Prof. PhDr. Martin Hilský, CSc., dr. h. c., MBE, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, was born into a family of an architect and a Japanologist during the negative period of the Nazi occupation. Perhaps that is why his lifelong credo is to spread positive energy. He is currently one of the most prestigious translators of Shakespeare’s plays and poems into Czech. He is an honorary member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the dissemination of English literature in the Czech Republic. He is also very appreciative of the award of the main National Prize of the Czech Head Project. This year, he has won the Magnesia Litera Literary Award in the Book of the Year category for his title Shakespeare’s England, published by Academia.
Please allow me to first congratulate you on winning the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year 2021 for your book Shakespeare’s England, A Portrait of an Age, published by Academia. What led you from translating Shakespeare’s works to mapping the England of his time in the Czech language?
The genesis of this book actually began in 1983 with my first translation of Shakespeare. It was a wedding or festive comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In order to translate it well, I had to know not only the text of the play in early modern English, including the erotic slang of the time but also many other things. I wanted to know, for example, what an Elizabethan wedding was like. What did Shakespeare’s contemporaries think and feel about this? How did the Elizabethans understand love? What was the relationship between a man and a woman? These questions were innumerable and far from being just about the realities of the time. They were primarily about the thinking and feeling of the people of Shakespeare’s time. And so was the preparatory work involved in translating each of Shakespeare’s thirtyeight plays. I only ventured into a book on Shakespeare’s England, A Portrait of an Age, when I had completed a translation of Shakespeare’s entire works and a detailed study of all his plays and poems. While Shakespeare and the Stage of the World (Academia 2010) is a collection of essays focusing on Shakespeare’s work in the context of the English and European Renaissance, Shakespeare’s England (Academia 2020) attempts to dramatically acquaint readers with Shakespeare’s time. This portrait of the period has two points of view. It attempts to take the widest possible view of people and society, from kings to prostitutes, thieves and others on the fringe, while, at the same time, taking a much closer look. The reader learns how the people of Shakespeare’s time lived, how they died, how they loved, how they hated, how and why they murdered each other, how and what they laughed at, what they took seriously, and what they believed, how they made money and how they spent it, how they educated themselves, how they understood the world, the universe and themselves, but also how they ate, how they dressed, how they lived, how they combed their hair, how they brushed their teeth, how they washed and where they went to the toilet.
You are a professor of English and a translator. What role do you think the English language will play in Europe after Brexit?
It is possible that after Brexit, English will be somewhat weakened as the EU’s negotiating language and French and German strengthened. But nothing, in my opinion, will change the fact that English is he main means of communication in the world today.
William Shakespeare’s texts are a well of inspiration on how to live or not to live. Which work, verse, character or idea has most influenced you in your life? Why and how?
The answer to this question is a topic for another extensive book. I am constantly haunted by Sonnet 66, especially the line “And purest faith unhappily forsworn”. Human history, and our present, proves how universal that observation is. However, because I want to spread positive energy, I would like to balance this quotation with the first verse of Sonnet 75: “So are you to my thoughts as food to life”. This verse names the greatest theme of all of Shakespeare and, indeed, of all of Western culture and civilisation. Note that the verse may be an address to a loved one, but it is also a defining statement of love itself. Nor is the slightly biblical feel of this translation accidental. Not only marriage, but love was a sacrament for Shakespeare.
Thank you for the interview.
