Word: seifert
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...spotlight of Nobel publicity casts a pitiless glare, of course, and if Seifert seems a rather modest and provincial talent to become so celebrated, he has nonetheless survived honorably in a time and region where that capacity was harshly tested. Born to poverty in 1901, he published his first book of poetry, A City in Tears, when he was 19. He was an idealistic Communist in those days, but two trips to the Soviet Union in the 1920s were disillusioning. When he challenged the Stalinist leadership of the party, he was expelled...
...Seifert made his poetic reputation in the 1920s and 1930s, but he made his living as a journalist. He worked on newspapers even throughout the German Occupation. He wrote patriotic poems, though, and they were widely read. When the Communists took power in 1948, he continued to produce both journalistic writings and verse subtly critical of the new regime, but often simply lyrics about love or spring or his city of Prague. "You cannot say he is a dissident, but just the same he is someone who never compromised," says Kundera. "The moral position of Seifert has always been absolutely...
...caught up, inevitably, in the crisis of 1968, when Czechoslovakia seemed for a few giddy months to have won a measure of independence. As Soviet tanks finally invaded, the ailing Seifert angrily hobbled to the Czech Writers' Union and got himself elected chairman so that he could take part in whatever resistance was to be offered. He helped organize the major protest declaration known as Charter 77. "If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical maneuver," Seifert declared. "If a writer is silent, he is lying...
Silence can be imposed, however. For a decade, the Czech authorities published no new work by Seifert. His poems circulated only in the private versions known as samizdat. As he neared 80, the regime relented, and selections of his work began to appear once again. They proved immensely popular. Trying to explain that popularity, George Gibian, professor of comparative and Russian literature at Cornell, described Seifert as "the grand old man of Czech poetry, a combination of Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings...
...grand old man's wife happy over this moment of recognition? "I can't think I am," said Marie Seifert, 85. "I would be happier if he were healthy...