On October 15, 2014 the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures hosted the Czech poet and scholar Sylva Fischerová who led the translation workshop in Czech.  Following the discussion, Fischerová joined the Harvard Czech table for conversation.

Sylva Fischerová (left) with Veronika Tuckerova, Czech instructor in the Slavic Department

During the workshop, attended by fifteen students of various levels of Czech (CZA, CZB, CZCr) and other Slavic graduate students, Sylva read her poems both in Czech and English, and described the translation process and the various challenges that she and her co-translator encountered. She spoke about the curious incidents of productive mistranslation, about the inspiration for the various poems and their classical and cultural contexts, and about poetic inspiration as a classical topos. In a lively discussion, students suggested various translation options, possible readings of particular passages, and inquired about several instances of grammatical gender in some rare figures in the poems.  Students tried their Czech and translation skills on one of Sylva’s poems, The Fate, and the class discussed their solutions to one of the difficult idioms. 

Within the reading and discussion, Sylva weaved in the intriguing history of her family, her philosopher-father’s rebuilding of the Palacky University in Olomouc after World War II and his philosophical influence on Vaclav Havel; her late sister’s Viola poetry, the Czech and Moravian literary and cultural contexts.

Discussion continued during the festive Czech table, conducted in Czech, where students posed questions about other Czech writers of their interest, e.g. Bohumil Hrabal and Ladislav Fuchs.