“A brilliant mind and a great spirit”

Czech poet and literary scholar Ludvík Kundera has passed away at the age of 90. Kundera (who is the cousin of novelist Milan Kundera) published his first collection of poems, Demons in Us, in 1946. He was involved in the Czech literary scene for six decades, and awarded the Jaroslav Seiffert prize for lifelong achievement just last year. Here’s what he told Czech Radio in 2009 about life as an artist under the former Czech Communist Regime:

It wasn’t easy for poets or artists or ordinary people on the wrong side of the regime, especially if you had kids. It wasn’t that they focused on you, but that they targeted your wife, children, and relatives. This is what was so malicious. Of course in the 1950s, there were executions, but here people were worn away by the regime. The state apparatus didn’t even have to ban you outright: things worked through all kinds of secret phone calls and information: you couldn’t know where you stood, but you knew you were on the outside.

Read more about Kundera at Czech Radio's site.