Jiřà Wolker
Karel Jiří Wolker ( born March 29, 1900 in Prostějov; † January 3, 1924 ) was a Czech poet.
Life
Wolker grew up as the son of a wealthy upper-class family in Prostějov. With the inclusion of studies in Prague in 1919 Wolker got into the circles leftist intellectuals who met in Prague coffee houses. He wrote poems and was looking for a new poetic style of the contemporary poets AM Píša, Miloš Jirko, František Němec, Zdeněk Kalista and Josef Suk affected.
In 1921 he published his first collection of poems Host do domu ( German guest into the house ). The poems looked at the world through the eyes of a " child poet " and were characterized by a simple, unpretentious style, harmony and childlike simplicity.
The poem Holy Hill appeared in the journal Červen (June), bringing the experience of homecoming in the family circle to express. Wolker designed in contrast to the poets of the contemporary Czech avant-garde a stable view of the world on the basis of a socialist ideology. He was a member of the Literární skupina ( Literary group) in Brno, the ( The Traveller) planned a periodical named host in reference to the title of Wolkers book of poems. Following publication of the manifesto, which he rejected as utopian, he left the group in September 1922 again. He was first a member of the Künstlerclub Devětsil, this group but left again after she addressed himself a rather apolitical poetry.
Then Wolker began to experiment with drama and prose. He published a collection of one-act plays and prose under the title Tři hry (three pieces ). Its stated goal is to include instead a pure poetry more narrative elements in poetry. His poetry was influenced by the literary ballads Karel Jaromír Erben, Jan Neruda and Petr Bezruč. The predominant in his early poems childlike view of the world he contrasted now with the sentient and appealers to act a man's heart and deals with social evils such as oppression, poverty and injustice. Overall, a strong influence of communist ideas on Wolkers seal is observed.
In April 1923 he became ill with tuberculosis. With his mother, he traveled to a sanatorium in Tatranská Polianka ( Weszterheim ) in the High Tatras. The disease became worse and Wolker wrote in November 1923 under the impact of his impending death his own epitaph. In early January 1924, he succumbed to the disease.
Soon after his death became Jiří Wolker a cult figure. It kindled a controversy between communist intellectuals who complained Wolkers work for their political goals, and the avant-garde poets who rejected a connection between poetry and political programs in principle. Following the establishment of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1948 Wolkers work has been interpreted as embodying the values of socialist poetry.
Works
- Host do domu ( guest into the house ), 1921
- Tezka Hodina ( The heavy hour ), 1922
- Tři hry ( Three Pieces ), 1922
- Jiří Wolker: I grow as day. In: Ilse lumpfish (ed.): Loeb Classical Library. 2, extended and modified ( first illustrated ) Edition. Volume 178 Fiction, Reclam, Leipzig 1977.