1946 Jindřich Hořejší – Návrat ztraceného syna

Jindřich Hořejší – Návrat ztraceného syna (The Return of the Prodigal Son) Prague: Kruh krásné knihy, 1946. Octavo (23.5 × 15 cm). 38 pp. First edition. One of 300 numbered copies printed on handmade Holland paper. This no. 159. Set in Fournier type and printed by Orbis, Prague. With a single original woodcut frontispiece by František Muzika, signed in pencil. Original plain wrappers with blue and black letterpress title. A late and important poem by Hořejší, published in the immediate postwar moment. Using the biblical parable only as a frame, the text reads as a restrained moral allegory of return after catastrophe: the survivor’s uneasy homecoming to a world ethically and culturally altered by war. Written in Hořejší’s pared-down late style, the poem emphasizes silence, humility, and uncertainty rather than redemption. Muzika’s stark frontispiece—an extended hand emerging from darkness—forms a quiet but powerful visual counterpart, underscoring themes of fragile reconciliation and the cost of return. Inv. I3