SOURCE: "Between Dream and Reality: The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert," in Scando-Slavica, Vol. 33, 1987, pp. 63-79.

[In the following essay, Możejko examines the different stages of Seifert's career.]

Jaroslav Seifert made his literary debut in 1921, barely four years after the first publication of T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, and one year prior to the appearance of The Waste Land. Franz Kafka was still alive and living in Prague. In the same year, another Czech writer and Seifert's contemporary, Karel Čapek, wrote his play, R.U.R., which gave the world a then strange, but now familiar, term: "robot".

The new generation of writers included such poets as Vitězslav Nezval, Konstantin Biebl, František Halas, Josef Hora, Vladimír Holan, Jiří Wolker, Stanislav Kostka Neumann and others. As noted by one critic [Květoslav Chvatík], no other generation has ever had a greater impact on the evolution of Czech literature than the one which appeared shortly after the first World War.

Jaroslav Seifert was part of this generation. Born on September 23, 1901, to a poor worker's family in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague, he began his professional career as a journalist, and appeared on the literary scene as a proletarian poet. Proletarian art, which manifested itself most distinctly through poetry, played an important role in the Czech cultural life of the early twenties. Its advocates postulated an art which would express the political and social aspirations of the working class, and which would be a preparation for revolution. At that time, Seifert joined the Communist party. He believed that this act would emphasize more strongly his desire to express solidarity with workers and the struggle for social justice. It seems that Seifert became a party member not out of ideological considerations, but because of his own harsh experiences, his personal dreams and ideals which later proved to be incompatible with the rigid, dogmatic stand of the party. This became particularly clear in his poetry.

His first collection of poems bore the title Město v slzách (1920; City in Tears). It described the misery of the poor and oppressed; its content is permeated by a revolutionary tone, calling for change and heralding justice for those who suffer. In a poem entitled "The Most Humble Poem" ("Básežn nejpokornější"), the poet identifies himself with a prophet who shows the way for the poor.

Seifert's first collection provides us with a good example of "natural" proletarian poetry. It is "natural" because it was not inspired by ideological ardour or indoctrination, but grew out of his genuinely working-class background and indignation with social injustice. In one of the poems, he calls himself "a poor boy from the outskirts". Indeed, he did not have to learn about poverty from textbooks, or be rational or speculate about it, because he lived in the midst of it. These poems can be defined, no doubt, as socially committed literature.

But they are more than just that. At the same time, their lyrical subject is many-faced, which distinguishes Seifert from other proletarian poets—his contemporaries. Some critics [such as Bedřich Václavek], writing about [Město v slzách] during the twenties, had already noted that it is based on a number of inner conflicts, or as we would prefer to say today—oppositions. On the one hand, the poet declares his admiration for nature, yet he must live in the city to struggle for a better future. He would like to isolate himself in nature, but he must remain among people to show solidarity with them, and even sacrifice his life for the improvement of their destiny. The motif of death occurs in these poems on more than one occasion, but life and biological vitality are dominating themes of this volume.

By and large, this poetry contains sharp criticisms of urban civilization, criticism directed against the city where man finds himself enslaved by mechanization and the advancements of technology. What was perceived and awaited in the past as a blessing, turned out to be a curse. The city is a cold world, devoid of warmth and human feelings. Therefore, the poet wants to embrace all those who are in need, who ought to wrench themselves free from the grip of indigence and humiliation.

Yet his relation to them is far from being sentimental. For a proletarian poet, very little hatred emanates from this volume—a fact not to be overlooked when explaining Seifert's later break with communism—but he does not exclude revolution either, and at times wants to "avenge in the name of love". For the most part, however, the author seems to avoid violent images of class confrontation, and revolution remains an idealization, rather than a bloody reality. "Basically—wrote Bedřich Václavek about [Město v slzách] in 1928—this is a poetry of soft, passive compassion."

