Antonín Jaroslav Liehm, a journalist, translator and film and literary critic, died, he was 96 years old. He was closely connected with the Literary Newspapers of the 1960s or with the promotion of the new Czechoslovak film wave in Western Europe. He spent a substantial part of his life in exile, moving back to Prague seven years ago. In 2015, he received the Tom Stoppard Award and the Czech Medal of Merit.
“He died today (Friday) in the afternoon after a short serious illness,” said his daughter Alexandra Urbanová. The family has yet to decide on the last farewell to Liehm.
Liehm began his career as a journalist and critic just after World War II, when he collaborated with Emil František Burian on the magazine Kulturní politika. After his closing, he worked in the press department of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the publishing house Naše vojsko and in the foreign newsroom of ČTK. In the 1960s, he headed the foreign and film section of Literární noviny. He translated mainly French literature.
In the autumn of 1968, Liehm went to Paris as a representative of the Czechoslovak state film and, due to the post-August development in his homeland, he remained abroad. He has lectured at universities in Europe and the USA, and has also contributed to foreign newspapers and radio.
In 1984, Liehm founded the international cultural review Lettre internationale in Paris and published the periodic almanacs Readings for Summer and 150,000 words. Readers in communist Czechoslovakia also managed to reach them.
According to his daughter, Liehm lived in Paris for 32 years, and spent the next 12 years in the USA, where he also acquired citizenship. After the fall of communism, he also began publishing in Czech periodicals. A frequent topic of his articles was the regret that the local culture after 1989 did not follow the successful 60’s.
Liehm has published two collections of interviews with foreign and Czech writers and the book Stories of Miloš Forman.
Liehm also wrote the work Closely Watched Films, which deals with the Czechoslovak “film miracle” from the 1960s. According to Urbanová, he worked with his wife Drahomír on the book. Six years ago, he published an overview of his articles called The Opinions of the So-Called Dalimil. He received the Stoppard Prize for this publication.
“I tried not to lie and talk about what people want to hear about. But not to say it with regard to what they want to hear. 2014.
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