Having graduated from a grammar school in 1939, she started to study philosophy in Brno, where she stayed until the Nazi occupants closed all universities.
She translated The Waste Land (together with her husband) in 1947, and also books by Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, Emily Dickinson and Dylan Thomas.
She was Thomas’ interpreter and guide when he visited Prague in March 1949 to attend a writers’ conference.
She has given an account of Thomas’ visit in her memoirs, Záblesky života, which has been partly reproduced in an English translation.
[1] In 1996 she received, together with the poet Zbyněk Hejda, the prestigious Jaroslav Seifert Award for the outstanding lifetime contribution to the Czech literature.