Milena Jesenská

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Milena Jesenská (pronounced [ˈmɪlɛna ˈjɛsɛnskaː]) (August 10, 1896, Prague – May 17, 1944, Ravensbrück, Germany) was a Czech journalist, writer, and translator.

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[edit] Life

Jesenská was born to an old aristocratic family of Slovak origin, settled in Bohemia; her father was Jan Jesensky, a surgeon and professor at Prague University. Her mother died when she was 16. Jesenská's father sympathised little with her, but gave her almost absolute liberty, which led to her first experience with drugs. She studied at Prague Girl Grammar School of Minerva (absolved 1915). Obedient to her father's wishes, she started to study medicine but soon left school. Between 1918 and 1925 she was married to Ernst Pollak, a translator of Jewish origin, and lived in Vienna. The marriage, which caused her to break off relations with her family, soon reached a crisis point.

Seeking independence from her husband, Jesenská started to work as a translator and give lessons in Czech; one of her students was the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch. In 1919 she came across a short story by Prague writer Franz Kafka (The Heater) and wrote him to ask for permission to translate the story from German to Czech. This letter began a series of passionate correspondence. Jesenská and Kafka met only twice: four days in Vienna and later a day in Gmünd. Eventually Kafka broke off the relationship because Jesenská did not want to leave her husband, and their correspondence soon ended. Both sensed that there was no real future for them together, especially because of Kafka's morbid fears. The Heater was Jesenská's first work of translation to Czech; later she translated other works by Kafka.

Jesenská became friends with German writers Max Brod, Franz Werfel, and Czech writer Karel Čapek and his wife, Czech actress Olga Scheinpflugová.

During this time, 1920-23, Jesenská became a journalist. In Vienna she contributed to the Tribuna (a daily newspaper in Prague). Between 1923 and 1926 she wrote for Národní Listy in Prague, and then for two magazines: Pestrý týden and Lidové Noviny. Between 1938 and 1939 she edited the famous political and cultural magazine Přítomnost, published in Prague by Ferdinand Peroutka.

Jesenská divorced Pollak and moved back to Prague, where she married Czech architect Jaromír Krejcar. In the 1930s she became addicted to morphine. She also developed an interest in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (of which she was a member for a time), but she left this interest in 1936.

Her earlier journalistic works had been film and fashion reviews, light-hearted and lightly-written pieces. In later years, however, both she and her writing became increasingly concerned with politics and the events of the day. Jesenská commented on the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party in Germany, the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany and the possible consequences this was to have for Czechoslowakia. The worse the situation got, the more clear and concise became her articles.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazi army, Jesenská joined a secret military resistance organisation. In 1939 she was arrested by the Gestapo. Next year, she was deported to a concentration camp in Ravensbrück, Germany, where she worked as a nurse and provided psychological and moral support to other prisoners. There she met her friend Margarete Buber-Neumann. She was murdered by the Nazis in Ravensbrück in 1944.

Jana "Honza" Krejcarová, the daughter of Jesenská and Jaromír Krejcar, was a writer for the underground publication Půlnoc in the early 1950s.

[edit] Works

  • Cesta k jednoduchosti ("The road to simplicity") (1926)
  • Člověk dělá šaty ("Man makes the clothes"), (1927)
  • Selected essays from Přítomnost Magazine (1937-39) were published as a book after Jesenská's death.

Apart from her own publishing activities, Jesenská also translated works by Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, F. C. Weiskopf and other writers into Czech.

[edit] References

  • Kafka, Love, and Courage: The Life of Milena Jesenská by Mary Hockaday, ISBN 087951731X [1]

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