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Petr Bezruč was the pseudonym of Vladimír Vašek (15 September 1867 - 17 February 1958), a Czech poet and short story writer who was associated with the region of Austrian Silesia. His most notable work is Silesian Songs, a collection of poems about the inhabitants of Silesia, written over many years.

Life

Petr Bezruč was born Vladimír Vašek in Opava in 1867 to Antonín Vašek and Marie Vašková (née Brožková). Antonín was a teacher and public intellectual who published the first Czech-language newspaper in Silesia, Opavský Besedník.

Vladimír Vašek had five siblings; three brothers, Ladislav, Otakar, and Antonín; and two sisters, Olga and Helena.

In 1873, Vladimír Vašek’s family was forced to move to Brno due to his father’s pro-Czech activities. Vladimír grew up in Brno, but spent the summers in the town of Háj ve Slezsku, where his father Antonín would hunt. In 1880, Antonín died of tuberculosis.

In 1881, Vladimír Vašek began studying at the Slovanské Gymnázium in Brno (today’s Gymnázium Kapitána Jarose). From 1885-1888, Vašek studied classical philology at Charles University in Prague, but he never completed his studies. During his time in Prague, Vašek became more and more melancholic and introverted. He did, however, meet several authors who would be influential in his later life, including Jan Herben and Vilém Mrštík, and learned from professors including T.G. Masaryk and Otakar Hostinský.

In 1888, Vašek moved back to Brno, because his family was in a tough financial situation. He published his first work, the short story Studie z Café Lustig, under the pseudonym Ratibor Suk in the magazine Švanda Dudák. In 1891, after completing trade school to work as a postal officer, he was sent to the small town of Místek.

Vašek’s time in Místek from 1891-1893 was crucial for Silesian Songs. Much of the material for the poetry came from Vašek’s experiences there. In particular, he was deeply struck by the extreme poverty of the region and the resilience of the local people.

In 1893, Vladimír Vašek’s best friend, Ondřej Boleslav Petr, committed suicide, and Vašek requested to be transferred back to Brno. In 1894, Vašek’s mom died and he began to take care of his younger brother Antonín, as well as to visit his brother Ladislav in Kostelec na Hané which marked the beginning of his deep connection towards the Haná region.

In 1899, Vladimír Vašek sent poetry to the magazine Čas, using the pseudonym Petr Bezruč.  Editor Jan Herben immediately recognized the quality of the poetry, and wanted to publish three poems, but because of Austrian censorship was only able to publish one. Over the next few years, Bezruč had his poetry published regularly in Čas. His first collection of poems was published in book form in 1903. In 1909, his poems were published with the collection title Silesian Songs for the first time.

In 1915, Bezruč was accused of writing two pro-Russian poems which appeared in the French magazine L’Indépendance Tchéque, which were signed P.B., but actually written by Jan Grmela. Bezruč was arrested under charges of treason, which was punishable by death. The military court found him innocent after failing to find evidence he had written the poems, but nevertheless moved him to a jail in Brno. With his literary success rising, including a translation of Silesian Songs to German, he was released later in 1916, although lawsuits continued until October 1918.

In the last forty years of his life, Silesian Songs was printed more and more frequently, and Bezruč was considered a Czech national poet. At the same time, however, he became more and more introverted and isolated from society. He enjoyed hiking in the Beskydy mountains.

Bezruč never published a work of the same acclaim as Silesian Songs. In 1945,  he was awarded the title of národní umělec (national artist) by the Czechoslovak government.

Bezruč lived out the rest of his life in Kostelec na Hané. He died in the Olomouc hospital in 1958 at the age of 90. He was buried in Opava.

Works

Bezruč’s fame is almost entirely due to the poetry collection Silesian Songs, which generally portrays the people of Silesia as an oppressed group, suffering from foreign exploitation and the negative effects of industrialization. The poems are intended for a working class audience. The themes of the poems could resonate with any colonized group of people, or people feeling left behind by modernization. Specific poems in the collection deal with themes such as love, poverty, oppression at the hands of other ethnicities, and poems about specific towns or locations.

Dispute over the authorship of Silesian Songs

Due to the fact that Petr Bezruč never wrote a similarly well-acclaimed collection of poems in his long life, as well as due to several details in the poems themselves, some critics have argued that Silesian Songs may in fact have multiple authors. Author and literary historian Jan Drozd argued that Vladimír Vašek co-wrote Silesian Songs with his friend Ondřej Boleslav Petr, and that Petr Bezruč is their collective pseudonym. Folklorist and rock musician Jaromír Nohavica argues that Ondřej Boleslav Petr is the author of around 10 of the poems in the Silesian Songs collection.

