This is the best translated and largest edition of poetry by the Czechs' only Nobel Prize–winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert (he won the prize in 1984 and died in 1986). The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”
This is the best translated and largest edition of poetry by the Czechs' only Nobel Prize–winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert (he won the prize in 1984 and died in 1986). The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”
The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert
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Overview
This is the best translated and largest edition of poetry by the Czechs' only Nobel Prize–winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert (he won the prize in 1984 and died in 1986). The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780945774396 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Catbird Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/1998 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.76(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert
By Jaroslav Seifert, George Gibian, Ewald Osers
Catbird Press
Copyright © 1998 Ewald Osers and George GibianAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936053-43-8
CHAPTER 1
Opening Poem
An angular picture of suffering
is the town,
and it is the one great object that stands in your sight.
Reader, you open a plain and unpretentious book —
and here my song takes flight.
Although I look
upon the glory of the city, my heart it cannot overpower;
its majesty and greatness do not bewitch me;
I shall return to the mysterious embrace
of star, of wood and brook, of field and flower.
But so long as one of my brothers
is suffering, I cannot be happy
and, bitterly revolting against all
injustice, I shall long
continue, amid the suffocating smoke, to lean against a factory wall
and sing my song.
Yet strange to me is the street, I've found.
Swiftly it flies like an arrow to conquer the world.
They'll never tune in to my blood's rhythm,
the running belts and the wheels
with which my hands and the hands of thousands are bound,
so that, whatever a man's heart feels
he must not and cannot embrace his comrade.
Yet were I to flee to the wood and the deer, to the flower and the brook,
sorrow would so weigh my heart down
that, without turning to look
at all the beauty and quiet and passion,
I should go back to the town,
the city that welcomes one in its ice-cold fashion,
where the nightingale ceases to sing and the pine-wood
loses its smell,
where not only man is enslaved,
but the flower, the bird, the horse and the humble dog as well.
Gentle reader, as you read these lines,
reflect for a moment and note this down;
the angular picture you scan
is the town.
Why, man feels just like a flower:
Don't pluck him, don't break him, don't tread on him!
Sinful City
The city of factory owners, boxers, millionaires,
the city of inventors and of engineers,
the city of generals, merchants, and patriotic poets
with its black sins has exceeded the bounds of God's wrath:
and God was enraged.
A hundred times He'd threatened vengeance on the town,
a rain of sulphur, fire, thunderbolts raining down,
and a hundred times he'd taken pity.
For he always remembered what once he had promised:
that even for two just men he'd not destroy his city,
and a god's promise should retain its power:
just then two lovers walked across the park,
breathing the scent of hawthorn shrubs in flower.
A Song About Girls
Through the city flows a mighty river,
seven bridges bestride it;
along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls
and no two are alike.
From heart to heart you go to warm your hands
in love's great warming flame;
along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls
and they're all the same.
Red-Hot Fruit
To love poets
the vanishing fauna of Yellowstone Park
And yet we love poetry
poetry
the eternal waterfall
Long-range guns were shelling Paris
Poets in steel helmets
But why count those who died of unhappy love?
Goodbye Paris!
We sailed round Africa
and fish with diamond eyes
died in the steamer's props
what hurts most
is one's memory
Negro lyres
and the smell of hot air
the red-hot fruit of chandeliers only ripens towards midnight
and Monsieur Blaise Cendrars
lost a hand in the war
Sacred birds
on slender legs like shadows
rock the fate of worlds
Carthage is dead
And the wind plays in the sugar cane
a thousand clarinets
Meanwhile on brittle parallels of the globe
History
century-old ivy is twining
I'm dying of thirst Mademoiselle Muguet
and you won't tell me
how the wine must have tasted in Carthage
A star was struck by lightning
and it's raining
The water's surfaces
swirl like taut drum skins
Revolution in Russia
the fall of the Bastille
and the poet Mayakovsky is dead
But poetry
a honeyed moon dripping sweet juices
into flowers' calixes
Honeymoon
If it were not for all those foolish kisses
we'd not be taking honeymoon trips to the sea —
but if it weren't for honeymoon trips,
what use then all those wagon-lits?
Perpetual fear of railway station bells,
ah, wagon-lits, honeymoon sleeping cars,
all wedded happiness is brittle glass,
a honeyed moon stands in a sky of stars.
My love, look at the Alpine peaks outside,
we'll let the window down, we'll smell the amaranth,
the sugary white of snowdrops, lilies' snow —
behind the wagon-lit's the wagon-restaurant.
Ah, wagons-restaurants, ah, cars for newlyweds,
to stay in them forever and to sup
with knife and fork on happiness in bed.
HANDLE WITH CARE! GLASS — FRAGILE! THIS SIDE UP!
And one more day and then another night,
two marvellous nights, two marvellous days like these.
Where is my rail guide, that poetic book,
oh and the beauty of my wagons-litsl
Oh wagons-restaurants and wagons-litsl
Oh honeymoons!
