Egon Bondy
Egon Bondy ( born January 20, 1930 in Prague, † April 9, 2007 in Bratislava; actually Zbynek Fiser ) was a Czech poet and philosopher. He was one of the intellectual giants of the Prague Underground seventies.
Life
Under the name Zbynek Fiser born in 1930 in Prague, the son of a chief of the Czechoslovak army grew up without a mother, but in a privileged family and prosperity. After the communist coup in 1948, he quickly got to experience first-hand the absurdities of real socialist everyday life: his father was demoted and dispossessed.
Even as a 16- year-old he was a member of the Surrealist group, and was a convinced Marxist. From 1957 to 1961 he studied at the Charles University in Prague philosophy and psychology. Lived early in the fifties Bondy at the edge of illegality. Jana Krejcarová - at this time that his stormy relationship with the daughter Milena Jesenskás falls. He devoted himself soon the "total realism", a policy shared by his friend Bohumil Hrabal artistic direction. His pseudonym he lay down in protest against the blatant anti-Semitism on during the Stalinist excesses of the 1950s in Czechoslovakia. This was not his only act of resistance, his life shaped the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Bondy's extensive poetic work just as typescript samizdat - in circulation and the conditions usually moved at a height of thirty copies.
After 1968, Bondy was a keen observer of the events surrounding the Soviet invasion of his homeland. The conflict between the writer and the totalitarian regime worsened progressively. Around him was the Prague Underground, cultural parallel society in the "normalized", that is, the Soviets adapted, Czechoslovakia. Bondy was in his unbroken wilfulness a leading figure in the cultural and political space of Czechoslovakia - before and after the peaceful separation in December 1992, he had this division criticized as expressing a politically incorrect development and settled in 1993 in protest to Bratislava about his self-chosen Slovak. exile.
Beginning of the 90s it became public that Bondy had denounced many fellow students during his studies as an informant of State Security. He died in 2007 in Bratislava.
Work
Egon Bondy has written numerous books of poetry, a series of prose works, sketches, essays and a comprehensive six volumes of the history of philosophy in Europe and the world, as well as numerous novels, which stand out clearly from the traditional literature. He also translated the Galgenlieder by Christian Morgenstern in the Czech language; they are still one of the best transfers. Several of his own poems have been set to music by the band The Plastic People of the Universe, which he opened a special sphere of influence in the 1970s. The subsequent arrest and indictment of the band members by the regime provided the impetus for the formation of the civil rights movement Charter 77
Despite his extensive literary work Bondy has remained a myth, a legend in Prague. Not least because his longtime friend Bohumil Hrabal made him the protagonist of several novels. Especially in the 1992 published by Suhrkamp book Gentle Barbarian. Hrabal had with Bondy success. While man Bondy was the victim of constant police pursuit and was shown in media only as an ideal example of the class enemy with long hair and beard, the figure of the director Jiří Menzel Bondy was filmed and became a blockbuster in theaters.
Bibliography (selection)
- Egon Bondy: The invalid siblings. 1st edition. Ivory, Heidelberg 1999 ( Original title: Invalidní sourozenci, translated by Mira sunshine ), ISBN 978-3932245251.
- Egon Bondy: Hatto. 1st edition. Ivory, Berlin 2007 ( Original title: Hatto, translated by Mira sunshine ), ISBN 978-3932245848.