In 2014, the Czech Literature Bureau of the Czech Academy of Sciences published a new edition of Silesian Songs and criticized the hypothesis that anyone other than Vladimír Vašek wrote any of the poems in the collection.

František Ladislav Čelakovský (7 March 1799 Strakonice - 5 August 1852 Prague) was a Czech poet, translator, linguist, and literary critic. He was a major figure in the Czech “national revival”. His most notable works are Ohlas písní ruských (Echoes of Russian Songs) and Ohlas písní českých (Echoes of Bohemian Songs).

Life

Čelakovský was born in Strakonice to the carpenter Vojtěch Čelakovský and his wife Anna. He attended high school in České Budějovice and then Písek. He began studying philosophy in Prague, but due to financial problems transferred to a lyceum in České Budějovice was expelled for reading Jan Hus. He continued his studies in Linz and then at Charles University in Prague (then called Charles-Ferdinand University). Rather than focus on the required courses, he took language and literature courses for his own self-studies; he failed a logic exam in 1822 and never got a university degree.

Čelakovský made a living as a private tutor until 1829, when thanks to Karel Alois Vinařický’s recommendation, Prague’s archbishop had him translate Augustine of Hippo's De Civitate Dei. From 1829 to 1842 he was a proofreader for the Časopis pro katolické duchovenstvo (Magazine for the Catholic Clergy). From 1833, Čelakovský was an editor of Pražské noviny, a newspaper in Prague. As editor, he attempted to develop readers’ political and cultural knowledge. He expanded the magazine Česká Wčela (The Czech Bee), had the newspaper include articles from foreign non-German-language press for the first time, and developed relationships with Slavists abroad. In 1835, he was named a professor of Czech language and literature in Prague.

On November 26th, 1835, Čelakovský commented negatively in Pražské noviny about Russian Tsar Nicholas I’s threats against a Polish uprising. The Russian embassy in Vienna complained and Čelakovský was removed from his position as both an editor and professor. For the next two years, he survived only through translations and the support of Karel Alois Vinařický. From 1838, he was a librarian for the Kinský family. In 1841, he became a professor of Slavic Literature in Wroclaw, and then got the same position in Prague in 1849.

Family

František Ladislav Čelakovský married Marie Ventová in Strakonice on February 2nd, 1834. They had four children together, before she died from typhus in 1844. The next year, he married Antonie Reissová in Prague. Antonie kept a correspondence with author Božena Němcová, which Čelakovský occasionally took part in. They had four children together, but one, Anna, died three months after she was born. Antonie died in 1852, and Čelakovský died later that year. In his will, Čelakovský made Dr. Josef František Frič the guardian of his children.

Works

Čelakovský’s style is often classified as pre-romanticism. He both influenced and was influenced by other leaders of the Czech “national revival” , as well as foreign Slavic cultural figures.

Between 1821 and 1823 he published several poems under the name Žofie Jandová, a woman’s name. As a female poet, she was intended to show the high level of development of Czech literature and culture. The English translator John Bowring included her in his anthology of Czech literature. Čelakovský also occasionally used the pseudonym Marcián Hromotluk.

Čelakovský’s most important works were either collections of Slavic folklore or poems based on Slavic folklore.

His Slovanské národní písně (National Songs of the Slavs) is an important collection of Slavic folk songs. Part 1 (1822) is a collection of Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak folk songs, dedicated to Václav Hanka. Part 2 (1825), dedicated to Kazimierz Brodziński, is divided into two books. The first continues to cover Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak folk songs. The second is folk songs from other Slavic languages, with the originals appearing next to Čelakovský’s Czech translations. Čelakovský published songs that did not make it into the first two parts in the originally unplanned Part 3 (1827), dedicated to Vuk Karadžić.

Ohlas písní ruských (Echoes of Russian Songs) (1829) is a collection of epic poems based on themes from Russian folklore, especially byliny.

Ohlas písní českých (Echoes of Bohemian Songs) (1839) is a similar collection of poems based on themes from Czech life. However, rather than focusing on epic or heroic themes like Echoes of Russian Songs, most of the poems are in much simpler language, with proverb-like lines about daily life.

Mudrosloví národa slovanského v příslovích (The Wisdom of the Slavic People in Proverbs) (1852) is a collection of Slavic proverbs, arranged thematically to portray the traditional life philosophy of the Slavs.

In addition to poetry and works related to Slavic folklore, Čelakovský also published translations from German, English, and Latin into Czech, scientific literature on Slavic linguistics, and textbooks on the Czech language.

Irena Dousková (18 August 1964, Příbram) is a contemporary Czech author, who writes primarily novels, but also short stories and poetry.

