A01=Miroslav Holub
A12=Vladimir Rencin
A12=Vojtech Pisarik
Author_Miroslav Holub
Author_Vladimir Rencin
Author_Vojtech Pisarik
Category=DNL
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
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eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9781852241230
- Weight: 176g
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 30 Apr 1992
- Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Miroslav Holub was called 'one of the half-dozen most important poets writing anywhere' (Ted Hughes). In the scientific community his renown rested on such works as Immunology of Nude Mice. In Czechoslovakia he also wrote a highly popular magazine column. When Holub was a "non-person", these "column articles" weren't published under his own name, but everyone knew who'd written them because the style was immediately recognisable as his: a cross between Flann O'Brien and Jonathan Swift, with a dash of Tristram Shandy… the Beachcomber of Wenceslas Square.
Subtitled Notes and objections, maximum length 43 lines, these "essaylets" are as brilliant and blackly funny as his poetry and as succinct and precisely observed as his scientific writing. In their pausings and musings over daily, supposedly ordinary happenings, they focus on the quirks of human conduct, yet the mirror they prop up to everyday life neither merely distorts nor simply reflects, but pinpoints little facets of human activity which reveal the mortality, thoughts and behaviour of our present age and civilisation.
This selection from Holub's contributions to the magazine Vim (maximum length, 43 lines) is illustrated by the leading Czech cartoonist Vladimír Rencin, with photographs by Vojtech Písarík.
Miroslav Holub (1923-98) was the Czech Republic’s most important poet, and also one of her leading immunologists. His Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations (Bloodaxe Books, 1990/2006) covers thirty years of his poetry. Before are his poems from the fifties and sixties, poems written before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: first published in English in his Penguin Selected Poems (1967) and in Bloodaxe's The Fly (1987), with some additional poems. After are translations of his later poetry, all written after 1968, including not only those from his two Bloodaxe editions, On the Contrary (1984) and Supposed to Fly (1996), but also the entire texts of two late collections published by Faber, Vanishing Lung Syndrome (1990) and The Rampage (1997). Supposed to Fly – now out of print in its original edition – was an entertaining, illustrated gathering of poems with some prose interruptions drawn from his native city of Plzen, perhaps better known, for its world-famous beer, by its German name of Pilsen. Bloodaxe also publishes The Jingle Bell Principle, a book of Holub's prose pieces.
