Diary of One Who Vanished
A Song Cycle by Leos Janacek of Poems by Ozef Kalda
By Seamus Heaney (Translator); Ozef Kalda
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Paperback, 9780374139230, 48pp.)
Publication Date: October 2000
Categories: English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
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A Cycle of Love Songs Translated by the Nobel Laureate
"Dappled woodland light,
Spring well chill and bright,
Eyes like stars at night,
Open knees so white.
Four things death itself won't cover,
Unforgettable forever."
In 1917, while reading his local newspaper, Leos Janacek discovered the poems that he was to set to music in his song cycle Diary of One Who Vanished. Written by Ozef Kalda and published anonymously, they tell the story of a farmer's boy who abandons his home because he has fallen in love with a Gypsy. These new English versions by Seamus Heaney were commissioned by the English National Opera for a series of international performances, which opened in Dublin in October 1999.
Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in Northern Ireland. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. A resident of Dublin, he has taught poetry at Oxford University and Harvard University.
"Pared to the bone in its simplicity . . . [it fills] the auditorium with the familiar cadences of folk song." -The Economist
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