Page:An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry.pdf/19

Rh an English Library (containing amongst others Czech versions of J. M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, F. Anstey, Rudyard Kipling, George Moore, Rider Haggard), and similar enterprises.

On the other hand Vrchlický's formal mastery of verse is of the utmost importance. He rendered the language still more flexible, employed all metres—sonnets, ballades, rondeaus, Persian ghazels—and prepared the way for the latest generation of Czech poets. It would be difficult to estimate the debt that they owe to him.

A reaction against Vrchlický and his school began in the nineties. It was instituted by those young writers who were strongly under the influence of hypermodern ideas, whose tendencies were towards foreign models—Maeterlinck, Wilde, Whitman, Nietzsche. Their poetry is marked by a certain artificiality, deadness, sometimes even by perversity. With this movement are associated such names as Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, Viktor Dyk, Jan z Wojkowicz, Josef Holý, Stanislav K. Neumann, Otakar Theer. Neumann (b. 1875), one of whose volumes bears the title: "I am the apostle of a new life," represents the anarchistic, rebellious element in modern Czech poetry. Another dauntless polemist is Jan Svatopluk Machar (b. 1864), who occupies an official post at Vienna. He is the poet of realism, of biting social satire, the enemy of all hypocrisy and pseudo-patriotism. In his non-political lyrics, he is the poet of deep pessimism, to which the translations in this collection bear