Here we arrive at yet another, and perhaps the most essential opposition. What makes these poems "softer", in fact, is a kind of mythologization of reality. The author often conveys his message through the extensive use of biblical imagery and symbols. At times such an attitude manifests itself by a word borrowed from the Scriptures, by the name given to a location (e. g., the title of a poem: "Sinful City"; Czech title: "Hříšné město"), by the name of a prophet or description of an entire situation which clearly alludes to one in the Gospels (a typical example is the poem "December 1920"): all of which, of course, lends an allegorical dimension to the whole collection. The collection does remind us of The Twelve, a poem by A. Blok, which was translated by Seifert into Czech in 1922.

Before we leave Seifert's poetic beginnings, one more comment seems necessary. It was at that time that Seifert formed the basic principles of his poetic world: an interaction of dreams and reality. Although the intensity and devices by which these elements intertwine does vary from one collection to another, their presence remains a stable component throughout the whole of Seifert's poetic oeuvre. Its formation was perhaps not entirely without foreign influence, and his well-known fascination with Guillaume Apollinaire may have had a certain impact on his development; but this characteristic definitely reflected Seifert's own creative sensibility. Incidentally, Seifert was not alone in his admiration for the author of Calligrammes; many of his contemporaries wrote poems under the direct influence of Apollinaire (e.g., J. Wolker's long poem Svatý Kopeček), and the title of one of the most significant Czech avant-garde journals, Pásmo, has a double meaning. It can be translated as both Filmstrip and "zone", the title of a poem written by the French poet in 1913.

In 1923 came Seifert's second collection of poetry, Samá láska (Nothing But Love). In comparison with his beginnings, the transformation was shocking: few traces of the proletarian poetry could be found, and the youthful exhaltation with social motifs disappeared almost completely. The change appeared to be so thorough that the above-mentioned critic Václavek noted that between writing the first and second books, Seifert must have changed Muses.

Indeed, the poet strikes, as it were, an entirely new tone: he leaves the realm of ideology, and embraces life itself. This statement requires some clarification. What it means is simply this: if, in [Město v slzách], he preaches love for one social class only, then now he discovers anew the whole world, or as he says in one of his poems—"all beauties of the world". He discerns this beauty in the most simple manifestations of everday life: flowers, the smell of bread, even kitchen utensils such as a coffee grinder. He is enchanted by and in love with them. Henceforth, the motif of love will permeate the whole of Seifert's lyrics, determining his relation to the surrounding reality. It is love for nature, for his country, for mankind and last but not least, sensual, erotic love.

The extent of this re-evaluation of his artistic attitude is justified in the following way:

        Because love is something big,
        You will recognize it, for example, from that,
        that if in the whole world there is a revolution,
        still, somewhere on the green grass
        lovers will have time to hold hands
        and rest their heads on each other.

Seifert abandons his former condemnation of urban civilization. Instead, he accepts it fully and does not hide his joyous appreciation of it. The revolution has been replaced by a people's carnival. The change in his artistic attitude is evident not only on the level of poetic meaning, but on the level of expression, too. Spontaneity, vitalism and even primitivism become essential characteristics of his poetry. If proletarian poems bordered on the elegiac, the poetry of [Samá láska] reminds us of song-like poems traceable to the tradition of Czech folk songs, a source of inspiration of which Seifert will avail himself with increasing mastery after the twenties.

[Samá láska] turned out to be just the prelude to a new adventure in Seifert's poetic life: his association with poetism. The origins of poetism go back as far as 1920, when a group of young writers organized the Association of Modern Culture, Devětsil (Svaz Moderní Kultury Devětsil). The strange name "devětsil" was taken from botanical terminology. It means "butterbur", a gramineous plant which blooms in spring in mountainous regions. The name was chosen in accordance with the group's main aesthetic principle, the principle of denouncing modern civilization.

