Jaroslav Seifert

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Jaroslav Seifert

Jaroslav Seifert listen (help·info) (IPA: [ˈjarɔslaf ˈsajfr̩t]) (September 23, 1901 – January 10, 1986) was a Nobel prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.

Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first collection of poems was published in 1921. He was a member of the Communist Party, the editor of a number of communist newspapers and magazines - Rovnost, Srsatec, and Reflektor - and the employee of a communist publishing house. During the 1920s he was considered a leading representative of the Czechoslovakian artistic avant-garde.

In March 1929, he and six other important communist writers were expelled from the Communist Party for signing a manifesto protesting against Bolshevik tendencies in the new leadership of Czechoslovak Communist Party.

In 1949 Seifert left journalism and began to devote himself exclusively to literature. His poetry was awarded important state prizes in 1936, 1955, and 1968, and in 1967, he was designated National Artist. He was the official Chairman of the Czechoslovakian Writer's Union for several years (1968-70). He was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984, but was not present himself for the awarding due to bad health, and so his daughter took the nobel prize in his name. Even though it was a matter of great importance, in the state controlled media there was only a brief remark about it. He died in 1986.