Page:Poet Lore, volume 25, 1914.djvu/579

 In the field of humor and satire, however. Bohemia was exceptionally favored in the birth of Ignat Herrman. Unfortunately his writings are so local, the types drawn so purely burgeois Bohemian, that the non-Slavonic world must forever be denied the pleasure of the exquisite wit and humor unparalled by any one else in the Bohemian world of letters. His is a treatment of a sympathetic onlooker, and while each type is provokingly ludicrous, the peculiarities and helplessness awakens our sympathy and love. His ‘Little Shop that was Eaten Up’ (three volumes) is a masterpiece. Almost a photographic portrayal of the life and death of a small shopkeeper, it contains unsurpassed humor and pathos. While his ‘Prague Sketches,’ his ‘Little Folks of Ours’ (childhood experiences superior to ‘Tom Sawyer’), ‘Small Animals I Have Tried to Keep,’ and many others, would not offend our Anglo-Saxon prudery, there are others where plain speaking is not avoided, and he completes such details of his picture willfully, knowing that he is writing for a nation whose mind is pure and which demands truthfulness from its teachers and bards.

All such writers of Bohemia, however, owe a debt to Vrchlicky which they cannot over-estimate. Mainly a poet, he inspired other poets. As a dramatist he lifted the drama from the marionette stage. As a translator he made it possible for younger men to study from a good translation the works of Shakespeare, Byron, Ibsen, de Musset and many others. As a patriot he taught the younger men to look for art among men and women of the Boehmerwald, Erz and Riesengebirge. His works have as well a practical stage value. The could be mistaken for a play coming from the Guignol, the Stadtheater or the Princess. I have taken some liberty with the original manuscript and left out a sentence here and there to bring it a little closer to our understanding of a one-act play. The ending of the play was also changed. Modesty, not my intention, forbids my stating that I touched it but to adorn. I trust, however, that the intrusion of the minor mind will cohesively blend