Dancing among eggs

Welcome to SoundCzech – our Czech language series in which you can learn Czech phrases and idioms through song lyrics. Today, the phrase to look out for is tanec mezi vejci – dancing among eggs in a song of the same name by famous Czech folksinger Jaromír Nohavica.

Dancing among eggs, as you’d probably guess, implies difficult balance and in Nohavica’s song the phrase is used as a metaphor for life; he sings, in fact, život je tanec mezi vejci… life is a dance among eggs, in other words difficult; in English you might say life is sometimes a high trapeze act.

In the song, Nohavica refers indirectly, it appears, to political events last year, in which youthful protestors took to throwing eggs at political meetings of the Social Democratic Party, a movement that caught like wildfire through Facebook but eventually got very ugly. Certainly, there is at least one clip on the Internet which refers to those events directly. And who better than politicians to have to perform delicate balancing acts? Sometimes, though, things get out of hand: they get splattered by eggs thrown by protestors. Literally. Metaphorically, dancing among eggs though is often something even the rest of us have to do, from balancing work and our private life to who knows what else. Nohavica suggests we might as well accept it, singing chce to klid– calm is needed and život prostě bezva je– life is great, a kind of Czech don’t worry, be happy, as long as there are enough eggs to be had, the singer adds.

What dancing among eggs isn’t, at least not exactly, is the Czech equivalent of the English expression to walk on eggshells (when you have to tread carefully in order not to upset or offend someone) although in the case of Czech politicians, it’s arguably not that far removed. The eggs, in Czech, probably represent more general obstacles and sometimes things come to a head and events get particularly precarious. In such cases, is recommended to postupovat opatrně - to take steps carefully, not to make a mistake and upset apple cart, so to speak.

On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to recall the English saying You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, a phrase which means it is difficult to achieve something important without causing any unpleasant effects: in Czech the phrase has nothing to do with eggs at all, but trees: the Czechs say když se kácí les, letájí třísky: when you fell a forest the splinters fly.