An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Introduction

MODERN Czech literature, like the present Czechoslovak Republic, is not an entirely new product, but constitutes a restoration of what was interrupted by the vicissitudes of history. The earliest writings in the Czech language (for the use of Slovak as a separate literary medium is of comparatively recent origin) consist of glosses which date back to the eleventh century. The first specimen of Czech composition consists of a hymn, known from its opening words as “Hospodine, pomiluj ny” (“Lord, have mercy upon us”). Its age and authorship are uncertain, but at an early date it had become a kind of Czech national anthem which was sung in the churches, at the coronations of kings, and also in battle.

By the fourteenth century Czech literature had made considerable progress. There were numerous versified legends of saints, there were allegories and fables. One of the chief authors during this period was Smil Flaška of Pardubice who in 1394 wrote The New Council, an animal allegory. The first collection of Czech proverbs ​is also attributed to him. Another important monument of early Czech literature is the rhymed chronicle of Dalimil, which gives an account of Czech history from the tower of Babylon to the accession of Jan of Luxemburg in 1310. Here belongs, too, the first great Czech moralist, Tomáš of Štitné, who was born about 1335 and died towards the close of the century. In many respects he may be regarded as a forerunner of Jan Hus (1369–1415), who quite apart from his religious martyrdom, had the greatest share in establishing a standard written Czech language based upon the speech current at Prague. Tomáš of Štitné and Jan Hus had a worthy successor in Petr Chelčický (about 1390–1460). In his greatest work, The Net of True Faith, he anticipated the teachings of Tolstoy, who, on reading translated extracts from it, expressed the opinion that Chelčický was among the greatest philosophers of the world. His ideas were adopted as the tenets of the sect known as the Czech (or Moravian) brethren.

The sixteenth century is often styled the golden age of Czech literature. Chronicles and descriptions of travel were cultivated with particular zeal. The most noteworthy name with which this period is associated is that of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín (1545–99), who wrote historical works, compiled dictionaries, and organised the printing of books. But in 1621, as a result of the battle of the White Mountain, the Czechs lost their independence. The resulting persecutions drove many from their country, and among these was the great pedagogue and philosopher Jan Amos Komenský (1592–1670), better known in Western Europe as Comenius. The greater part of his life was spent as an exile in Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Germany, Holland, and ​elsewhere. In 1641 he came to London at the invitation of the English Parliament to found an academy of learning, but the outbreak of the Civil War intervened, and the project had to be abandoned. Komenský’s attainments as a scholar, which gained him a European reputation, are evident from the numerous learned works which he produced. Perhaps the most considerable of these was a Czech dictionary and grammar comprising material which he had been collecting for more than forty years, but which was destroyed by a fire in 1656. His most important literary achievement is the philosophical allegory The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart which he wrote in 1623.

While Komenský was in exile, the Czech language at home was viewed with disfavour by the new rulers, who did all they could to discourage the use of it. In consequence the number of Czech speakers diminished so rapidly that if the process had continued much longer, the language would have become almost extinct. There was also a systematic destruction of Czech books by the Jesuits in their campaign against heresy, and one of them, Koniáš, according to tradition, himself burnt more than thirty thousand of the offending volumes. Under these circumstances Czech literature fell into a state of decay which continued until the second half of the eighteenth century.

The accession of Josef II in 1780 marked the beginning of an era of reform. The new king aimed at removing all traces of the counter-reformation and at enhancing religious and social freedom. At the same time, however, he introduced measures in the interests of German and ​to the corresponding detriment of Czech. But this policy tended to provoke efforts on behalf of the language, and this tendency constituted one of the factors leading to the Czech revival. There is no doubt, too, that the general wave of European enlightenment which emanated from the French encyclopædists contributed to hasten the movement.

One of the earliest pioneers in the Czech revival was Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829), who was concerned mainly with the more formal problems of language. So thorough was his work in this direction, that it extends far beyond the limits of purely Czech affairs and establishes him as the practical founder of modern Slavonic philology. It is noteworthy that from the very outset of the revival, the Czechs aimed at closer relations with the other Slavonic races. This is a tendency which, in a form rendered far more elaborate and effective by many years of systematic effort, exists to-day.

At a time when the Slavonic languages were mostly ignored or despised as outlandish and uncouth jargons, Dobrovský, an ex-Jesuit, was devoting his whole attention to them, as is amply demonstrated by his correspondence with Kopitar, the Slovene grammarian. This correspondence, encyclopædic both in bulk and contents, contains the germs of most modern theories about the structure and development of the Slavonic languages. For years these two scholars, by mutually querying, correcting errors, searching for analogies in points of pronunciation, etymology, and idiom, gathered a vast mass of information which enabled them and their followers to restore their mutilated languages largely according to the sound traditions of popular speech.

Josef Jungmann (1773–1847) supplemented the ​philological labours of Dobrovský by his extensive dictionary, which appeared at the critical period when the newly moulded language was beginning to crystallise. But he did far more than this. He wrote a literary history and a greatly needed treatise on prosody. He translated much—in particular Chateaubriand’s Atala and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Here, again, Jungmann was setting a valuable example, for translation was to play an important part in the subsequent development of the literature. At this particular stage in its progress, Jungmann’s translations enriched it by the ideas contained in their subject-matter, while at the same time the language was being strengthened in its resources. Moreover, Jungmann was helping to solve the difficult problem of creating a native reading public.

The learned programme of these two men was enlarged by the efforts of P. J. Šafařík (1795–1861), author of the valuable Slavonic Antiquities, and F. Palacký (1798–1876), whose name is associated with an erudite and inspired History of the Czech Nation.

It has already been pointed out how the linguistic ideas of Dobrovský and Jungmann were derived from two wholesome sources—popular speech as far as it had been preserved, and the languages of the other Slavonic races. Parallel tendencies can be traced in the writings of those authors who, making use of the implement which the scholars had been preparing for them, now began to build up the young literature on an artistic foundation. One of the first of the new Czech poets was Jan Kollár (1793–1852) who wrote the remarkable cycle of sonnets known as The Daughter of Sláva. Here Kollár expresses his visionary and romantic conceptions of an ideal Slavonic brotherhood. The stately rhetoric ​of the “Prologue” (1824), where Kollár employed the hexameter and pentameter of Greek and Latin verse, has lost little of its emotional appeal, which may be compared with the ode To Slavdom written in 1863 by the Croatian poet Petar Preradović. The poem itself consists of a series of over six hundred sonnets, which form a curious medley of history, philology, phantasy, and romance. Kollár’s somewhat illusory and unpractical Pan-Slavonic ideas, which among the Southern Slavs gave rise later to the so-called “Illyrian” movement, were also expressed in a prose pamphlet entitled On the literary reciprocity between the various branches and idioms of the Slavonic nation (1837).

The interest which was being taken in folk-poetry throughout Europe influenced the progress of the Czech revival very appreciably. It may be recalled that as far back as 1761 James Macpherson had begun to issue those fragments of old Celtic epic which, in spite of the opposition they encountered among certain critics, set Europe astir in a ferment of enthusiasm. In 1765 Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry had revealed fresh treasures, while Herder’s Stimmen der Völker had followed in 1778. Among the Slavs, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić published his earliest volume of Serbian folksongs in 1814, and three years later the episode of Hanka and the ancient Czech manuscripts recalled the exploits of Chatterton fifty years earlier. Thus, it is not surprising to find F. L. Čelakovský (1799–1852) collecting folksongs, not only of the Czechs but also of the Russians, in a series of “Echoes” which reproduced the native products without tampering with the primitive qualities of their style. Many of Čelakovský’s original verses were conceived in the spirit of folk-poetry, so completely ​had he made it his own. In the lyrical Hundred-leaved Rose, which is to-day a faded blossom, he displayed, if nothing else, at least a skilful handling of verse-form. But his epigrams are altogether on a higher plane; they have all the qualities which are associated with the work of the great classical epigrammatists. The influence of folk-song and folk-lore generally can be seen also in the work of K. J. Erben (1811–70). His Garland of Czech national ballads appeared in 1853, and he also compiled an extensive collection of Slavonic Legends and Stories.

The Czech poetry of the early nineteenth century was, on the whole, not of an intrinsically high order. It can scarcely be regarded as anything more than a series of exercises in versification, based upon such models as the Odes of Anacreon and the Idylls of Gessner. To this category belong the fables of Puchmajer and a poem by M. Z. Polák on the majesty of nature, imitated from Haller and Ewald von Kleist (whence it may be traced back to Thomson’s Seasons). But the poems of Karel Hynek Mácha do not belong to this class at all. His association with Polish refugees at Prague brought him under the influence of the Byronic spirit as interpreted by Mickiewicz. The ideas thus absorbed, acting on a temperament already overshadowed by a sombre destiny, produced the romantic poem Máj which appeared in 1836. The melancholy music of Mácha’s verses received scant praise from his contemporaries, but his influence on subsequent poets was considerable.

The lyrical spirit of Mácha had its satirical counterpart in Karel Havlíček (1821–56), the first great Czech publicist. The disillusionments of his personal experience made him a resolute opponent of empty patriotism. As a result ​of his political views he was exiled to Brixen in the Tyrol, where he composed his Tyrolese Elegies. In these poems the despotism under which he suffered is attacked with a restraint which renders them all the more effective. The general bent of his sympathies can be judged by the fact that he translated Voltaire and also Gogol’s Dead Souls.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the Czech literary revival had passed far beyond its rudimentary stages. One of the most significant landmarks in its development was the publication of The Grandmother by Bozena Němcová (1820–62) in 1855. This novel depicts the life of the Czech rural population, and its graphic style and skilful character-drawing have made it a standard work of Czech literature. The literature of this period, both in prose and verse, is rich in purely popular elements. Thus, Vítězslav Hálek (1835–74) wrote such collections of poetry as Evening Songs (1859), In the Midst of Nature (1872), and Tales from Our Village (1874), which are distinguished by the delicacy and simplicity of their diction. The romantic spirit pervading Hálek’s verses is also found in the strongly racial poems of Adolf Heyduk (1835–1923). Among his numerous collections of verses, Gypsy Melodies (1859) and Cymbal and Fiddle (1876), the general character of which is indicated by the titles, deserve special notice. Here a reference should be made to the numerous Czech writers who have followed the tradition of popular and patriotic poetry. In general their verses tend either to idyllic themes, derived from peasant life and treated in the manner of the folk-song, or the national subject-matter ​is dealt with in its social aspect. Among the former may be mentioned J. V. Sládek (1854–1912), also noteworthy on account of his admirable translations from Shakespeare, and Eliška Krásnohorská (1847–1927), who also translated from Pushkin, Mickiewicz and Byron, while Svatopluk Čech (1846–1908) is a typical example of the patriotic poet identifying national sufferings with social injustice. This applies in particular to his eloquent Songs of a Slave (1895), one of the most famous volumes of Czech poetry. Svatopluk Čech was also a prominent prose writer, and his travel sketches and short stories are deservedly famous. Among more recent writers, F. S. Procházka (b. 1861) has displayed much vigour in his patriotic verses, and achieved an outstanding success in his Hradčany Songs (1904), inspired by his country’s bygone splendour.

The greatest personality produced by the Czech literary movement which was gathering strength in the ’fifties of the nineteenth century was Jan Neruda (1834–91), in verse a Czech Heine, and in prose a Czech Dickens. The effectiveness of his Songs of the Cosmos (1878), Simple Themes (1883), and Ballads and Romances (1883) lies in their spontaneous utterance, their plain and powerful sincerity. His most famous prose works are probably the Old Town Stories (1878), in which he depicts with pathos and humour the lower middle-class life in Prague, as he had known it in his childhood and youth. He also wrote innumerable newspaper feuilletons, which are distinguished by their sparkling wit and buoyant gaiety.

The progress of the Czech novel may here be briefly indicated. The rustic story in the tradition of Božena ​Němcova’s Grandmother was cultivated by a large number of regional authors. Thus, Karel V. Rais (1859–1927) is famous for his tales from Northern Bohemia, a district in which Antal Stašek (b. 1843) also laid the scenes of stories dealing with the religious sects still surviving there. Karel Klostermann (1848–1923) describes the lives of the glass and timber workers in the Šumava or Bohemian Forest. Moravia, rich in interesting racial types, found its novelists in the brothers Mrštík–Alois (1861–1925) and Vilém (1863–1912). The latter was an advocate of Russian realism, and he translated Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In collaboration with his brother Alois, he wrote a lengthy peasant novel entitled A Year in the Village (1904), which forms a rich and detailed picture of rustic scenes painted in vivid colours. Josef Holeček (b. 1853) has also dealt minutely with the life of the Czech peasant in his work Our People, which began to appear in 1898, and which now comprises several large volumes. There is a more idyllic tone in the village stories of Karolina Světlá (1830–99), who is sometimes referred to as the Czech George Sand.

The social novel, generally with humanitarian purposes in view, found a large number of exponents in Czech literature. One of the earliest was Gustav Pfleger Moravský (1833–75), who revealed a characteristic Czech sympathy for the lot of the workers. Similar aims were pursued with decreasingly romantic tendencies by M. Šimáček (1860–1913), who showed a special knowledge of the conditions in the sugar factories, and by J. K. Šlejhar (1864–1914), whose stories from factory life are despondently realistic. There is less gloom in the provincial sketches by F. Herites (b. 1851), which are written in a vein of humour and light satire, while the ​quaint features of Prague life form the subject of numerous volumes by Ignát Herrmann (b. 1854), who in many respects may be regarded as a successor to Neruda.

The Czech historical novel has also been extensively cultivated. V. Beneš Trebízský (1849–84), a Catholic priest, dealt feelingly and in a popular style with the period of the Hussites and the Thirty Years’ War. Zikmund Winter (1846–1912) displayed his profound knowledge of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and a skilful handling of archaic diction in a series of novels, the most noteworthy of which is perhaps Master Kampanus, containing a vivid portrayal of the fateful events in 1621. Alois Jirásek (b. 1851) has treated the whole range of Bohemian history, from the earliest times down to the epoch of the national revival, in an impressive array of novels which will favourably bear comparison with analogous works by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish.

There are, of course, several novelists who cannot conveniently be classified under a special heading. Thus, Jakub Arbes (1840–1916) was a prolific author with a bent for the grotesque, and a pronounced advocate of progressive ideas. It is interesting to observe that in a story entitled Newton’s Brain, which appeared in 1877, he anticipated H. G. Wells’ idea of a time machine.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Czech novel, very largely owing to French and Russian influences, entered upon a period of realism. The most noteworthy exponent of this tendency was K. Čapek-Chod (1860–1927). He did not achieve fame as a novelist until comparatively late in life. The first of his works which calls for special notice is the novel Kašpar Lén, the Avenger, a study of murder and social injustice, ​published in 1908, and regarded by many as his finest work. In 1916 appeared The Turbine, a large-scale panorama of bourgeois decadence, and this was followed less than two years later by Antonín Vondrejc, another very long novel, dealing with the gradual downfall of a poet. Ad Hoc, a collection of vivid wartime stories, was issued in 1920, and in the same year Jindra, Father and Son, a novel containing some admirable but ruthless descriptions of wartime Prague. In 1924 came Vilém Rozkoč, a lengthy narrative in which Prague artistic circles are drastically portrayed and a number of characters figuring in earlier books are reintroduced. Řešany, Čapek-Chod’s last novel, forms a sequel to Vilém Rozkoč, transferring the action to a provincial town, the life of which is subjected to the same minute and unsparing scrutiny as that of the capital. Čapek-Chod has been compared with Balzac, and also with Dostoyevsky. With the former he shares a comprehensive vision of society in its most varied aspects. By profession he was a journalist, and his experiences in this capacity had supplied him with an intimate knowledge of Prague and its people which forms one of the most striking features of his stories. The parallel with Dostoyevsky is justified by Čapek-Chod’s profound pity for “the humiliated and afflicted” (this, however, is a common feature of Czech literature), and still more by his faculty for exploring the darker manifestations of the human soul. A great part of his work consists of a brutally ironical commentary on the blind and meaningless workings of fate. Yet even his most uncompromising realism is modified by a romantic twist, and by a humour which, though often sardonic and grotesque, is genuinely spontaneous. His propensity for elaborate detail is ​sometimes detrimental to the composition of his stories, but in many of his descriptive passages Čapek-Chod demonstrates his consummate mastery of language. It is, indeed, on account of his exuberant virtuosity and immense verbal resources that he occupies so important a position in the history of Czech prose.

Of the numerous contemporary Czech novelists, Fráňa Šrámek (b. 1877) is perhaps the most remarkable. He is also distinguished as a lyric poet, and the qualities of his prose-its subtle cadences, its rich imagery—are mainly lyrical. Both in style and subject-matter his novel, The Silvery Wind (1910), recalls Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, and it contains some admirable passages of impressionistic description. His latest novel, The Body (1919), a vivid book, abounding in warmth and colour, represents his finest artistic achievement. Šrámek excels, too, as a writer of short stories. He shows great skill in presenting emotional conflicts, and in his earlier work particularly there is a strong undercurrent of social satire. Among the Czech prose-writers of the younger generation his influence is manifest.

During the last few years the Czech novel has made a rapid advance. The general tendency has been towards naturalism, accompanied by a fairly obvious endeavour to attain a European outlook. This applies to such writers as Jaroslav Maria (b. 1870) and Emil Vachek (b. 1889), while Vladimír Vančura has revealed remarkable powers as a creative stylist.

The development of Czech literature has been accompanied by a conflict between two main tendencies. On ​the one hand, there is the national school of writers, and on the other the advocates of European models. The former reproached the latter for yielding to foreign influences, but their aim was rather to emancipate themselves from German culture. For this reason they devoted much attention to foreign literature, their main purpose being to produce adequate Czech renderings of the great European poets. A large part of this project was carried out by the industry of one man, Jaroslav Vrchlický (1853–1912), a versatile and prolific author who in many respects is a unique figure in the whole of literary history. His first volume, From the Depths, appeared in 1875, and from then onwards he continued to issue lyric, epic, and dramatic poems, short stories, critical studies, and miscellaneous prose in an astonishing abundance. By the musical diction of his original poems, Vrchlický enriched the Czech language, and he also introduced every variety of metrical form into Czech literature. But in addition to over seventy volumes of his original works, which maintain a surprisingly high level of achievement, he produced a vast quantity of translations. They include the whole of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, together with much from Shelley, Victor Hugo—perhaps his favourite—Camoens, Goethe, especially Faust, Whitman, Calderon, Mickiewicz, and numerous other English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and Slavonic authors.

Vrchlický gathered round him a large group of poets who followed him in his leanings towards perfection of form, and also in his activities as a translator. Thus, Antonín Klášterský (b. 1866) completed the standard Czech version of Shakespeare begun by J. V. Sládek, and besides translating widely from other English and ​American authors, published numerous volumes of original poetry. The poems of Jaromír Borecký (b. 1869), another follower of Vrchlický, are distinguished by their exquisite style no less than by the romantic melancholy which pervades them. Borecký is also an accomplished critic and translator who has produced admirable versions from Polish and Oriental literatures. Jaroslav Kvapil (b. 1868) followed Vrchlický’s model, more especially in his love-poems, and is also well known as a dramatist. Other poets of this group are František Kvapil (1855–1925), a copious translator from the Polish, and Adolf Černý (b. 1864), who produced a large number of excellent translations from various Slavonic poets, mainly Polish and Serbian. The translating activity of these writers is emphasised on account of its educative significance, but their original poems are also of high merit.

The rallying-point of Vrchlický and his followers was the Lumír, a literary periodical which was founded in the ’seventies. Among its most important contributors was Julius Zeyer (1841–1901), although the general tendencies of his work bear no direct relation to those of the Lumír group as a whole. Zeyer was aloof, isolated, and exclusive. His poetry, chiefly epic in character, was sumptuously decorative in style, and its exotic subject-matter was derived from Scandinavian, Celtic, Spanish, and Oriental legends, from the Charlemagne cycle, and from the early history of his native country. Zeyer travelled widely and the manifold impressions which he thus obtained were not without influence upon his poetry. At home he felt himself neglected or slighted, and, indeed, it was not till after his death that his literary work was adequately appreciated. In Jan ​Maria Plojhar (1891), a semi-autobiographical novel, Zeyer has left a striking account of the vicissitudes which moulded his strange personality.

The progress of Czech poetry since the appearance of Vrchlický is associated in particular with the names of J. S. Machar (b. 1864), Antonín Sova (1864–1928), and Otakar Březina (b. 1868), whose achievements it would be difficult to find excelled by any other trio of modern European poets belonging to the same country. Machar is spiritually akin to Havlíček and Neruda. His early poems are reminiscent of Heine, de Musset, Byron, and Lermontov, but their romanticism was soon laid aside for realism, for social and political satire and, later still, for an epic series on a large scale under the general title of The Consciousness of the Ages. This collection of poems, the majority of which are in blank verse, reveals Machar’s keen dramatic and psychological faculties for depicting the most diverse characters. His attitude is undisguisedly anti-clerical, and altogether his respect for tradition is of the slightest. The same tendencies are displayed in his prose works, especially in the highly unconventional The Confession of a Literary Man (1901), Rome (1907), and The Jail (1918), the latter being a graphic account of the events connected with Machar’s imprisonment by the Austrian Government during the war.

Sova’s personality is an almost complete contrast to that of Machar. He is a sensitive dreamer, a lyric poet, the subtlety of whose diction is admirably adapted to the impression and allegory which he handles with such consummate art. Sova has passed through a complex development, and much of his poetry bears witness to the intense emotional stress which produced it. Yet ​in spite of his leanings towards subjective and introspective verse, he possesses the typical Czech social and racial consciousness, by which some of his most effective poems—the scathing diatribe, “To Theodor Mommsen,” for example—were prompted. He has also written novels and short stories in which his bent for psychological analysis is very pronounced.

Březina, probably the greatest artistic intellect in modern Europe, has written comparatively little, but his five small volumes of poems form a quintessential record of a unique spiritual development, from the melancholy broodings of the Secret Distances (1895) to the dithyrambic optimism of The Hands (1901). Březina’s poetry, perplexingly rich in imagery, profound and often transcendental in subject-matter, probes into the mystery of life, not merely in its relation to earth, but to the whole universe. Here again the Czech instinct for freedom and tolerance, which in Machar is expressed by clear-cut irony, in Sova by passionate invective, is found in Březina’s poems, especially in his last volume, in the form of humanitarian mysticism, which is inspired by a fervid belief in the ultimate perfectibility of mankind, and the advent of worldwide brotherhood. Březina’s prose essays are as characteristic in style as his poems, whose ideas they elaborate and amplify.

Březina’s religious thought may be described as non-sectarian in character, although he sometimes derives his metaphors from terms connected with the Catholic liturgy. There exists, however, a whole group of Czech poets whose diction, at least, bears vivid traces of Catholic influences and who in this respect may be compared with Francis Thompson. The principal representatives of this group are Xaver Dvořák ​(b. 1858), Jakub Deml (b. 1878), and Jaroslav Durych (b. 1886).

One other representative of the older generation of poets must here be mentioned. This is Petr Bezruč (b. 1867), the author of a single volume of verses entitled Silesian Songs (1909), in which he protests against the social and racial oppression suffered by the Czechs in the Teschen district. By his unstudied but powerful art Bezruč has elevated this localised theme to a plane upon which its appeal becomes universal.

As a contrast to the poems of Bezruč, which are inspired mostly by collective emotions, those of E. Lešehrad (b. 1877) and Karel Toman (b. 1877) are essentially individual in character. Toman’s elusive fragments of song are suffused by a bitter-sweet melancholy which have suggested comparisons with Villon and Verlaine. In his later poems Toman has attained a firmer and maturer style, without sacrificing the delicacy of his previous work. The poetry of Otakar Theer (1880–1917) is also, in the main, intensely and poignantly personal. It expresses the conflicts of a tragic personality which vainly sought to reconcile the opposing forces of intellect and passion. Theer was one of the most gifted of the younger Czech poets, and his death cut short his development at what was evidently a critical turning-point. Jan z Wojkowicz (b. 1880) and Otokar Fischer (b. 1883), both of whom were closely associated with Theer, are also lyric poets of distinction. The latter is also a dramatist, a critic of extraordinary erudition and a translator with a consummate mastery of form and language. In particular, his renderings from Shakespeare, Villon, and Goethe are models of their kind.

The European ferment of new ideas embodying a ​revolt against the prevailing artistic and moral standards, the tendencies implied by such terms as decadence and symbolism, made a deep impression upon Czech literature in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Its effects were concentrated especially in the columns of the Modern Review, which was founded in 1894 by Arnošt Procházka (1869–1925), and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (b. 1871). From the very beginning this review disdained popular favour, and its interests are indicated by such names as Verlaine, Przybyszewski, Nietzsche, Wilde, and Huysmans in literature, Beardsley, Munch, and Rops in art. Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic was, at the same time, one of the active exponents of these ideas both in prose and verse. His poems are polished and musical, morbid and perverse, often recalling such English poets as Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons. In his novels he cultivates the unnatural and grotesque, somewhat in the manner of Huysmans, whose example he has also followed recently by entering the Catholic Church. Another accomplished contributor to the Modern Review was Karel Hlaváček (1874–98), whose verses, astonishing achievements for so young a poet, contain passages of a curiously wistful charm, subtle and intangible as snatches of distant music.

It is here impossible to devote more than a few brief phrases to other adherents of these modern tendencies in literature. Viktor Dyk (b. 1877) has revealed his sceptical, ironical, and turbulent disposition in verse, novels, and plays. Stanislav K. Neumann (b. 1875), in volumes of poems bearing such titles as I am the Apostle of a New Life (1896), Proud and Passionate Harangues (1896), and The Glory of Satan in our Midst (1897), indulged somewhat ostentatiously in tirades against bourgeois society. ​The accents in which he enunciates his inconoclasm are often reminiscent of Whitman, but in spite of these early extravagances Neumann possesses genuine poetical qualities. There is real vigour, for example, in his Vision of the Despairing Throng (1903), and his nature poetry, pagan and primitive in tone, contains many admirable passages. In his Thirty Chants from the Upheaval (1919) he vividly depicts his impression of military life during the recent war. Another poet of revolt, with strong anti-militarist tendencies, is Fráňa Šrámek who has already been referred to as a novelist. Besides his revolutionary verses, he has written delicate impressionistic poems suggestive of folk-song melodies.

The stage contributed very appreciably towards the progress of the Czech national revival, although the intrinsic value of the plays which were performed during this important period was insignificant. They consisted largely of imitations or adaptations of foreign models, and reveal very few racial qualitics. These early dramatic efforts are associated with such names as Václav Klicpera (1792–1859), and his disciple J. K. Tyl (1808–56), who is also noteworthy as having written the words of “Where is my home?” the Czech national anthem. After an interval of romanticism, which may be traced to Shakespearean influences, and which is most marked in the plays of J. J. Kolar (1812–90), the Czech stage was conquered by the devotees of realism. French comedy, as represented by Scribe, found its Czech counterpart in the works of Emanuel Bozděch (1841–89). His Cotillion Time (1867), Baron Goertz ​(1871), and The Statesman’s Ordeal (1872), in particular, are constructed with admirable skill. Realism of a more national character was cultivated by Ladislav Stroupežnický (1850–92). In Our Haughty Peasants (1887) he produced a very effective village drama, in which Czech rustic types are delineated with much insight.

On November 19th, 1883, the Czech drama received an important impetus by the opening of the National Theatre in Prague. The first manager of the National Theatre was F. A. Šubert (1849–1915), a dramatist whose organising abilities ensured a repertoire of great variety and interest. The influence of Ibsen, together with the realism of the Russian and German stages, led the younger group of playwrights to the modern social drama of a pessimistic type. The more recent developments of the Czech theatre have resulted, on the one hand, in the sentimentally romantic treatment of national and legendary subjects, as in the well-known Maryša (1894), a Slovak village tragedy by the brothers Mrštík, and on the other, in the cultivation of historical drama which seems to have inspired the most striking of the modern products. Thus, Jaroslav Hilbert (b. 1871), who began as a successful pupil of Ibsen, has been influenced by the reaction against realism, and has achieved heroic tragedy of a high order in Falkenstein (1901), the action of which is taken from medieval Czech history. Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (b. 1871) has followed similar tendencies in his Cæsar Borgia (1908), and the same is true of the Tristan (1908) of Jaroslav Maria, also a renegade from the Ibsen tradition. Other names associated with this recent historical drama are Viktor Dyk (b. 1877), J. Mahen (b. 1882), and Arnošt Dvořák ​(b. 1880), whose most remarkable play is Václav IV (1910). Modern plays from contemporary Czech life, and distinguished by their subtlety of presentation, have been written by Fráňa Šrámek.

With the appearance of Karel Čapek, a new force in the Czech drama has arisen. Čapek was born in 1890 in a small town of Northern Bohemia. His first play, The Robber, begun as early as 1911, but not completed until after the war, can be described as an allegorical comedy. The anonymous central character, from whom the title of the play is derived, represents the victorious and energetic spirit of youth, seizing all it covets and opposed to the sober logic of old age. As a play it suffers from a lack of uniformity in its texture, lyrical romanticism alternating with the elements of farce and melodrama. The Robber was followed by R.U.R. (1921), Čapek’s masterpiece, which he describes as a “collective drama.” Čapek imagines a future society in which the menial work is performed by mechanically constructed beings, human in outward appearance, but devoid of real personality. The play shows what happens when these beings begin to acquire a soul. From their resulting discontent is produced a tremendous rebellion which leads to the slaughter of the human race, and inaugurates an entirely new era in the history of the world.

Čapek’s destructive criticism of human society is more direct and ruthless in his next play, The Life of the Insects (1921), written in collaboration with his brother Josef. Here the various types of human beings are depicted in the form of insects with corresponding characteristics. The three chief varieties are those who play, those who rob, and those who work, and each of ​the three acts of the drama deals respectively with the players, the robbers, and the workers. As compared with R.U.R., the interest of the play is more scenic than dramatic, but the last act, “The Ants,” a powerful satire upon the activities of a modern efficient State, and epitomising the folly and injustice of warfare, is of high literary merit in itself.

In February, 1923, Karel Čapek produced The Macropulos Affair, which deals with the problem of longevity. Would it be a good thing if human beings were enabled to prolong their lives more or less indefinitely beyond the normal span? This is the question around which the action of the play revolves, and Čapek answers it in the negative. It is distinguished by the same adroit stagecraft which forms one of the chief assets of R.U.R. Čapek’s most recent play, Adam the Creator, in which he again collaborated with his brother Josef, was produced in April, 1927, at the National Theatre in Prague. The destruction of the world, which in R.U.R. is arrested at the last moment is, in this latest play, allowed to occur. Adam, a nihilistic philosopher, who is responsible for it, then makes experiments to see if he can justify his act of destruction by improving on the old world. His attempts to produce something better, resulting in a variety of human types, male and female, prove very unsatisfactory, and the play ends on a note which seems to imply a modified approval of things as they are. Josef Čapek, who is part author of this play and also of the Insect Play, has written one play of his own, entitled The Land of Many Names (1923), which shows that his contribution to the partnership must be a very substantial one.

Another Czech dramatist who has achieved con​siderable success since the war is František Langer (b. 1882), especially with his comedy Through the Eye of a Needle (1923) and his psychological tragedy Slums (1925). Langer has also written some of the best Czech short stories of recent times. He shows an equal mastery of romantic and realistic methods, both being admirably represented in the collection Dreamers and Murderers (1921).

