Zbyněk Hejda (2 February 1930,

Hradec Králové Hradec Králové (; ) is a city of the Czech Republic. It has about 94,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Hradec Králové Region. The historic centre of Hradec Králové is well preserved and is protected as an Cultural monument (Czech R ...

– 16 November 2013,

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

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, essayist and translator (mainly from English -

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

; and German - Georg Trakl, Gottfried Benn).

Life

He studied

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. From 1953 to 1958, he taught the history of the

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Com ...

at the Faculty of Arts. From 1958 to 1968, he worked at the Prague Information Service, and later in 1968 he started working in a publishing house but left the very same year together with the whole editorial staff. From 1968 to 1978 he worked in a second hand bookshop, until he signed the

Charter 77 Charter 77 (''Charta 77'' in Czech language, Czech and Slovak language, Slovak) was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members ...

and was forced to leave. From 1981 to 1989 he worked as a caretaker. Since 1990 to 1995 he taught cultural anthropology at the 2nd Faculty of Medicine,

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

Work

Since 1959 he published his poetry in literary magazines, including Revolver Revue, in the Czechoslovak Republic, and in Czech exile magazines, such as Svědectví published by Pavel Tigrid in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He received The Tom Stoppard Prize for his essays in 1989 and the Jaroslav Seifert Prize in 1996.Valse melancolique
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Bibliography

* ''Všechna slast'', 1964 * ''Blízkosti smrti'', samizdat 1978,

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

1985, Prague 1992 * ''Lady Felthamová'', samizdat 1979, Paris 1987, Prague 1992 * ''Tři básně'', samizdat 1987 * ''Pobyt v sanatoriu'', 1993 * ''Nikoho tam nepotkám'', 1994 * ''Valse mélancolique'',

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

1995 * ''Básně'', 1996 (Collected Poems) * ''Překlady'', 1998 (Collected Translations) * ''Cesta k Cerekvi'', 2004 * ''Sny'', 2007

References

External links

Zbyněk Hejda

Z. Hejda's poetry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hejda, Zbynek 1930 births 2013 deaths 20th-century Czech poets Czech male poets Writers from Hradec Králové Charter 77 signatories Charles University alumni 20th-century Czech translators