Jaroslav Seifert

Who was Jaroslav Seifert?

Jaroslav Seifert was a Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.

Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first collection of poems was published in 1921. He was a member of the Communist Party, the editor of a number of communist newspapers and magazines – Rovnost, Srsatec, and Reflektor – and the employee of a communist publishing house.

During the 1920s he was considered a leading representative of the Czechoslovakian artistic avant-garde. He was one of the founders of the journal Devětsil. In March 1929, he and six other important communist writers left the Communist Party for signing a manifesto protesting against Bolshevik tendencies in the new leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He subsequently worked as a journalist in the social-democratic and trade union press during the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1949 Seifert left journalism and began to devote himself exclusively to literature. His poetry was awarded important state prizes in 1936, 1955, and 1968, and in 1967 he was designated National Artist. He was the official Chairman of the Czechoslovak Writer's Union for several years.