, memory, encyclopaedia and apocalypse). An examination of Talking Zone reveals the process of exhaustion of the genre of zone as a leading genre of the Czech avant-garde poetry and the exhaustion of the avant-garde projects of the new world. The archaeology of modernism (of an era), as conveyed in SouCkova's writing is determined by space (Europe), person (writer) and action (modernism). In SouCkova's Talking Zone each of these three elements is depicted as extinct.