Czech edition Jean-Gaspard Páleníček presents his French texts from 2011-2017 in the poetry collection Mater speciosa, with their parallel translations into Czech, on which he collaborated with Ivan Matoušek. Páleníček's civilly tuned insights into interpersonal micro-dramas portray the archetypal themes of birth, happiness, pain and death in an exquisitely spare poetic language. The larger central composition, stylized as a tragicomic theatrical scene, reflects with subtle empathy and self-critical sarcasm on the meaning of artistic creation in our contemporary world.