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Selected poems
Vladimír Holan is now regarded in Czechoslovakia as one of the most outstanding living poets. Yet fom 1948 until 1963 official disapproval of his poetry forced him to live in isolation. Those grim years inspired his finest work: he developed themes of man's suffering, is lost innocence and the frustration of life in a world of ambiguities. Originally influenced by surrealism, he makes use of the justaposition of unexpected images to evoke in the reader his owns sense of the strangeness of human existence.
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 1971
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About the author
Vladimír Holan
108 books51 followerss one of the earlier poets of the country. Born in the year 1905, Vladimír Holan was famous for the obscure language and the pessimistic ideas that his poems revealed. Born in Prague, Vladimír Holan perused a career of a clerk. His first poetic work was published in the year 1932 and was called Vanutí meaning Breezing.
A member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Vladimír Holans poetry often reflected his strong political views. His more political poems included, Zárí 1938 (September 1938),Sen (The Dream), Odpoved Francii (The Reply to France), and Zpev tríkrálový (Twelfth Night Song). In the year 1949 he left the Communist party and by the 1950s and 60s he started writing longer poems which were a mixture of abstract lyrics and reality.
Vladimír Holan stopped writing after the death of his only daughter in the year 1977 and in the year 1980 he passed away and was buried at the Olšany Cemetery. The most celebrated poems of the poet Vladimír Holan includes:
* Snow
* Stay
* When It Rains On Sunday
* A Night With Hamlet
* Eodem anno pons ruptus est
* Meeting in a Lift
* Mi Lascio
* She Asked You
* Human Voice
A member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Vladimír Holans poetry often reflected his strong political views. His more political poems included, Zárí 1938 (September 1938),Sen (The Dream), Odpoved Francii (The Reply to France), and Zpev tríkrálový (Twelfth Night Song). In the year 1949 he left the Communist party and by the 1950s and 60s he started writing longer poems which were a mixture of abstract lyrics and reality.
Vladimír Holan stopped writing after the death of his only daughter in the year 1977 and in the year 1980 he passed away and was buried at the Olšany Cemetery. The most celebrated poems of the poet Vladimír Holan includes:
* Snow
* Stay
* When It Rains On Sunday
* A Night With Hamlet
* Eodem anno pons ruptus est
* Meeting in a Lift
* Mi Lascio
* She Asked You
* Human Voice
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 22, 2021
"Things wait. Man forebode.
Things importune. He resists.
Thing age and outlive their time.
He is immortal and perishes"
Lúgubre. Terno. Sem pátria. Bonito.
Things importune. He resists.
Thing age and outlive their time.
He is immortal and perishes"
Lúgubre. Terno. Sem pátria. Bonito.
April 15, 2017
What poets leave behind
has always something in it hurt by time, sin, exile.
The truest of them,
the least known, quietest and most loving
doesn’t force anything on you: neither by his image,
scorn nor solace, least of all by love;
Present, he is absent. And Picasso
making a snowman well understood
that the immortality of art
is in time, sin, exile,
which the sun must redeem
in tears, springs, river, sea, and nothingness.
has always something in it hurt by time, sin, exile.
The truest of them,
the least known, quietest and most loving
doesn’t force anything on you: neither by his image,
scorn nor solace, least of all by love;
Present, he is absent. And Picasso
making a snowman well understood
that the immortality of art
is in time, sin, exile,
which the sun must redeem
in tears, springs, river, sea, and nothingness.
August 6, 2017
Early evening.... Cemetery.... And the winds harp
as bone splinters on a butcher's block
Rust shakes its model out of tortured form
And above it all, above the tears of shame
the star has almost decided to confess why we understand simplicity only when the heart breaks
and we are suddenly ourselves, alone and fateless
----
Today there is deep in you a not long dried-up spring though how quickly it fills with tears
Today there is deep in you a not long abandoned airfield though how quickly it's overgrown
You'll have to go on foot now, your spring of grief within But you stand frozen
while infront of you
cockroaches cross the street
moving from butcher to baker
----
Have you ever watched your old mother
making up the bed for you
how, she pulls, straightens, tucks in and smoothes the sheet so you won't feel ansingle wrinkle?
