The most famous Czech poet spent his entire life in Prague and in his verses, he managed to capture its beauty, transformations and hidden dramas. Towards the end of his life, he even brought home the first ever Nobel Prize for Literature. In May 1910, planet Earth flew through the shining tail of Halley’s Comet. Just eight years old at the time, Jaroslav Seifert saw it in the night sky above the towers of Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. The golden pollen of stardust remained on his face, as he later wrote in his poem with the simple title Halley’s Comet. When the new Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in Prague in October 1918, anarchists from Žižkov toppled a baroque column with a statue of the Virgin Mary at the top on Old Town Square. The impact broke the column into seven pieces, and the offended head of the Virgin Mary rolled across the pavement to stop at the feet of seventeen-year-old Jaroslav Seifert, who was watching the outburst of destruction. Soon afterwards, Seifert began writing poems – poems about love, about the meaning of human life, and about his hometown. Seifert’s Prague is just only a city of historical monuments and famous events, but above all a place of everyday life. He perceived the poetry of ancient houses, mysterious corners and lamps illuminating the evening streets just as intensely as the emotions of people walking through the city with their joys and worries. In his poetry, Prague becomes a living being – sometimes tender and kind, sometimes melancholic and brooding. Jaroslav Seifert | Czech Radio Archives When a poet strolls along the riverside, he watches the shimmering reflection of the bridges on the surface between the banks and listens to the murmur of the water. In these moments, he finds inspiration for verses that connect two different banks: the past with the present. The history of the city intertwines with personal memories and creates an image of Prague as a place that preserves the stories of countless generations. During the most difficult periods of Czech history, the Nazi occupation and the subsequent communist dictatorship, Prague was also a symbol of home and cultural identity for Seifert. Its streets and squares reminded him of the values he considered important – freedom, humanity and respect for the truth. Hence, the city appears in his work not only as a backdrop, but also as an important symbol of Czech statehood. Jaroslav Seifert was not just a great poet, but also a brave man. In the 1950s, he publicly stood up for persecuted authors, defended the freedom of art and culture and spoke out against censorship. In 1968, he spoke out on state television against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. When student Jan Palach burned himself alive in January 1969 to protest the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Seifert honoured his memory, while calling on students not to follow Palach’s desperate act. In subsequent years, as the communist regime consolidated its power, Seifert fell out of favour due to his civic stances and had to withdraw into seclusion. Nevertheless, he became one of the first signatories of Charter 77, a civic initiative in support of human and civil rights. By that time, Seifert’s collections could only be published in samizdat – people copied and distributed them by hand, despite prohibitions and the threat of imprisonment. Jaroslav Seifert with his friend Alois Volkman, photo: Tobiasfrydl, CC BY-SA 4.0 Two years later, Jaroslav Seifert visited the ailing poet Vladimír Holan and, at his home, saw for the second time the broken stone head of the Virgin Mary from the column on Old Town Square, destroyed in 1918. The toppled head of the Queen of Heaven thus framed the beginning and end of his poetic work. In 1984, Jaroslav Seifert received the Nobel Prize for Literature, but by then he had less than two years left to live. The communist regime could no longer silence the world-famous poet, so it tried to use him for its propaganda, but with little success. In early January 1986, just as Halley’s Comet was returning to Earth after many years, Jaroslav Seifert died. The religious farewell to the deceased poet was held under the supervision of the communist secret police in the Church of St. Margaret in Břevnov, on the premises of the oldest male monastery in the Czech Republic. When the lanterns on Charles Bridge are lit in the evening and silence falls over the rooftops of the Old Town, you can sometimes hear Seifert’s verses resonating between the stone walls. His poetry reminds us that Prague is not just a collection of buildings and streets, but above all an interwoven network of human stories, memories and dreams, and this is the unique connection between Jaroslav Seifert and Prague – the city he loved and which he forever imprinted on world literature.