Jaroslav Durych

Who was Jaroslav Durych?

Jaroslav Durych was a Czech prose writer, poet, playwright, journalist, and military surgeon.

Durych was born in Hradec Králové. Prior to World War II, he was perhaps the only Czech author beside Karel Čapek with works translated into more than one foreign language.

His major prose masterworks are Bloudění, a novel from the time of the Thirty Years' War and Služebníci neužiteční of which only a first part could be published in Czechoslovakia because after the 1948 Communist putsch, Durych was silenced.

Durych's Catholic views were often at odds with those of the prevailing intellectual forces in the first Czechoslovak Republic, notably his positive evaluation of the internal developments in Bohemia and baroque culture that followed the Battle of White Mountain. Durych felt that the loss suffered there by Friedrich von Pfalz saved Bohemia from becoming a part of Germany.

Durych died in Prague.