#seifert

[orchurisarts]

last art fight attack of the year, throwing bricks at @hermitcrabcross

[orchurisarts]

art payment for @hermitcrabcross even though she didnt ask for it

[marz-likes-palaces]

Model (1972)

a poem by Jaroslav Seifert, translated into english by yours truly

I wish they'd just wrap me in a frieze already and carried me back to the atelier to the warm stove. And poured a hot punch in me.

I’m standing here in the snow naked just so Master Hynais can precisely capture the tint of a frosted blue body on the painting of Winter.

For long, he reportedly looked for a ginger, like me, with slate blue eyes. If I was a raven and with eyes red like a mouse, I wouldn’t be standing here.

And he wouldn’t clothe me in a translucent drapery. So slowly, as if intentionally. Once, so they would frame my breasts, I have pretty ones, another time, so my thighs would be visible with goose bumps. Each time, the professor slowly steps back, then folds the cloth differently and I continue to freeze.

Hurry up, you old fool! You have winter shoes and a fur coat, meanwhile, I’m standing here naked in a thin translucent rag.

I would endure the coldness on my back, but the wind blows towards me and I have two pieces of ice here in front and moreover, it was like if someone was pricking my nipples with a pin.

What do you even know about the woman body? Women are delicate on the stomach, and when they catch cold from down there, it’s usually a trouble for a long time

Screw your painting, screw the boudoir of the king's box. Should I freeze for the art? Screw the National Theatre! You’ll have fame, and I’ll have pneumonia. That leads to keeling over and very often at that, just so you know.

Don’t think and paint, or I will knock out your palette and stomp it into the snow You say I’m not purple enough? But that my teeth chatter like skeletons in a puppet show, isn’t that enough?

You should’ve stayed in Paris! Not even the last girl of the street  would stand for you like this. And that there are various tramps down for anything.

I wish they'd just come with the frieze already with the rough, but warm frieze I wish they’d just come back already.

the painting this model was supposedly standing for:

Winter by Vojtěch Hynais (finished 1901)

[hana-loves-bumblebees]

Jaroslav Seifert toho nenechá

[hana-loves-bumblebees]

Tongues battling for dominance, česká verze:

Seifert to psal před Wattpadem

[ever-loving-chaos]

[cornchrunchie]

Okay, hear me out

Mirko und Polizeiobermeister Seifert aus Höllenfahrt. But as boyfriends

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

(x, x)

[readtheworld2021-blog]

The Czech Republic

Source: Jaroslav Krejčí, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986) was a Czechoslovak writer born in Prague, presently the capital of the Czech Republic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984 "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man" (“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1984"). 

When Seifert was born, Prague was part of Austria-Hungary, a constitutional monarchy that was dissolved in 1918 during World War I. It then became the First Czechoslovak Republic. 

Seifert’s first collection of poetry was published in 1921. At that time, he was a member of the communist party and worked as an editor on communist publications but he and many of his contemporaries left the communist party in 1929 in protest of Bolshevism.

Source: Sayer, Derek. The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton University Press, 2020.

In 1939, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In '42, resistance successfully assassinated the appointed Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and Hitler retaliated by randomly arresting over 10,000 Czechs, executing about 1,300, and completely obliterating the village of Lidice whose residents were accused of aiding members of the assassination team.

Between 1939 and 1945, Seifert published three volumes of poetry that sought to encourage Czechs and to celebrate Czech culture and language and thus he became the unofficial national poet. 

Later, the Prague Uprising of 1945 took place. It was a three day battle in which the Czech resistance attempted to liberate the city from German occupation. 

Seifert was working in journalism through the social-democratic and trade union press at the time of the Prague Uprising. He was also involved in the Czech Writers Union which sought "to maintain and develop the traditions of [Czech] literature in fraternal cooperation with Slovak authors" and "to ensure that our writers can write freely about the world in which we live according to their conscience and by their own means and in their own way" (Daily Report D1). 

He did not participate in the Prague Uprising. He writes that he and many others sought shelter in the editorial offices of the People’s House on Hybernská Street: 

Because the Germans fortified themselves...next door in the Anglobank, shots whistled over our typewriters and over the hairdos of our typists. We moved the entire editorial office downstairs into the basement, where the presses were, and then still further down, to the paper storeroom. I wrote verses about May on rolls of newsprint in the storeroom. It was a good way to write. (Seifert)

At one point, the Germans captured the men in the People’s House, Seifert included, and escorted them away to be executed. Seifert and the men he was with waited to die until finally the Germans decided, instead, to exchange them for a group of German women and children who had been captured by the Czech resistance. Seifert reflects on the experience:

Today I do not remember those terrible moments any more than a child running after a new ball remembers the measles he had the year before. Yes, believe me. That’s how it is. Take care. Good-bye. And let there be no more wars! (Seifert)

The Prague Uprising ended when the Germans agreed to withdraw from Prague though not all units complied. The Western Allies did not aid Prague but the Soviet Red Army entered the city and overcame any remaining German forces. This bolstered support for communism and eventually the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic came into power.

In 1977, Seifert signed Charter 77, a document and later a civic initiative which the Czechoslovak government considered subversive (organized opposition to the government was illegal). This document criticized the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for failure to preserve human and civil rights despite many promises that they would do so.

Gustav Husak, the president of Czechoslovakia from 1975-1989, acknowledged Seifert and congratulated him on his 80th birthday in 1981 but Seifert's work was highly censored and/or banned in Czechoslovakia and, in some cases, confiscated and used in court as proof of anti-state activities (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe). In 1984, when the Swedish Academy announced that the Nobel in Literature was awarded to Jaroslav Seifert, Prague, after hesitation, "gave lukewarm consent to acceptance of this honor" and, while a short announcement was printed by the Czechoslovak Press Agency, certainly no mention was made of the labeling of his work as subversive or of Seifert's association with civil rights movements, with the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, or with Charter 77 (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 130).

The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was still in power at the time of Seifert's death and his funeral was attended by dissidents, secret police, journalists, politicians and other public figures.

Seifert lived through World War I and II in a country that was deeply affected by both wars. I wonder how Seifert's character, personal beliefs, and writing were influenced by all of the political unrest, the unstable government, and the violence.

During a meeting of the Czech Writers Union of which Seifert was the acting chairman, he said “...art is a means whereby everyone can seek himself, his place in the world and in general man's place on this blue planet of ours" (Daily Report D1). 

References

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Human Rights in Czechoslovakia: The Documents of Charter 77. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988. https://books.google.com/books?id=Oi2BCLKQY-EC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Issues 111-120. 1969. https://books.google.com/books?id=6Dx7-7EEVdcC&dq

Gerber, Larry. “Dissidents And Authorities Say Farewell To Nobel Laureate.” AP News, 22 Jan. 1986, https://apnews.com/article/8feb8b7ef1f1bd7a56804771779831e4. Accessed 1 Jan. 2021.

"Jaroslav Seifert." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 28 Dec. 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Seifert. 1 Jan. 2021. 

“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1984.” NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. 31 Dec. 2020, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1984/summary/

Sayer, Derek. The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton University Press, 2020.

Seifert, Jaroslav. The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert. Translated by Ewald Osers and George Gibian, Catbird Press, 1998.