Egon Bondy
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Egon Bondy, born Zbyněk Fišer, (born January 20, 1930, Prague) is a Czech philosopher, writer, and poet, the main personality of the Prague underground.
At the end of 1940s he was active in a surrealistic group. From 1957 to 1961 he studied philosophy and psychology at the Charles University of Prague. From the 1960s he was the main personality of the Prague underground, writing texts for The Plastic People of the Universe. His non-conformism brought him into conflict with the communist regime in the occupied Czechoslovakia and his works were spreading only as Samizdat literature.
Bondy was always interested in the study of Karl Marx and in the criticism of both contemporary capitalism and totalitarian socialism. His philosophical work concerns ontological and related ethical problems. He attempts to show the relevance of ontology without any substance or groundings.
Bondy's work is very characterful. He was a close friend of another Prague writer Bohumil Hrabal and is one of the most influential Czech intellectuals of 20th century.
In the 1990s Bondy moved from Prague to Bratislava.
The scale of his works is exceptionally broad: He has published about 30 books of poetry, ranging from epic poems in early 1950s to meditative philosophical works in the 1980s. He has also published about 20 novels, most of them dealing with the topic of a society or an individual in a crisis, or a crisis of the relationship between an individual and the community. Despite the deep, existential background of his work, the texts are fresh and amusing to read. He himself values most of his books on philosophy. He has published a multi-level history of philosophy. However, this creation is mostly criticized by other authorities within the rank for its subjective deformation of the topic, reflective of Bondy's Marxist orientation.
