Poetry
Blízkosti smrti
Not translated into English
Zbyněk Hejda · 1970
Synopsis
Poems in regular eight-line stanzas, in which a native village, its cemetery and its inn recur, along with the dead and a body that still desires. The images, elliptical and tightly compressed, sometimes give way to an invented language, made of sounds more than words; nothing in them is explained or consoled, and awareness of the end accompanies everything seen.
Context
Prepared for printing and already typeset, the collection was banned in 1970 without having been printed; it circulated in samizdat from 1978, appeared in Munich in 1985 and, revised, in the country itself in 1992. Petr Král reviewed it in the exile journal Svědectví. In French, Erika Abrams translated it in 2010 for the éditions Fissile, under the title Abord de la mort, preceded by the narrative Je n'y rencontrerai personne.
Who it is for
Short poems, in regular eight-line stanzas, in a tightly compressed language. Translated into French in 2010.
Prizes and reception
Awarded the Tom Stoppard Prize in 1989, when it had appeared only in samizdat and in exile.