Fwd: LOST in AMERICA, Czech avant-garde writer (1930s) - Tue, Feb 26 at 7pm at BNH

[Suzanna Halsey]

Dear literature lovers! 

Hope you can join me and learn about the Czech avant-garde modernist writer Milada Souckova who was a leading figure on the literary scene in 1930s Prague and later emigrated to the USA.

Suzanna

 

 

 

Save the Date!
Tuesday, February 26 at 7 pm
Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73 St. 3rd fl., Manhattan, NY
REGISTER HERE
Suggested donation $5.00

 

Zuzana Říhová will present the unique Czech avant-garde modernist writer Milada Součková and her journey from a natural sciences scholar, to a young writer married to artist Zdenek Rykr, participating actively in the vibrant literary scene in 1930s Prague, to her émigré life in the USA. Říhová will focus on Součková’s poetry as a dialogue with American poets, especially with T. S. Eliot.

Milada Součková was a friend of the linguist  Roman Jacobson and the writer Vladislav Vančura. After WWII, she served as a Czechoslovak cultural attaché in New York. After the Communist coup of 1948, she resigned and emigrated to the USA. Her fate was shared by many  other émigré Czech writers who struggled to find an audience in their adopted country. Součková taught Czech literature at American universities (Berkley and Harvard) but remained unknown as a writer, partly, because she did not write in English.  She missed her homeland and its culture. “Don’t forget about me” is a recurring phrase in  letters to her friends in Prague.

Zuzana Říhová, Ph.D., is currently a visiting scholar at  Columbia University. In the past, she worked at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences and served as Head of the Czech Department at Oxford University (2014 – 2017.) In her research, she focuses on the Czech Avant-garde and Modernism in the European context. In her monograph Amidst the Crowd (2016), she examines the reception of French Unanimism in Czech literature, and the relationship between the inter-war Russian and Czech Avant-garde. In her study of Milada Součková’s work, she focuses on how it relates to Anglo-American modernism. She co-published a collection of Součková’s correspondence with Roman Jakobson and Jindřich Chalupecký. Říhová is also the author of a poetry collection I Let You into My House (2016) and a novel Evička (2018).

Alex Zucker  is a translator of Czech literature.  He is working on a translation of the Milada Součková poem Mluvící pásmo.   Organized by Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), New York Chapter with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA).

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Suzanna Halsey
Adjunct Czech Language Instructor

NYU CAS Russian and Slavic Studies Department

sh...@nyu.edu

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