Vladimir Holan: I can read the silence in-between the words!

O you century old tree! The main branches of yours

are dead…But with every spring,

you turn green with a tiny shoot.

O you ancient life! Graveyards have outgrown you

right up to death…And yet, again and again,

it is a child you lead by the hand!

-Vladimir Holan, An Oak Tree (Dolour)

I first discovered this Czech poet at the Arignar Anna Government Arts College library in Karaikal, sometime in the late 80’s. I had to wait till 2011 to own a copy of his work. I bought Dolour (Verses from years 1949-1955) via Flipkart. The parcel arrived at 3 pm on  November 24, 2011. But I assume, from pencil jottings on the margins, I was deeply immersed in the work in 2013.

“He was often characterized as a ‘poet of apocalypse’ but it would be more fitting to call him a poet of an endangered human being, a poet of the drama of a world in which human values had totally disintegrated,” writes Dr Jiri Brabec in the introduction to the book.

Holan was devastated by the totalitarian regime of the Communist Party which took over Czechoslovakia in 1948. “Holan had been a member of the Communist party until 1945, but he radically rejected the dictatorship of the Party. He voluntarily retreated into solitude and, for the rest of his life, hardly ever left his flat on the island of Kampa in Prague…”

I love the dolour and beauty in Holan's poetry.

-------------------------ends