Hle nyní – Dvořák Ladislav (2025)

This is the first standalone printed book edition of a poetry collection regarded as one of the finest works of Czech poetry from the second half of the twentieth century. From the early 1970s, Ladislav Dvořák composed his writing for adult readers into three bodies of work: the poetry collection Hle nyní, the story cycle Šavle meče and the volume of short reflections and prose records Sentence. The texts in all three collections reveal his attraction to the interweaving of different literary forms and genres, the movement from one to another, the linking of thematic and motif-related connections, and a concise style in which firmly grounded, earthy and increasingly stripped-down lyricism joins naturally with brief narrative detail and reflection centred on an urgent concern for the human being. Marked by expressive sharpness, brevity and the combination of a free, distinctive, gently playful tone with bitter sarcasm, Dvořák’s varied texts achieve a mature synthesis of tangible reality and the passage of life, chronos, with a reality that captures a comprehensive view of life, takes a stance and accepts life from perspectives beyond the individual, filled with hope and grace, kairos. The contents are in Czech.