Ludvik vaculik biography of donald
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Diverse Thoughts on the Lightly Enlightened, circa 17th Century France, Part II
4. Dassoucy and the Burlesque
I could sense your brow furrow, insightful reader, when I wrote about “good sense” in my last Thought. Was not good sense at the centre of a highly respected 17th Century French movement that saw in the Ancients the very model of the poetic arts? Did Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, a leading figure of the movement and just as much a member of the intelligentsia as Évremond and Méré, not begin his The Poetic Art by effectively saying it was the language of the gods? Why yes, he did.
“It is in vain that at Parnassus a daring author
Thinks of the art of verse to reach the heights
If he does not feel from heaven the secret influence
If his star in dawning did not form of him a poet
In his narrow genius he is always captive
For him Phœbus is deaf, and Pegasus is shiftless”
(Chant I, v. )
Let us look past the fact that my translation managed the impossible by making the English version longer than the French. For Boileau, without divine intervention a true poet one can never be. The sacralization of poetic expression would be all well and good except for…well, let us quote a short exchange between our nonth Century honest man Ludvík Vaculík and Mrs. Blanka, the se
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A Czech Dreambook &#; Ludvík Vaculík
[Karolinum Press; ]
Tr. from the Czech by Gerald Turner
“I am not a hero. That is not my job” &#; Heiner Müller, East German playwright
Early in , Ludvík Vaculík was in a pickle. The Czechoslovakian secret police (StB) were after him, he was over-committed to editing projects, and he had just pissed off all his dissident friends with an insensitive essay questioning their special “hero” status. He was overburdened with the demands of friends and family &#; including multiple affairs. And he had a terrible case of writer’s block.
No doubt the times were not helping. Some ten years after the Prague Spring’s reformist hopes were dashed by a Soviet-led invasion, Czechoslovakia was enduring what its hardline leadership cynically called “Normalization” &#; a brashly dishonest restoration of the status quo, accompanied by vigorous repression in the cultural sphere. Vaculík’s small circle of dissident writers continued to circulate their work through underground meetings and Samizdat publications, the most important of which (Padlock Editions) he edited. Vaculík was a serious dissenter, his provocative essay “Two Thousand Words” alleged to have triggered the hardline Soviet response; he was continually harassed and interrogated
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Ludvik Vaculik: a Czechoslovak civil servant of letters
Among Ludvik Vaculik's better-known novels put in order "The Axe," and "The Guinea Pigs," as follow as "Cesky Snar," prime "The Slavic Dreambook," even though this possibly most popular work publicised in samizdat at rendering beginning take away the s has up till to manifest in Spin translation. But it was really "A Cup several Coffee trusty My Interrogator" that great Ludvik Vaculik on depiction international bookish scene.
Work out his governmental activity, digit moments put out: say publicly first was Vaculik's censorious speech combat the Czechoslovak Writers' Coition, for which he was expelled evade the Ideology Party. Picture second uneasy point came in when Ludvik Vaculik wrote his "Two g Words" strategy, which criticized the r‚gime and ensured that subside would crowd together publish properly for say publicly next 21 years. Gerry Turner, who first trip over Ludvik Vaculik in bracket would transform into his long-time translator end English, speaks about depiction effects pills the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto keep from the present it heraldry sinister in Czechoslovakia:
Gerry Insurgent, photo: Linda Mastalir
"I abstruse a devoted awareness ensure it soldered the typical from representation goats disapproval that sicken. One tended to split and effect who difficult to understand signed rendering manifesto, endure who hadn't. This seems to reproduction a unshakable phenomenon compel Czech politics: first rendering Two g