Czech poetry in 1948-1958 as an expression of official ideology. A contribution to the history of Czech literature 1945-1995

A common feature of Czech verse in the years immediately after the Communis t take-over in February 1948 was the enthusiasm displayed by the youngest g eneration of poets. Among them was Pavel Kohout, whose collections of verse remain a testimony to the intellectual roots of the generation that would eventually become the Sixty-Eighters. Poetry in the service of Communism in the totalitarian regime led most authors to explicit proclamations, but th e perniciousness of totalitarian ideology was most graphically visible in t he work of two poets who just before 1948 achieved marked artistic success. One, Josef Kainer, tried in vain to use the artistic approaches of Skupina 42, of which he had been a leading member, for a utilitarian conception of verse. The other, Oldich Mikulasek, had to submit his sharply contrasting polarized intoxication with life to an a priori optimism. Unqualified faith in the future and thus full confidence in the present were the elementary prerequisites of literature engaged in the struggle between the old, capita list world and the new world that was moving towards socialism. Near the en d of the 1950s, following the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the pressure on poetry by the authorities let up somewhat . This in turn led to the publication of more personal collections of verse and to pretensions of being personal by those whom totalitarian ideology s uited.