Jan Zábrana (4 July 1931 in Herálec – 3 September 1984 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

) was a Czech writer and translator. His parents were teachers and politicians persecuted by the

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

regime after the communist revolution of 1948: his mother, a member of the regional

parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

, was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison; his father, mayor of

Humpolec Humpolec (; german: Humpoletz) is a town in Pelhřimov District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 11,000 inhabitants. Administrative parts Villages of Brunka, Hněvkovice, Kletečná, Krasoňov, Lhotka, Petrovice, Plačk ...

before the communist coup, was also sentenced to 10 years in prison. All property of the Zábrana family was

confiscated Confiscation (from the Latin ''confiscatio'' "to consign to the ''fiscus'', i.e. transfer to the treasury") is a legal form of seizure by a government or other public authority. The word is also used, popularly, of spoliation under legal forms, o ...

when Zábrana was nineteen. University studies were prohibited to non-communists, so he tried to study in a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

school for priests, but this was prohibited, also. From 1952-53, Zábrana worked in the Tatra Smíchov tram factory in Prague, and the following year in an enamel factory in Radotín, and wrote poems and short stories (published after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 in the book ''Sedm povídek''). At this time he met many writers, both his elders ( Vladimír Holan,

Jiří Kolář Jiří Kolář (24 September 1914, Protivín – 11 August 2002, Prague) was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work included both literary and visual art. Life Kolář was born in Protivín on September 29, 1914, in a work ...

) and his peers

Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...

, Josef Škvorecký,

Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal (; 28 March 1914 – 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, often named among the best Czech writers of the 20th century. Early life Hrabal was born in Židenice (suburb of Brno) on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province ...

). From 1954, he worked full-time as a translator and became one of the best Czech translators of 20th century. His interest focused mainly on

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

n and

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

literature, including Aksjonov, Ivan Bunin, Cvetajeva,

Mandelstam Mandelstam or Mandelshtam (russian: Мандельштам) is a Jewish surname which may refer to: * Leonid Mandelstam (1879–1944), Russian theoretical physicist ** Mandel'shtam (crater), lunar crater named for Leonid Mandelstam * Nadezhda Mand ...

, Pasternak,

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, and Platonov; and

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...

, Sylvia Plath,

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

, and

Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrough ...

. Zábrana also wrote many afterwords to his translations and these were published in ''Potkat básníka'' in 1989. Apart from three years during the 1960s when he published three collections (' 1965, ' 1968 and ' 1968), he published no original poetry in his lifetime. He wrote three detective stories (with Josef Škvorecký), and one novel for children. In the

normalization Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Most commonly it refers to: * Normalization (sociology) or social normalization, the process through which ideas and behaviors that may fall outside of ...

period of the 1970s, later in the 1980s, he wrote poetry and continued with his diaries, published in 1992 under the title ' (A Whole Life).

Translations

(English) *Jan Zábrana, ''"The Lesser Histories",'' trans. Justin Quinn, Karolinum Press (2022). . *Jan Zábrana,
"Evening Trains"
'' trans. Justin Quinn, ''New York Review of Books'' (2020). *Jan Zábrana,
"Two Poems"
' trans. Justin Quinn, ''Body'' (2014).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zabrana, Jan 1931 births 1984 deaths People from Havlíčkův Brod District 20th-century Czech poets 20th-century male writers Czech male poets Czech translators 20th-century translators