The Power of Silence: Jan Skácel, the Banned Man

• Authors: Marta Belia

Abstracts

EN

Jan Skácel is a Czech poet whose literary production marked the second half of the 20th century, a particularly difficult historical period. In 1948 the Communist Party had implemented a coup d’état thus conquering the totalitarian management of power and had begun to accentuate the ideological control of cultural life. After a short period of easing of the censorship, in 1968 the harsh period of the so-called “normalization” began: in 1970 Skácel was banned from publishing. In the decade of ban on official publishing he never left his country and never stopped writing verses, declaring his suffering, and tirelessly denouncing, often using refined figures of speech, the difficult condition of the poet reduced to silence. This article proposes an analysis of these texts following some thematic nuclei: first the poems which contain metaphors drawn from the animal world used to represent the figure of the banned poet will be analyzed, to then examine the compositions in which Skácel more explicitly and directly denounces the censorship.

Keywords

EN

Jan Skácel; Czech poetry; normalization; censorship; totalitarian regime; Czechoslovakia; Central Europe

• Publisher: Komisja Nauk Filologicznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Oddział we Wrocławiu
• Journal: Academic Journal of Modern Philology
• Year: 2023
• Issue: 19
• Pages: 25-36

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Marta Belia

• Sapienza University of Rome (Dipartimento di Studi Europei Americani e Interculturai - SEAI)
• Charles University in Prague (Department of Czech and Comparative Literature)

References

• Skácel, Jan (1968) “Jan Skácel.” [In:] IV sjezd Svazu ceskoslovenských spisovatelu protokol, Praha 27–29.cervna 1967. Praha: Ceskoslovenský spisovatel; 117–118.
• Skácel, Jan (1996) Básne II. Brno: Blok.
• Skácel, Jan, Ewald Osers (eds.) (2001) Banned man: selected poems. Mississauga: Modrý Peter.
• Skácel, Jan ([1964] 2010) Jedenáctý bílý kun. Praha: Blok.
• Cosentino, Annalisa (1998) “Nihil sine amore.” [In:] Alessandro Catalano, Annalisa Cosentino, Alena Wildová Tosi (eds.) Tra immaginazione e memoria, quattro percorsi poetici. Roma: Bulzoni; 177–184.
• Cosentino, Annalisa (2004) “Una bianca spirale di silenzio.” [In:] Jan Skácel, Annalisa Cosentino (eds.) Il colore del silenzio. Pesaro: Metauro; 7–30.
• Cerný, Václav (1992) Tvorba a Osobnost I. Praha: Odeon.
• Havel, Václav ([1978] 1987) [Moc bezmocných.] Translated into English by Paul Wilson. [In:] Václav Havel, Jan Vladislav (eds.) Living in truth. London: Faber and Faber; 36–122.
• Havel, Václav ([1984] 1987) [Politika a svedomí.] Translated into English by Erazim Kohák, Roger Scruton. [In:] Václav Havel, Jan Vladislav (eds.) Living in truth. London: Faber and Faber; 136–157.
• Havel, Václav ([1987] 1999) “Príbeh a totalita.” [In:] Václav Havel, Jan Sulc (eds.) Eseje a jiné texty z let 1970–1989. Praha: Torst; 931–959.
• Kožmín, Zdenek (1994) Skácel. Brno: Jota. Musil, Petr (1992) “Jan Skácel ocima svého prítele.” [In:] Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis, Facultas paedagogica, Philologica 13, Studia philologica 3. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého; 91–108.
• Musil, Petr (1993) “Jan Skácel-básník Moravy, ticha, strachu a casu.” [In:] Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis, Facultas paedagogica, Philologica 14, Studia philologica 4. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého; 79–88.
• Opelík, Jirí (2000) “Doslov.” [In:] Jan Skácel, Jirí Opelík (eds.) Kvety z nahorklého dreva. Praha: Mláda Fronta; 164– 173.
• Opelík, Jirí (2000) “Životopis.” [In:] Jan Skácel, Jirí Opelík (eds.) Kvety z nahorklého dreva. Praha: Mláda Fronta; 176– 193.
• Richterová, Sylvie (1991) Slova a ticho. Praha: Ceskoslovenský spisovatel.

Identifiers

DOI

10.34616/ajmp.2023.19.2

Biblioteka Nauki

27307659