Her breathing, the motion of her hands and palms are so loving
that in the past they are still putting out the fire in Persepolis and at this moment calming some future storm
off the China coast or in unknown seas
----
Between the idea and the word
there is more than we can understand
There are ideas for which no words can be found
The thought lost in the eyes of a unicorn
appears again in a dog's laugh
as bone splinters on a butcher's block
Rust shakes its model out of tortured form
And above it all, above the tears of shame
the star has almost decided to confess why we understand simplicity only when the heart breaks
and we are suddenly ourselves, alone and fateless
----
Today there is deep in you a not long dried-up spring though how quickly it fills with tears
Today there is deep in you a not long abandoned airfield though how quickly it's overgrown
You'll have to go on foot now, your spring of grief within But you stand frozen
while infront of you
cockroaches cross the street
moving from butcher to baker
----
Have you ever watched your old mother
making up the bed for you
how, she pulls, straightens, tucks in and smoothes the sheet so you won't feel ansingle wrinkle?
Her breathing, the motion of her hands and palms are so loving
that in the past they are still putting out the fire in Persepolis and at this moment calming some future storm
off the China coast or in unknown seas
----
Between the idea and the word
there is more than we can understand
There are ideas for which no words can be found
The thought lost in the eyes of a unicorn
appears again in a dog's laugh
April 21, 2022
Death
"You drove it out of you many years ago, closed the place, tried to forget it all.
You knew it wasn't in music and so you sang
you knew it wasn't in silence and so you were quiet
you knew it wasn't in solitude and so you were alone.
But what could have happened today
to ~are you like one who in the night suddenly sees
a beam of light under the door of the next room
where no one has lived for years?"
Today There Is..
"Today there is deep in you a not long dried-up spring,
though how quickly it fills with tears.
Today there is deep in you a not long abandoned airfield,
though how quickly it's overgrown.
You'll have to go on foot now, your spring of grief within.
But you stand frozen
while in front of you
cockroaches cross the street moving from butcher to baker."
Smiles
"There are many smiles.
But I am thinking of the most difficult,
the simplest smile.
It is deep-set, cut
on every side by the vinegrower's blade of time,
a smile that needs just one more wrinkle
to unravel everything and be ready for God's full name.
A smile like that stays on the face
somewhat longer than the joy from which it came _
or it's the smile that goes before the joy
and disappears
leaving the whole face to joy alone."
Bequest
"What poets leave behind
has always something in it hurt by time, sin, exile.
The truest of them,
the least known, quietest and most loving
doesn't force anything on you: neither by his image,
scorn nor solace, least of all by love;
Present, he is absent. And Picasso
making a snowman well understood
that the immortality of art
is in time, sin, exile,
which the sun must redeem
in tears, springs, river, sea, and nothingness."
Presentiment
"One December night you filled your glass with wine
and went to the next room for a book.
When you returned the glass was half-full.
You were afraid and asked in a cracked, mad voice
who could have drunk it since you live alone
shut in by stone walls and wild thorn
and amidst such inhumanity
that long ago you drove away statue and chimera and ghost."
"Good wine needs no bush. Art neither."
"To be, you would have to live,
but you will not be because you aren't alive,
and you aren't alive because you do not love,
because you do not love even yourselves, let alone your neighbour.
And I have had enough of your coarseness,
and if! haven't killed myself it is only
that my life is not my own."
"You drove it out of you many years ago, closed the place, tried to forget it all.
You knew it wasn't in music and so you sang
you knew it wasn't in silence and so you were quiet
you knew it wasn't in solitude and so you were alone.
But what could have happened today
to ~are you like one who in the night suddenly sees
a beam of light under the door of the next room
where no one has lived for years?"
Today There Is..
"Today there is deep in you a not long dried-up spring,
though how quickly it fills with tears.
Today there is deep in you a not long abandoned airfield,
though how quickly it's overgrown.
You'll have to go on foot now, your spring of grief within.
But you stand frozen
while in front of you
cockroaches cross the street moving from butcher to baker."
Smiles
"There are many smiles.
But I am thinking of the most difficult,
the simplest smile.
It is deep-set, cut
on every side by the vinegrower's blade of time,
a smile that needs just one more wrinkle
to unravel everything and be ready for God's full name.
A smile like that stays on the face
somewhat longer than the joy from which it came _
or it's the smile that goes before the joy
and disappears
leaving the whole face to joy alone."
Bequest
"What poets leave behind
has always something in it hurt by time, sin, exile.