Philosophy
Remember the wise philosophers:
Life is but a moment.
And yet whenever we waited for our girlfriends
it was an eternity.
The Fan
To hide a girl's blushes,
provocative eyes, deep sighs,
finally wrinkles and a smile become wry.
A butterfly alighting on her breasts,
palette of loves gone by
with the colours of faded memories.
Moscow
The minuet has long ceased to be danced,
the harp has long lost its last audience.
The display cases in the old palace
are tombstones of the dead.
There were battlefields here,
the Kremlin's bloodstained wall still bares its teeth.
Bear witness for us, you who are dead,
buried in silks.
Cups without wine,
flags dipped to the past,
a sword that recalls
from whose hand it dropped.
Rotten rings, a mildewy diadem,
a corsage that's fragrant still,
the disintegrating robes of dead tsarinas
and eyeless masks, the look of death and damnation.
The orb, symbol of power, lying on the ground,
an apple worm-eaten and rotten.
All's over, all is over under the golden domes,
death is guarding history's graveyard.
Suits of armour, empty like golden nutshells
on carpets of unparalleled design,
and Empire carriages drive back into the past
without horses, without lights, without occupants.
Apple Tree with Cobweb Strings
Deep-red apples
curve down the royal trunk like a harp,
fitted by autumn with cobweb strings,
ring and sing,
my player!
We are not from a land where oranges grow,
where round Ionian columns climb the vine
that's sweeter than
the lips of Roman women;
ours but the apple tree, fiercely bowed down
by age and fruit.
Beneath it sits a man
who's seen all this —
Parisian nights, Italian noon,
above the Kremlin a cold moon —
and has come home to reminisce.
A tune that sings
a calm and quiet song that could be played
upon these cobweb strings
sounds in my ear.
And where is beauty found,
mountains, cities, seas?
Where do trains take you in search of peace,
to heal still smarting wounds?
Where?
And women's eyes,
their breasts, whose rise and fall
would rock your head in rich erotic dream,
do they not tempt you?
A voice that's redolent of distance calls you:
Your land is small!
Do you stay mute
when that seductive voice speaks to the vagrant
in you? Midday is gone,
I pick an apple from the ancient tree,
inhale its fragrance.
To be alone and far
from women's laughter and from women's tears,
to be at home, alone,
with the familiar tree-song in your ears.
Why, the pointless beauty of some foolish women
isn't worth an apple.
Panorama
The stag is retreating, the smoke of its antlers is rising
through the fern's foliage, listen to the star,
but softly, only softly.
Plates full of fruit, nights full of stars,
I'd like to hand you this bronze bowl
and be a barber.
Oh coiffeurs,
tired hands gliding down smooth hair,
a comb is dropped, the sculptor lays down his chisel
and in the mirror eyes have turned to ice.
It's night already. Are you asleep?
Shatter the softness of your eiderdowns!
The midnight hour. Electric lamps.
Dark, light, dark, half-light
and behold:
The comb of mountains combs the hair of the sky
and stars are falling fast like golden lice.
Dance of the Girls' Chemises
A dozen girls' chemises
drying on a line,
floral lace at the breast
like rose windows in a Gothic cathedral.
Lord,
shield Thou me from all evil.
A dozen girls' chemises,
that's love,
innocent girls' games on a sunlit lawn,
the thirteenth, a man's shirt,
that's marriage,
ending in adultery and a pistol shot.
The wind that's streaming through the chemises,
that's love,
our earth embraced by its sweet breezes:
a dozen airy bodies.
Those dozen girls made of light air
are dancing on the green lawn,
gently the wind is modelling their bodies,
breasts, hips, a dimple on the belly there —
open fast, oh my eyes.
Not wishing to disturb their dance
I softly slipped under the chemises' knees,
and when any of them fell
I greedily inhaled it through my teeth
and bit its breast.
Love,
which we inhale and feed on,
disenchanted,
love that our dreams are keyed on,
love,
that dogs our rise and fall:
nothing
yet the sum of all.
In our all-electric age
nightclubs not christenings are the rage
and love is pumped into our tyres.
My sinful Magdalen, don't cry:
Romantic love has spent its fires.
Faith, motorbikes, and hope.
Song
We wave a handkerchief
on parting,
every day something is ending,
something beautiful's ending.
The carrier pigeon beats the air,
returning;
with hope or without hope
we're always returning.
Go dry your tears
and smile with eyes still smarting,
every day something is starting,
something beautiful's starting.
Prague
Above the elephantine blankets of flower-beds
a Gothic cactus blooms with royal skulls
and in the cavities of melancholy organs
in the clusters of tin pipes,
old melodies are rotting.
Cannonballs like seeds of wars
were scattered by the wind.
Night towers over all
and through the box-trees of evergreen cupolas
the foolish emperor tiptoes away
into the magic gardens of his alembics
and through the halcyon air of rose-red evenings
rings out the tinkle of the glass foliage
as it is touched by the alchemists' fingers
as if by wind.
