Jaroslav Durych
Encyclopedia
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
prose writer, poet, playwright, journalist, and military surgeon
Surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...
.
Durych was born in Hradec Králové
Hradec Králové
Hradec Králové is a city of the Czech Republic, in the Hradec Králové Region of Bohemia. The city's economy is based on food-processing technology, photochemical, and electronics manufacture. Traditional industries include musical instrument manufacturing – the best known being PETROF pianos...
. Prior to World War II, he was perhaps the only Czech author beside Karel Čapek
Karel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
with works translated into more than one foreign language.
His major prose masterworks are Bloudění (1929), a novel from the time of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
(English translation with titleThe Descent of the Idol appeared in New York in 1936) and Služebníci neužiteční of which only a first part could be published in Czechoslovakia because after the 1948 Communist putsch, Durych was silenced (full ed. in 4 vols. Rome, 1969).
Durych's Catholic views were often at odds with those of the prevailing intellectual forces in the first Czechoslovak Republic, notably his positive evaluation of the internal developments in Bohemia and baroque culture that followed the Battle of White Mountain
Battle of White Mountain
The Battle of White Mountain, 8 November 1620 was an early battle in the Thirty Years' War in which an army of 30,000 Bohemians and mercenaries under Christian of Anhalt were routed by 27,000 men of the combined armies of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor under Charles Bonaventure de Longueval,...
. Durych felt that the loss suffered there by Friedrich von Pfalz (Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
) saved Bohemia from becoming a part of Germany.
Durych died in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.