This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Macha. The event is being celebrated with a series of concerts, exhibitions, performances and book launches that will take place throughout the year. Especially notable is the release of a new edition of Macha’s poem “May” in English translation by Marcela Sulak, published by Twisted Spoon Press.
Macha is best known for his epic poem “May,” a book-length narrative poem of passion, temptation, patricide and revenge which has become something of a national poem to Czechs. Almost all Czech school children are required to memorize passages from the poem. Even today, on May 1, many Czechs make a sort of pilgrimage to the statue of Macha on Petrin hill to lay bouquets of lilacs at his feet.
The irony is that Macha’s poem was at first ridiculed as being too obscure and was published at the poet’s own expense after being rejected by several publishers. Macha died young in 1836 – following the Romantic poet paradigm – without ever having achieved real fame. In the increasing Czech nationalist fervor of the coming decades, the poem continued to be reviled, this time for not being “Czech” enough.
It was not until the end of the 19th century that several important poets and critics began to rescue “May” from obscurity and trumpeted it as certainly the greatest poem in the Czech Romantic tradition and possibly the greatest poem ever written in Czech. The struggle continues today as avant-garde poets, who see Macha as their precursor because of his reliance on symbolism and his innovative use of language, continue the struggle to wrest Macha from his position of national poet, where he has been placed in large part by academics.
You can find more information about Twisted Spoon Press’s release of “May” in English translation here. Stay tuned for more information regarding the book’s launch, and updates about Macha events, that will be taking place all year.
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