Jirí Orten

Born in Central Bohemia in 1919, Jirí Orten is considered one of the finest writers of Czechoslovakia’s so-called War Generation. As a teenager, Orten moved to Prague and began to publish poems in avant-garde journals and to act in experimental theater groups. His first book of poems, Cítanka jaor (Reader of Spring) was published in 1939. In 1940, following the German occupation of Prague, Orten was expelled from school and forced to take odd jobs, such as clearing snow. For fear of denunciation from anti-Semitic newspapers, he published his poems under pseudonyms. His collections of poems from this time include Cesta k mrazu (The Journey toward Frost, 1940) and Ohnice (Charlock, 1941). On his twenty-second birthday, Orten, while trying to cross the street to purchase cigarettes, was struck by a German ambulance. Because he was a Jew, the first hospital he went to refused to admit him. He died two days later. His diaries, which contained not only all of his poems but also many of his conversations, letters, and dreams, were published in three volumes after his death. Following the arrival of Communism and socialist realism in Czechoslovakia in 1948, however, his work was condemned as “degenerative muck.” He would regain favor during the Prague Spring in the late 1960s. Orten’s poems show a strong influence of both Czech folklore and surrealism.