Josef Škvorecký

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Josef Škvorecký - Náchod 2004

Josef Škvorecký (born September 27, 1924 in Náchod , Czechoslovakia ; † January 3, 2012 in Toronto , Canada ) was a Czech writer , translator and publisher . From the end of 1969 he taught American and modern English literature at the University of Toronto .

Life

His parents were the senior bank clerk Josef Škvorecký (1897-1967) and Anna, née Kurážova (1896-1947), who came from the Chod region. Josef Škvorecký attended high school in his hometown, which he graduated from high school in 1943. Since the Czech-speaking universities had been closed by the German occupation of the Protectorate in 1939 as a result of the Prague special , he was unable to study; instead he was obliged to work at Metallbauwerk Nachod KG Zimmermann, Schilling & Co., where u. a. Accessories for the Messerschmitt BF 111, the V1 and the Focke-Wulf were manufactured. Later he was forced to work for the textile works of brothers Josef and Cyril Bartoň in Nachod for a short time after Nové Město nad Metují and at the end of the war . He describes this time in the novels The Soul Engineer and Feiglinge , while the high school days of the last school years are remembered in A great season . While still at high school he founded the band "Red Music" in Náchod, in which he played the saxophone. After the end of the war he began studying medicine at Charles University in Prague , but after one semester he switched to the Faculty of Philosophy, where he studied English and philosophy . After completing his studies in 1949, he worked for two years as a teacher at schools in Broumov , Police and Hořice . In 1951 he received his doctorate at the Charles University with a dissertation on Thomas Paine with the title "Thomas Paine a jeho vztah k dnešku". After two years of military service, he went to the Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury (State Publishing House for Fine Literature ) as an editor . From 1956 he was editor of the bimonthly publication "Světová literatura", which he co-founded. Because of the scandal caused by his first novel Zbabělci (Cowards), written in 1948/1949 but only published in 1958 , he was transferred to a subordinate position in the publishing house. The novel depicts the National Socialist occupation and the Náchod events at the end of the war without any pathos from the perspective of a young jazz freak. It was not until 1963, during the phase of liberalization of cultural life in Czechoslovakia that led to the Prague Spring , that he was allowed to publish again. In 1968 he received a one-year scholarship for a stay in California, which he began in January 1969. After the Czechoslovak authorities refused to publish his novel "Tankový prapor" in the same year, he decided not to return. After the scholarship expired, he and his wife, the writer Zdena Salivarová , settled in Toronto. He then taught American literature and modern English literature as a professor at the University of Toronto until he retired . Together with his wife he founded the exile publishing house 68 Publishers in Toronto , where in 1971 the first edition of “Tankový prapor” appeared. The publishing house became a center of Czech exile literature with authors such as Václav Havel , Milan Kundera and Ludvík Vaculík .

Škvorecký translated modern American authors such as Ernest Hemingway , Raymond Chandler , Henry James and William Faulkner into Czech. He also wrote detective novels and detective stories , sometimes together with Jan Zábrana .

In 1978 his Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked.

In many of his novels, which repeatedly revolve around the youth of his narrator Daniel Smiřický (known as Danny ), he deals with Jewish topics, as they inevitably presented themselves under German rule in the Protectorate and which take shape in the circle of his narrator's acquaintances. This topic becomes central in “Lvíče”, published in 1969; German under the title “Junge Löwin”, 1969 or “Die Moldau. A political love story ”, 1996. Škvorecký tells of the young concentration camp survivor, Leona Silbersteinová (“ slečna Stříbrná ”), who after the war takes revenge on a man who broke off his engagement with her older sister because of her Jewish origins and she thereby surrendered to the access by the Germans and thus to destruction.

His main work are the five novels with his literary alter ego Danny Smiřický ( Zbabělci , Tankový prapor , Mirákl , Prima sezóna and Příběh inženýra lidských duší ). However, he also wrote a variety of other works, including a. a detective trilogy. In 1980 he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature . He belonged to the Czech writers' association Obec spisovatelů .

In 1982 he was proposed for the Nobel Prize. In 1999, during a review of the 1997 and 1998 German novels Eine prima Saison and Der Seeleningenieur in Die Zeit , Sigrid Löffler stated: “In him we have a great Central European author who is yet to be discovered.” In 1985 the city of Toronto awarded him the Toronto Book Awards for his English version of The Soul Engineer . A lifelong friendship connected him with the music writer Lubomír Dorůžka , with whom he edited several jazz publications.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1990, President Václav Havel awarded him the highest Czechoslovak honor, the Order of the White Lion . His hometown of Náchod made him an honorary citizen on May 14, 1990 . The Josef Škvorecký Society was founded in Prague and operates a private high school of the same name. The Josef Škvorecký Literature Academy offers courses in creative writing and media culture. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2004, a conference was held in his hometown of Náchod, attended by President Václav Klaus and numerous public figures as well as domestic and foreign writers and literary scholars. The conference volume was published in 2005 under the title: Škvorecký 80 - sborník z mezinárodní konference o díle Josefa Škvoreckého, která se uskutečnila v Náchodě u příležitosti autorova životního jubilea ve dnech 22. – 24. září 2004 ISBN 80-86877-13-2 .

