Prague, Sept 19 (CTK) – A concrete ribbon pointing at the sky and covered with a verse by Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert was unveiled in Prague on Monday within the world congress of poets held in honour of Seifert (1901-1986) who won Nobel Literature Prize in 1984.
The sculpture was installed in the Prague-Zizkov neighbourhood, on a small lot near a tram stop and close to the place in which Seifert spent his childhood.
The idea of installing a memorial to Seifert was pushed through by the owners of a nearby house who also own the small lot.
Last year, the Jaroslav Seifert Foundation was established at the Czech centre of the International PEN Club to raise the money needed to make the sculpture.
During the unveiling ceremony, Culture Minister Daniel Herman said Czech society belatedly paid tribute to its only winner of the Nobel prize for literature.
Recalling the year when Jaroslav Seifert won the Nobel prize for literature, Herman said it was “a time than can be called the dark age of the 20th century” and Seifert’s awarding “was not spoken of very much then.”
In 1977, Seifert was one of the signatories of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto whom the Czechoslovak communist regime persecuted.
On Seifert’s 100th birth anniversary in 2001, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the house that was his birthplace.
Zdenek Lukes, a historian of architecture, said the new memorial resonated with the interwar era of modern art and at the same time perfectly fitted the genius loci of the charming Zizkov neighbourhood” more than Seifert’s previous statues or busts that were mostly figural and realistic.
Seifert is considered a leading representative of the Czech artistic avant-garde of the 1920s.
