2024-08-05 07:38:06
Jiří Opelík was a literary critic, editor and historian who dealt with modern Czech literature. An expert on the work of the Čapk brothers died on Saturday night at the age of 93.
The website Echo24 reported on the death. For his work, Opelík was awarded the FX Šalda Prize or the Tom Stoppard Prize, which was awarded to him by the Charter 77 Foundation. He also became the co-author of an extensive Lexicon of Czech literature, which in 2009 received the Magnesia Litera for his contribution to Czech literature.
Jiří Opelík was born on October 21, 1930 in Olomouc. He studied Czech and German at the Palacký University there, where he was later an assistant at the department of Bohemian Studies. In 1959 and 1960, he was forced to work as an auxiliary worker in the foundry of the Moravian Ironworks. From 1961 to 1998, he worked as a researcher at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences.
From the 1950s, he dealt with Czech modern literature as a literary historian and editor. The committee of critics, reflecting on contemporary poetry and prose between 1957 and 1968, concentrated it in the book Nenavidené želmestro.
From the beginning of the 1970s, Opelík devoted himself exclusively to literary history, lexicography and editorial work. He published monographs on Josef Čapek, edited the works of Josef Čapek, Karel Čapek, Václav Řezáč, Jiří Weil, SK Neumann, Josef Kainar, Jan Skácel and Jaroslav Seifert.
Opelík published a selection of his long-term literary and historical research in 2000 at the Torst publishing house in the collection Milované želmedo. In 2017, together with the literary historian Jiří Brabec, they won the Jaroslav Seifert Award for a lifetime of work focused on modern writing.