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Janko Jesenský
Janko Jesenský (1874-1945). Poet, prose writer, translator and Slovak statesman. Jesenský was the scion of the noble Slovak family Jesenský z Horného Jasena. Like his father, Jen B...view moreJanko Jesenský (1874-1945). Poet, prose writer, translator and Slovak statesman. Jesenský was the scion of the noble Slovak family Jesenský z Horného Jasena. Like his father, Jen Baltazár Jesenský-Gasparé and brothers Fedor and Vladimír, he was active in the propagation of Slovak culture and language during the difficult years of the Habsburg Empire, when Slovakia was subjected to strong Magyarising pressure. Jesenský is well known as a poet, having published nine collections of verse, including Zo zajatia [From Captivity, 1918], which chronicle his four years as a Russian prisoner of war and member of the Czechoslovak Legions, two plays (unpublished in his lifetime) and eleven works in prose, including his memoirs Cestou k slobode [On the Road to Freedom, 1933], an important eyewitness account of the First World War, the establishment of the Czechoslovak Legions and the Czechoslovak National Council, the Russian Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War. His translations from Russian include Alexander Pushkin's masterpiece Eugene Onegin. In the newly established First Czechoslovak Republic he served as county governor (župan) in Rimavská Sobota and Nitra, and later in the regional-national government in Bratislava, eventually becoming Vice President of the Regional Government for Slovakia. During the Second World War, at the breakup of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the collaborationist Slovak Republic of Monsignor Tiso, he retired from public life but continued to compose anti-Fascist poetry, much of which was broadcast from the free Czechoslovak radio service in London.view less