Twisted Spoon Press, the Prague-based publisher of quality Czech and Central European literature in English translation came out with one of the key works of Czech national revival, Karel Hynek Mácha's 1836 Romantic epic poem Máj. Please support Twisted Spoon and CzechUpdate by buying the new translation on Amazon.
This is the first published English translation in over 50 years. The Czech original with an older translation by Edith Pargeter is available online on http://www.lupomesky.cz/maj.
Byl pozdní večer – první máj –
večerní máj – byl lásky čas.
Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas,
kde borový zaváněl háj.
These are probably the most famous (and most misunderstood) words of Czech poetry. Every Czech student will be able to recite at least the first two lines (whether they read the whole poem or not - and it is not for most). This is what they mean:
Late evening, on the first of May—
The twilit May—the time of love.
Meltingly called the turtle-dove,
Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay.
The Oxford Czech studies scholar (and Colloqial Czech author) James Naughton also offers the original along with an annotated parallel translation aimed at students on his website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/macha2.html. There is a s
This is what Twisted Spoon have to say about the work:
Compared to Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Poe, called Lautreamont's "elder brother" by the Czech Surrealists, Karel Hynek Macha (1810-1836) was the greatest Czech Romantic poet, and arguably the most influential of any poet in the language. May, his epic masterpiece, was published in April 1836, just seven months before his death. Considered the "pearl" of Czech poetry, it is a tale of seduction, revenge, and patricide. A paean as well to his homeland, virtually every Czech student learns to recite the first stanzas of the poem from memory and new editions are still regularly published. The reason for the poem's popularity and longevity is the beauty of its music and its innovative use of language. Scorned at first by the national revivalists of the 19th century for being "un-Czech," he was held up as a "national" poet by later generations, a fate from which the interwar Czech avant-garde, who considered him a precursor, tried to rescue him.
