In the poetry of Zbyněk Hejda, a man’s life is often pictured as a never-ending movement on a path between two places: the village – usually represented by its centre, local pub – and the final resting place, the graveyard. More specifically, the pub is the scene of gathering after the funeral. In addition, the pub is a place of delights – allowing man to momentarily forget about his mortality. On a very general level (as in the late poem “Café Francois Ier”) there is an allegoric meaning to this phenonmenon: it’s a reflection of one’s stay in this world. On the other hand, the graveyard, characteristically situated just a short walk from the pub and almost within view, is a place ceaselessly reminding man of his own mortality. The paper concentrates on the depiction of these two places in Hejda’s poems and the relations between them.
