Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/13



Comparatively very little of Czech and Slovak literature is known to the British and American public, and our English speaking visitors have often complained of their inability to procure works of our fiction in translation. We have no doubt that the publishers of the United States of America and of Great Britain will in the near future see to satisfying the interest and curiosity of their public in this regard, and if we have decided to publish a few selections of the works of our authors in translation, we are led not so much by the wish to call attention to certain typically Czech authors as by the desire to show that unobserved by the world our writers could encompass the world and its highest ideals in their scope. We chose for the first volume of our little series a work by Jan Havlasa if for no other reason, because he is the only Czech fiction-writer expressing himself as readily in English as in his own language; and »Four Japanese Tales« are in fact not a translation but only the author’s own English version of his Czech work. A still more decisive reason was our wish to show that sympathies extended to our Siberian army by the Japanese could only strengthen the interest that already existed in our nation for the Japanese before they became aware of our existence. It is well to mention that Mr. Jan Havlasa spent a whole year in Japan not long before the outbreak of the war writing about his experiences both in Czech and English. For the following volumes we prepare a selection from the writings of Otakar Březina, the foremost Czech poet, a selection of old Czech myths from the pen of the most beloved author of Bohemia, Alois Jirásek, a book of verses, translated by the well-known friedfriend [sic] of the Czech nation, Mr. P. Selver, an anthology of the work of Viktor Dyk, and others.