Life

Irena Dousková was born Irena Freistadtová in Příbram in 1964. She grew up around the acting scene. Both her mom and stepfather were actors in the Příbram theater. Her father Petr Freistadt was a theater director, who emigrated to Israel in 1964. She changed her last name from her father’s name to her mother’s maiden name, Dousková.

In 1976, Dousková’s family moved to Prague. After graduating high school, she worked as a librarian and secretary, before being accepted to the faculty of Law at Charles University. She completed her degree in 1989, but never worked in law.

Instead, she worked as a playwright, and then as a journalist for several newspapers, before becoming a full-time author.

Dousková first emerged on the Czech literary scene through her poetry. She was a member of the group LiDi, and presented poetry through them starting in 1988. She also published in several magazines and newspapers. Only later did the focus of her work turn to prose.

Works

In 1992, Dousková published a collection of poems, Pražský zázrak (Prague Miracle).

In 1997, she published her first work of prose, Goldstein píše dceři (Goldstein Writes to His Daughter), followed by Hrdý Budžes in 1998. Hrdý Budžes is her most highly regarded work by literary critics, and also most popular among readers. It was also made into a play which became almost as popular as the original work.

Dousková continues to write a new novel about once every three years, and has also published short stories and poems.

Some hallmarks of Dousková’s work include the use of irony and humor to address tragic themes. This allows her to describe dark periods in modern history, especially communist Czechoslovakia and Jewish history, in ways that will attract readers.

A trilogy of her works --- Hrdý Budžes, Oněgin byl Rusák (Onegin was a Russki) and Darda---  follows the story of a schoolgirl during the 1970s “normalization” period in commmunist Czechoslovakia. Dousková was the same age as the protagonist during this time period, so she was able to use personal experience to add realism to the writing.

Dousková is one of the most successful modern Czech authors abroad, having been translated into at least thirteen different languages. Hrdý Budžes was translated into English by Melvyn Clarke in 2016 (with the title B. Proudew), and Clarke continues to translate her works into English.

Michal Viewegh  is one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers.

He is the most published Czech author of all time, with over a million books sold. In 1993 he earned the prestigious Jiří Orten award for Czech writers 30 years old or younger.

Viewegh survived a traumatic aortic rupture in 2012.

Life

Michal Viewegh was born in Prague on March 31st, 1962. His mother is a lawyer. His father was a chemical engineer, and then the mayor of Sázava.

Viewegh graduated from Benešov Gymnazium in 1980. He studied economics at the Prague University of Economics and Business, but dropped out. He then completed a degree in Czech and in pedagogy at Charles University in the Philosophy department in 1988. While in school, Viewegh began publishing short stories in Mladá fronta, with his first story published in 1983.

After graduating from university in 1988, Viewegh worked as an elementary school teacher until 1993. In 1993, he was awarded the Jiří Orten award for young Czech authors. For two years, he worked as an editor at the publishing company Český spisovatel; after that, he was able to support himself  as a professional author.

Viewegh has been married twice, first to Jaroslava Macková, with whom he has one daughter, Michaela. In 2002, he married Veronika Vieweghová (née Kodytková). They have two daughters, Sára and Barbora. They divorced in 2015.

On December 12th, 2012, Viewegh suffered a traumatic aorta rupture. He suffered from depression and memory loss during his rehabilitation and was unable to write. However, it also helped him gain a new perspective on the relative importance of some of his problems before the accident. Viewegh said that when he thinks about the fact that 90% of people with a ruptured aorta do not survive,  he does not worry about criticism, the tabloids, or politics anymore.

He has lived most of his life in Sázava, a village in central Bohemia.

Works

Viewegh’s first book was the novella Názory na vraždu (Opinions on a Murder), published in 1990. His first full-length novel was Báječná léta pod psa (The Wonderful Years that Sucked), a semi-autobiographical novel which portrayed Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the fall of communism in 1989. In 1997, it was adapted into a very successful film, directed by Petr Nikolaev.

Viewegh has published novels almost every spring since the late 1990s. He sells around 50,000 copies per book and has sold over a million books total, making him the most published Czech author of all time. His works have been translated into 23 languages. His most famous works include Báječná léta pod psa, Výchova dívek v Čechách (Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia, 1994), and Román pro ženy (A Novel for Women, 2001).

In addition to novels, which make up the majority of his work, Viewegh has also published several other genres of literature. Nápady laskavého čtenáře (Thoughts of a Loving Reader, 1993) and Nové nápady laskavého čtenáře (New Thoughts of a Loving Reader, 2000) are both examples of literary parody, in which Viewegh parodies famous Czech and world authors.

Viewegh has also published collections of short stories. Additionally, he has published several autobiographical works, each capturing a small portion of his life in diary format. Můj život po životě (My Life After Life), published in 2013, details his recovery from his ruptured aorta.

