Page:Poet Lore, volume 27, 1916.djvu/90



O the American public the world of Bohemian literature of the present day is practically a closed book, hence to presuppose an intimate acquaintance with the dramatic writers of the nation of Čechs is an unwarranted presumption.

It is only since 1848 when the nation awakened from its two hundred year swoon resulting from the almost mortal wound inflicted at the Battle of Bilá Hora, that the truly wonderful literary energy of the people has displayed itself. It would be a misappellation to designate the few efforts during the period of the nation’s lethargy as literature. A nation which, at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War—that long agony which had its inception in Bohemia—lost by exile thirty-six thousand of its most progressive and best educated citizens and its liberty at the same time could hardly be expected to recover at once.

Physically speaking, it would have been preposterous to look for a literary impetus or development at a time when it was possible for a certain Jesuit priest to boast that he alone had burned sixty thousand Bohemian books.

The quivering throes of the nation during the generations preceding 1830 could hardly be looked upon as anything else but the reflex shudders of a corpse. But the blood, apparently con gealed, began once more to course through the stiff veins when the breath of freedom and democracy at first wafted, then like a mighty gale, fairly rushed through the land in 1848, revivifying, renewing, inspiring everywhere.

In the land of the westernmost Slavs—Bohemia—the long suppressed Čechs arose to assert themselves not alone as Čechs—sturdy Slavs and troublesome obstacles in the path of the All-Deutsch policy of their northern neighbors but as men, as citizens of the world demanding their human rights and insisting on the equality of privileges and freedom of thought and expression.

It was at the high tide of reaction that Karel Havliček, the