Early in the spring of 1922, Seifert (himself a member of Devětsil) read his paper titled "The New Proletarian Art" to a student meeting in Prague. In fact, it was a polemics with J. Wolker's earlier and much more dogmatic statement of the same year, entitled "Proletarian Art". Although the adjective "new" appeared in Seifert's title, suggesting that he still remained within the limits of proletarian poetry, the content of his speech went far beyond what was generally understood as proletarian art. In fact, it deviated from it. According to Vitězslav Nezval (1900–1958), it proposed an entirely new model of poetry [as noted in Alfred French's 1969 The Poets of Prague] which helped the formation of poetism as a literary movement. Some critics credit Seifert's lecture as the inspiration for Nezval's poem Podivuhodný kouzelník (The Amazing Magician)—the first truly poetic text of poetism. It appeared in the Revolutionary Almanac Devětsil (Revoluční Sborník Devětsil), in the late fall of 1922. By 1924, poetism was firmly established in Czech literature; and until the beginnings of the thirties, it remained the leading poetic force.

The name "poetism" derives, of course, from the word "poetry". It would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that, if compared to other modernist European movements, poetism can be recognized as one of the most, so to speak, poetic movements among them. Indeed, it deserves such a qualification. While other avant-garde currents based their poetic programmes mainly upon a single aesthetic principle—for example, Futurists experimented with words, Surrealists were interested in discovering the subconscious, Constructivists insisted on expedience, Imagists elevated the role of image, and so on—poetists recognized the validity of all these devices as equally important, so long as they contributed to the creation of a poem, or other literary work of art. Word, image, free associations, sound, film, theatre and the "reality of this world, arrangement and organization of ingenuity or sensibility" (V. Nezval) are indispensible elements in evoking lyrical feelings. The emotive function of the poem depends on them. Neither ideological nor artistic rigidity is acceptable. Consequently, poetry should be liberated from didactic, rational functions. Lyrical sensation stems from the spontaneity of fantasy and lexical sources. In poetism, Czech poets discovered that art is a game—the less regulated, the better.

Translated into terms of Seifert's own poetic code, this meant that poetry is a continuous creation of the new. Hence Seifert's inclination for artistic experiment, his search for new realms of imagination and his ability to surprise the reader, even in his late poetry, written in the sixties and seventies. Seifert's association with poetism lasted for about six years. It produced three volumes of poetry: Na vlnách T.S.F. (1925; On the Waves of the Wireless), Slavík zpívá špatně (1926; The Nightingale Sings Poorly) and Poštovní holub (1929; The Carrier Pigeon).

A mutual dependence exists between the poet and the literary current to which he belonged. On the one hand, he shaped the very essence of poetism; and on the other, the current left an indelible mark on his further evolution as an artist. Cooperation and friendship with such poets as V. Nezval, Konstantin Biebl, Josef Hora and above all, the critic Karel Teige, with whom the poet travelled to France and Italy in 1924, helped him to shape his own poetic profile. It was, by the way, K. Teige who defined poetism as "the art of living and enjoyment".

The most "poetist" among the three collections mentioned is undoubtedly [Na vlnách T.S.F.] (sometimes translated as On Waves of Radio). In the preceding volume [Samá láska] some vestiges of the proletarian period are still visible in the dichotomy between revolutionary rhetoric and a new epicurean perception of life. To the contrary, [Na vlnách T.S.F.] strikes one by its homogeneous poetic attitude, typical of poetism. It is characterized by light and playful fantasy, grotesque, paradox, puns, irony, emotionalism at times bordering on the sentimental. Seifert preserved many of these characteristics in the poetics of his mature period. Generally speaking, it is a collection expressing enchantment with life, with its richness and manifold tempting attractions.

The most conspicuous motifs in it are those of the city, travel, the unknown, exotic worlds and vivid eroticism. The typical accessories of this poetic world are luxury trains, tall leafy palms, cruise ships, the shining lights of a big metropolis, and so on. F. X. Šalda, one of the greatest Czech critics of this century, made the following observation:

The most valuable innovation of Seifert will be, I feel, this: he found objects; after words—objects. He made them speak ("rozhovořil věci") from within, and recorded in a reliable and truthful manner what they told him. His polyphony is not broad, but being relatively narrow, it is pure and fresh.

