[In the following review, Werner offers a mixed assessment of The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert, questioning whether his work is worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature.]

[The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert] tries to answer two questions: who was Jaroslav Seifert and did he deserve the Noble Prize in Literature? When he won the award in 1984, Seifert was largely unknown outside of Czechoslovakia, but within his native country his poetry was immensely popular (if not always officially sanctioned) and he was considered (in [his editor and translator] George Gibian's words) the country's unofficial national poet. This volume goes far toward answering these two questions.

Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) was born into a working class background and wrote first a book of proletarian poetry. Soon, though, Seifert joined the avant-garde poetism movement, roughly the Czech equivalent of Western European modernism but with a larger streak of surrealism, dada, and futurism than mainstream modernism. Seifert matured artistically in the early thirties, developing a lyric style that was euphonic, dense, and song-like; while the diction was simplified, the verse turned technically complex and intricate. His themes were the beauty of the world, women, and love. As public events commanded attention during the end of the decade and throughout the war, Seifert (and other writers) turned to public events for poetry, such as the death of President Masaryk, the Prague uprising, past Czech writers, Prague itself, his homeland.

The fifties brought another change to Seifert's poetry. In 1954 he published Maminka (Mother). Unfortunately, this book of poems is neither mentioned nor translated from in this collection, yet it is at this point that the second question above becomes problematic. A. French (in 1982) labeled Maminka a "classic," saying that "it combined the elements of traditional art and return to the world of childhood. In itself, it summed up a whole trend of literature away from the monumental to the humble; from public themes to private; from the pseudo-reality of political slogans to the known reality of Czech home life which was the product of its past." This heady praise is balanced by Robert Pynsent's judgment (1979) that "Seifert subjected himself to over-sentimental so-called Realism" with the book. Maminka is "a flaccid collection which is still immensely popular." Maminka's worth is an important issue because the poetry of Seifert's last decades seems to develop directly from this book. Seifert's style loosens as he abandons the song-like elements and the rhymes and metaphors, and he writes in a simple and personal free verse. Although present or latent throughout his whole poetic career, various themes come to the fore: Seifert's love for the physical world and beautiful women, his sensuality and hedonism, his enjoyment of life, his compassion for others. Overall, a generous, warm-hearted spirit pervades Seifert's poetry.

Given this century's conditions, convergences between politics and Seifert's poetry are unsurprising, though that poetry never appears to be openly political. A communist in the 1920s, Seifert was expelled from the Party for criticizing it in 1929 (he never rejoined), wrote overtly nationalistic poems during the Nazi occupation, was denounced by the Party in 1950 for writings deemed gloomy and reactionary, yet commanded sufficient respect to be able to criticize publicly the government's treatment of writers in 1956 and 1968, and was an original singer of Charter 77. However, the greatest effect of politics upon Seifert's poetry was that during the 50s and 70s he was officially denied permission to publish.

Gibian brings together in this collection an introduction to Seifert's life and work, translations by Ewald Osers of 62 poems from 17 books, ten selections of prose reminiscences translated by Gibian, a glossary of names and places, and endnotes to the introduction, poems, and reminiscences. Despite the apparent fullness of accompanying apparatus, this book lacks a bibliography of Seifert's works or at least of English translations. The endnotes are minimal; the glossary helps with Seifert's many local references, but the identifications of French authors seem unnecessary.

This book's major portion is disappointing because it fails to do justice to Seifert's career; 62 poems cannot represent Seifert's diversity. Gibian's description of the poetry in his introduction is not lived up to in the range of poems presented. Part of the problem stems from the criteria used for selecting poems: "intrinsic quality, representativeness, and translatability." One result, especially of the third criterion, is, as Gibian notes, that the bulk of these poems comes from the 1950s and later. We have a lopsided view of Seifert's work, most of it coming from the second half of his career because the poetry became easier to translate after the style became simpler and more conversational.

These poems are warm, accessible, and generous. They are easy to read and comfortable. Many, perhaps because they were written by a man growing old, concern death, but nothing fatalistic or morbid intrudes. Death is another natural fact; if anything, death heightens the sensation of a kiss or memory of a kiss. An open and natural sensuality pervades these late poems, unlike the frenetic sensuality of Yeats' later poems. To give an idea of Seifert's usual strategy, let me quote one poem entirely, "St George's Basilica":

        If in the white Basilica of St George
        fire broke out,
            which God forbid,
        its walls after the flames would be rose-coloured.
        Perhaps even its twin towers: Adam and Eve.
        Eve is the slimmer one, as is usual with women,
        though that is only an insignificant glory
            of their sex.
        The fiery heat will make the limestone blush.
 
        Just as young girls do
        after their first kiss.

Here we find a mixture of sacred and profane, of conflagration and a first kiss. The movement is toward the personal and the physical, as we can see in the comment on Eve's build, the blushing walls, the young girls. This is a small poem, but in the larger poems with their complexes of themes the same movement is decisive.

The paucity of poems here makes an answer to the second question posed at the beginning unfair. This selection gives pleasant, enjoyable reading, but the poetry does not invite rereading. The reasons could be many—that Seifert addresses a popular audience (the like of which doesn't exist in this country), that much is lost in translation, or that the poems chosen for translation can be translated because of their lack of depth. Seifert avoided the social realism promulgated by the Communist Party, but he developed a personal realism that verges on the sentimental and banal. Perhaps in this country we cannot judge a public poet, a national poet, since we lack a popular audience for poetry or a tradition of one. Seifert was an important Czech writer who produced a large body of poetry, but what makes for a Nobel Prize remains questionable.