Poetry Talks Prague with Sakari Happonen. The Plague Column by Jaroslav Seifert.
Czech has an exceptionally rich literary history that makes it the incredible country we all love today. One of the writers that forms Czech literary identity is Jaroslav Seifert.
Jaroslav Seifert was born on Bořivojova in Žižkov. We will meet at Parukářka to discuss The Plague Column poem from the collection The Plague Column here: https://allpoetry.com/The-Plague-Colemn. You can read these in any language you can find. Sakari is reading the Finnish translation, we will discuss in English.
WE'RE STILL LOOKING FOR A LOCAL CZECH READER TO JOIN US AND READ FROM THE PLAGUE COLUMN (MOROVÝ SLOUP) IN CZECH DURING THE EVENT. IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW WOULD BE INTERESTED, PLEASE LET US KNOW :)
Through discussion we use each other to help us understand the poem. You do not need to be an expert, you do not need to be that familiar with poetry, all you need is curiosity and through discussion we can learn about ourselves, our cultures and Seifert and the Czech identity.
Any questions please reach out to [email protected] or on the facebook event. If there are any changes to the event we will write on Prague Literary Calendar event page.
More information and context below from Sakari Happonen, a Finnish poet and writer in residence.
__________________________________________________
We invite you to join us for an evening of poetry readings and discussion about the Czech Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, the grand old man of Czech poetry and a poet of death and desire, Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986), in his birthplace of Žižkov. Seifert was a poet of the people, whose memorial stands at the Lipanská tram stop. He was also a key figure in Poetism, an important poetic and artistic movement in Czechoslovakia that formed part of the avant-garde.
During the evening, we will discuss the section “The Plague Column” (pages 95–104) from Jaroslav Seifert’s poetry collection The Plague Column (Morový sloup). The reading material will be available on this event page. Please send us a message if you have any questions or encounter any problems downloading or opening the material.
The discussion will take place in English. We encourage you to read the poem(s) in your native language and bring your own unique perspectives and interpretations to the discussion. Sakari Happonen will bring a Finnish translation of Seifert’s The Plague Column (Ruttopylväs, translated by Hannu Ylilehto, 1985) to the evening. It is currently the only Czech poetry collection intended for adult readers to have been translated into Finnish.
During the event, we will hear a reading of “The Plague Column” in at least two different languages. We are still looking for a local Prague reader who could read the poem in its original language (Czech), so if you or anyone you know might be interested, please get in touch. :)
It is important to note that this is not a lecture, but an evening where we discover and learn from each other. Bring your own knowledge, perspectives, and curiosity to the discussion! As the discussion will take place in a group setting, it is important to treat everyone with respect and listen attentively. This evening dedicated to Seifert offers a unique and rare opportunity to better understand the movements — poetic and otherwise — that have shaped the Czech Republic into what it is today.
Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal once said that young poets write about death, while old fogies write about sex. In Seifert’s case, both are equally true, and nowhere else is this more apparent than in his collection The Plague Column (1978). If possible, we highly encourage all attendees to read the entire collection, rather than just the “The Plague Column” section, as this will provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the collection’s topics and themes as a whole. Any worthwhile poetry collection strives to be more than the sum of its parts, with warp threads running beneath the reading experience — a kind of underlying dramaturgy that binds the poems together. The Plague Column is perhaps Seifert’s most cohesive collection, in which individual poems build upon one another to create a more unified whole. Send us a message if you would like to read the entire collection; we can provide a copy.
FURTHER READING:
Joseph Grim Feinberg has written on Seifert and the Czech interwar avant-garde for those who want delve deeper: https://ojs-gr.zrc-sazu.si/primerjalna_knjizevnost/article/download/9784/9201
About the Seifert monument: https://umeleckepamatky.udu.cas.cz/en/object/101-monument-to-jaroslav-seifert
Nobel Prize website — four complete poems:
Autobiography / An Umbrella from Piccadilly / Fragment of a Letter / To Be a Poet
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1984/seifert/poetry/
kresadlo.cz —
http://kresadlo.cz/seifert.htm
Radio Prague International —
https://english.radio.cz/czech-books-you-must-read-8506310/14
Poetry Dispatch blog —
https://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/jaroslav-seifert-stasten-happy/
AllPoetry.com
https://allpoetry.com/Jaroslav-Seifert
Poetry Foundation — biographical page only, no full poems:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jaroslav-seifert
Kavárna Slavia (Seifert’s poem about Cafe Slavia, and the importance of french poet Apollinaire for the Czech poets)
https://praha.mkc.cz/en/place/po-stopach-kafkova-popisu-jednoho-zapasu/kavarna-slavia
Jaroslav Seifert was born on Bořivojova in Žižkov. We will meet at Parukářka to discuss The Plague Column poem from the collection The Plague Column here: https://allpoetry.com/The-Plague-Colemn. You can read these in any language you can find. Sakari is reading the Finnish translation, we will discuss in English.
