SOURCE: "Jaroslav Seifert, Nobel Prize-Winner for Literature, 1984," in Quadrant, Vol. XXIX, Nos. 1-2, January-February, 1985, pp. 42-3.

In the essay below, Lewis provides a brief overview of Seifert's life and career, noting that the poet "has refused to allow his artistic integrity to by compromised" by Czechoslovakian censorship.

Few People will have heard the name of Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert before he won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. His work is little known beyond the confines of his native Czechoslovakia and the few scattered Czech émigré communities in Western Europe, Canada, USA and Australia. Moreover, Seifert's output consists almost entirely of lyric poetry—a genre of limited appeal in any language and one notoriously difficult to translate into a foreign tongue. The award will perhaps even come as a surprise to lovers of Czech poetry, as they could point to a number of poets of equal merit which...