Poet and journalist who was the first Czech to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984. Seifert was the last great representative of Czech avant-garde. He published over 30 collections of poems. Not only acknowledged for his poetical production, Seifert also became as symbol of freedom of expression.

"... poetry has occupied a very important position in our cultural life. It is as though poetry, lyrics were predestined not only to speak to people very closely... but also to be our deepest and safest refuge, where we seek succor in adversities we sometimes dare not even name." (from Nobel lecture, 1984)

Jaroslav Seifert was born in Zizkov, a working-class suburb of Prague, into a poor family. His father was a manager of a small general store. To help him, Seifert spent his afternoons delivering goods to customers throughout Prague. In Seifert's youth, the Russian Revolution of 1917 played a key role in the development of his political consciousness, and he enthusiastically embraced socialist ideals. As a result, and to start his career as a journalist, Seifert dropped his high school studies, and worked for the Communist party newspaper Rudé Pravo.

In 1923 Seifert made his first journey to Paris and adopted there new literary ideas. With the art theorist and critic Karel Teige he helped to found in the 1920s an avant-garde literary movement called Devetsil, which was influenced by the French writer Giullaume Apollinaire. The name of the movement was taken from a story by the Capek brothers.

Seifert's early books reflected his ideological stance, but also expressed his Epicurean joie de vivre. MESTO V SLÁCH (1921) was on the side of proletarian revolution. In SAMÁ LÁSKA (1923) he expressed his desire for revolution and optimism, as in SVATEBNÍ CESTA (1925). SLAVIK ZPIVA SPATNE (1926, The Nightingale Sings Badly) was published after Seifert's journey to the U.S.S.R. and was influenced by Dada and Surrealism. It was labelled with a short-lined, rhymed stanza-the language of slogans and political agitation, familiar from the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1930 Seifert became an editor in chief of theater monthly Nova Scena. He also contributed to newspapers throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1929 Seifert was among those who refused to follow Klement Gottwald's Moskow-inspired line of systematic opposition to the legitimacy of the Czechoslovak Republic. During the years, Seifert had developed a critical attitude toward socialism, and his visit in the Soviet Union did not increase his enthusiasm about Communism. In 1929 he was expelled from the Communist Party and the Devetsil collective.

JABLKO Z KLÍNA (1933) marked the emergence of his new style, in which he uses almost colloquial language and natural images. A number of the poems dealt with love-it was a dominant subject also in RUCE VENUŠINY (1936). Ideologically Seifert approached the Social Democrats, who worked inside the parliamentary democracy. Also as a poet Seifert went through the process of renewal: he searched inspiration from the Czech poetic tradition, evoking a quasi-mythological mother figure, and drawing on the experiences of everyday life. In 1938 appeared Seifert's prophetic ZHASNETE SVETLA (Put Out the Lights), after the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. The title work, about the Nazi threat hanging over Prague, is one of his most famous poems.

During the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia, Seifert continued to write poems that expressed the anguish of his homeland. With VEJIR BOZENY NEMCOVÉ (194), a passionate protest against the Nazi occupation of Prague, Seifert won the confidence of the Communist Party for a time. PRILBA HLÍNY (1945) celebrated the Prague uprising of 1945 against the Nazis and earned Seifert the stature as a Czech national poet. He identified himself fully with the people's grief, and interpreted the commonly shared feelings of betrayal and hope for survival. In 1966 he was named Poet of the Nation.

From 1945 to 1949 Seifert edited the Trade Union daily Práce. When Czechoslovakia came under pro-Soviet Communist domination, Seifert returned to apolitical themes and wrote much children's literature. In 1948 he refused all compromise after the Communist take over. Among others his MOROVNÝ SLOUP (1977, trans. The Plague Column) had to be published abroad. Seifert's poetry was attacked by a party critic for sinking into subjectivism.

"What's all this talk about grey hair
and wisdom?
When the bush of life burns down
experience is worthless.
Indeed it always has been."
(from The Plague Column)

In the 1950s Seifert became a spokesman for artistic freedom and criticized Government's cultural policies. "If a writer is silent, he is lying," he once said. However, MAMINKA (1954) received the State award. In 1968 Seifert condemned the Soviet invasion of his country, which aimed to stop all liberal tendencies. He was appointed president of the Writers Union in 1969, but resigned shortly thereafter in protest of Soviet oppression. During the 1970s, his works circulated in underground editions. In 1977 he signed among 500 others the Charter on Human Rights and his works gained first time wider attention of English-speaking readers. MOROVÝ SLOUP (The Plague Column), which was published in the same year, was a single long poem. It used a three-hundred-year-old Prague monument as a symbol for Czech fate and history, and warned of the dangers of neo-Stalinism. "I believe that seeking beautiful words is better than killing and murdering," Seifert argued.

