Sign-In
Cart
The Lesser Histories
Paperback
Series: Modern Czech Classics
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 8024649330
ISBN13: 9788024649337
Publisher: Karolinum Pr
Published: Nov 4 2022
Pages: 100
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.40 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9788024649337
Publisher: Karolinum Pr
Published: Nov 4 2022
Pages: 100
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.40 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The first collection of poetry in English by an acclaimed twentieth-century Czech writer. From the eighth floor of a tower block in Central Europe, Jan Zábrana surveyed the twentieth century. He had been exiled from his own life by Communism. His parents were imprisoned, their health was broken, and he was not allowed to study languages in college. Refusing both to rebel outright or to cave in, he thought of himself as a dead man walking. To all those who keep asking me to do things for them, I sometimes feel like saying: 'But I'm dead. I died long ago. Why do you keep treating me as if I were one of the living?'
Yet during some of Europe's most difficult years, he wrote The Lesser Histories, a collection of sixty-four sonnets that range through themes of age, sex, and political repression-a radiant testament to his times. The lines are emptied both of personal pathos and political stridency. Often Zábrana's own voice segues into those of poets he had translated over the years, leaving only a bare shimmer of subjectivity-humorous, oblique, pained-with which to view his own works and days. The poems document a splendid and bitter isolation, and are immersed in the humor, hatreds, and loves of the everyday. Published in Czech in the ill-fated year of 1968, they subsequently fell into neglect. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Zábrana's collected poems and selected diaries were published in Czech, and he was acclaimed as a major twentieth-century writer. Now, with this collection, he can begin to reach English-language readers for the first time.
Yet during some of Europe's most difficult years, he wrote The Lesser Histories, a collection of sixty-four sonnets that range through themes of age, sex, and political repression-a radiant testament to his times. The lines are emptied both of personal pathos and political stridency. Often Zábrana's own voice segues into those of poets he had translated over the years, leaving only a bare shimmer of subjectivity-humorous, oblique, pained-with which to view his own works and days. The poems document a splendid and bitter isolation, and are immersed in the humor, hatreds, and loves of the everyday. Published in Czech in the ill-fated year of 1968, they subsequently fell into neglect. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Zábrana's collected poems and selected diaries were published in Czech, and he was acclaimed as a major twentieth-century writer. Now, with this collection, he can begin to reach English-language readers for the first time.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
$33.00
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
$19.94
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
$18.05
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
$18.00
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
$24.70