The truest of them,
the least known, quietest and most loving
doesn't force anything on you: neither by his image,
scorn nor solace, least of all by love;
Present, he is absent. And Picasso
making a snowman well understood
that the immortality of art
is in time, sin, exile,
which the sun must redeem
in tears, springs, river, sea, and nothingness."
Presentiment
"One December night you filled your glass with wine
and went to the next room for a book.
When you returned the glass was half-full.
You were afraid and asked in a cracked, mad voice
who could have drunk it since you live alone
shut in by stone walls and wild thorn
and amidst such inhumanity
that long ago you drove away statue and chimera and ghost."
"Good wine needs no bush. Art neither."
"To be, you would have to live,
but you will not be because you aren't alive,
and you aren't alive because you do not love,
because you do not love even yourselves, let alone your neighbour.
And I have had enough of your coarseness,
and if! haven't killed myself it is only
that my life is not my own."
September 6, 2025
Holan’s world is lonely (eg. Snow) and gloomy (eg. Ubi Nullus), but it contains understated care (eg. Mother) and quiet joy (eg. Eodem Anno).
January 11, 2025
i was debating on whether to give it four stars, since that would mean it’s deemed as an official favorite, but given the fact that i was intrigued by nearly every poem and would one hundred percent read again, both a rarity in my voyage into poetry, i have to say my rating was forced and this obscure collection now holds a place in my heart.
🌀🌀🌀
On a Freezing Night
One night I heard a walnut-tree
crack with the frost.
It went off like the shrapnel
at the storming of Babylon,
shrapnel which is exploding only now.
The farmer ran out of his house, a horse from the stable,
and I found myself opening
the white book of summonses to conscience...
We don't have a single clue
and then we are dumbfounded.
🌀🌀🌀
Passion Week
Am I really alone again, loving a little
and keeping silent a little, suffering a little
and thinking myself free
because I've never fulfilled my fate?
Don't I understand that a man gives
only because he was left short of something?
Was I so full of those proud colours
that tease the empty light until it fades them?
Even art, where feeling serves the pulses
as the type-setter his lamp,
has left me for my double
and is somewhere lowering my stocks, the better off
the more my barren husks
deserve trampling.
Outside it is raining, just the time
the wolf goes after the swan,
while from the paranoiac river resounds
the roar of floating logs,
coffins for us all.
🌀🌀🌀
On a Freezing Night
One night I heard a walnut-tree
crack with the frost.
It went off like the shrapnel
at the storming of Babylon,
shrapnel which is exploding only now.
The farmer ran out of his house, a horse from the stable,
and I found myself opening
the white book of summonses to conscience...
We don't have a single clue
and then we are dumbfounded.
🌀🌀🌀
Passion Week
Am I really alone again, loving a little
and keeping silent a little, suffering a little
and thinking myself free
because I've never fulfilled my fate?
Don't I understand that a man gives
only because he was left short of something?
Was I so full of those proud colours
that tease the empty light until it fades them?
Even art, where feeling serves the pulses
as the type-setter his lamp,
has left me for my double
and is somewhere lowering my stocks, the better off
the more my barren husks
deserve trampling.
Outside it is raining, just the time
the wolf goes after the swan,
while from the paranoiac river resounds
the roar of floating logs,
coffins for us all.
November 1, 2020
"And also life insisted,
insisted dangerously that we would survive,
though we might really wish to die ..."
Vladimír Holan (1905-1980), acclaimed as one of the most brilliant poets of the XX Century. His obscure language, his depth and his dark topics will take your breath away. Furthermore, it will invite you to reflect upon the meaning of life.
insisted dangerously that we would survive,
though we might really wish to die ..."
Vladimír Holan (1905-1980), acclaimed as one of the most brilliant poets of the XX Century. His obscure language, his depth and his dark topics will take your breath away. Furthermore, it will invite you to reflect upon the meaning of life.
March 8, 2024
excellent book. certain poems were particularly resonant with me and my ideologies about death and life - choosing to annotate was an excellent choice and holan has definitely turned into a favourite poet of mine just from these selected poems
June 30, 2020
Nice poems
February 13, 2021
the red comes off dahlias... AND MY DISAPPOINT COMES OFF IN TYPHOONS!! horrid book.
May 1, 2023
4.5
very intense & complex
very intense & complex
August 24, 2015
"And also life insisted,
insisted dangerously that we would survive,
though we might really wish to die ..."
insisted dangerously that we would survive,
though we might really wish to die ..."
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews