A collection of the poetry of Max Brod (1884-1968) pays tribute to an artist whose lyric poetry, numbering over five hundred poems, is almost unknown in Bohemia. The Prague-based Jewish German writer is mainly spoken of in this country as a friend of Franz Kafka and the preserver of his work; however, Brod's own extensive oeuvre is unfairly neglected. Of his five collections of poetry, Der Weg des Verliebten (The Way of the Lover) was published first in 1907 and Gesang einer Giftschlange (The Song of the Poisonous Serpent) last in 1966. The collection Desire presents Brod's colourful and multilayered poems to Czech readers in a translation by the leading Czech linguist Zlata Kufnerová, including the German original, and allows us to get a general idea of the author's poetic output. Many of the lyrics have strong autobiographical features, reflecting personal experiences at different periods of the author's life, based on memories of childhood, youth, love, family and the environment in which Brod moved. Naturally, there are poems with the theme of Judaism, the Holocaust and the Shoah. The highly emotional verses dedicated to his brother Otto, also a writer, who together with his family was a victim of Nazi murder, are particularly compelling.
Czech- German edition