Prague's Indomitable Spirit

By Otto Friedrich

A remarkable, obscure Czech poet wins the Nobel Prize

How did last week's announcement of the Nobel Prize strike some of the celebrated writers who might like to win it themselves? Nobody knows, of course, but perhaps there was an outcry of bewildered protests like this:

"Who?" shouts Norman Mailer (and probably Graham Greene as well).

"Chi?" wonders Alberto Moravia (and perhaps Italo Calvino).

"Wer?" grumbles Gunter Grass (and possibly Peter Handke).

"iQuien?" inquires Jorge Luis Borges (and maybe Carlos Fuentes).

Some such chorus of international wonderment would have been quite understandable, for once again the Swedish Academy had awarded the world's most prestigious literary prize (now worth $190,000) to a man virtually unknown outside his own country. He is Czech Poet Jaroslav Seifert, 83. Only two of Seifert's 30 volumes of poetry are currently in print in the U.S., one published by a Czechoslovak society in New York City, the other by The Spirit That Moves Us Press of Iowa City, Iowa.

Seifert heard the news of the award in Prague's Vinohrady Hospital, where he had been admitted the previous week for treatment of a heart ailment and diabetes. Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoglund came to his bedside and presented him with the academy's statement honoring him "for his poetry, which, endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness, provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man." To the press afterward, Skoglund added, "He was overwhelmed. But I could see he was very tired."

Death will soon kick open the door

and enter.

With startled terror at that minute

I'll catch my breath

and forget to breathe again . . .

The Swedish Academy never discusses its mysterious decisions-and some of its recent choices have been almost equally obscure-so critics immediately speculated on the political implications in the choice of Seifert. Was the academy pointedly honoring a man for having spoken out against Communist censorship and harassment of intellectuals in Eastern Europe? Or was it avoiding the selection of more celebrated and more militant Czech dissidents, notably the exiled Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and Playwright Vaclav Havel (A Private View)?

Perhaps ambiguity was quite appropriate here, for Seifert is a man who has opposed both Nazism and Communism in the past, and yet is now tolerated by the Communist regime. Says Emigre Czech Novelist Josef Skvorecky (The Engineer of Human Souls): "He is a poet of the people. The government hates him, but he is so revered, so old and ill; he is too famous to be touched." And if the poet laureate of

Prague was gazing out of all her

windows,

smiling happily

at herself. . .

The 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 in 1929.

His voyages to Paris' Left Bank made an equally deep impression. He was influenced by avant-garde poets like Guillaume

Apollinaire and Andr6 Breton, and by the whole Parisian scene. "He must have been a real playboy," says Kundera.

You seldom find out

What women are really thinking

about.

Their little thoughts elude you

just as small birds barely touch the

human voice when their claws clench the phone

lines.

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 pure. Absolute but moderate."

He was 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."

Was the 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."

To all those million verses in the

world

I've added just a few.

They probably were no wiser than

a cricket's chirrup,

I know. Forgive me.

I'm coming to the end.

-By Otto Friedrich. Reported by Mary Johnson/ Stockholm, with other bureaus

With reporting by Mary Johnson