The literary scientist and first post-communist director of the Institute of Czech Literature at the Academy of Sciences Zdeněk Pešat passed away on Monday 29 March 2010 at the age of 82.
Zdeněk Pešat was born on 4 November 1927. He is considered as one the most significant literary historians of the last few decades. Pešat devoted his life’s work to Czech literature of the second half of the 19
th and the 20
th century. Following his studies and a short stint at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, he embarked on a lifelong professional journey at the Institute of Czech Literature at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, later renamed to Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Pešat was one of the leading interpreters of modern Czech poetry, examining the ouvre of Jan Neruda, Jaroslav Vrchlický, Petr Bezruč, S. K. Neumann, František Halas or the poets from Skupina 42 (Group 42) whose works he assorted into an anthology.
Since the 1970s, he had been one of the main authors and editors of the most important dictionary work of Czech literary science – Lexikon české literatury (The Lexicon of Czech Literature). He valued this work most in the last couple of years and completed it a year and a half ago. In October 2008, he joined the discussion about Milan Kundera’s alleged denouncement whom Pešat defended.