Jaroslav Seifert

Jaroslav Seifert (Prague, 1901 – Prague, 1986) was a Czech poet and journalist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984. His career spans the interwar years, the Nazi occupation, the postwar communist period and the last years of socialist Czechoslovakia, so his work also shows how a poet lived alongside the politics of his time.

He was born in Žižkov, a working-class district of Prague that at the time was part of Austria-Hungary, into a working-class family. He left his studies unfinished and soon devoted himself to poetry and journalism. His first collection of poems appeared in 1921, launching a career tied to the avant-garde of the 1920s: he was one of the founders of the group Devětsil and a leading figure in Czechoslovak avant-garde art.

His links with communism shaped much of his public life. He belonged to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and contributed to several leftist publications, but in March 1929 he left the party together with six other writers, after signing a manifesto against the Stalinist direction taken by the new leadership. During the 1930s and 1940s he worked as a journalist for social-democratic and trade union papers, and in 1949 he gave up journalism to devote himself entirely to literature.

His style is lyrical and sensual, with a fondness for imagery and wordplay. Love, the city, especially Prague, everyday life and the figure of the mother recur throughout his work. He received important state prizes in 1936, 1955 and 1968, and in 1967 was named National Artist. From 1968 to 1970 he chaired the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. In 1977 he signed Charter 77, a stance opposing the government that brought him the suspicion of the authorities.

In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Due to poor health he could not attend the ceremony, and his daughter accepted the prize on his behalf; the state-controlled media barely noted the news. The following year he published his memoirs, known in Spanish as Toda la belleza del mundo. He died in Prague in 1986 and was buried in the family tomb in Kralupy nad Vltavou, in a funeral heavily watched by the secret police, who tried to suppress any sign of dissent.

His legacy is a poetry that combines lightness, eroticism and urban memory, and it still reads as the testimony of an author who never stopped speaking of beauty in difficult times.