Host
Eurozine
Host
2008-01-14
Abstracts for Host 10/2007
My life might have developed in a different way... (Composed interview about Ludvik Vaculik)
This is an experimental interview: not with one person on many topics, but with many people on one person. On the occasion of the publication of Ludvik Vaculik's new autobiographic novel Piano Lessons, we have addressed several people connected, in various ways and in different measure, with Vaculik's life and work. The people we have addressed include Pavel Kohout, a Vienna-based Czech writer, once a fanatic Communist, then a dissident, now a Czech classic; Václav Klaus -- economist, presently Czech president; Jiri Gruntorád -- founder of the samizdat library Libri Prohibiti; Jonathan Bolton, prominent American bohemist; Michal Wiewegh -- Czech bestseller writer; Jakub Patochka -- politician, editor and environment activist.
Ludvik Vaculik (born 1926) can be considered one of the most prominent figures of Czech literature of the second half of the 20th century. Since the 1960s, his works, but also his much-debated political and social activities and statements have always had a wide-ranging impact on Czech society.
Zdenek Volf
The golden strings of manure (Cowshed poetry as a specific space for poetic creation)
Jan Zábrana, in his foreword to an anthology of verses by Sergei Yesenin, explains the term "rustic poet", created in Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. I have worked in the milieu of cowsheds for more that 25 years as a cow inseminator; and as I am slowly getting back towards the roots of Czech poetry I cannot but notice, from time to time, poems dealing with topics like beast, cowshed, farm, pasture, slaughterhouse..., for which I offer the summarizing term of "cowshed poetry". Cowshed poetry as a specific space for poetic creation approached by different authors: sometimes by an important part of their work, sometimes by one single text.