Václav Černý

Václav Černý (* March 26, 1905 Jizbice u Náchoda; † July 2, 1987 Prague) was Czech literary researcher and translator.

Life

After high school he studied from 1924 to 1929 Bohemistics and Romance. From 1930 he worked in Geneva, where he professor of comparative literature and literary studies a year later. In 1936 he returned to Prague and lectured at Charles University and from 1938 as an adjunct professor at Masaryk University in Brno. Since that year he also edited the Kritický měsíčník ( Critical Monthly Bulletin). After the universities were closed, he taught at high schools. During the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, he joined the resistance group Parsifal and was arrested on 11 January 1945.

After the Second World War, he was a professor of comparative historical literature at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Because of disagreement in the interpretation of Marxist literary history he had to leave the university in 1951. He was arrested a short time later and after his release, he worked as a minor employee at the Czechoslovak Academy. He was reappointed in 1968 to the University, but left this in 1970 and went into retirement. After 1970 his work has been published only abroad.

Works

His work was inspired by the existential socialism, he examined theoretically. It concerned itself more with the French literature Baroque literature and later also with Old Bohemian literature. His favorite subject was the romance.

In addition to numerous own works he translated from Romance languages. One of his major works was the publication of a poem almanac, which dealt with the generation of the poet Jiří places.