Poetry
The Plague Column
Morový sloup
Jaroslav Seifert · 1970
Synopsis
Free-verse poems, arranged in cycles, in which Prague, childhood memories, love and feminine beauty recur in the face of old age and death. In the poem that gives the book its title, a baroque column raised against the plague, topped by four statues, becomes the image of the Czech destiny, and love is the only bulwark against time and the injustice of history.
Context
Written from 1968 to 1970, at the beginning of normalisation, and conceived from the outset as a farewell to his readers, the poems could not be published in the country: they circulated in samizdat in the Petlice edition from the end of 1972, appeared in Cologne with Index in 1977, then were officially published in Prague in the early 1980s, in a version revised by the author in the summer of 1979.
Who it is for
A collection in free verse, in a language close to spoken language; about seventy pages in the French edition.
Prizes and reception
The first book by its author to be translated into English, in 1979; one of his best-known works, along with Maminka.