We recently commemorated the 30th anniversary of the death of singer Karel Kryl, and in April we will commemorate the 80th anniversary of his birth. In the difficult times of the red totality, his songs and verses helped us a lot, they were a great encouragement for us.
I remember one of my pranks sometime in the late eighties. We were young and the world belonged to us. I arrived with two friends in Tasovo, a village in the Czech-Moravian Highlands, also the birthplace of the Catholic poet Jakub Deml, and Karel Kryl started playing and singing in the local pub. He was our idol of bravery, defiance and intransigence before the criminal communist regime. So we drank and sang. True, the innkeeper was so uneasy. And as soon as we said “So here we are, brothers” and I almost shouted at the end, “thank you, brothers, grabbers,” he didn’t breathe anymore, he shouted at us that he wouldn’t let us close because of us, let’s take our bottles, and let’s go howling into the woods. So we went, there was nothing else left for us. However, after a while a lady called out to us: “guys, wait”. Then she told us. “It was nice, I like Krylo a lot, but you know, my husband is very careful and afraid. Here are some burritos and fry them.” She didn’t even want money from us, she’s a good washcloth. Well, Kryl was really a phenomenon on the set.
The singer and poet did not have it easy in life, his family suffered under the Nazis and the Communists. His parents and grandparents had to flee after the occupation of the Sudetenland by Hitler’s Germany in the fall of 1938 from Nové Jičín to Kroměříž, where Karel Kryl was born on April 12, 1944. When little Karl was six years old, an unwelcome visitor came to their home, as stated in the article on the Echo24.cz website. The Kryls owned a printing workshop, and a gang of communist thugs smashed their printing presses after the communist putsch in February 1948. A little later, already in elementary school, as he recalled in an interview with Miloš Čermák in the book Půlkacíř, his fellow teacher let him be kicked by the strongest student in the class because he did not want to join the pioneer. It is therefore not surprising that such experiences convinced him that the Communists were an evil that could not be reconciled.
After the Soviet August occupation in 1968, he stayed in Czechoslovakia for another year, but then he understood that he had no future as a singer in the normalized, raped country. He also released the LP Bratříčku závírej vratka, which, however, soon ended up in the ascendancy. It is clear that songs like Veličenstvo kat, Král a Klaun, Song of the Unknown Soldier and others could not be tolerated by the normalized communist regime. He therefore went to the Federal Republic of Germany, lived in Munich and worked in the Czech editorial office of Radio Free Europe. And he also continued to sing and play.
“Some people believe in God, some don’t, we Catholics believe in him,” Karel Kryl once said when he was asked if he was a believer. This perhaps still the most popular Czech singer-songwriter of all time became a devout Catholic under the influence of his friend, the Archpriest of the Břevnov monastery, Jan Anastáz Opask, although, as he admitted, somewhat sinful. But even Jesus Christ himself declared: “Who among you is without sin, cast the first stone.” Karel Kryl experienced the evil of communism firsthand, and his path to Catholicism was logical in a way. The hooligan abbot, as Father Opask was also nicknamed, later married him to his first wife, Eva Sedlářová, and finally, although the many years older clergyman could not have guessed it at the time, he also buried him when he served the funeral rites in the Břevnov Basilica of St. Margaret and then at his grave in a nearby cemetery.
According to Krylo, folk forces a person to turn to the spiritual, and Archeopath Oposek was an ideal spiritual leader. He was able to unite people of different opinions, among other things he also organized the famous meetings of emigrants of different political opinions in Rohr, Bavaria, where the Břevnov monastic community temporarily resided in the local abbey. And so the old post-February emigrants met the post-August emigrants here, who were often former reform communists who once persecuted the former. Kryl also went to Rohr regularly. It must be added that he didn’t have much to do with those reformed comrades after his sixty-eighth year, given his experience.
Father Opasek was able to lead him to Catholicism by his personal example. He was a warm, open, humble and very kind person. And Kryl understood that Catholicism and Catholic clergy are something different than the communist propaganda hammered into him at school. In addition, the Břevnov archiopath was a great support to him in difficult moments, which Kryl, as a sensitive person, did not have much of in exile.
After November 1989, he started coming to his former homeland again, but remained permanently living in Munich. He was disappointed by the post-war development, it bothered him that many former communists remained at the trough. He was particularly hurt by the breakup of Czechoslovakia, which he bore very hard. Nowadays we know that the creation of new states was the only possible solution, but at the time some people, including Karel Kryl, took it as a big disappointment. It is likely that this event also contributed to his premature death from a heart attack in his early fifties on March 3, 1994.
When I have a trip to Prague, if time permits, I like to go to the Břevnov cemetery. And at the grave of Karel Kryl, I will light a candle and remain in silent contemplation. I once saw a stone inscription there “Karl Kryl, we don’t dig a handle in the ground anymore.” And I wish it would last for us.
Recently, it became clear again what Kryl means to the Czech Republic, when the cemetery administration announced that the lease of his grave at the Břevnov cemetery is ending. Immediately there were many willing individuals who wanted to pay the fee for renting the grave.
Půlkacíř, Karel Kryl, Miloš Čermák, Leda publishing house, Prague 2013
2024-03-06 23:59:13
#sang #Krylo #kicked #pub #burritos #Seznam #Médium