WE'RE STILL LOOKING FOR A LOCAL CZECH READER TO JOIN US AND READ FROM THE PLAGUE COLUMN (MOROVÝ SLOUP) IN CZECH DURING THE EVENT. IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW WOULD BE INTERESTED, PLEASE LET US KNOW :)
Through discussion we use each other to help us understand the poem. You do not need to be an expert, you do not need to be that familiar with poetry, all you need is curiosity and through discussion we can learn about ourselves, our cultures and Seifert and the Czech identity.
Any questions please reach out to [email protected] or on the facebook event. If there are any changes to the event we will write on Prague Literary Calendar event page.
More information and context below from Sakari Happonen, a Finnish poet and writer in residence.
__________________________________________________
We invite you to join us for an evening of poetry readings and discussion about the Czech Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, the grand old man of Czech poetry and a poet of death and desire, Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986), in his birthplace of Žižkov. Seifert was a poet of the people, whose memorial stands at the Lipanská tram stop. He was also a key figure in Poetism, an important poetic and artistic movement in Czechoslovakia that formed part of the avant-garde.
During the evening, we will discuss the section “The Plague Column” (pages 95–104) from Jaroslav Seifert’s poetry collection The Plague Column (Morový sloup). The reading material will be available on this event page. Please send us a message if you have any questions or encounter any problems downloading or opening the material.
The discussion will take place in English. We encourage you to read the poem(s) in your native language and bring your own unique perspectives and interpretations to the discussion. Sakari Happonen will bring a Finnish translation of Seifert’s The Plague Column (Ruttopylväs, translated by Hannu Ylilehto, 1985) to the evening. It is currently the only Czech poetry collection intended for adult readers to have been translated into Finnish.
During the event, we will hear a reading of “The Plague Column” in at least two different languages. We are still looking for a local Prague reader who could read the poem in its original language (Czech), so if you or anyone you know might be interested, please get in touch. :)
It is important to note that this is not a lecture, but an evening where we discover and learn from each other. Bring your own knowledge, perspectives, and curiosity to the discussion! As the discussion will take place in a group setting, it is important to treat everyone with respect and listen attentively. This evening dedicated to Seifert offers a unique and rare opportunity to better understand the movements — poetic and otherwise — that have shaped the Czech Republic into what it is today.
Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal once said that young poets write about death, while old fogies write about sex. In Seifert’s case, both are equally true, and nowhere else is this more apparent than in his collection The Plague Column (1978). If possible, we highly encourage all attendees to read the entire collection, rather than just the “The Plague Column” section, as this will provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the collection’s topics and themes as a whole. Any worthwhile poetry collection strives to be more than the sum of its parts, with warp threads running beneath the reading experience — a kind of underlying dramaturgy that binds the poems together. The Plague Column is perhaps Seifert’s most cohesive collection, in which individual poems build upon one another to create a more unified whole. Send us a message if you would like to read the entire collection; we can provide a copy.
FURTHER READING:
Joseph Grim Feinberg has written on Seifert and the Czech interwar avant-garde for those who want delve deeper: https://ojs-gr.zrc-sazu.si/primerjalna_knjizevnost/article/download/9784/9201
About the Seifert monument: https://umeleckepamatky.udu.cas.cz/en/object/101-monument-to-jaroslav-seifert
Nobel Prize website — four complete poems:
Autobiography / An Umbrella from Piccadilly / Fragment of a Letter / To Be a Poet
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1984/seifert/poetry/
kresadlo.cz —
http://kresadlo.cz/seifert.htm
Radio Prague International —
https://english.radio.cz/czech-books-you-must-read-8506310/14
Poetry Dispatch blog —
https://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/jaroslav-seifert-stasten-happy/
AllPoetry.com
https://allpoetry.com/Jaroslav-Seifert
Poetry Foundation — biographical page only, no full poems:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jaroslav-seifert
Kavárna Slavia (Seifert’s poem about Cafe Slavia, and the importance of french poet Apollinaire for the Czech poets)
https://praha.mkc.cz/en/place/po-stopach-kafkova-popisu-jednoho-zapasu/kavarna-slavia
Where is it happening?
Parukářka, Menhir v Praze, 130 00 Praha, Česko, Prague, Czech Republic
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