Milada Součková

Milada Součková (24 January 1898 Prague – 1 February 1983 Cambridge (MA)) was a Czech writer, literary historian and diplomat. She lived and worked in Prague, from 1945 on in the USA.

Life

Milada Součková was born in a wealthy family in Prague. She studied at the prestigious Minerva high-school together with Milena Jesenská and other emancipated girls. From 1918 she studied sciences at Charles University in Prague where in 1923 graduated with a thesis on plant life. Subsequently, between 1923–1924 she attended the University of Lausanne and met her future husband, the painter Zdeněk Rykr. She wrote for several newspapers and journals, met the Russian linguist Roman Jacobson and 1936 became a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle. In 1940 her husband had to commit suicide not to fall in the hands of Gestapo and Součková left Prague to live in the countryside. During the occupation she worked with writer Vladislav Vančura on his monumental Obrazy z dějin národa českého („Pictures from the History of Czech Nation“) namely until his arrest by Gestapo.

After the WW II, in 1945 was appointed cultural attaché of the Czechoslovak embassy in Washington. Three years later (1948) in protest against communist coup in her homeland she remained in the United States as emigree. R. Jacobson helped her to enter academic career as bohemist, between 1950 and 1962 at Harvard University, then in Chicago and from 1970 to 1973 at Berkeley University. For the rest of her life she was librarian at the Widener Library at Harvard.

Work

The first literary experiments of Milada Součková were influenced by James Joyce and surrealism. Most of her prosaic work is a sort of "stream of consciousness", imaginative, but sober. In her best works she experiments with language, but describes mostly the common daily life. In the US, she wrote mostly poetry in Czech and theoretical works in English. At home, she was unable to publish her literary work, neither under the Nazi, nor under the communist regime, her last novel „Neznámý člověk“ (The Unknown Human, 1962) was puiblished in exile. The Czech collected works were published in 11 bands in Prague until 2009 and in 2010 earned the Magnesia Litera literary award.

Novels

• První písmena (The first letters), 1934, experimental prose
• Amor a psyché (Amor and Psyche), 1937, experimental prose
• Odkaz (The legacy), 1940
• Zakladatelé (The founders), 1940
• Bel canto, 1944
• Hlava umělce (The head of an artist), 1944
• Neznámý člověk (The unknown human), 1962
• Der unbekannte Mensch. Stuttgart 1999: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. (German translation)

Poetry

• Gradus ad parnassum, 1957
• Pastorální suita (Pastoral suite), 1962
• Sešity Josephiny Rykrové (The notebooks of J. R.), 1981

Literary history

• A literature in crisis: Czech literature 1938 - 1950, New York 1954
• The Czech Romantics, s´Gravenhage, Mouton 1958
• The Parnassian Jaroslav Vrchlický, The Hague, Mouton 1964
• A literary satellite. Czechoslovak-Russian literary relations. Chicago, U. of Chicago Press 1970
• Baroque in Bohemia, Ann Arbor, U. of Michigan 1980

External links

• Entry in Slovník české literatury (in Czech)
• Entry in Intetrnetový slovníků spisovatelů (in Czech)
• Collected works at Prostor editions (in Czech)

Bibliography

• Suda, Kristián: Eine unbekannte Autorin. Unbekannte Prosa. Ein unbekannter Mensch. Nachwort in: Milada Součková: Der unbekannte Mensch. Stuttgart 1999: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. S. 231-243. (German)

Persondata
Name	Souckova, Milada
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	24 January 1898
Place of birth
Date of death	1 February 1983
Place of death