Vilem Závada

Závada, Vilem 

Born May 22, 1905, in the village of Hrabová, near Ostrava. Czech poet.

In the 1930’s, Závada was the editor of the literary journals České slovo andA—Zet. His first collections of poems, Requiem (1927) and The Siren (1932), are imbued with a consciousness of the trouble in the social structure of society. The life of the mining town Ostrava is reflected in the collection The Road on Foot (1937). A protest against the fascist occupation and the joy of liberation are expressed in the collections The Fortress Tower (1940)and Resurrection from the Dead (1945). The collections The City of Light (1950), Field Flowers (1955), and One Life (1962) tell of the spiritual revival of man under socialism and affirm the poetry of labor. The lyrical hero of the collection On the Threshold (1970) feels a great fullness of life despite advancing age.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Odna zhizn’: Stikhi i poemy. Foreword by D. Samoilov. Moscow, 1967.

REFERENCES

Budagova, L. N. “Zavada.” In Ocherki istorii cheshskoi literatury XIX-XX vv. Moscow, 1963.
Petrmichl, J. V. Závada: Básník českého charakteru. Prague, 1963.

L. N. BUDAGOVA