Authors
Pavel ŠRUT
The poet, translator and novelist Pavel Šrut was born in Prague on May 3rd 1940. He studied English and Spanish at the faculty of arts at Charles University (1962-67). Afterwards he worked for three years as an editor at Naše vojsko publishers. Since 1972 he has been involved in literary and translation activities on a freelance basis. In 1987 he spent four months on the International Writers’ Programme at Iowa University. He was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize (2002), his work for children has been nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize (2004, 2005, 2007), which he was awarded in 2009, and he has also been acknowledged at the Zlatá stuha (The Golden Ribbon) Czech Republic children and young people’s book competition (2004, 2005); he´s also laureate of the Czech ASSITEJ Centre Prize (2010).
He has gained recognition in many genres: as a poet, translator, novelist, lyricist for pop music, writer of fairy tales for cinema and television and cultural journalist. He has been involved in translating English and American literature (Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, John Updike, Leonard Cohen etc). As a poet Šrut is rarely dichotomous: he writes as confidently for adults as for children. His works aimed at children are humorous and display an inventive use of language, often with a nonsensical symbolism inspired by nursery rhymes (Petrklíče a petrkliky, [Primroses and Trimroses] 1966; Kočka v houslích, [The Cat in the Fiddles] 1969; Šišatý švec a myšut [The Crooked Cobbler and Mysut], 2007, etc). The author belongs to a powerful generation of poets who were born during the war and who entered the world of literature in the first half of the 1960s . (Petr Kabeš, Antonín Brousek, Ivan Wernisch etc). His first work, Noc plná křídel (A Night Full of Wings, 1964), is a sensitive look at adolescence and a celebration of childhood, which is tempered by the painful experiences of the war. The unmistakable mark of Šrut’s poetics is evident: attentively observing the rural and urban scenery which become his lyrical space for expressing the beauty and sorrow of the intimacy of man. The collection Přehlásky [Umlauts] (1967) turns away completely from the naively trusting style of his first work, moving towards an intellectual poetry. The inspiration here comes from literature (the verse of K.H. Mách, D. Thomas, F.G Lorca etc) and art. The original imagery is filled with classic verse in the form of sonnets and quatrains. The last of Šrut’s collections from the 1960s, Červotočivé světlo (The Worm-eaten Light, 1969), is an inner response, which to the background of an autumn landscape, grasps the pain of subjective experience at the end of 1968. The motifs of rhymes and games that are to be found here and in Šrut’s later poetry are by no means a joyful return to childhood, instead they suggest an anguished fight with the passing of time. During the era of normalisation the poet had limited publishing opportunities, so the majority of his published work was for children and song lyrics. His collections (Malá domů [A Passback to the Goalkeeper], Houpací trojský kůň [The Rocking Trojan Horse], Dechová cvičení [Breathing Exercises]) and the collection of song lyrics (Cokoli [Whatever]) came out in samizdat form. He was able to return to a wider circle of readers with two representative anthologies at the end of the 1980s (Malá domů [A Passback to the Goalkeeper], 1989; Přestupný duben [A Leap May] 1989). At the end of the 1990s the author brought out more distinctive collections, characterised by a sophistication and conciseness of expression, with an objective vision and an ironic, or self-ironic, outlook. Zlá milá (The Evil Darling, 1997) has a ballad-like undertone and was developed from the basis of the manuscript Milostných poprav (Merciful Executions), in which a memory of a lost love evokes the delusion of the fate of romantic relationships: “My darling ripples the lake/with her manifold octopus limbs/ she laps the lake/she gives herself to the corroding sun/ ..The evil darling came out from the lake/she lies down beside me/pulling a blanket of sand to her chin.” Work from the 1970s and 1980s came out in typescript samizdat editions and in exile, and included the volume Brožované básně (Paperback Poems, 2000); the collection Papírové polobotky (Paper Shoes, 2001) is a sceptical survey in which the author hides behind the anonymous character Mr N. Pavel Šrut also became well known for his pop-music lyrics and a collection of his lyrics came out under the title Kolej Yesterday (1990), which was an album of popular songs by Michal Prokop. In the new millennium the author has been doing more translations and writing poetry collections for children (Veliký tůdle, [The Big “No Way!”] 2004; Příšerky a příšeři, [Twilight and the Little Monsters] 2005). From his latest works for children there is the fairy-tale story Verunka a kokosový dědek (Verunka and the Coconut Grandfather, 2004) and even more recently Pohádky brášky Králíka (Brer Rabbit Fairy Tales, 2007), in which the accomplished author adapts the less well-known Afro-American adventures of the cunning rogue to a Czech context. Verunka and the Coconut Grandfather is a loosely constructed cycle of 366 stories – one for each day. Šrut’s ability to describe joyful and sorrowful characters of every generation from a humorous perspective is brought to life – and not only in this book – by Galina Miklínová’s amusing illustrations. As the bibliography of Pavel Šrut runs to some 60 independent publications, we would recommend those interested to go to www.nkp.cz.
This profile was last updated on January 1st 2008
Deutsch 
Pavel ŠRUT, Deutsch.doc
