What was the main reason for writing a new book?
I entered the land of old age and the memories did not leave me. It was not a week that we would not experience the crazy moments of youth again when we met friends. So I listened to Helena, my friend Bob’s wife, who encouraged me to do so, and that’s how this book came about.
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How long have you been working on it?
I was afraid that everything we had experienced would end in oblivion. Our stories were told around and around the Czech homeland. I gave them for good on the road around the world, in the theater and in pubs. I also wrote some of them in my older books.
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I was also inspired by my torn diaries. I just had, and still have, a desire to leave a message for our descendants about the world of grandparents.
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Was your intention to write an apolitical story?
At no time can you run away from politics. Then and now she was and is with us. It affects our actions. I worked as a non-partisan worker, and yet I raised many worries with my sharp tongue. In the age of socialist realism, we searched our huts for our free world, sang tramp songs, drank rum, roasted burritos, told obscene and anti-state anecdotes, and when the moon came out, they hugged their wives.
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There were times when we forgot that we were a satellite of the Great Earth, not divided into those with a badge and those with an empty flap. The old river, forests, hills, songs and love were more for us.
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The heroes of the books speak a strange beautification reminiscent of Vančur’s language, and the stories are told by Hrabal’s storytelling. Are both authors your source of inspiration?
The origin of our flower talk is quite unclear, but the evil linguists claimed that the wine juice played a crucial role in this. So far, no one has told me that his writing style reminded him of Hrabal or Vančura. However, at the time when Bohumil Hrabal left the United Steelworks in Kladno in 1952, I joined the smelters as a worker. I didn’t love school, I was only interested in history, Czech, style and singing. The religion I was associated with was abolished. Life became my school.
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I read Hrabal’s book Jarmila on a night shift at the Koněv smelter and had no idea that in five years I would meet a girl of the same name who has been my wife for fifty-nine years. A friend Emil from the settlement, which is also mentioned in the book, called me Gentle Barbarian. Little did I know that Hrabal’s book had the same title.
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I read Vladislav Vančura’s book The End of Old Times at the request of my dad. Uncle Antonín, a musician, died in 1942 in the Mauthausen concentration camp, as did Vančura.
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Do you already have a response to the book?
I still meet interesting people on my travels. I rejoice in every kind smile, in every sentence that is kind. Thank God I found soul mates at home and across the oceans. Responses to my books, to my performances on stage and on the radio encourage me to continue my work. Barborka, the granddaughter of Helena and Bob, my roommate, said while reading the book Carefree Journeys that she could not cope with her. That she laughs for a while and she cries for a while.
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Why isn’t the story exactly timed?
I think that readers will include it in the described past. I didn’t want the dates to affect their perception. At all times, one looks for a place where no one is led, reprimanded and forced to be a sheep in a loyal flock. Two days a week, we were larks flying out of a temporarily open cage.
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In the book, you write, among other things, that a false story does not need to be condemned and that a lie that pleases and does not harm is not a lie. So what percentage is the fact and what is the author’s appeal?
By no means do I stand up for lies that aim to deceive and rob a person. A lie that makes people fools is a shame. A merciful lie that will help a person tired of life, illness, unfavorable to the fate of not giving up and trying to continue to fight, is not a sin.
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The stories of my book have actually been lived through, only occasionally adorned with personal feelings. I love ordinary life, so I don’t want to write about what I haven’t experienced.
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Covid-19 disrupted many activities. How much did he prevent you from doing?
The state of emergency was declared on March 12, which was an unwanted gift for my eighty-first birthday. After the end of the spring emergency, I was happy to perform again. In October, the state of emergency began to rule again, so my performances in Luhačovice, the U Hasičů Theater in Prague, Litoměřice and Buštěhrad fell away. I was also looking forward in vain to performing in the programs Wonders of Nature and All-Party.
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But I’m not crying. What is to happen will happen. It is important that we are kind to each other, not impatient. We’re all on a shaky barge. Let’s believe he’s sailing to a quiet harbor.
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When we get better times, do you count on the baptism of the book?
There have always been worse and bad times in the world. When the veil is over, a possible book launch would be a thank you to the publisher, but also to family, friends, readers, viewers, listeners, doctors and nurses, who have helped my heart pound several times to celebrate life.
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I believe that the song we performed with the singer Petr Spálený at the Semafor Theater would be heard at the baptism. It is sung in it: A smile is a medicine that cures trouble, grief and hopelessness, do not mind wrinkles, so come laugh.
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What are you working on now?
Years later, I finished two more books. I called the first Images of the Soul with the subtitle Photographic Blues. This is my photographic confession since 1961, when I took my first picture with the Smena camera. I described my journey to the photo I still love. My friends Pavel Císař and Jan Soudek, who always supported me in my work, gave me the impetus to write the publication.
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I called the second book, which I finished and am correcting, Miss from the Kozel chateau. It is a kind of diary of memories mixed with the current state of society and my soul. The young lady I’m confiding in is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier named Phoebe.
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