Two Poets Between English and Czech: Jan Zábrana and Milada Součková
Two Poets Between English and Czech: Jan Zábrana and Milada Součková

Summary/Abstract: This article examines two cases of Czech anglophone literature by mid-twentieth-century poets: Jan Zábrana and Milada Součková. The English language as well as anglophone poetry was inte gral to Zábrana’s poetic imagination, adding an important extra dimension to his writing in Czech. Součková goes further, incorporating more anglophone elements in her oeuvre. Her choice of lan guage, and the resultant form of the poem, is a consequence of her mobility, i.e., the particular jour ney she made from Prague to Boston. The article approaches uncertainty about matrix and embed ded languages in Součková’s work, not as an anomaly to be solved, but an opportunity to open up literatures labeled by nation, belonging to one place or community. This article argues that Zábrana’s and Součková’s work disturbs the conventional division between Czech and anglophone literary can ons, thus prompting us to reconsider long established canonical and linguistic divisions.

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