During the war a number of Czech authors saw active service on various fronts, and afterwards recorded their experiences, or else utilised them in fiction or poetry. Thus, S. K. Neumann vividly reproduced his impressions of the Albanian campaign in his prose-work Elbasan (1920), while his Thirty Chants from the Upheaval (1919) treat the same subject-matter in verse. Petr Křička (b. 1884) wrote some striking war poems from the Galician front. Richard Weiner (b. 1884), also a poet of singular subtlety, derived material for penetrative psychological sketches from the Serbian front, which are contained in a collection entitled The Furies (1917). Then the Czech legionaries, who served in Siberia and elsewhere, are represented by the work of such writers as Rudolf Medek (b. 1890), Josef Kopta (b. 1894) and František Kubka (b. 1894). Medek described the vicissitudes of the legionaries in a series of novels—The Fiery Dragon (1921), Great Days (1924), and The Island in the Storm (1925)—which possess great documentary value. An account of his personal experiences and wanderings as a legionary is given in a volume entitled To the Fairest Land in the World (1922) containing many suggestive comments on the Russians and the Czechs ​themselves. He also wrote some vigorous war poetry, especially that contained in the volume Lionheart (1919), which forms a striking contrast to the æstheticism of his pre-war verses. Kopta’s best war novel is The Third Company (1925), which deals with the Siberian adventures of the legionaries. Kubka was greatly influenced by his stay in Manchuria and the Far East, in which he laid the scene of several excellent short stories. He has also written a drama, The Whirlwind (1927), dealing very effectively with the conflict between the European and Asiatic elements in the Russian character. His volume of poems, too, The Star of the Kings (1924), is a product of the same set of experiences. František Langer, who has already been referred to in connection with Czech drama, also took part in the Siberian campaign, which forms the theme of his Iron Wolf (1920), a volume of short stories. Here some reference should be made to the work of those Czech authors who experienced the war-time persecution of the Czechs at home. The Jail (1918), by J. S. Machar, has already been mentioned. Another book of a similar character is The Quiet House (1922), by Viktor Dyk. It might have been expected that these two fellow-countrymen, being satirical pocts with a fairly close resemblance in their artistic tendencies, would react to their prison surroundings in a similar manner. But while Machar shared a cell with a continually changing company of prisoners, representing all grades of society, all types of transgressor, and half a dozen different nationalities, Dyk spent his time in solitary confinement, with only precarious opportunities for conversation. As a result, Machar’s book is rich in incident, while Dyk’s Quiet House harmonizes with its title, and is ​largely elegiac and contemplative in character. What is common to both books is the stoicism with which their authors endured not only the hunger, cold, and general discomforts of prison life, but also the uncertainty of the fate which was in store for them. In both books there is a striking lack of rancour, either against individuals or the country of which they were the representatives. Dyk also wrote poems dealing with his prison experiences, and collected in the volume The Window (1921).

Finally, no account of Czech war literature would be complete without at least a reference to Švejk, the Good Soldier, by Jaroslav Hašek. The literary merits of Švejk are, of course, not in proportion to the wide popularity of the book, for Hašek was an uneven writer. But he was also a genuine and spontaneous humorist, and there are pages in Švejk which are of a high satirical quality.

The ethical and social problems which were brought into prominence as a result of the war, also produced a great effect on Czech literature. In particular, much of the poetry which made its appearance immediately after the war expresses, somewhat chaotically but none the less sincerely, a craving for the brotherhood and equality of man. Among the poets associated with these tendencies may be mentioned Josef Hora (b. 1891), Jaroslav Seifert (b. 1901), Jindřich Hořejší (b. 1889), Miloš Jirko (b. 1900), A. M. Píša (b. 1902), and, above all, Jiří Wolker (1900–24) who died before his talent had fully developed, but who had already shown great skill in the use of the ballad-form as a medium for humanitarian poetry.

This early post-war phase in Czech poetry now appears to be largely superseded by the cult of an abstract ​versification which has been copied from contemporary French models. Konstantin Biebl (b. 1898) and Vítězslav Nezval (b. 1900) are the leading exponents of this mode which, though often empty and pretentious, at least produces occasional evidence of verbal dexterity. But, like the tendency which it replaced, it is probably a symptom of transition.

Here, too, a few words may be added on the subject of Czech criticism. The greatest of contemporary Czech critics is F. X. Šalda (b. 1867), also prominent as a poet, dramatist, and author of short stories. In his volume of essays, The Struggle for the Morrow (1906), he formulates a number of fundamental artistic principles, and his Spirit and Work (1913) contains a series of critical portraits, mainly of Czech authors. Šalda’s critical principles have been followed by F. V. Krejčí (b. 1867) who has written numerous monographs on individual Czech authors. Another authoritative critic is Arne Novák (b. 1880) who, like Šalda, is both a scholar and a stylist. In addition to an encyclopædic history of Czech literature, he has published several volumes of critical essays, such as Men and Destinies (1914) and Ideas and Authors (1914). Jindřich Vodák (b. 1867), a follower of Taine, is noted as an uncompromising and discerning critic of literature and drama. Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, whose position as a lyric poet and dramatist has already been indicated, is hardly less distinguished as a critic of literature and art. He has written several volumes of essays, such as Impressionists and Ironists (1903) and Art as a Criticism of Life (1906), which are markedly æsthetic in tendency.

Of the younger critics, the most noteworthy is Otokar Fischer (b. 1883), previously mentioned. The wide ​range of his interests is seen by such volumes as his critical studies of Nietzsche (1913) and Heine (1922), as well as his Problems of Literary Psychology (1917) and On Drama (1919). His activities as a poet and translator have already been mentioned. Another critic, who also has a reputation as a poet, is Miroslav Rutte (b. 1889). The chief volumes of his literary essays are The New World (1919) and The Hidden Countenance (1925).

It has already been pointed out that Slovak literature is of comparatively recent origin. Jan Kollár and P. J. Šafařík, who were so closely associated with the Czech revival, were both Slovaks, but they wrote only in Czech. The first step towards establishing a Slovak literary language, distinct from Czech, was taken by Antonín Bernolák (1762–1813), a Catholic priest, who devoted much attention to Slavonic matters. He first presented his views on the need for a written Slovak language in his Latin treatise, Dissertatio philologico critica de litteris Slavorum (1787). He was also the author of a work entitled Grammatica slavica, which was published at Bratislava in 1790 and contains suggestions for the teaching of Slovak in schools. His greatest achievement, however, was a Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Magyar dictionary which appeared in six volumes, posthumously between 1825 and 1827. There were several reasons for Bernolák’s efforts to establish a separate written language for the Slovaks, but he was probably actuated, above all, by the desire to emphasise the distinction between the Slovak Catholics and Evangelicals, the latter of whom kept in touch with written Czech through ​their knowledge of the famous Kralice Bible. But the separatist movement spread to the Slovak Evangelicals also, when in 1843 Ludovít Štúr started an agitation in company with J. M. Hurban and M. M. Hodža (1811–70) to replace Czech by Slovak as a written language. The only difference was that, whereas Bernolák had chosen western Slovak as his medium, Štúr advocated central Slovak, as being less exposed to foreign influences, and he also aimed at uniting the Slovak Catholics and Evangelicals in a common cause against the racial encroachments of the Magyars. Among those associated with Štúr were the poets Samo Chalupka (1812–83), Janko Král (1822-76), Jan Botto (1829–81), and notably Ondrej Sladkovič (1820–72), while Janko Kalinčák (1822–71), the author of historical novels, was the most important prose-writer of this group.

