Publicistika 1933–1938 - Dílo Jaroslava Seiferta – Seifert Jaroslav (2011)

Unlike volume 12, which presented a collection of memories titled Stars over the Garden of Eden, the second volume of Seifert's journalism offers a diverse range of short texts. For the first time, it comprehensively compiles the poet's essays, columns, glosses, italic pieces, short memoirs, reflections, a film script, medallions, prefaces, reports on literature or theatrical productions, polemical texts, responses to surveys, and public speeches from the years 1933–1938, when Seifert led the cultural column of the social-democratic newspaper Ranní noviny. This became his main publishing platform (he also published his timely, occasional verses here), and in addition, he contributed to Právo lidu (and the Evening Právo lidu), occasionally to other periodicals. Alongside a number of poetic portraits, reflections on the poet's fate, snapshots of Prague locations (often with a nostalgic tone), and intense reflections on events in the domestic theater scene, Seifert's attention during these years was inevitably drawn to a series of shocking and distressing events: the rise of Nazism in neighboring Germany, the civil war in Spain, the deaths of F. X. Šalda and T. G. Masaryk, manifestations of intolerant nationalism in parts of Czech cultural circles, and the Munich Agreement. In 1938, almost...