The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945–1990

Jiří Hejda (1895–1985)

cZEcHosloVaKia | 93 Jiří Hejda (1895–1985) Hejda was one of the thirteen members of an alleged antistate terrorist group led by Dr. Milada Horáková (1901–1950), a well-known political activist tried and convicted in 1950. In the most notorious Communist-era show trial preceding the Rudolf Slánský case of 1952, Horáková, a former member of the Czech Parliament who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, was sentenced to death despite pleas on her behalf from around the world. The Czech president Klement Gottwald refused clemency, and Horáková and three other codefendants were hanged. The rest of the prisoners were given long prison terms, Hejda among them. While in prison, he became a poet in order to keep from succumbing to despair and hopelessness. Without paper or writing tools, he composed poems and committed them to memory until his eventual release when he was finally able to transcribe them. The result was the astonishing collection of 153 poems Sonety zpívané šeptem ve stínu šibenice: RuzyněPankr ác-Mírov-Leopoldov-Valdice 1950–1962 (Sonnets Chanted in a Whisper in the Shadow of the Gallows: Ruzyně-Pankrác-Mírov-Leopoldov-Valdice 1950– 1962, 1993). The collection is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Milada Horáková. Hejda was also the author the novel Utěk (Flight), which first appeared in 1969 and presents a chilling account of life in the notorious Leopoldov prison in Slovakia , and Žil jsem zbytečně: Román mého života (I Lived Superfluously: The Story of My Life, 1991), a large two-part autobiography that covers Hejda’s life from World War I to 1973. It is divided into two parts: part I, devoted to the period 1914–1945; part II, to 1945–1973. The following excerpts are from Sonety zpívané šeptem ve stínu šibenice (Anthropos: Prague, 1993), a prefatory poem to his wife, 103, 104, 138, 139, and have been translated from Czech by Harold B. Segel. from Sonety zpívané šeptem ve stínu šibenice Louise4 For half a century I didn’t have a free moment to write verse, not even in a diary. Above sonnets (from which hung laurels) I esteemed the rhythm of a flywheel. Now it is surely strange for someone so old to turn up in the guild of poets. It’s not my fault. My change of wardrobe to prison clothes put me there. 94 | cZEcHosloVaKia This is by way of an apology. If these verses, rhymed casually and in solitude, without paper, in darkness, and from memory, bring You only a measure of the happiness they gave me, then I shall be at peace in the depths of my soul. Death is not sleep, death crushes us and tosses us away like excess refuse. Trampled, macerated, and torn to pieces like a broken jar, a cracked tumbler, a derelict. Until the doctor shakes his head hopelessly above your bed, until your sight clouds over and your throat constricts in agony, don’t believe in a miracle, in the last judgment, in paradise, that maybe then. . . . No! Don’t believe it! There’s nothing waiting for you. You’ve lived your paradise and hell on earth. And when you die, the black hearse will conduct you only to the Strašnice Crematorium.5 Death is the end, there is nothing else. Death is the end, there is nothing else. A voice, rolled up on a tape recorder, a face, smiling from picture postcards —that is all that will remain after your demise. But the tape will crack, lose its freshness of tone, as for your likeness, the less said the better. You think your children will remember? In today’s bustle there are but two generations. Barely three. Nothing more. And yet it was worth living. I would wish to prolong life a hundredfold, ever to begin anew, you have to beg. But this leads nowhere. You can live just once. Your May has passed, the leaves already pale, silent autumn has already reached the outskirts. cZEcHosloVaKia | 95 The blood of the tormented calls out to heaven that the time of a new White Mountain6 has arrived, that the people are again driven beneath the banners of the only faith, whose high priest preaches the articles of the true faith. Accept, for only it will save you! For other convictions there are Pankrác...