The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert [Paperback]

Jaroslav Seifert (Author), George Gibian (Editor, Translator), Ewald Osers (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

This is the best translated and largest edition of poetry by the Czechs' only Nobel Prize–winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert (he won the prize in 1984 and died in 1986). The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Nobel prize-winning poet Seifert, who died in 1986 at the age of 85, was and remains as popular among the Czech people as movie stars are among Americans. Though he spoke out throughout his lifetime against the oppression of Nazi and later Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia, he was protected from retaliation in part by the people's well-deserved love for him. Seifert is a straightforward, direct, accessible poet who speaks of common human concerns: aging, lust and longing, reminiscing, love for his homeland, grief for dead friends. For this revised and expanded edition of The Selected Poems of Jaroslav Seifert (1986), poems have been updated and corrected and 27 new ones added. The poems are ably translated by Osers, who renders Seifert's easy, flowing style into seemingly effortless English while giving hints of the "inner rhythms" so many critics have said make Seifert impossible to translate: "Whoever falls in love with beauty/ will love it to his dying day,/ stagger toward it aimlessly,/ beauty has feet of charm and grace/ in sandals delicate as lace." This is not a bilingual edition, but a Czech pronunciation guide does appear. Enjoyably readable and refreshing, this volume is highly recommended.AJudy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Catbird Press (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945774397
• ISBN-13: 978-0945774396
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,358,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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This review is from: The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert (Paperback)

Two years before his death, Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986), the most important Czech poet of the 20th century, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Who remembers this? Who remembers him? Seifert occupies roughly the same place in Czech letters and politics that Milosz represents for the Poles but the latter made frequent trips to the United States, learned to write in English and was lucky in the translators who worked to unlock his words from an almost equally difficult language to learn and pronounce.
Seifert's long career begins in the 1920s when he wrote "proletarian" poetry. Soon he became a member of the "Poetism" movement and his work became more experimental, metaphoric, loosely connected. From his first book, "City of Tears" (1921), Seifert's poetry was centered on Prague, his love of beauty in women and art, his love for his nation. His song-like virtuousity in later poems, depending as much as it does on the peculiarities of the Czech language, is difficult to discern in these translations but his imagery and deep emotion are always impressive. During the Second World War, his poems represented a subtle form of resistance and he became the national poet. Like Milosz, the disappearance of the Jews from national life was never far from his consciousness. In the 1960s Seifert turned to free verse and became a major figure in the Prague Spring and the resistance to Soviet hegemony. Sickness and advancing age turned his poetry toward the subject of aging, a process he faced with wisdom and paradoxical vigor.
This volume collects work from every phase of Seifert's career and excerpts from his prose reminiscences and memoir, "All The Beauties of the World" (1981). The title poem from "The Plague Column" (1978) is a perfect summary of his genius, simple in its diction, direct and modest in tone, based on an architectural monument in his beloved Prague, carrying an ominous lesson for our times; speaking ostensibly about the Bubonic Plague: "the taverns have fallen silent/the grave-diggers in the end/buried each other." We have much to learn about Czech poetry in the last century, not to mention such figures as Jan Neruda from the 19th, a hero to Seifert and the gentleman after whom a certain poet from Chile took his nom de plume. This book provides an excellent introduction to the greatness of the other Milosz.