Until last October's Nobel Prize announcement, Jaroslav Seifert (b. 1901), one of the best Czech poets of this century, had not had the recognition he deserves due to the official censure he has faced in his country and the paucity of translations abroad. His career spans more than sixty years of sustained creativity, beginning with the avant-garde period of poetism and surrealism and continuing through the present day. The best of Seifert's poetry is represented in this volume, Ruce Venušiny (Hands of Venus), compiled and published by Sixty-Eight Publishers, who are hereby bringing out and preserving another important Czech writer.

Seifert's early poetry displays an appealing lyricism and a recognizably masculine grace. He is a young man in love, full of hope and energy, fascinated by the sensual possibilities of language. To his credit, he never loses his ludic charm, which is born of idealism and an instinctive faith in the best qualities of man—above all, his capacity to love. Even after witnessing the most deplorable human tragedies of this century, Seifert finds it possible to praise the human spirit. His attitude becomes graver and more pained, but he refrains from expressions of noisy outrage or prolonged sessions of despair. With each poem he sets out anew, facing the world with sympathy and adopting, more and more, an informal and intimate speech, as if by shaping the artifice of poetry according to the rhythms and nuances of familiar utterance he could remove all barriers between poet and reader.

To some, the language of his later poetry may seem prosaic and bare, but by exposing himself so openly, Seifert manages to capture the flickering changes of the mind and a constant refinement of sensibilities. Without sacrificing his youthful sprezzatura or disdain, he has gained the maturity and naturalness that come rarely and only with patience. Aware that his last poems might evoke such reactions, Seifert has tried to guard against this interpretation. Like Yeats in his old age, he scoffs at the notion that old men are necessarily wise or that wisdom holds a candle against the burning husk of experience.

Still, Seifert's wisdom is indeed valuable and necessary: through the nightmare of history, the calamities of nature, and the agony of personal loss, he has steadfastly refused to sing the cynical songs of gravediggers or to rage against the dying of the light. He has sought to express himself through affirmation and delight; each poem is an act of love. Among lyric poets today, Seifert is perhaps the most eloquent pleader for humanity; he is therefore indispensable.