In order to promote their cultural efforts the Slovaks founded the “Matica slovenská,” a literary society, in 1863, but in 1875 the Magyar authorities, in their efforts towards racial unification, suppressed it, and it was not restored until 1918. Under the tyrannical Magyar régime, which became particularly ruthless from 1867 onwards, Slovak culture fared very badly. Yet it was precisely the harsh measures adopted by the Magyars to extirpate the Slovak language and all other manifestations of Slovak nationality, which, while causing the weaker to succumb, had just the opposite effect upon the more resolute among the Slovak nationalists. In 1879 appeared a memorable volume of poems, Tatra and Ocean, by Svetozár Hurban-Vajanský (1847–1916), the son of J. M. Hurban. He was destined to become one of the most influential Slovak authors of his period, both in prose and verse. In Slovak matters he followed ​the principles advocated by Štúr, i.e. he fanatically insisted upon the racial separateness of the Slovaks, and deliberately opposed Czech influences. His romantic mentality led him to regard Russia as the future liberator of the Slovaks, and this belief was coupled with a conservative attitude in politics. In addition to several volumes of poems, Vajanský also wrote vivid travel sketches and novels in which he copied Russian models, especially Turgeniev, in his descriptions of Slovak life, but his treatment tends to follow conventional lines.

The greatest poet and intellectual leader of the Slovaks was Vajanský’s contemporary, Pavol Országh (1849–1921), better known under his pseudonym of Hviezdoslav. His earliest verses were written in Magyar which was, however, soon abandoned in favour of his native lauguage. In Slovak literature he occupied a position analogous to that of Jaroslav Vrchlický among the Czechs. Like Vrchlický, he translated extensively from foreign literatures, and he produced Slovak versions of Shakespeare (Hamlet and Midsummer Night’s Dream), Goethe (ballads and the prologue to Faust), besides various renderings from the Russian (Pushkin and Lermontov), Polish (Mickiewicz and Slowacki), and Magyar (Petöfi, Arany, and Madách). His original verses are marked by a spirit of idealism, which is exhibited notably in his Hymn of Resurrection (1919), an eloquent poem which symbolically celebrates the restoration of Slovak liberty. During the war he produced his Sonnets Written in Blood (1914), which, without any racial bias, express his craving for human brotherhood and the end of all injustice among mankind.

While these two writers represent the romantic and idealistic tendencies in Slovak literature, Martin Kukučín ​(pseudonym for Matěj Bencúr, 1860–1928) was the chief Slovak realist. He was a doctor by profession and much of his life was spent outside Slovakia, first, from 1894 in Dalmatia and subsequently, from 1907 onwards, in South America. After an absence of several years he returned home again in 1922. As a novelist and author of short stories he followed the great Russian realists, principally Gogol. His subject-matter is derived from the life of the peasants and small farmers in his native Slovakia, as well as in Dalmatia, which became his second home.

The history of Slovak literature from the later part of the nineteenth century onwards, continued to be a record of the struggle against the increasingly drastic anti-Slovak measures adopted by the Magyar Government. Some of the younger Slovak intellectuals established literary centres beyond the jurisdiction of the Magyars, notably in Prague. Important results were attained also by periodicals, such as the Hlas (Voice) which was issued monthly from 1898 to 1905, and the Slovenský týždenník (Slovak Weekly), founded in 1903 by Dr. Milan Hodža. In 1909 the literary review Prúdy (Tendencies) was started, and after being suspended by the authorities at the outbreak of the war was renewed in 1922. The new Slovenské pohľady (Slovak Review), which was originally founded in 1846 and has survived several stoppages, now under the editorship of the poet Štěpán Krčmery (b. 1892), also serves the interests of the modern literary movement in Slovakia. The work of the generation of authors whose literary beginnings date from the first decade of the present century, shows to what extent these activities had raised the standard of Slovak culture.

​The chief poet representing this new movement is Ivan Krasko (b. 1876), who was strongly influenced by Czech literature. In subtlety of diction his work marks a definite improvement on the language of the older poets. The same applies to the verses of Ivan Gall (b. 1885) and Vladmír Roy (b. 1885), both of them, like Krasko, lyric poets with strong leanings towards melancholy introspection. Martin Rázus (b. 1888), on the other hand, is concerned more with the destinies of the Slovak people as a whole, and his poems circulated during the war are credited with having done much to promote the national cause. The war-poems of Janko Jesenský (b. 1874), which he wrote while a prisoner of war in Russia and Siberia (his earliest volume appeared as far back as 1905), are also of value as a record of changing moods during a period of chaotic experiences.

Of the youngest generation of poets, E. B. Lukáč (b. 1900) and Jan Smrek (b. 1898) are the most promising. Both of them are still preoccupied with personal emotions, and the unrest of the years immediately following the end of the war has left its traces upon their work. But amid the ferment of these verses there is often a rich and sensitive verbal imagery which augurs well for the future.