Page:An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry.pdf/21

Rh they are remarkably effective. Interesting, too, are his poems inscribed with the names of places, wherein by a few deft strokes he gives the characteristics of a particular race. Thus, for instance, in the poem "Kyjov" (see page 86) he deals with the Slovaks of Northern Hungary.

The most noteworthy of modern Czech lyrists are Otakar Březina (b. 1808) and Antonín Sova (b. 1864). The poetry of Březina defies all description. It sweeps along, laden with mystic visions of the cosmos, heavy with a wealth of splendid imagery, yet filmy and intangible in its symbolistic suggestiveness.

Through Březina's amazing array of words the reader perceives but dimly, as through a veil of mist, the underlying significance of the symbols and emblems which the poet has chosen to express his meaning. Often in a kind of ecstasy he discards rhyme and fixed metre, and revels in a flood of magnificent verbiage, a very riot of mystic poetical prose. It is interesting to note that Březina, whose real name is Václav Jebavý, is a school-teacher in Moravia.

Sova's mysticism is neither as intense nor as sustained as that of Březina, but his poetical horizon is far wider. Its width is best gauged by the comparison of two such poems as "The Yellow Flowers" and "Alder Trees" (pages 109 and 111).

Sova is, indeed, one of the best of the Czech nature poets. His volume "From My Country" contains in verse-form charming little pastels from the district of Tabor. B