In spite of the sensual externalization of objects, it remains unreal; it is tangible, yet elusive. The poet does not describe this world, but rather, he suggests it. Seifert achieves this kind of poeticality by applying the principle of simultaneity: in two or three short lines, he includes different levels of human experience, as it happens, for example, in the poem "Abacus", handy to quote for its brevity:

        Your breast
        is like an apple from Australia.
        Your breasts are like two apples from Australia.
        How happy I am to have this abacus of love.

To be sure, this is not an extreme example of Seifert's elliptical technique. He sometimes destroys the logical order of life's phenomena to achieve quite unusual imagery. In the four initial lines of "The Words on Magnet", we encounter the following image:

       On a sailing glacier, polar bear's sleep stretches
       down to the equator,
       bird from the tropics dies on the polar circle,
       night like a nut cracked freshly at midnight,
       white star.

Together with other writers of the poetist movement, Seifert dismissed the logical sequencing of the poem: the principle of spontaneity allowed the extensive use of free associations. Quite often the unusual, deformed world is laid over a narrative tone, reminiscent of prose, which lends these poems a sense of intimacy and expressive lyricism. A typical example in this respect is the poem "Miss Gada-Nigi", in which the description of circus artists is combined with the image of nightfall over the town, and ends with an epic apostrophe to Miss Gada-Nigi, an actress.

The lyrical subject in the poetist period exposes youthful vigour, sincerity and joyfulness. The optimistic adventure with life continues, with some variations, throughout the two other collections (mentioned earlier) which were published in the second half of the twenties. Seifert's fascination with life is not philosophically motivated, or justified by any ideological stand: it grows out of his spontaneous appreciation of it. He is eager to catch reality in the twinkling of an eye, to preserve a moment, to commemorate an event or experience, and to render them through the flash of poetic revelation. Life is the only true source of sensation, including suffering. In the poem "Wine and Time" ("Vino a čas"), we read the following lines:

      So what if water runs and time flows?
      And man begins to die the very day
      he is born?
      Just ask the Belfort lion,
      whether he would not trade his eternity in sand
      for one day,
      when into living flesh he could thrust his claws
      and drink blood
      until Etoile would be extinguished by horror.

Whatever we experience, we experience through the medium of life and therefore it should be the subject of our admiration. This spontaneous, undogmatic attitude coincides with the poet's progressive distancing from ideological inflexibility. True, in 1926, his [Slavík zpívá špatně (The Nightingale Sings Badly)] appeared, as a result of his trips to the Soviet Union in 1925. In some poems, Seifert seemingly attempts to reconcile his personal sympathies with the proletarian cause. But it was, indeed, a rather symbolic gesture. [According to Sir Cecil Parrott in his "Introduction" to the 1979 British edition of Seifert's The Plague Column,] Seifert returned from the Soviet Union frightened by the revolution, "appalled by its bloodshed" and disappointed with what he saw. Whatever interesting he found there—belonged to the past. He called Russia "the graveyard of history". Dealing with the Russian drama, he omitted any dramatizing effects, and "assumed a deliberately nonchalant attitude, avoiding the temptation to strike tragic poses and unfold apocalyptic visions". In doing so, he preserved the stylistic affinity of this volume with the rest of his poetist literary output. Three years later, in 1929, Seifert broke with the communists. However, to emphasize his continued loyalty to socialist ideas, he joined to social democrats, who abode by the legitimacy of parliamentary democracy, and who defended the workers' cause within the framework of this system. The communists never forgave Seifert's change of heart; but he did not recant, even after 1948, when many of his colleagues did.

In 1930, Seifert takes yet another important turn: he leaves the poetists. While they began to reorganize themselves and promote the Czech branch of surrealism, he decided to choose his own independent path, to search for his identity outside of any artistic, ideological or political framework. In short, Seifert becomes Seifert.

