Jan Palach w czeskiej poezji

The article tackles the analysis of lyrical pieces dedicated to Jan Palach. From the extensive material, including inter alia Kazimierz Wierzyński’s poem Na śmierć Jana Palacha w Pradze broadcasted by the radio station of Radio Free Europe, or the piece written by a popular Bulgarian poet, Valery Petrov, entitled Self-immolation, I have selected only those works which were created in Czechoslovakia right after Jan Palach had committed self-immolation. The primary reason for such a selection is that they were composed shortly after Palach’s act and were written by Czech and Slovakian poets emotionally committed to the dramatic political suicide of a young Prague student and experienced the events of January 1969 directly. As a consequence, the following works remain in my interest: Miroslav Holub’s Praha Jana Palacha and Josef Kainar’s Bolest at’ mi poví, published in a weekly magazine of the Association of Czechoslovakian Writers “Letters” on 23rd January 1969, Jan Skácel’s Hořící keř, as well as the poem by Pavol Horov Malé rekviem za Jana Palacha a iných, both published in “Letters” on 6th and 13th February accordingly, and the poem written on 30th January 1969 by Jan Zábrana entitled První (Noc v Tatrách). The aspects I am mainly interested in in the works referred to above are the manners of articulating the heroization of Jan Palach and his act. Indeed, these poems constitute a part of heroic discourse, they create heroic narration and present the self-immolated person in a blaze of glory as an indisputable hero