Jan Neruda: Figurines

The figures conclude Neruda's Tales of the Lesser Town and, together with "A Week in a Quiet House", form the framework of a whole cycle of pictures from the life of the Prague district, which the author knew intimately from his early childhood. Jan Neruda lived in the Lesser Town for more than thirty years, in 1934 he was born in Újezdské barracks as the son of a cantina worker, and for years the family lived in Ostruhová Street, first in the house U Dvou slunců, where his father received a trafik as a military pensioner, and after his death Neruda and his mother moved to the house U Tří černých orlů. His knowledge of the Lesser Town and its inhabitants forms the basis of much of Neruda's short story writing. In Tales from the Lesser Town he not only paid tribute to the place of his youth, but also opened the way for the modern Czech short story. The fate of Krumlovský, a law clerk, was the subject of two films (1938, directed by Jiří Slavíček; 1981 directed by Jiří Krejčík). Jiří Just dramatised the story for radio in the first half of the 1990s. Director Vlado Rusko cast Ivan Trojan in the lead role, who is ably supported by Naďa Konvalinková, Jan Novotný, Antonín Molčík, Růžena Merunková and others.