Jaroslav Saifert and the Search for Meaning

Abstract

The 1984 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature has remained almost unknown in history. This happened because his popularization under Soviet influence was prohibited due to the fact that his conveyed messages jeopardized socialist regimes. After 1989, synchronization with the Occident became a priority, and therefore rehabilitating dissident writers was postponed again, even if they were internationally acclaimed. From poetry to memorialist prose, Jaroslav Seifert illustrated the model of a human captive in history, who can nonetheless escape from its sphere of influence. Jaroslav Seifert is the creator of a poetics in which civic and aesthetic pathos combine into a lyrical evasion of great sensibility. The beauty of Seifert’s poetry stems from paradisiac visions born in a constantly modifying captivity between structural melancholia and faith in the indestructible character of being.