The Dark Blue World of Jaroslav Ježek

“One day around that time […] a smiling young man came up to the table where I was sitting in the National Café, introduced himself, and asked whether I might find a free moment to come and listen to a song he had set to a quatrain from my Cocktails. [...] He led me into a room with an old piano and family furniture and apologized that his song would not sound as it should on that piano. Then he played me a song whose lyrics begin with the words: My eyes are like flax, and he enchanted me far more than I had expected. Again and again, I asked him to play the song for me once more [...].”

“It was a blessed cultural current [Impressionism] that broke the bonds of realism and made art abstract, an airy value; it refined and distilled everything that had until then been considered delicate and elusive. The human nervous system was laid bare to perceptible sensations. Music began to depict the magic of water, rain whispering over gardens, and fractured reflections on the surfaces of ponds [...]. Debussy transposed them so suggestively that they seemed almost real. This is the secret of this complex and refined being, which cannot […] be translated into words.”

“The opening performance by our émigré artists was a tremendous success! – A rich and original programme of satire, singing, and music swept the audience into explosive expressions of praise and enthusiasm – the Sokol Hall was sold out to the very last seat!”

“Do not think that I have somehow fallen out with the boys [Voskovec and Werich] just because I live somewhere else. I am happiest here in New York, and I hate Cleveland. Besides, here I can at least occasionally earn a few pennies or cents.”

“Ježek’s sound-conduction apparatus had been completely destroyed by a long-standing purulent inflammation in both ears. The auditory nerve, however, remained undamaged, and his perception of musical tones was excellent. […]

Yet he was hard of hearing in conversation. Everything he created at the “Liberated Theatre” is a jubilant apotheosis of life, in which the spirit overcame the suffering of the body, in which genius, lashed by physical pain, mocked fate and attacked suffering with the laughter of youth. This is how future generations will know Jaroslav Ježek; this is how his contemporaries and friends knew him, for he never complained to them about his difficulties. He remained this way until the final moments of his life, when he was struck down by another, likewise congenital, kidney defect.”