Authors
Ludvík KUNDERA
The writer and translator Ludvík Kundera was born on 22 March, 1920 in Brno. His uncle was the pianist and music teacher Ludvík Kundera. Milan Kundera, the world famous novelist and essayist, is his cousin. A grammar school graduate, Kundera started his university studies at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague (Czech and German Studies), and then at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno. During WWII, he was a worker and in 1943, he had to work for the German Reich in the German town of Spandau. After the war, Kundera was a member of the editorial board of magazines The Block (Blok), Equality (Rovnost) and The Guest in the House (Host do domu). Since 1955, he has been a freelance writer and translator. The only exception was in the late 1960s, when he worked as an advisor for the State Theatre in Brno.
Since 1976, Ludvík Kundera has lived in the Moravian town of Kunštát. L. Kundera died on 17th August 2010.
Kundera's interest in art and literature has always been extremely varied. Since the late 1930s, he has written poetry, prose and drama, as well as essays and critical studies, dealing mostly with German Romanticism and the Czech poet František Halas. Kundera has collaborated with the national radio and TV companies, has worked as an editor and, most importantly, as a translator from French and German. It is due to his efforts that Czechs can read the works of Bertolt Brecht, Georg Trakl, Gottfried Benn, Paul Celan, Heinrich Heine and Georg Büchner, as well as anthologies of Expressionist and Dada poets. Apart from literature, Kundera is also interested in music, theatre, visual arts and photography. An active visual artist himself, he also comments on the works of his contemporaries and "teachers": Vilém Reichmann, Václav Zykmund, Hans Arp and Alfred Kubin. During the war, Kundera built a strong bond with the Surrealistic Group "Ra" and collaborated with its members on some, as yet, unpublished anthologies (Ragged Dolls, And Meanwhile War). Avant-garde poetics left a mark on his works, but in the early 1950s, the influence of surrealism started to fade and was replaced with Halas's poetry and, still later, with poetic experimentation. Kundera became very interested in speech itself and how it could be distorted. In his poetry, prose and theatre plays, a play of associations and freemindedness mingle with intellect, irony and sceptical comments about the world. 1994 marked the beginning of the publication of the Complete Works of Ludvík Kundera. 17 volumes are planned, of which 15 were published by the end of 2005. The first three volumes are dedicated to Kundera's poetry: "Nameless" (Bez názvu; 1939-1945), "Meanders" (Meandry; 1945-1969), and "Freezing Drizzle" (Mrznoucí mrholení; 1969-1980). The fourth and fifth volumes, "The Neat Jungle" (Úhledná džungle) and "At the Mercy Of" (Napospas), summarised Kundera's texts from 1973 to 1993 and miscellaneous prose from 1941 to 1999, respectively. The sixth and seventh volumes contain theatre plays and texts dating from 1961 to 1970 ("In the Hailstorm"; Ve vánici), and 1967 to 1989 ("Kings Criminals Magi"; Králové zločinci mágové), respectively. The tenth and eleventh volumes are dedicated to Kundera's lifelong passion for Halas and tea ("I am Drinking Tea"; Piju čaj). The seventeenth, two-book volume contains portraits, letters, interviews and fragments from 1936 to 2004. The volumes on Expressionism and Dada, an anthology of Kundera's translations and four other volumes, which will summarise Kundera's essays from 1937 to 1992, are not yet published.
Deutsch 
Ludvík KUNDERA, Deutsch.doc