What is most conspicuous in the ensuing decade is a departure from the motifs of the preceding period. In a sense, however, this development demonstrates a noticeable affinity to [Samá láska], which the poet had abandoned by joining the poetists. The continuity, though, is by no means straightforward. What distinguishes this new poetic impulse from the earlier one, and at the same time lends to it a peculiar unity, is the overall dominating mood of reflection. What becomes obvious is that Seifert forsakes the experimental model of poetry in favour of a more communicative pattern of artistic expression. He evolves his own poetic style, whose stanzaic forms and uncomplicated imagery strike a more traditional note than do the works of many of his contemporaries, a style which allows him to establish a closer relationship with the reader. In Czech literature of the thirties, amongst the prevailing themes of gloom (for example, in F. Halas), the tendency to continue experiments (V. Nezval and the surrealists in particular), and ideological narrowness (M. Majerová), Seifert's work shines with its unusual originality, as it "clings almost alone to optimism, at the same time cultivating imagistic and linguistic precision in the lyric form" [according to William E. Harkins in his "On Jaroslav Seifert's Morový sloup," in Cross Currents, Vol. 3 (1984)]. Seifert's creative maturity traces out such cycles of poetry as Jablko s klína (1933; An Apple From the Lap), Ruce Venušiny (1936; The Arms of Venus), Jaro sbohem (1937; Farewell, Spring!). During the whole following decade, he wrote refined lyrics, drawing on the experiences of everyday life, at the same time revealing another characteristic of his versatile talent: the mastery of occasional verse.

When we speak here of "everyday life" as a source of inspiration, we should keep in mind that it differs significantly from the one we encounter in poetism. Surely, Seifert's externalization of objects, the texture of his poems, preserve the same sensuality, tangibility, freshness and plasticity; but gone now are the requisites and glamour of the big city, his fascination with the exotic world of jazz, films, cafes, bars, palm trees, and so on. Instead, Seifert exploits nature, popular and national tradition, art, personal reminiscences, patriotic themes and, last but not least, the beauty of Prague—the capital of the country. The literary space, so to speak, of his poetry has changed profoundly, and the lyrical persona is not any longer a "poor boy from the suburbs", but a "white shrub" whose branches embrace the surrounding world. Nothing better expresses this change than Seifert's poem "Transformations" ("Proměny"), dedicated to F. X. Šalda.

      The boy has changed into a white shrub,
      The shrub into a sleeping shepherd,
      soft hair into the strings of a lyre,
      snow into snow fallen upon curls.
 
      Words have changed into questions,
      wisdom and fame into wrinkles
      and strings again into soft hair,
      the boy is changing into a poet
      and the poet has changed
      into that white shrub, under which he slept,
      because he loved beauty so fervently.
      Whoever loved only beauty
      is fond of her forever
      and wanders after her without end;
      beauty has wonderful legs,
      shod in soft sandals.

To translate Seifert's masterful language, to render his play with words, to draw out the shades of their meaning or subtle ambiguity—more than one translated version of the poem would probably be needed; but the motif of transformation would remain obvious. In addition to telling us about the poet's changing individuality, it also reveals his enriched sensitivity. Therefore, in his "Song About Love" ("Píseň o lásce"), he makes a frank and sincere confession:

       I hear what others do not,
       barefeet walking on the plush

—typical Seifertian lines, combining an abstract thought with a concrete sensual image ("barefeet walking on the plush").

It would be difficult to enumerate here all the motives emerging in the above-mentioned collections. They seldom appear in a "pure" manifestation. History is intertwined with the description of his native land, allusions to literary works provoke thoughts about the present, religious motifs are juxtaposed with mundane reality. But almost without exception, the creative impulse stems from the immediate surrounding nature and human experience. Rain, sunshine, night, birds, seasons of the year, recollections of childhood, of his home, motherly love, at times a single event, a flirtation, a gaze or a glance—these become, under Seifert's pen, an inexhaustible source of poetic invention.