Since the ruptured aorta, Viewegh has been much less prolific and successful as a writer. He still suffers from short-term memory loss, lack of directional awareness, and depression. He publishes at a much slower rate than before the injury. The general consensus is that the quality of his writing has also declined; however, some argue that his works are less successful due to poor promotion from his publisher.

Relationship with tabloid newspapers

For years, Viewegh has fought Czech tabloids in the court system, and criticized them publicly, accusing the tabloids of invading his privacy and of publishing false information about him. In 2009, Viewegh and actor Marek Vašut started a petition Vzkaz bulváru a výzva kolegům (A Message to the Tabloids and an Appeal to Colleagues) criticizing Czech tabloid tactics. Many influential artists, including actress Jiřina Bohdalová, signed the petition.

Political Views

Viewegh’s 1992 novel Báječná léta pod psa uses humor to criticize conditions in Czechoslovakia under communism.

Viewegh was unhappy as a writer under communism, but likes the freedoms of post-communist Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.  Viewegh has said that “in the eighties I wrote two novels and neither of them were published. They were banned from being printed for the normal ideological reasons. After the revolution came absolute freedom. I was able to write just how I wanted, and to publish whatever I wanted."

Viewegh is also opposed to right-wing former Czech president Václav Klaus. This attitude is most notably displayed in his 2002 novel Báječná léta s Klausem (The Wonderful Years with Klaus), which is a loose continuation of Báječná léta pod psa.

I will keep the last two sections from the current Wikipedia article mostly as they are:

Controversies

In his column for Lidove noviny (Czech newspaper and online news site) published on 1 October 2018, Viewegh criticised Christine Blayse Ford's allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh on the grounds that "putting her in an empty room, groping her, covering her mouth while trying to undress her" was an "innocent high-school petting" and that he thanks God that he, as a pubescent, was free to grope his female schoolmates without endangering his future career, without any "North-American cow" complaining about it.. He has been criticised in turn by criminologist Pavel Houdek in a published open letter, that his views are what makes victims of sexual abuse keep it to themselves.

Bibliography

• 1990. Názory na vraždu ("Opinions on a Murder")
• 1992. Báječná léta pod psa ("Bliss Was It In Bohemia") - humorous bestseller about the Communist era; adapted to film as Those Wonderful Years That Sucked in 1997 (co-scripted by Jan Novák)
• 1993. Nápady laskavého čtenáře ("Thoughts of a Loving Reader") - collection of literary parodies
• 1994. Výchova dívek v Čechách ("Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia") - translated by A. G. Brain (pseudonym of Gerald Turner) in 1996, ISBN 1-887378-05-7; made into a film in 1997
• 1996. Účastníci zájezdu ("Tourists on an Excursion") - made into a film in 2006, successful at Tribeca Film Festival
• 1998. Zapisovatelé otcovský lásky ("Notes on Fatherly Love")
• 1999. Povídky o manželství a sexu ("Tales of Marriage and Sex") - adapted to film as Shameless in 2008 (co-written with Jan Hřebejk)
• 2000. Nové nápady laskavého čtenáře ("New Thoughts of a Loving Reader") - second collection of literary parodies
• 2001. Román pro ženy ("A Woman's Novel") - made into a film in 2005
• 2002. Báječná léta s Klausem ("Wonderful Years with Klaus") - loose sequel to the first Wonderful Years criticising Václav Klaus before the Czech legislative election, 2002
• 2003. Případ nevěrné Kláry ("The Case of Unfaithful Clara") - the 2009 film of the same name is loosely based on the novel
• 2004. Vybíjená ("Dodgeball")
• 2004. Tři v háji – with Halina Pawlowská and Iva Hercíková
• 2006. Lekce tvůrčího psaní ("The Creative Writing Lesson") - novella
• 2006. Báječný rok ("Wonderful Year") - a diary of 2005
• 2007. Andělé všedního dne ("Angels of the Everyday") - novella with experience about his father's death
• 2008. Román pro muže ("A Man's Novel")
• 2009. Něco na těch Vánocích být musí ("What's So Special About Christmas, Anyway?") - short story collection published in 2010 by Garamond (Czech/English parallel text)
• 2010. Biomanželka ("Eco-Wife")
• 2011. Mafie v Praze ("The Mafia in Prague")
• 2012. Mráz přichází z Hradu ("The Big Freeze from Prague Castle")
• 2013. Můj život po životě ("My Life After Life")
• 2015. Biomanžel ("Eco-Husband")

Collections of newspaper columns:

• Švédské stoly aneb Jací jsme (2000)
• Na dvou židlích (2004)