2024-09-24 19:31:25
Poet and novelist Pavel Kolmačka received the Jaroslav Seifert Award, which is awarded by the Charter 77 Foundation for an outstanding work of poetry or fiction, this Tuesday at the residence of the Prague mayor. He was awarded for the novel Canto ostinato, taking into account his previous work. He was chosen by a jury led by literary scholar Tomáš Kubíček.
The ceremony was accompanied by singer-songwriter Karel Vepřek, for whom Kolmačka wrote some lyrics.
The organizers presented the award for the thirty-second time. The first laureate was Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka, the director of the Charter 77 Foundation, Jolana Vondráková, recalled.
Poet, prose writer and translator Pavel Kolmačka has been one of the most remarkable representatives of contemporary poetry since his lyrical debut I followed him in 1994. Even his other poetic works, including The Sea or Wittgenstein beats the pupil, unmistakably accentuated the feelings and fears of man in the contradictory modern world. His sprawling autobiographical novel Footsteps Over the Horizon from 2006 provided a compelling account of childhood and coming of age in a time of normalization.
Last year’s prose Canto ostinato is a testimony of experiencing existential questions on the threshold of old age and a deep reflection on generational differences and a worrying future. “Pavel Kolmačka’s books deal with the soul, and modern society is in a state of war with the soul,” wrote jury member Jiří Zizler in the laudation, according to whom Kolmačka’s texts ‘are not to be read with coffee’.
“Literature is not superfluous, I see it as a collective dream, which when it stops, the community is sick in some way,” he said when accepting the Kolmaček award.
The Jaroslav Seifert Prize was initiated in Stockholm in 1986 by the nuclear physicist and founder of the Charter 77 Foundation, František Janouch. It is awarded for an excellent verbal work published or otherwise published in the Czech Republic or abroad in the last three years, exceptionally also for a lifetime work. The laureate is announced on the occasion of Seifert’s birthday and receives 100,000 crowns. Earlier winners were, for example, Pavel Šrut, Ivan Diviš, Václav Havel, Ivan Martin Jirous or Jáchym Topol.