Poštou havraní

Pavel Čech is a painter. And a fireman. And an Indian. And a writer, a dad, and a lot more. But it's the fact that he's a painter that's important to this book. Pavel Čech is a painter, and his paintings are windows into other worlds that are a joy to explore.

I kind of felt sorry that some of these paintings that say so much will stay with the painter in the studio and possibly on someone's wall at home. And I remembered František Hrubín and Jan Skácel, who wrote several books of poems about Josef Čapek's pictures. Or Jaroslav Seifert and his poems to pictures by Mikoláš Alš and Josef Lada. Or, thirdly, Josef Brukner, who opened a whole gallery of world art with his verses in his book Obrazárna (Picture Gallery). And so I tried to finish Pavlov's pictures, which whispered the most to me.

What to say, I simply tried to write in verse what I - also - read in them. Because the pictures tell a story. They tell something a little different to everyone, and that's called art.

I'd like most of all if you could hear the paintings talking to the poems.

Czech edition