A Prayer of Marta
Let peace remain with this country!
Let hatred, envy, grudge, fear
and strife cease! Let them cease!
Now, when your lost sovereignty is returning to you,
finally returning to you.
The cloud drifts slowly away from the sky
and everybody reaps what he has sown.
Let my prayer speak
to hearts not burnt by the time of wrath,
like flowers by frost, like frost.
Let peace remain with this country!
Let hatred, envy, grudge, fear, and strife cease!
Let them cease!
Now when your lost sovereignty is returning to you,
people, finally returning to you.
Today, Marta Kubišová is considered a Czech national heroine. She had already found a place in the hearts of Czechs when she was in her twenties, as a famous singer and television star. In 1977, the communist party arrested the rock band Plastic People of Universe. A small group of dissidents, including Vaclav Havel, met secretly to draw up a written demand for the government to respect human rights. Marta Kubišová was there the whole time, working with Havel on the document as well. They called it Charter 77 and then they signed their names to it.
This one signature meant the effective end of her career at the time. The communist party put out false stories and faked photographs to ruin her reputation. She lost her job in television and no one would hire her to act or sing.
But in November of 1989, when Czechs and Slovaks gathered in Wenceslas Square in Prague to protest the communist regime, Vaclav Havel asked her to stand with him on a balcony overlooking the crowds and bring back her signature song, A Prayer of Marta. She had originally performed the song as a character in a film, but it became popular as a single and she was asked to sing it at all her concerts. Now she was welcomed back at one of the most pivotal moments in Czech history. If it had not gone well, if the revolution had not succeeded, she probably would have been punished even more. It was a very brave act to sing on the balcony in November of 1989.
The interesting thing is that those lyrics were meaningful to the situation at hand.
Let hatred, envy, grudge, fear, and strife cease!
Let them cease!
Now when your lost sovereignty is returning to you,
people, finally returning to you.
Ever since that day, this song is considered the anthem of the Velvet Revolution.
And Marta Kubišová grew to be not only the sweetheart of the Czechs, but also a national heroine.
In the video below, Marta sings the anthem of the Velvet Revolution in English.