Seifert's autobiography VŠECKY KRÁSY SVETA (1981, All the Beauty of the World) appeared abroad, in two émigré publications, and led to the Nobel Prize. In this memoir Seifert recreated the spirit of the Czech avant-garde between the two World Wars and during the Nazi occupation. Too old and ill to travel to Stockholm for the prize, the poet welcomed the news from his hospital bed. The Government was not excited about the award, and refused to give an exit permit to his son-in-law and secretary to go to Stockholm in his behalf. In the late 1970s he wrote in 'Finger Prints' (published in An Unbrella From Piccadilly, 1985): "Perhaps I had committed an offence against public morality, I don't know! I know nothing about the law. Yet I was sentenced after all to lifelong punishment. If love is a labyrinth full of glittering mirrors, and it is that, I'd crossed its threshold and entered. And from the bewitching glitter of mirrors I haven't found the way out to this day." Seifert died in Prague on January 10, in 1986. As a People's Artist, Seifert was entitled to a state funeral; it became a national event.

For further reading: Jaroslav Seifert by V. Cerný (1954); The Poets of Prague by A. French (1969); Modern Slavic Literatures, vol. 2 , ed. by V.D. Mihailovich et al. (1976); Czech Literature by A. Novák (1976); The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, ed. by George Gibian et al (1998); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 4, ed. by Steven R. Serafin; see entry by Maria Nemcovà Banerjee (1999) - Note: The English novelist and mystery writer Ellis Peters translated Seifert's Mozart in Prague. In 1968, the year of the 'Prague Spring', she was awarded the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations Gold Medal.

Selected works:

* MESTO V SLZÁCH, 1920
* REVOLUCNÍ SBORNÍK DEVETSIL, 1922
* SAMÁ LÁSKA, 1923
* NA VINÁCH T.S.F, 1925 - Over the Waves
* SVATEBNÍ CESTA, 1925
* SLAVIK ZPIVA SPATNE, 1926 - The Nightingale Sings Out of Tune
* HVEZDY NAD RAJSKOU ZAHRADOU, 1929
* JABLKO Z KLÍNA, 1933
* RUCE VENUŠINY, 1936
* OSM DNÍ, 1937
* BASNÍKU KARLU TOMANOVI, 1937
* ZHASNETE SVETLA, 1938
* SVATEBNÍ CESTA, 1938 - Honeymoon Ride
* VEJIR BOZENY NEMCOVÉ, 1940 - Bozena Nemcova's Fan
* SVETLEM ODENÁ, 1940
* SVETLEM ODENÁ, PRAHA 1940, 1942
* KAMENNÝ MOST, 1944
* PRILBA HLÍNY, 1945
* RUKA A PLANEM, 1948
* DOKUD NÁM NEPRŠÍ NA RAKEV
* POZDRAV FRANTIŠKOVI HALASOVI, 1949
* S OBLÁCKY HROZNU, 1949
* ROMANCE O KRALÍ VÁCLAVU IV, 1949
* PÍSEN O VIKTORCE, 1950
* MOZART V PRAZE, 1951 - Mozart in Prague: Thirteen Rondels (trans. by Paul Jagasich, Tom O'Grady)
* PETRÍN, 1951
* ROMANCE O MLÁDÍ A O VÍNE, 1954
* MAMINKA, 1954
* KOULELO SE, KOULELO, 1955
* CHLAPEC A HVZDY, 1956
* The Linden Tree, 1962 (translation)
* KONCERT NA OSTROVE, 1965
* DVA SVETY, 1966
* PRSTEN TREBONSKÉ MADONE, 1966
* ODLÉVÁNÍ ZVONU, 1967 - The Casting of the Bells (translated by Tom O'Grady and Paul Jagasich)
* HALLEYOVA KOMETA, 1967 - Halley's Comet
* DÍLO, 1954-1968 (7 vols.)
* ZPEVY O PRAZE, 1968
* DESTNÍK Z PICCADILLY, 1979 - An Unbrella From Piccadilly (translated by Ewald Osers)
* V
* MOROVÝ SLOUP, 1981 - The Plague Column (translation by Lyn Coffin) - Ruttopylväs (suom. Hannu Ylilehto)
* VŠECKY KRÁSY SVETA, 1981, 4 vol.
* Russian Bliny, 1982 (translation)
* BYTI BÁSNÍKEM, 1983
* 8 Days: An Elegy for Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, 1985 (trans. by Paul Jagasich, Tom O'Grady)
* The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, 1986 (translation)
* Dressed in Light, 1992 (trans. by Paul Jagasich, Tom O'Grady)
* The Early Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, 1997 (trans. by Dana Loewy)
* The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, 1998 (ed. by Ewald Osers, George Gibian)

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