[According to Sir Cecil Parrott, these] are "pure lyric poems on scenes of everyday life and the thoughts they aroused in him". He now achieved an unusual intimacy and range of feelings, at times humorous or melancholic, playful or paradoxical, mournful or nostalgic, but always expressed with remarkable simplicity, a simplicity that occasionally appears to border on the obvious, yet never slides into the trivial. These poems always contain a word, a line, an image which sounds like a philosophical maxim, a sort of Heraclitian pensiveness about the passage of time, constant change, and the only certainty—death. Yet the reader will also find in them a touch of "Horace's love of rustic enjoyment, something too of Anacreon's devotion to Muses, love and wine". Often, they bring to mind the folk-wisdom of oral poetry, and it comes as no surprise that, in the first part of [Jaro sbohem], all of the poems have the word "song" in their titles.

Seifert's interest in writing occasional verse was mentioned earlier. He developed it not without a certain influence of his concrete external situation. The political evolution in Europe during the mid-thirties did not inspire confidence in the future. Many writers expressed their anxiety and concern about the growing instability and the danger of war. Seifert was no exception. He wrote about the Spanish Civil War and the spectre of fascism. However, he approaches them not from the point of view of a revolutionary, but as one who judges events in terms of the universal categories of good and evil. At that time, he did not anticipate that the history of his own contry would provide such abundant material for occasional verse.

In 1937, Seifert published a cycle of ten poems Osm dní (Eight Days), mourning the death of the great statesman Thomas Masaryk, thinker and philosopher, the founder of modern Czechoslovakia. The cycle is a powerful and moving threnody, devoted to a great national figure of historical significance. It is expressed most dramatically in the words from the poem "Conversation With Death", namely, that the nation had nothing more precious to offer than the body of its leader. The passing away of the beloved president is described as a tragic blow, not only to the entire country, but to the whole of Europe, because the stature of the man surpasses his temporal political importance.

Just one year later, as the German troops entered Prague, Seifert has to express sorrow over the loss of independence. He responded to this tragic event by writing the volume Zhasněte světla (1938; Put Out the Lights), with a number of poems which denounced with bitterness and pain the consequences of the Munich agreement; but on the whole, he reacted to the new historical situation by turning his attention to the treasures of the national past and the beauty of Prague, his native city.

In 1940, the Czechs celebrated the 120th anniversary of the birth of Božena Němcová, one of the leading writers of late Czech romanticism, and the author of Babička (1855; Granny). Seifert commemorated this occasion by writing the poetic cycle Vějíř Boženy Němcové (1940; Božena Němcová's Fan). It was a hymn in praise of human endurance: in spite of the hardships Němcová suffered during her short life, she became one of the key figures of the Czech national revival. Consequently, in Seifert's poem she acquires the characteristics of a symbol of hope, becomes an allegory of survival and spurs confidence in the strength of cultural tradition, which will help it to overcome. In the long poem Písežn o Viktorce (Song of Viktorka), Seifert "returned" to Němcová in 1950, this time offering reflections on Viktorka—the heroine of the novel Granny.

But the country's capital, Prague, remains the major subject of his poetic reveries. In 1940, the volume Světlem oděná (Clothed in Light) appeared; together with Kamenný most (1944; The Stone Bridge) and Praha (1956; Prague), it constitutes a part of poetic triptych devoted almost entirely to the author's native city. For Seifert, Prague is the most beautiful place on earth. It is more beautiful than Venice, Rome or any other city in the world. Indeed, the number of similies and metaphors employed by Seifert to depict the beauty of Prague is stunning; but above all, Prague, with its legends, rich architecture, castles and relics of the past, remains the source of national pride, an inspiration for hope that the nation, like its capital, will survive. It is not only a store of old monuments, but a living symbol of permanence and vitality, which provides the poet with an opportunity to reflect upon Czech history in general.

How did Seifert react to the end of the war in 1945? Usually, critics stress the fact that the poet greeted and welcomed the liberation. Indeed, it could not have been otherwise. Patriotic motives prevail in the collection Přilba hlíny (1945; The Helmet of Clay). At that time, Seifert wrote several poems commemorating the Prague uprising of May 1945, the return of President Beneš, the sacrifice of the Red Army and so on. But was he truly relieved of any shade of doubt? Or was there, at the bottom of his heart, even anxiety that the so-called liberation contained in it the seeds of new subjugation, which might turn into yet another period of national nightmare? In short: was his country out of danger? The question is a difficult one to answer, but it cannot be avoided by whoever wants to give an honest evaluation of Seifert's writing.