On December 6th, 2009 he was awarded the Polish Central European Angelus Literature Prize in Wroclaw for The Soul Engineer as the best book published in Polish of the past year.

Works

  • Zbabělci . Prague 1958
    • Cowards . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1969
  • Legenda Emöke . Prague 1963
    • German: Legend Emöke . Hanser, Munich 1966
  • Bass saxophone . Prague 1967
  • Lvíče . Prague 1969
    • Übers. Ludmilla Sass: Young lioness. A criminal melodrama . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1971
    • Übers. Ludmilla Sass: The Moldau. A political love story . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996 ISBN 3-499-15799-3
  • Tankový prapor . Toronto 1971, Prague 1990
  • Sedmiramenný svícen . Nakladatelství konfrontace, Zurich 1973
  • Mirákl . Sixty-Eight Publishers, Toronto 1972; again Atlantis, Brno 1991
    • English, transl. Paul Wilson: The Miracle Game. Alfred A. Knopf, New York; Lester & Orpen Dennys, Toronto 1991
      • Translated from Johanna Posset (from the English barrel): The miracle. Deuticke, Vienna 2001 ISBN 3-216-30438-8
  • Prima sezóna . Toronto 1975, again Praha 1990
  • Příběh inženýra lidských duší . Toronto 1977
  • Příběh neúspěšného tenorsaxofonisty - Poetry and Truth - Vlastní životopis. ISBN 80-901731-0-1 .
  • Swing na malém městě - Vzpomínky na orchestr Miloslava Zachovala, významný amatérský swing band protektorátní éry . Compiled by Josef Škvorecký and Boris Mědílek. Ed. Ovo Železný, Praha 2002 ISBN 80-237-3710-4

literature

  • Jiří Holý: Jazz inspiration: stories and novellas by Josef Škvorecký. In dsb .: the bass saxophone. Jazz stories. Epilogue Jiří Holý, transl. Marcela Euler, Kristina Kallert, Andreas Tretner . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt DVA, Munich 2005 ISBN 3-421-05250-6 pp. 339-360
  • Walter Klier : Reference to the narrator Josef Škvorecký: "It was very interesting to live". In: Josef Škvorecký: A great season. A novel about the most important things in life. Original title: Prima sezóna. Translated from Marcela Euler. Deuticke, Vienna 1997; again Piper-TB 2804 ISBN 3-492-22804-6
  • Aleš Fetters: Josef Škvorecký a Náchod . Nakladatelsti Bor, Liberec 2012 ISBN 978-80-87607-05-3

Web links

Commons : Josef Škvorecký  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aleš Fetters: Josef Škvorecký a Náchod , pp. 13-18.
  2. ↑ Jirí Holý: Josef Škvorecký ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on: exilarchiv.de
  3. ^ Metallbauwerk Nachod KG Zimmermann, Schilling & Co., Nachod Protectorate  in the German Digital Library
  4. ^ Josef Škvorecký in: Slovník české literatury
  5. ↑ See curriculum vitae Příběh neúspěšného tenorsaxofonisty , p. 69 ff.
  6. ↑ "Angelus" award ( memento of the original from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.instytutksiazki.pl
  7. ↑ Review. (Czech)
  8. ↑ Know Generic scorn . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1971 ( online ).
  9. ^ Andrea Daniela Schutte: The Jewish theme in the work of Jiří Weil. (PDF; 1.8 MB) pp. 30–32.
  10. ^ Sigrid Löffler: Cream puffs and rascal . In: Die Zeit , No. 6/1999; about two novels
  11. ↑ Lubomír Dorůžka: Milý Errole! In: Škvorecký 80 - sborník o mezinárodní konference o životě a díle Josefa Škvorckého. ISBN 80-86877-13-2 , pp. 384f.
  12. ↑ "Angelus" award on December 6, 2009 ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.instytutksiazki.pl
  13. ↑ modified version compared to the original, authorized by the author
personal data
SURNAME Škvorecký, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Škvorecký, Pepík
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH After that
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2012
Place of death Toronto