Prague in Thaw. Praha za času plujících ker

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Rio Preisner

The collection Prague in Thaw (Praha za časů plujících ker) by Professor Rio Preisner was first published in Czech in 1992 by the publishing house Pražská imaginace. It was the first volume of his poetic works published in his homeland since he left Czechoslovakia in 1968. The collection was inspired by Preisner’s first visit home following the liberation of Czechoslovakia from Soviet hegemony in 1990.

Masaryk University Press now presents the book in a bilingual edition, pairing the Czech original text with an English translation by the author’s former student, Charles S. Kraszewski. Written in a demanding, allusive style that recalls the work of Georg Trakl and T. S. Eliot, the collection is a reckoning with Czechoslovakia as it emerged from five decades of Communist oppression. It is not a work of nostalgia, it is the clear-eyed assessment of Prague, and Czech society and culture, as the exile experienced it after an absence of over two decades.

Originally a consideration of how the Prague he loved had been affected by ‘enslavement’, today – three decades into Czech freedom – it is time to consider it as a touchstone for our own musings upon how far Prague, and the Czechs, have come since the emancipation brought by the Velvet Revolution.

Rio Preisner (1925–2007) was a Catholic poet and educator, philosopher, writer, translator, and theatre scholar, and one of the most important Czech intellectuals of the post‑war period. In 1968, in response to the political situation in Czechoslovakia, he fled with his family to Vienna and later emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a professor of German studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In his essays, studies, and monographs, Preisner posed provocative questions, stimulated critical thinking, and at times aroused disagreement; yet his work always constituted a deeply valuable dialogue on fundamental issues of European culture and European history. In 1995, he received the Jan Zahradníček Prize, and in 2000 he was awarded the Medal of Merit (First Class) by President Václav Havel.