Agnes of Bohemia

The Return of Agnes of Bohemia was written in Melbourne from 1996 to 1999 under the impression of author’s visits to Prague, when for more than 20 years he was not welcome in his native country. Having his beloved city again in front of his eyes, he perceived vividly how still alive its historical continuity was, with both all the horrors and the beauty.

In a double story-line of The Return of Agnes of Bohemia – if this poetic allegory can be taken as a story-line at all – a man is walking through Prague with a woman, who arrived from abroad on the man's invitation. The man and the woman are people of the present time, but as if, at the same time, they were the Czech King Wenzel I and his sister Agnes, who after centuries meet each other here. As is well known, the relationship between Agnes and Wenzel I. was very warm and Agnes often acted to his brother as an advisor.

The man and the woman visit in Prague places that are somehow connected to Agnes, and the woman tries again and again to find the evidence that in the distant past she actually was Agnes. She is also searching for the answer to the question, why she came back. Was it really because it was her fate to return to what she loved above anything else? At one point, when she realizes her strong affection for the man who is supposed to be her brother, she asks: do you really think "... that I had / to return to this world / only to learn about carnal love for a man?" But " how to become worthy / of loving in the flesh without attachment?" And the answer was the advice that Agnes used to give to her brother – and what one can consider a personal creed of the author: one must learn to " love everything without distinction. / That means to love / all living creatures, and plants, and trees, /and even stones. Yes, to love every single, / solitary, insignificant little piece / of this omnipresent mystery all around us, / until we too become a part of it…”