Authors

Kuběna graduated in art history from Masaryk University in Brno and was awarded the title of doctor. He belongs to the generation known as the “Thirty-sixers”. In 1998 he received a gold medal for his lifelong contribution to poetry. He edited the samizdat collections Tempo (1968) and Tauros (1974), the magazines Proglas (1990) and Box (from 1988). From 1996-2000 he acted as the warden of Bítov castle and organized the national meetings of poets there (with M. Pluháček). Today he lives in Bítov, where he enjoys permanent residence.

“I see myself as a crossroads where almost everything intersects,” said Kuběna in one of the many interviews he has given. In the introduction to the book Paměť básníka he writes “I’ve had a rich life.” Despite this there are particularly expressive moments from his poetry and personal life around which his inner and external life revolves and which characterise him as a poet. Jiří Kuběna’s professional life is connected with historical preservation. From the end of the 1950s he was employed by the National Monument Institute in Brno. As a respected art historian and expert on historical interiors he has been involved in the restoration of various castles and stately homes (e.g. Lysice, Vranov nad Dyjí and Buchlovice). While still at university, through student work experience and summer jobs, Kuběna worked as a guide in historical buildings. The castle at Lednice provided him with his poetic inspiration and it was here in 1955 that he met Zdeněk Kuběna, with whom he was later to become friends. Shortly afterwards he began using the artistic surname of Kuběna. However, Bítov Castle has been the centre of his professional and creative life, and the place where he has been the castle warden since 1994: “For me it’s a place…which one approaches as though entering an inner landscape…each and every part is imbued with poetry. It is the only place where I am fully alive – and do not waste away: and where – God willing – I will die with honour.” The significance of Kuběna’s last novel, with the subtitle Z Mého Orloje, lies in the memories and reflections on the atmosphere of the time, and also in the penetratively precise sketches of his companions, spiritual advisors and role models (J. Šafařík, M. Medek, L. Novák, I. Jelínek, etc.). At the start of the 1950s Jiří Kuběna began to correspond with, and then later met personally, Václav Havel and the literary circle of the “Thirty-sixers”, a group of young authors who were linked by the year in which they were born. Jiří Kuběna set up the Brno branch of this group along with J. Koblasa, P. Švanda, A. Wagnerová and V. Fischerová. It was mainly with Václav Havel that Kuběna went through “systematic research for a genuine literary context”, exploring celebrated and neglected literary figures: J. Seifert, V. Holan, V. Nezval, J. Kolář and others. They undoubtedly contributed not only to satisfying his youthful curiosity, but also provided Kuběna with a definition for his generation: “We are the last young generation which not only did not rebel against our fathers…but naturally saw our main role as maintaining continuity.” Jiří Kuběna ordered his poetic role models into a simple triad: Vítězslav Nezval is the body which Kuběna comes close to, not only physiognomically but also through the ability to feel the poeticness of words, chained together in an untiring succession. Otokar Březina is the soul – his influence is most apparent in the symbolic expression, the versatility and “encoding”. And Jakub Deml – the spirit – from whom he took a poetic toughness objectively set in the consciousness, and total opposition to the insipid nature of the mainstream as well as extremism in religion. Jiří Kuběna’s poetics can be characterised as sparkling, fascinated by beauty, enchanted by onomatopoeia, seeking pleasure by delving into grand words, mythical stories, blazing from the suffering of love, strictly adhering to monarchism and Catholic traditionalism and triumphalism. Matter, spirit and thought are indivisible. While his poetry is a celebration of the physical, a paean to a host of “Apollos”, by the same measure it is a panegyric for the metaphysical, a violent waterfall for the celebration of the spiritual, God and Christ and the word made flesh. Kuběna venerates the ideals of good, beauty and truth, eternal love, harmonising the ideas with their classical roots in European culture. Balancing Greek and Christian traditions in harmony with Heaven and Earth, his poems are litanies which rigorously avoid philistinism, lifted up through prayer, taken from man to God with a self-evidence invoking infinity and eternity. Kuběna’s poetic style is impassioned and grandiose, with a sense for the dramatic. His solitary individuality is well groomed, exuberant and enchanting, celebrating and praising, filled with metaphor and adoration. The flow of verse resembles an opulent feast of symbols and parables, an ecstatic dance which is forever changing its form. As for the publication of Jiří Kuběna’s poetry, the first official opportunity was interrupted by the events of August 1968. With the onset of normalization, publication of his work was practically halted and he became involved with non-official structures. At the beginning of the 1970s he set up the home theatre group Šlépěj V Okně in Brno with Jaroslav E. Frič and friends. He also became involved in distributing a wide range of titles of Moravian samizdat editions. Jiří Kuběna had to wait until the 1990s before his poetry works could be published officially: split into seven editions and published by Vetus Via in Brno.

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This author profile was last updated in 2006.

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