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Bezruč, Petr (pseudonym, according to "CeskáČeská [sic] Lyra," of Vladimír Vašek, b. 1867). Czech poet, whose "Silesian Songs" contain some of the most powerful verses in the whole of Slavonic literature. In this one small volume, Bezruč has uttered the swan-song of the Silesian Czechs, whose numbers ("The Seventy Thousand") are rapidly diminishing through the encroachment of surrounding nationalities. Several of these poems are of local interest and are strongly coloured with dialect. But about half a dozen of them attain such a degree of tragic utterance, that the