Noc s Věstonickou Venuší

Re-edition of a collection of love poetry.Jan Skácel graduated from the real grammar school in Breclav. During the war he was totally deployed on road construction in Austria. From 1948 he worked as an editor of the Brno Rovnost. In 1953 he joined the literary editor-in-chief of the cultural review Host do domu a ROK. After the demise of Host he was not allowed to publish, his work was published in samizdat and exile. It was not until the 1980s that he collaborated with the theatre, e.g. his re-telling of Sophocles' Oedipus was performed at the State Theatre in Brno and at the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague. Jan Skácel's work was characterised by a deeply moral attitude; during the period of the so-called normalisation, it was characterised by existential anxiety. Skácel's poetry is characterised by capturing the mood of the moment, inspiration from Moravian folklore, love for folk tradition and the desire to break free from the chaos of the contemporary world. While Skácel was basically unable to publish at home, in 1989 he received two major European literary awards: the Vilenica 89 prize from the Slovene Writers' Association and the Petrarch Prize in Italy. In this country he was only recognised after his death.

The Czech edition