If the poet's continuous interest in historical themes, the beauty of his native land and first of all, in the national cultural tradition may be taken as any indication, he did not believe that the country was out of trouble. His post-war interests in these motifs remain too conspicuous to be interpreted as a simple continuation of the preceding period, i.e., unrelated to the post-war present. The material seems to prove the legitimacy of such an assumption. Apart from the above-mentioned [Píseň o Viktorce] Seifert published in 1948 Ruka a plamen (The Arm and the Flame)—a collection of poems almost entirely devoted to Czech writers and artists. A year later, he edited Šel malíř chudě do světa (The Painter Went Poor into the World), which are poems-illustrations to Mikoláš Aleš' paintings of the Czech landscape. Finally, in 1954, Maminka appeared—a cycle of personal lyrical reminiscences about mother, motherly love (a motif present throughout Seifert's work), and at the same time [according to Maria Němcová Banerjee] an "evocation of the quasi-mythical mother figure" that is a symbol of the whole nation.

Seifert's passion of reviving the national cultural tradition did not go unnoticed by official critics. He was attacked for "sinking" deeper and deeper into subjectivism, and was accused of having an apolitical attitude—a euphemism, of course, reproaching him for not having complied with the principles of socialist realism promoted by the party. The clash between Seifert and the party came into the open during the short-lived liberalization which began in the mid-fifties. At the Second Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers Union in 1956, Seifert voiced his protest against Stalinist practices in literature and art. He appealed to writers to become "the conscience of the nation", a concept remaining in obvious contradiction with the communist slogan of writers as "engineers of human souls".

For the next ten years, Seifert did not publish much; but his silence was rather ostensible. He surprised everyone with an unusual outburst of creative energy by publishing three new books of poetry: Koncert na ostrově (1965; Concert on the Island), Halleyova Kometa (1967; Halley's Comet) and Odléváni zvonů (1967; The Casting of Bells). It is a triptych which both thematically and artistically can be considered to be a synthesis of the long road of a poet who reaches an old age. It is a sort of lyrical confession about the harshness of life, vanishing illusions, reminiscences and questions about the meaning of our existence. Life is still the main source of the poet's inspiration, because there is no escape from it; but his outlook on it grows sceptical, sombre, at times even bitter. His previously joyful appreciation and acceptance of life has been toned down considerably. "We know, hell is everywhere—writes the poet—but what about paradise?" We find it in moments only, in smiles given to us after a long wait ("Jen jednou jsem spatřil …"; "Only Once I Caught a Glimpse …"). One can also find in these poems an acute sense of an oncoming ending: time and time again, the motif of death reoccurs with unusual sincerity. The poet expresses surprise at the fact that he was given to live longer than any other poet of his generation ("Pocta Vladimíru Holanovi"; "Eulogy on Vladimír Holan"), which evokes in him a peculiar feeling of guilt and alienation. He is not the same person, and the people who surround him are not those of his youth. It's time to face the inevitable. Life is compared to a train, whose passengers will soon have to alight at the Lethe station ("Úryvek z dopisu"; "Excerpt from a Letter"). In spite of occasional flashes of self-irony or even sarcasm, what prevails in these poems is the tendency to familiarize with the thought of death as the final point of man's physical existence.

The events of the late sixties revived Seifert's social and political activity. In 1968, he openly condemned the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Later he was asked to serve as the president of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, in the hope that his authority would save the Union from destruction. He remained in this position until the dissolution of the Union two years later. Together with the philosopher Jan Patočka, writers Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, Pavel Kohout and others, he paved the way for the manifesto of human rights, known as Charter 77. Seifert was one of its first signatories.

