Tales from Jindřichův Hradec
Zdeněk Kryzánek - Czech actor and author of Tales from Jindřichův Hradec. You may remember the old farmer Psalman in the TV series F. L. Věk, Hejtman Pivo in Markéta Lazarová or The Lord of Vlkov in František Vláčil's Valley of the Bees. After the war he joined the Pilsen theatre, where he created 89 roles. He liked to make things up and tell stories in the theatre club about his great-grandfather being a fisherman named Kuba, about being the last descendant of Jan Cimbura, about bombing Pilsen with the English squadron. He was denounced by Pilsen's innkeepers for anti-state speeches and Zdeněk Kryzánek was brought to court in the 1950s. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and banned from acting for 3 years. He got out of prison a little earlier only thanks to the pardon of the President of the Republic, but the ban on acting was not shortened. And so he returned to his native Jindřichův Hradec, where he first demolished the cemetery at the Holy Trinity and dug up graves, then built an elementary school and then got a job as a maintenance worker and later as a guide at the State Castle and Chateau. He regaled visitors with stories about the White Lady, which entertained them. And he started writing his stories.
1. The Dividing of the Roses - An ancient tale about the armorial implantation of the famous Five-Leaved Rose - in a humorous way it tells the story of how Vitek of Prčice divided South Bohemia among his 5 sons.
2. Kňour - a lesser-known story about Kňour, a townsman from Jindřichův Hradec who donated his fortune to make a large bell and went to fight against the Hussites.
3. The White Lady - a lesser-known legend about the White Lady, who aroused Father Nicholas Pistorius to go to give the last rites to the ruler Jáchym Oldřich of Hradec. Zdeněk Kryzánek supplemented this legend with stories about the White Lady, which he was so fond of telling to visitors of the castle.
We decided to honour the 100th anniversary of Zdeněk Kryzánek's birth with this audiobook of his stories.