Letokruhy – Štroblová Jana (2022)

The anthology of poetry by the leading Czech poetess Jana Štroblová traces the remarkably long journey of the author from her debut work Protěž, published while she was still a student in 1958, to the collection Měsíc tak pošetile modrý from 2021. While the first two collections are dazzled by love, the third (Hostinec u dvou srdcí) already contains so much skepticism that two poems from it were chosen and set to music by Hana Hegerová. The publication of another collection (Torza, 1970) is largely a reaction to the period from the arrival of the troops in 1968 to Palach's death, in hints and poetic images so striking that two longer poems made it into the exile quarterly for politics and culture, Svědectví, which made it impossible for the poetess to publish poetry and find work in her field for a good ten years. However, her verses have never been and are not in any way overtly political; the author transfers all experiences, feelings, and emotions into the realm of the personal and existential. The collection Úplněk, published after a forced hiatus in 1980, is evidence of this. Here, some thematic circles characteristic of her further poetic work are also beginning to emerge – love, death, God, elements, nature, dreams. All these motifs develop over time, gaining urgency and depth – as if...