Czechoslovak Stories/Svatopluk Čech

by Šárka B. Hrbková

SVATOPLUK ČECH

 

(Born February 21, 1846, in Ostředek near Benešov. Died February 23, 1908.)

 

Svatopluk Čech was the son of a government official, and thus spent his youth in various parts of his native land, attending schools in Postupice, Liten, Vráný, Litoměřice and Prague, securing his degree in the Piaristic Gymnasium in 1865. Later, he studied law, though as a Gymnasium student he had already entered the field of literary effort, using the pseudonym “S. Rak.” Eventually he became editor successively of several of the leading Czech literary journals. His best works appeared in the “Květy” (Blossoms), a magazine which he and his brother, Vladimír, established in 1878.

Čech traveled extensively in Moravia, Poland, the Ukraine, around the Black Sea, Constantinople, in the Caucasus, Asia Minor, Denmark, France and England. Each of these journeys bore literary fruit.

While Čech is unquestionably the greatest epic poet of the Czechoslovaks and by some critics is ranked as the leading modern epic poet of Europe, some of his shorter prose writings are also notable as examples of enduring literature.

Čech’s title to superlative distinction in the field of poetry is earned through the following works which discuss broad humanitarian,, religious and political questions with democratic solutions in each case. “Adamité” (The Adamites) is an epic of the Reformation describing the rise and fall of this peculiar religious sect. “Bouře” (Tempests) and “Sny” (Dreams) are in the Byronic manner. “Čerkes” is a picture of the life of a Czech immigrant in the Caucasus. “Evropa” (Europe) studies the forces disintegrating ancient Europe. “Ve Stínu Lípu” (In the Shade of the Linden Tree) depicts with rich touches of delicate humor such types as the simple peasant, the upstart tailor-politician, the portly miller, the one-legged soldier and others, each relating experiences of his youth, a veritable Czech “Canterbury Tales.” In “Václav z Michalovic” he presents a sorrowful epic of the gray days after the Battle of White Mountain. “Slavie” is a truly Utopian picture of Panslavism. “Dagmar” unites the threads binding Czech with Danish history. “Lešetinský Kovář” (The Blacksmith of Lešetin), a distinctively nationalistic poem, dramatically portrays the struggles of the Czechs against the insidious methods of Germanization. This poem was suppressed in 1883 and not released until 1899, being again prohibited after August, 1914, by the Austrian government. Portions of this vividly genuine picture have been translated into English by Jeffrey D. Hrbek. “Petrklíče” and “Hanuman” are collections of lovely fairy tales and plays in Čech’s most delightful verse. “Modlitby k Neznámému” (Prayers to the Unknown) is a series of meditations in pantheistic vein on the mysteries of the universe. “Zpěvník Jana Buriana” (The Song Book of Jan Burian) solves monarchistic tendency with the one true answer—democracy. “Písně Otroka” (Songs of a Slave), of which some fifty editions have been published, not only in Bohemia, but in the United States as well, represent, through the symbolism of oriental slavery, the modern bondmen who are in mental, moral, political and industrial subjection.

Of his larger prose works, the novels “Kandidát Nesmrtelnosti” (A Candidate for Immortality) and “Ikaros” are best known, but humor and satire, together with genuine story-telling ability, hold the reader far more tensely in his delicious “Výlet Páně Broučkův do Měsíce” (Mr. Brouček’s Trip to the Moon) and in his ten or twelve collections of short stories, arabesques and travel sketches. The story “Foltýn’s Drum” is selected from Čech’s “Fourth Book of Stories and Arabesques.”