The Phenomenon of Karel Kryl, The Poet with the Guitar, in the Czech Culture

Abstract

The article describes the work of Karel Kryl (1944–1994), a Czech singer-songwriter and poet. Author’s musical poetry as a cultural phenomenon is considered. From the mid-1960s (“The Happy Age of Literature”) he performed songs of his own composition, based on the traditions of Czech artists of the interwar period J. Werich, J. Voskovec, J. Ježek, and the poetry of P. Bezruč. Kryl, belonging to the first generation of the Czech folk, was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan and the American tradition of song poetry. He expanded the popular song genre and became a legendary voice of protest and the voice of his people. He earned fame after August 1968, when he wrote the song “Bratříčku zavírej vrátka” (“Keep the Gate Closed, Little Brother”) in one night. The Poet with a Guitar spent twenty years in Germany. His life path was not easy both in the emigration as well as upon his returning back home, since he could not accept the new reality after the Velvet Revolution. He had a hard time enduring the division of Czechoslovakia into two states and therefore faced misunderstanding. An eternal dissident and a rebel, Kryl went down in history as an original poet who used a variety of means of artistic expression and complex metaphors. He became a symbol of the Czech music and poetic culture in the second half of the 20th century. His significance for the Czech Republic is comparable to that of V. Vysotsky and A. Galich for Russia. There are many studies about Kryl in Czechia but the scale and facets of his talent, his prophetic visions, and the individual style of his creative manner deserve attention and are waiting to be discovered in Russia.