SOURCE: "Jaroslav Seifert—The Good Old Drinking Poet," in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture, Vol. 4, 1985, pp. 283-98.

A Czechoslovakian-born Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic, Škvorecky has resided in Canada since fleeing his homeland after the 1968 Soviet invasion. In the essay below, he discusses Seifert's poetry in relation to the social climate in Czechoslovakia, noting the Czech government's official views on Seifert throughout his career. Škvorecký notes in particular the impact in Czechoslovakia of the Swedish Academy's decision to award him the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Yet another obscure East European"—so went the word around the cocktail circuit, and a letter to The Times [October 20, 1984] condemned the Swedish Academy's award to Jaroslav Seifert as further proof that the Nobel prize "is becoming more and more a reward for pussy-footing mediocrity." The new Nobel laureate, readers were told, writes "verse of mawkish self-pity...