Karel Hlaváček’s cycle of drawings Prostibolo duše (The Soul’s Bagnio) was inspired by the poetry collection of the same name by Arnošt Procházka. Hlaváček took its central theme – the destruction of a human soul too fragile to withstand the outside world and its own weaknesses – and pushed it to an absolute: this experience does not merely estrange a person from themselves and from any sense of home but kills them outright. Procházka later brought both cycles together under the sign of the modern artist’s “Way of the Cross,” reading the verses and illustrations as a shared testimony to the contemporary artist’s futile “pursuit of beauty and freedom.” Hlaváček’s work can thus also be read as a bitter personal confession – one that, for all its expressive formal language, never forfeits the dignity of a tragic martyr to the ideal.