Edwin Muir in Prague, 1947 and 1948. Foreword to Czech anthology of new English Poetry. Mezi dvěma plameny: Nová anglická poezie

A rare photo, given to me by Mary Bosdêt: 

Edwin Muir (far left); Dr. Arna Rides, or Dr. Ridesová (fourth on right),

Kounic Palace courtyard, Summer 1947, Prague

Miss J.M.Bosdêt, Mary Bosdêt, the British Council’s Archivist and Registrar in Prague at the time - later a teacher and language school inspector- took this photo in the courtyard of the Kounic palace in the summer of 1947: “Edwin Muir is on the left and the newly-arrived Arna Rides is the Eton-cropped five-footer”, she explained).

Mezi dvěma plameny: Nová anglická poezie, 1948

From Muir's ten page foreword from the anthology in Czech edited by Jiří Kárnet and Josef Nesvadba, Mladá fronta, Prague, 1948.

The foreword was translated by Jiří Kárnet.

Table of contents:

Předmluvu k antologii, v níž jsou zastoupeni básníci Dylan Thomas, David Gascoyne, C. D. Lewis, W. H. Auden a George Barker, napsal Edwin Muir.

Vydáno 1948, Mladá fronta

Překlad František Vrba, Jiří Kárnet, Ivan Jelínek, Jarmila Urbánková, Josef Nesvadba, Jan Tumlíř, Arnošt Vaněček, Kamil Bednář, Jiří Valja, Jiřina Hauková



EDWIN MUIR: A SCOTTISH POET IN PRAGUE, Radio Prague International


Three of Edwin Muir's poems (Merlin, The Wayside Station and Confirmation (a love poem to his wife, Willa), also appeared, in Czech translation, in this Karel Offer anthology published in 1948:

See also, Edwin Muir, The Labyrinth


Miroslav Holub, on 1948:

"We entered literature by shutting up. By complete silence. By a complete distrust of everybody.
It was a perfect lesson in Creative Non-writing. It was a shortcut to an almost biological feeling of the absurdity of everything, including one's inner self".

From Poetry against Absurdity, Poetry Review, vol. 80 No 2. Summer 1990. Translated by Ian and Jarmila Milner.