born Sept. 23, 1901, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
died Jan. 10, 1986, Prague, Czech.
Czech poet.
He made a living as a journalist until 1950. Though his early works reflect youthful expectations for the future of communism in the Soviet Union, he broke with the Communist Party in 1929. More lyrical elements were evident in his later poems, and the history and current events of Czechoslovakia were the most common subjects in his approximately 30 volumes. In the 1980s and '90s many of his works were translated, including Honeymoon Ride (1938), Bozena Nemcova's Fan (1940), and Halley's Comet (1967). He also contributed to journals and wrote children's literature and memoirs. In 1984 he became the first Czech to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.