Prague Addresses: author Stanislava Jarolimkova on her new book

Prague author Stanislava Jarolimkova has talked in an interview about her new book, “Prague Addresses”, the eleventh in her series of books about the capital. She says that working on the text made her look differently at several historical figures, including Emperor Rudolf II and the writer Božena Němcová.

How the book came about

The author did not organize the chapters by district. Instead, she started from the accumulated Prague curiosities she wanted to learn more about. That is how the first chapter, on the relocation of the St. Matthew’s Fair, came about. One eyewitness’s recollection suggested that in 1962 the fair was held at the Spartak Modřany stadium on today’s Komořanská street, and newspapers of the time confirmed it. Going on through the press, she found that in 1956 the fair lured visitors to the White Swan department store, and in 1960 to the Old Town market near Rytířská street.

The sidebars of the book collect the author’s favorite interesting facts: whom Praguers had to thank for real street addresses, why foreigners praised Charles Bridge while some thought the statues spoiled its grandeur, and how our ancestors feared electricity in connection with radio, “like the devil fears the cross”.

The book can also be used as a guide for walks, as it includes maps. For nature lovers, the author recommends visiting the Church of St. Matthew above the beautiful Šárka valley; for sculpture fans, getting to know the work of the Brokoff family; and for those interested in the history of Prague radio, walking the places in chapter 13, from Petřín to Vinohrady.

Revised opinions

According to the author, Rudolf II ruled the country haphazardly but, in the view of some historians, was the best-known art connoisseur of his time. She explains his mental problems by heredity: he inherited them from his ancestors, his great-grandmother Joanna I, nicknamed the Mad, and probably from his parents. Rudolf’s father, Maximilian II, was a first cousin of his own wife Maria of Spain, Rudolf’s mother.

She has also revised the story that the poet Jaroslav Vrchlický supposedly broke down because of the infidelity of his wife Ludmila. Even as a young man he understood that he could be happy only with a woman who would admire him constantly. Žofie Podlipská was a master of this, and Vrchlický married her daughter Ludmila, even though she took no interest in his books and was not his true choice.

The author also has complaints about Božena Němcová. She disagrees with the admiration for the writer having written in Czech for the sake of her homeland despite hardship: friends corrected the Czech of her works, and she brought the poverty on herself. When her husband took a better-paid post in Hungary in 1850, she returned to Prague with her children, determined to support the family by writing. It did not work out, but Němcová refused salaried work to preserve her spiritual freedom and preferred to borrow from acquaintances. And “The Grandmother”, published in 1855, noticeably resembled the story “The Governess”, which she certainly read in 1851.

The path to writing and plans

Stanislava Jarolimkova is a native Praguer who graduated from the journalism faculty of Charles University and, while still a student, wrote about the city’s history for the newspaper “Večerní Praha”. After a break from the profession, in 1991 she decided to work for herself. Soon she was writing for about ten Prague editorial offices at once, spent nine years producing a fifty-page monthly magazine and for seven years appeared on Jan Rosák’s Friday program “Šťastnou cestu”.

In 1999 a colleague whose author had dropped out of a book series asked her to write a replacement within a month. Her first slim book was about how priests at ancient oracles deceived pilgrims. Since then Jarolimkova has written only books, and she now has 43 of them. By her own account, she has never written anything she would have to be ashamed of.

Next she wants to write a twelfth book about Prague in the same spirit: the proposal of topics has already been sent to the publisher Euromedia.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by prazskypatriot.cz