Cultural Resistance: Parallel Literature in Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The award of the 1984 Nobel Prize for literature to Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert caught Western journalists napping. Their scramble for information provided concrete proof of the free world’s ignorance of what used to be called Central Europe and is now regarded as part of Eastern Europe. More disturbing, however, is that in many cases people do not appreciate just how uninformed they are and do not hesitate to express opinions. A well-known Parisian weekly, for example, made the ‘expert’ pronouncement that the Swedish Academy was not honoring a poet but a dissident whose greatest literary achievement had been to sign Charter 77.