However, Seifert's most remarkable achievement of the seventies will again be his rebirth as a poet. What I have in mind is the long poem Morový sloup (The Plague Column or The Plague Monument) and Deštník z Piccadilly (The Umbrella from Piccadilly), published respectively in 1977 and 1979. It would not be an exaggeration to say that if Seifert had left only The Plague Column to posterity, he would have assured himself a lasting place in Czech literature. The poem amazes with its innovative power, revealing once again the magnitude and versatility of Seifert's poetic talent. At the age of 76, he was able to break his own fossilization, although he had no illusions as to his own future. Let me quote the closing fragment of the poem:

      To all those million verses in the world
      I've added just a few.
      They probably were no wiser than a cricket's chirrup.
      I know. Forgive me.
      I'm coming to the end.
 
      They weren't even the first footmarks
      in the lunar dust.
      If at times they sparkled after all
      it was not their light.
      I loved this language.
 
      And that which forces silent lips
      to quiver
      will make young lovers kiss
      as they stroll through red-gilded fields
      under a sunset
      slower than in the tropics.
 
      Poetry is with us from the start.
      Like loving,
      like hunger, like the plague, like war.
      At times my verses were embarassingly
      foolish.
      But I make no excuse.
      I believe that seeking beautiful words
      is better
      than killing or murdering.

If the sixties culminated in the synthesis of previous achievements, The Plague Column marks a new opening, if not for Seifert, then for others.

Metaphorically speaking, The Plague Column is a literary fugue, with many motifs, themes, observations and thoughts which are loosely intertwined throughout the whole poem, but all ultimately relate to the universal questions of humanity and its destiny: life and death, religion and secularity, freedom and slavery, war and peace, love and hatred, good and evil, truth and falsehood. The title, The Plague Column, refers [according to William E. Hawkins], to the XVIIth Century custom of building columns "in gratitude for deliverance from the plague". It would be difficult and premature to indulge in an exhaustive interpretation of the poem, but Seifert seems to have tinged it with the tone of apocalyptic doom.

It's time for a summary. Seifert lived through almost all of the important events of this century. He managed to preserve in his poetry a simplicity of expression and sense of reality, as few poets have done. Apart from the early period, his lyrics are completely free from reasoning, based not on any particular dogma but "upon a spontaneous receptiveness," coupled with a clear awareness of ongoing change. He goes through various stages of artistic evolution: "from a boyish, joyous naivety and optimistic outlook upon lie, transitory beauty", showing a keen interest in national tradition, to a more sombre, even tragic, perception of our age. Not many poets have succeeded as Seifert did in embracing such a broad range of human questions and at the same time maintaining [according to the editors of The Linden Tree: An Authology of Czech and Slovak Literature, 1890–1960, 1962] "an intimate and close contact with his readers".

To ask whether all this makes him worthy of the Nobel Prize is a perennial question, which can never be answered in a satisfactory manner, because our choice or preference is always determined by language, limited by the scope of our linguistic experience. Usually, these limitations work against the writers of smaller nations. But we should try to find some other criteria of a more general and comparative nature. In the case of Czech culture, the following question seems to be justifiable: we often listen, with great pleasure, to the compositions of A. Dvořák, B. Smetana; we admire the great mastery of Miloš Forman as a film director. Do we ever ask the question of whether these achievements are matched in other arts, as, for example, in Czech literature? Certainly, it's a devious way of proving things, it is a proof "per analogiam", but still it may help us to realize our limitations. After all, we should not forget that this literature represented by writers of such stature as K. Čapek and J. Hašek. Seifert, often called the doyen of Czech literature, is both a continuation and a culmination of this tradition. His poetry, no doubt, gives witness to our difficult time, but it also reflects something equally important: the artist's struggle with himself, his constant quest to discover new realms of human experience. Seifert treats poetry as an incessant challenge, as a clash between his imagination and the world that it has to capture, as expressed in the following stanza:

       If anybody asked me
       what is a poem,
       I would be in despair for a few moments.
       And I know it so well!

Perhaps in this Seifertian paradox lies the greatness and unique nature of his poetry.