Authors
Egon BONDY
Egon Bondy (real name Zbyněk Fišer), philosopher, poet, writer, pamphleteer and journalist, one of the founders and long-term source of inspiration of Czech alternative culture, was born in Prague on January 20th 1930. After leaving school (1957) he took a correspondence course in philosophy and psychology at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts from 1957-1961. In 1967 he was awarded his PhD. From 1957-1962 he worked as a night watchman in the National Museum and from 1962-1967 he was a librarian in the State Library. In 1967 he took invalidity retirement. From 1993-1996 he lectured at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and at other universities in Bratislava, where he lived from the beginning of the 1990s. He was involved in theatre work, translation, writing for children and music. Egon Bondy died on April 9th 2007.
Fišer, like many other young people after the war, was attracted by surrealism: in 1949 he contributed to a handwritten collection by surrealists entitled Židovská jména (Jewish Names, 1995), which was a reaction to increasing antisemitism. All the participating authors took on a Jewish sounding name and he chose Egon Bondy. He was later to use this as his permanent literary pseudonym. After splitting from Teige’s surrealist circle, Egon, together with Jana Krejcarová, Ivo Vodseďálek and others, formed a group of nonconformist authors, which at the beginning of the 1950s published the typewritten edice Půlnoc (Midnight Edition), where he made his first collection of poems accessible to a small group of friends. Although Bondy was a convinced Marxist, he was against the ruling Stalinist form of socialism and created his own form – “total realism”. He wanted to move away from any kind of stylization, instead putting down a completely accurate record of reality in order to anticipate the betrayal of speech. He later borrowed from Vodseďálek’s idea of a so-called “awkward poetry” – the use of this deliberate de-poeticization and awkwardness parodied socialist realism to such an extent that his Dadaist nonsensical rhymes were even more stupid than the official poetry and slogans of the “builders of socialism”. The consciously provocative clownish texts with a blunt triviality reflected personal as well as romantic experiences, but also the desperate situation and brutality of life in the 1950s. Standing in opposition to this demanding free verse are consciously placed simple short poems in which he employs elements of word play – trivial grammatical rhymes, bilingual puns, automatisms and clichés. This poetry, directed towards naivety and playful nonsense, gained widespread recognition in the 1970s underground when several of Bondy’s texts were set to music by the rock group Plastic People of the Universe, and the author became one of the leading figures in Czech underground culture. The author’s literary output is dominated mainly by poetry; alongside his handwritten collections from the start of the 1950s (eg Totální realismus [Total Realism], Trapná poezie [Poetry of Embarrassment], Velká kniha [The Large Book], poema Pražský život [the poem Prague Life] ) are included his extensive poetry works (The Poetic Works of Egon Bondy published in 1989-1993 comprise nine volumes in Martin Machovec’s editions), taped compositions, visionary epics, poems, mockery and polemics as well as confessional lyric poetry. Poetry became an indispensable support in Bondy’s constant battling with the world as well as a redemption from his personal crises. Along with his poetry in the 1970s Bondy also produced an extensive amount of prose, combining his own autobiography with impersonal parables and philosophical passages (Prvních deset let [The First Ten Years], Invalidní sourozenci [Invalid Siblings], Sklepní práce [Cellar Work], Severin [Severin], Leden na vsi [January in the Village] etc.), as well as pursuing his philosophical concerns, which were aimed primarily at placing Marxism within the intellectual currents from the East (his six-volume Poznámky k dějinám filosofie [Notes For a History of Philosophy]).
As the author’s bibliography has over 100 entries, those interested might find the following internet address of use http://libpro.cts.cuni.cz/bibl_bondy_egon.pdf − a detailed bibliography of E. B. of more than 60 pages, by Martin Machovec).
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This profile was last updated on May 1, 2007
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Egon BONDY
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