“From a sort of long-distance learning to close cooperation. Prague Linguistic Circle and the present European project on the threshold of the 21st Century”

1. What happened

I remember quite well, it was pretty late, in the afternoon, at the beginning of Autumn, 1989, in Milan.
I had been researching into the Prague Linguistic Circle since the middle of the Eighties , and I needed to test my hypotheses and my reconstructions, my comprehension and evaluation of its classical period, to prevent my sources from being only book learned.
What better opportunity to check the quality of my work than to submit it to a living witness, if there was one?
I had no way of dialling any direct phone number in the Iron Curtain. No Internet. So, I called the Italian Public Telephone Society, to ask for the phone number of a well-known scholar, Josef Vachek, who had greatly contributed to the dissemination of Prague Linguistics throughout the world. His academic post had been in Brno, but I suspected he had always lived in Prague. As he had been born in 1909, was it still possible to meet him? The employee who answered to me wasn’t first able to find his name in the directory, because according to our alphabet ‘ch’ comes within ‘c’, and not after ‘h’. Anyway there was no Vachek listed in Brno. What about Prague? Yes, in Prague there were both the surname and the first name, Josef. So I asked to call that number and eventually the phone rang and ... he was the one I was looking for: we simply began to talk and I managed to explain my interest in establishing a direct link with an actual member of the Circle, who sixty-two years beforehand, just one year after its foundation in 1927 , had become the amanuensis of its founder, Vilém Mathesius, whose sight was weak. Thereafter he became the herald of that scientific enterprise, through the West, and from Europe to the United States .
He listened to me patiently and gave me his address. So our correspondence began and went on from 1990 to 1995. At the end of April 1990 I went to Prague for the first time in my life, and I met him. We spoke of the Circle, of its most prominent members, of its theoretical tenets. He asked me where I came from, and when I answered Milan, from the Catholic University, he surprised me saying “from Sacred Heart, Gemelli's university”! Linguists abroad knew more about our university's founder, Agostino Gemelli as a scholar of language and voice, than we ourselves did. He confirmed my views on Prague linguistics, my insights into Jakobson’s work. And he began telling me about what was going on in those early days of the Circle revival, and about the difficulty of getting materials copied, as xerox machines had been forbidden until a short time before. 
In the meantime, as a matter of fact, something extraordinary had happened, in Berlin, in Prague , in Moscow.
So, my scientific correspondence began to increase, with Oldřich Leška (1991), first President of the revived Circle, with Radim Palouš (1991), new Rector of the Karlova Univerzita in Prague; after many years (2004-), with Eva Hajičová, in those years President of PLK; after the celebration of PLK 80th anniversary (Prague, September 2006), with Tomaš Hoskovec, Secretary of the same Circle and, through him, with Jan Radimsky (2008-) and his colleagues of the Philosophy Faculty of České Budějovice, that is to say, the University hosting the present Conference.

As a matter of fact, three international conferences contributed to strengthen the links with these very special pen friends:

• dedicated to the Prague Linguistic School,  in Switzerland, at Lausanne University in 1993, organised by Patrick Seriot who invited me, along with František Daneš, Jan Šabršula, Milena Srpova and Jindřich Toman;
• about translation, in Italy, at Piano di Sorrento (Naples) in 2005, at the annual convention of the Italian Society for the Philosophy of Language , with Eva Hajičová as guest speaker;
• in situ, i.e. at Prague University in 2006, where I was invited to speak at the seminar on The Role of PLK in the development and in the perspectives of Czech linguistics .

A new project was then set in motion, «Theories and concepts of the Prague Linguistic Circle on the threshold of the 21st Century», a series of talks organised by the Institute of Romance Languages and Literature of the Arts Faculty of České Budějovice South Bohemia University , which has already achieved its objectives twice, while organizing the following colloquia:

1. Synchronie dynamique du système linguistique (Synchronic dynamics of the linguistic system) (November 2006)
2. Centre et périphérie dans le système linguistique (Centre and periphery in the linguistic system) (March 2009).

Before planning a third one (2011/12) some mid-term seminars through Europe have been broached: in Italy first (Milan, October 2010), then in France (Metz, 2012/13) thanks to the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) – Erasmus Bilateral Agreement for the Academic Years 2009 to 2013; a dissemination through and thanks to the Czech Republic towards “a world of science without borders”.

2. History of science and theoretical research

I would like continue by outlining a couple of claims:

• theoretical research in the humanities also requires the free and therefore critical adoption of a paradigm, with  its methods and goals; the choice of a tradition, or the beginning of a new one;
• in Italian we say “la povertà aguzza l’ingegno”, necessity is the mother of invention.  The absence of both theoretical linguistics and of philosophy of language in Italy before the second half of the last century is a subject worth investigating . What's more, being a bit removed from the main traditions in linguistics can provide a good opportunity to search for a good one to work in. To find one, which is at the same time a school of the origins and a leader of some specialised fields of the present days, is a great chance.

