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The issue of time in the Czech and Portuguese short stories of František Listopada

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

In November 2021, one hundred years have passed since the birth of František Listopad (originally named Jiří Synek), a Czech poet and writer who, after his experience with the anti-Nazi resistance in the 1940s, emigrated to France and settled permanently in Portugal in the 1960s, where he directed under the name Jorge Listopad plays, made films, taught at universities, and above all, still wrote. He found a second home and creative background in Lisbon, where he died in 2017.

After the Velvet Revolution, however, he often returned to his homeland to collaborate with theaters and publish his poetry and short story collections. While he has a permanent place in Portuguese culture and an entire director's school and one still-functioning theater troupe refer to him, domestic literary science still owes him a certain debt in the reception of his work, especially after 1989.

With the exception of afterwords, for example, there are no comprehensive scholarly articles reflecting on Listopad's poetry or short stories, and almost nothing is known about his original pre-war interest in children's literature, to which he returned decades later in Lisbon. The Czech-French-Portuguese language situation in his works and the issue of translation are certainly interesting, because until November 2021, with one exception, none of his poetic works were officially translated, they were written and published exclusively in Czech at his request.