Jan Zábrana
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Jan Zábrana (4 July 1931 in Herálec – 3 September 1984 in
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
) was a
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writer and translator. His parents were teachers and politicians persecuted by the
communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
regime after the communist revolution of 1948: his mother, a member of the regional
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, was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison; his father, mayor of
Humpolec Humpolec (; ) is a town in Pelhřimov District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 12,000 inhabitants. Administrative division Humpolec consists of 12 municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): ...
before the communist coup, was also sentenced to 10 years in prison. All property of the Zábrana family was confiscated 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 List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
school for priests, but this was prohibited, also. From 1952 to 1953, 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 Vladimír Holan (; September 16, 1905 – March 31, 1980) was a Czechoslovak poet famous for employing obscure language, dark topics and pessimistic views in his poems. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in the late 1960s. Life Holan was bor ...
,
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 dissident. Havel served as the last List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissol ...
,
Josef Škvorecký Josef Škvorecký (; September 27, 1924 – January 3, 2012) was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the ...
,
Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal (; 28 March 1914 – 3 February 1997) was a Czech Republic, 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 ...
). 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
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n and
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literature, including Aksjonov,
Ivan Bunin Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( or ; rus, Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин, p=ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪdʑ ˈbunʲɪn, a=Ivan Alyeksyeyevich Bunin.ru.vorb.oga;  – 8 November 1953)Cvetajeva,
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, 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 Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...
,
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 novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...
,
Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for '' The Colossus and Other Poems'' (1960), '' Ariel'' (1965), a ...
,
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. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and ...
,
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
, and
Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet. Along with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, he was part of the Beat Generation, as well as one of its youngest members. Early life Born N ...
. 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 Josef Škvorecký (; September 27, 1924 – January 3, 2012) was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the ...
), and one novel for children. In the
normalization Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Science * Normalization process theory, a sociological theory of the implementation of new technologies or innovations * Normalization model, used in ...
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 Czech male writers Czech male poets 20th-century Czech translators