A more local premise has to be added: a common thread runs through the history and exceptionally blurs philosophy and linguistics; Anton Marty (1848-1914) and Vilém Mathesius (1882-1945) are the conduits:

• one town = Prague
• two Universities = after the ancient one (1348), the imperial Carlova, then the German one ( 1782-1945) and (after 1882) the Czech one
• two disciplines = philosophy of language and general linguistics
• one hidden continuity.

A final consideration needs to be borne in mind: to explore unknown subjects, both kinds of knowledge are requested, the empirical and the theoretical framework (questions, goals, methods) for integrating evidence with inference, data with theory. They have been called respectively referential competence and inferential competence . To create a sound balance between the two is not always easy and sometimes not even possible. I would summarize the alternatives as follows:

• book learning vs. learning by experience
• long-distance learning vs. in praesentia learning
• remote events vs. contemporary witnesses
• knowledge by description vs. knowledge by acquaintance (as Russell distinguished them).

To overcome such oppositions is, when possible, the result of a stimulating challenge and the prize of a well accomplished commitment.

3. The Secret of a Long Life

If now we want to evaluate what the favourable conditions were which made – as far as I understand – such accomplishments possible, first of all because they allowed the Prague Linguistic Circle to survive in spite of severe censures, I would sum them up in this way:

• Cooperative work
• Long-lasting tasks
• Theory & practice
• Multilingualism
• Young generations, intergenerational involvement
• Dissemination

Just a few words, before concluding, about one of these relevant elements: the importance of multilingualism for cultural exchanges, better for communication in any context, and especially in difficult, different and between remote contexts.
I think of English obviously, our present lingua franca, as Latin was previously.
But we can think also of French, particularly cultivated in the history of the Prague Circle: let us recall their papers, the Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague as well as the initiatives taken by the Institute of Romance Languages and Literature of the Arts Faculty of České Budějovice South Bohemia Universityand by the same University's Circle of modern philologists.
I would also like to mention here German, the language of a super-national entity which allowed many scholars to feel – if I may say so – at home in a wide European region, despite several national borders and different national identities: I think of philosophers (of language) like Franz Brentano and Anton Marty, who came from Boppard in Germany and Schwyz in Switzerland respectively, who met at Würzburg University before going their separate ways, with Brentano going to the university of Wien and Marty going to Prague via Czernowitz (1875-1880) (which belonged first to Austria then Galicia, Poland, Rumania and the Ukraine).  Without some common language, or at least some shared language, the strong European roots of the metalinguistic tradition inherited and elaborated in Prague would have been inconceivable.
On the contrary, the well-known Czech multilingualism is still a powerful companion to the scientific vitality of your scholar community. So that many of us, invited to your Conference, felt themselves at home, because we could talk and listen to each other in one of our native or shared languages. For this reason but certainly not solely because of it, your borders reopened and we could get in touch again with the whole Europe.
Not only for the sake of your multilingualism, as I just said. I would like to quote Václav Havel to underline how much the fight for survival depends not only on symbols / languages, but also on the denoted facts. «Je viens enfin au mot merveilleux de liberté. Voilà quarante ans que, dans mon pays, je lis ce mot sur chaque toit, dans chaque vitrine. Quarante ans qui ont suffi à me rendre allergique, comme tous mes concitoyens, à ce mot magnifique, parce que je sais qu’il recouvre depuis quarante ans: des armées de plus en plus gigantesque, prétendant de servir de rempart à la paix….
Malgré ce long processus par lequel ce mot de paix a été systématiquement vidé de son contenu et même carrément chargé d’un sens diamétralement opposé à celui que lui donne le dictionnaire, malgré tout cela, quelques Don Quichotte de la Charte 77 et quelques-uns de leurs jeunes collègues du Mouvement indépendant pour la paix ont réussi à réhabiliter ce mot et à lui rendre son sens originel….» .
On the presidential flag flying over on Prague Castle we read “Pravda Vítezí” – Veritas vincit, or Truth conquers. I wish to recall some other words, written by Gustav Janouch in his Conversations with Kafka and quoted by Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to Prague at the end of September 2009: “Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old”. Benedict XVI went on: “If our eyes remain open to the beauty of God’s creation and our minds to the beauty of his truth, then we may indeed hope to remain young and to build a world that reflects something of that divine beauty, so as to inspire future generations to do likewise”.