Masterful Czech poet gets his due

Paper Shoes is the first collection of Pavel Šrut's poetry available in English, and is just hitting the bookshelves of Prague bookstores. Essentially a book of selected poems wonderfully translated by the young Czech-American Ema Katrovas, the book samples nearly 50 years of Šrut's work, including a group of poems originally published in samizdat form under Communism. The majority of Paper Shoes revolves around a central character, Mr. Novák, Šrut's cipher and a singular unassuming representative of the human condition. As Šrut writes in "The Story of the First Quest," the poems tell the story of "some sort of life, some kind of Novák."

Richard Katrovas, poet, editor and father of the translator, rightly points out in his introduction to Paper Shoes that Novák is a kind of modern soldier Švejk, the wise buffoon created by Jaroslav Hašek (or Jan Hašek, as Katrovas misnames him).

Like Švejk, Šrut's protagonist is wise in spite of himself, a man who knows much because he knows he's a fool (or does he?). But Novák is too old for Švejk's boisterous optimism, fueled as it was by noble Austro-Hungarian ideals and plentiful vittles. Instead, Novák more closely resembles Mr. Cogito from Zbigniew Herbert's masterful Polish poems: an intelligent man slightly battered by time, awash in tides of chance which ebb to show his losses.

First steps, first loves, first sexual encounters, the first realization of death's eternal presence: Šrut's poems are concerned with irrefutable turning points, moments when the familiar dissolves. These poems - in Katrovas' lithe translation - dance between darling adoration of life's mysteries and bored expressions of quotidian truths. Šrut's deceptively simple images capture the essence of abstract concepts in vivid parables. "The Story of Lust" is one fine example:

          Mothers, don't keep your little boys

          from playing in the dark

          with a flickering flashlight

          For the story of lust

          is so simple:

          from dark to light

          from light to dark

          back and forth

All of Šrut's poems in Czech lack punctuation, lending a seeming lack of finality to the work. Also, many of the poems rhyme in the original Czech, but Šrut's poetry isn't as dependent on musical language as some of his literary forebears, as translator Ema Katrovas explained in correspondence with The Prague Post, saying, "Šrut's work is very much based in high concept."

"Šrut seems to be motivated by image, [Bohumil] Hrabal by sound; the latter is much harder to translate," she added.

Pavel Šrut was unable to publish his poetry for 20 years under communism, despite being considered one of Czechoslovakia's "official poets" while in his 20s during the late 1960s. The 19 poems contained in the samizdat portion of the book offer crucial poetic notes from the underground, while the other sections of the book mine the existential core of a classic intellect marooned in communist and post-communist modernity. But Šrut's poetry is more than a historical curiosity, said Katrovas, reminding us that "Good writing doesn't have much to do with what language you're writing in."

"Šrut is unique among poets in general. I hope [his poetry] will not always be read in English through the lens of historical significance and cultural differences," she added.

An essential volume, Paper Shoes offers English-language readers an intimate glance at the work of a great Czech poet. Pavel Šrut's poems offer us an intimate glimpse of ourselves.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com