Poetry
A Night with Hamlet
Noc s Hamletem
Vladimír Holan · 1964
Synopsis
One night, the poet receives Hamlet, and a conversation begins between them about what life, love, death and art are worth. Other voices slip in, including those of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the questions follow one another without any of them closing on a definitive answer, taken up and varied from one voice to another.
Context
The poem was written from 1949 to 1956, during the years when its author could no longer publish, and taken up again in 1962. It was first recited in public, with music, at the Viola poetry café in November 1963, appeared in March 1964 in the journal Plamen, then in volume form the same year, four hundred years after the birth of Shakespeare. In French, Dominique Grandmont translated it as early as 1968, with a preface by Louis Aragon.
Who it is for
A long poem in a single unbroken piece, demanding, full of literary and historical allusions. Translated by Dominique Grandmont, available in paperback.
Prizes and reception
His best-known work, and the most often translated Czech poem; on publication it aroused the enthusiasm of part of the critics and the coolness of another.