Ivan Blatný

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Ivan Blatný (born December 21, 1919 in Brno ; died August 5, 1990 in Colchester , England ) was a Czech poet and a member of Group 42 .

Life

As early as 1928 he took part in a competition organized by the daily Lidové noviny . His father, the poet and theater critic Lev Blatný , died in 1930 , his mother three years later. Ivan Blatný was then raised by his grandmother and uncle. His literary mentor and sponsor was Vítězslav Nezval, nineteen years his senior .

Memorial plaque on Blatný's house in Brno

Blatný attended high school and then studied Czech , German and Esperanto at the Philosophical Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno. After completing his university studies, he ran an optical business that he inherited from his grandfather and began publishing articles in magazines. Blatný also published several volumes of poetry between 1940 and 1947.

After the Second World War he joined the Communist Party KSČ and took part in a trip to London in 1948 with a delegation made up of three members of the Syndicate of Czech Writers , from which he never returned. On the BBC's Czech-language program , he criticized the suppression of freedom of culture and creativity in Czechoslovakia . As a result, he was classified as a traitor, his property confiscated, his citizenship revoked and his poetry banned.

The former psychiatric hospital in Ipswich

His life in exile was marked by material worries and psychological problems. It is not certain whether he has a mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia ). In any case, Blatný suffered from paranoia and feared (not entirely unjustifiably) that he would be pursued - or even kidnapped - by the secret service. Among other things because of his collaboration with the BBC and Radio Free Europe . In 1954 he came to the psychiatric clinic Claybury Hospital in Essex, then in 1963 to the so-called "Hope House" not far from the psychiatric clinic in Ipswich (Suffolk) and in 1985 finally to a pension in Clacton-on-Sea for care . He died in 1990 and his ashes were buried in the Brno Central Cemetery.

In 1977 he met the nurse Frances Meacham, who sent his works to Canada . There his poems were published by 68 Publishers . Both volumes published there also appeared independently in a Prague samizdat edition.

German-language editions

  • Landscape of New Repetitions , Czech-German, translated by Radim Klekner, Verlag C. Weihermüller, Leverkusen 1992
  • Old residences , Czech-German, translated by Christa Rothmeier, Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna 2005
  • Auxiliary School Bixley , translated and with an afterword by Jan Faktor and Annette Simon, Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna 2018

literature

  • Jürgen Serke : Ivan Blatný. Escape into the madhouse , in: Jürgen Serke: Das neue Exil. The exiled poets, Frankfurt / M. 1985, pp. 170-183.
  • Francis Nenik: On the miracle of double biography guidance (PDF; 188 kB), in: EDIT # 59 (summer 2012) The award-winning essay reconstructs the life of Ivan Blatný and relates it to the biography of the English poet Nicholas Moore . The essay is reprinted in Francis Nenik: Double Biography Tour . Spector Books, Leipzig, 2016 ISBN 978-3-95905-002-9 , pp. 10–33.

The essay appeared in Nenik's book: The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping in a version extended by an exchange of letters between Blatný and Moore. Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire, Readux Books 2013, reading sample . There is also a German translation of the correspondence, which is freely accessible.

Fiction
  • Martin Reiner : Básník / Román o Ivanu Blatném . Biographical novel. 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin Reiner: Básník / Román o Ivanu Blatném . 1st edition. TORST, Praha 2014, ISBN 978-80-7215-472-2 , p. 17-29 .
  2. ↑ Author information at perlentaucher.de
  3. ↑ Ivan Blatny / Nicholas Moore - an exchange of letters. Accessed June 22, 2018 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Blatný, Ivan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1990
Place of death Colchester