Homo Aviaticus: a Bohemian, a Worker, an Apostle, a Failure












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            * Ondřej Váša
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            Abstract

            The essay analyses Bohemian avant?garde poetry and popular aviation literature of the 1920
            trying to reconstruct a typical poetic figure of the period technological imagination, i.e
            “homo aviaticus”. To organize the scattered sources, the essay first outlines Jünger’s con

            worker” and presents him as the model aviatic figure. The key elements of this “Gestalt” –
            nature, his mobile and mobilizing character, and his utilization of death – serve as the k
            which the essay triangulates the Bohemian “homo aviaticus” in question. The essay subseque

            the poetry of Vítězslav Nezval, Jaroslav Seifert, and others (the authors published in the
            Devětsil, Disk, Život…), and reveals their ambivalent attitude to the aviation which they 

            The last third of the essay uncovers the intrinsic ambivalence of the figure itself: while
            used to be defined in terms of his spiritual superiority, the real problems concerned his 
            the end, he could only meet the expectations pinned on him at the price of self?destructio


            Keywords: aviation; aviator; pilot; avant?garde; Jünger; Haldane; Bernal; transhumanism; i
            Czech poetry


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