The telescopes have gone blind from the horror of the universe
and the fantastic eyes of spacemen
have been sucked out by death.
And while the moon was laying eggs in the clouds,
new stars were hatching feverishly like birds
migrating from blacker regions,
singing the songs of human fate —
but there is no one
who can understand them.
Listen to the fanfares of silence,
on carpets threadbare like ancient shrouds
we are moving towards an invisible future
and His Majesty dust
settles lightly on the abandoned throne.
Wet Picture
Those beautiful days
when the city resembles a die, a fan, a bird song
or a scallop shell on the seashore
— goodbye, goodbye, pretty girls,
we met today
and will not ever meet again.
Those beautiful Sundays
when the city resembles a football, a card, an ocarina
or a swinging bell
— in the sunny street
the shadows of passersby were kissing
and people walked away, total strangers.
Those beautiful evenings
when the city resembles a clock, a kiss, a star
or a sunflower that turns
— at the first chord
the dancers flapped their wings of girls' hands
like moths or nightmares at the first light of dawn.
Those beautiful nights
when the city resembles a rose, a chessboard, a violin
or a crying girl
— we played dominoes,
black-dotted dominoes with the thin girls in the bar,
watching their knees,
which were emaciated
like two skulls with the silk crowns of their garters
in the desperate kingdom of love.
November 1918
In memoriam Guillaume Apollinaire
It was autumn. Foreign troops
had occupied the vineyard slopes,
emplaced their guns among the vines, like nests,
and aimed them at the Gioconda's breasts.
We saw a sad impoverished land,
soldiers without legs or hands
but not without a spark of hope,
the fortress gates were swinging open.
A scent-filled autumn sky: below it
a city with an ailing poet,
a window to the evening sun.
Here is a helmet, sword and gun.
This city, true, is not where I was born,
its rivers flow along without concern,
but once below a bridge there I had wept:
a pipe, a pen, a ring are all I kept.
The gargoyles up by the cathedral's rafters
vomit the city's dirt into the gutters,
their heads bent forward from the cornice toppings
and fouled and spattered by the pigeons' droppings.
The bells ring out, the bronze notes fall,
but this time without hope at all,
a funeral cortege must pass
down the boulevards of Montparnasse.
The ripples on the river told the birds,
the birds flew up to tell the clouds
and sang the news up in the skies:
the stars that evening did not rise.
And Paris, as it stood, City of Light,
shrouded itself in deepest, blackest night.
Parting
So foolish are the hearts of many women,
of beautiful and ugly ones alike,
their footprints are not easy to distinguish
in the sands of your memory.
But what you minded most
at our final parting
was that in my poor rags
— but was it not the costume of a beggar? —
you couldn't see your tears as in a suit of armour.
Goodbye, you swarm of flies
which buzzed into my dreams,
goodbye, my quiet evenings and
my cigarette case with the engraved rosette!
Opening the door I heard the screams
of angels hurtling down to hell.
The Wax Candle
for A.M. Pí?a
Born of the buzzing hives
and of the smell of flowers,
honey's little sister,
honey-bathed for hours
till from that fragrant bath
lifted by angels' hands —
and in the month of love
bees wove its garment strands.
When a dead man collapses
at its feet like one at rest
on a train of black shadows,
then it will comb its crest
and down its waxen body
will run a red-hot tear:
Come with me, dear departed,
your bed is waiting here.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert by Jaroslav Seifert, George Gibian, Ewald Osers. Copyright © 1998 Ewald Osers and George Gibian. Excerpted by permission of Catbird Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Pronunciation Guide,Introduction,
CITY IN TEARS (Mesto v slzách, 1921),
NOTHING BUT LOVE (Sarná láska, 1923),
HONEYMOON (Svatební cesta, 1925),
THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS BADLY (Slavík zpívá spatne, 1926),
CARRIER PIGEON (Postovní holub, 1929),
AN APPLE FROM YOUR,
THE HANDS OF VENUS (Ruce Venusiny, 1936),
SONGS FOR THE ROTARY PRESS (Zpíváno do rotacky, 1936),
GOOD-BYE, SPRING (Jaro, sbohem, 1937),
ROBED IN LIGHT (Sverlem odená, 1940),
A HELMETFUL OF EARTH (Prilba hlíny, 1945),
CONCERT ON THE ISLAND (Koncert na ostrove, 1965),
HALLEY'S COMET (Halleyova kometa, 1967),
THE CASTING OF THE BELLS (Odlévání zvonu, 1967),
THE PLAGUE COLUMN (Morory sloup, 1978),
AN UMBRELLA FROM PICCADILLY (Destník z Piccadilly, 1979),
TO BE A POET (Býti básnikem, 1983),
UNCOLLECTED,
ALL THE BEAUTIES OF THE WORLD (Reminiscences; Vsecky krásy sveta, 1981),