Máj is a romantic

Romantic poetry

Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...

 poem by Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha was a Czech romantic poet.- Biography :Mácha grew up in Prague, the son of a foreman at a mill. He learned Latin and German in school...

 in four canto

Canto

The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...

s. It was fiercely criticized when first published, but since then has gained the status of one of the most prominent works of Czech literature; the poem now is memorized by schoolchildren and continuously in print.

Setting

According to the author's epilogue

Epilogue

An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...

, the poem is a homage to the beauty of spring. It is set in a bucolic landscape, inspired by such features as a lake then called Velký rybník, and now called Máchovo jezero

Máchovo jezero

Máchovo jezero is an artificial lake in the Liberec Region of the Czech Republic, near Doksy and Bezděz Castle....

, "Mácha's lake," after the poet. The poem's action takes place near the town of Hiršberg. Castles such as Bezděz

Bezdez Castle

Bezděz Castle is a Gothic castle located some 20 km southeast of Česká Lípa, in the Liberec Region, Northern Bohemia, Czech Republic. Its construction began before 1264 by order of Přemysl Otakar II....

, Karlštejn

Karlštejn

Karlštejn Castle is a large Gothic castle founded 1348 AD by Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor-elect and King of Bohemia. The castle served as a place for safekeeping the Imperial Regalia as well as the Bohemian/Czech coronation jewels, holy relics and other royal treasures...

, and Křivoklát

Krivoklát, Rakovník

Křivoklát is a market town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is also the place where the medieval Křivoklát Castle is located....

 (Mácha was an avid walker and knew Central Bohemia

Central Bohemian Region

Central Bohemian Region is an administrative unit of the Czech Republic, located in the central part of its historical region of Bohemia. Its administrative center is placed in the Czech capital Prague , which lies in the center of the region...

 intimately) also influence the setting of the poem.

Dramatis personae

As a dramatic poem (in the byronic sense), the poem has a cast of characters: Vilém, a bandit, in love with Jarmila; Jarmila, a girl in love with Vilém but dishonoured by Vilém's father; and Hynek, the narrator

Narrator

A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...

.

Plot

A young girl, Jarmila, has been seduced by a man who is killed by his own son, Vilém; the latter is a robber known as the "terrible forest lord." On the evening of 1 May, sitting on a hill by a lake, she awaits his coming, but is instead told by a one of Vilém's associates that her lover sits across the lake in a castle, to be executed for the murder. While he waits, he ponders on the beauty of nature and his young life. The next day, he is led to a hill where he is decapitated; his mangled limbs are displayed in a wheel fastened to a pillar, and his head is placed on top of the pillar. Seven years later, on 31 December, a traveler named Hynek, comes across Vilém's palid skull and the next day is told the story by an innkeeper. Years later, on the evening of 1 May, he returns and compares his own life that the month of May.

Structure

The poem consists of four cantos and two intermezzos.

First canto

The poem opens with a description of the lake and the night sky on the evening of 1 May; everything speaks of love—the turtledove

Turtledove

Turtledove may refer to:* Doves of the genus Streptopelia, in particular the European Turtle Dove * Harry Turtledove, a historian and author who writes historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy novels...

, whose call ends Cantos 1, 3, and 4; the silent moss; and the nightingale

Nightingale

The Nightingale , also known as Rufous and Common Nightingale, is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae...

. Jarmila awaits her lover anxiously under an oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 tree, but instead is met by a boatman, a man she knows and presumably a member of Vilém's gang of robbers, who tells her that her lover is to be executed and curses her for having caused his death. The turtledove, closing the canto, cries "Jarmila! Jarmila!! Jarmila!!!"

Second canto

On the same night, the lake is described from the other side, now with images of dying stars and the pale face of the moon prevailing. Vilém, locked in a tower overlooking the lake, is chained to a stone table and bewails his fate. Remembering his youth, he quickly recalls how his father drove him from that joyful place "to grow up in the midst of thieves"; he became the leader of their band, and was called the "terrible forest lord." He falls in love with a "wilted rose" and kills her seducer, not knowing it is his father. In his complaint, he claims the guilt was not his own; his curse is his father's. The clanking chains wake the prison guards, who goes to the cell and finds Vilém motionless and senseless at the table. Vilém whispers the story in the guard's ear—the tearful guard never retells the story and "no one ever saw a smile / on his pale face again."

First intermezzo

Midnight, in the countryside. A chorus of ghosts awaits the coming of a new dead soul, and especially the "guardian" of the burial site: as the author explains in a note, the last one buried stands guard over the graves at night until a newly buried person can take their place. Personified elements of the poem, such as the gale over the lake, the pillar with wheel, night, and the moon speak out on what they will contribute to the funeral. The mole under the earth, for instance, will dig his grave. This continues until the break of day.

Third canto

On the morning of 2 May, Vilém is led from his prison to the place of execution. The setting is as beautiful as the spring—there is a sweet morning wind, and "every living creature celebrates young May." A crowd accompanies Vilém to the hillock where the stake and wheel stand; many pray for him. The convict, overlooking the beauty of the landscape, bewails how he will never see Nature's bounty again and apostrophizes

Apostrophe (figure of speech)

Apostrophe is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea...

 the clouds, and calls out to earth, whom he calls "my cradle and my grave, my mother / my only homeland." In short order the executioner's sword flashes, the dead man's head "drops--bounces--bounces again," and his head and limbs are displayed on the pillar and the wheel. The canto ends with the turtledove crying "Vilém! Vilém!! Vilém!!!"

Second intermezzo

In the forest, under oak trees, Vilém's gang silently sits in a circle, in the middle of the night. All of nature whispers "Our leader's dead," the forests in the distance quake and echo the complaint, "Our lord is dead!"

Fourth canto

On the last day of the year, a traveler, seven years after these events, comes across the knoll where the stake and wheel still display Vilém's bones and skull. Fleeing to the town, he asks, the next morning, about the skeleton, and his innkeeper tells him the story. Returning many years later, on 1 May, he sits on the hill; nature has awoken again and again the nightingale sings while the wind plays through the hollow skull. He sits until nightfall, meditating on Vilém's life as well as his own, decrying "humanity's lost paradise, ... my lovely childhood." The poem ends with the turtledove, who "invites to love: / 'Hynek'!--Vilém!!--Jarmila!!!'"

Rhyme and meter

The basic metrical unit

Foot (prosody)

The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...

 is the iamb, unusual for the Czech poetry at that time, and probably inspired by English romanticism, particularly by George Gordon Byron. Czech medieval and folk poetry

Czech literature

Czech literature is the literature written by Czechs or other inhabitants of the Czech state, mostly in the Czech language, although other languages like Old Church Slavonic, Latin or German have been also used, especially in the past. Modern authors from the Czech territory who wrote in other...

 did not yet use word stress count as an element of prosody, while their Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 poetry was mainly dactylic

Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...

.

Most of the poem rhymes in an abba pattern, and while most of the lines are tetrameter

Tetrameter

Tetrameter: [ti'tramitə]; te·tram·e·ter; a verse of four measuresOrigin: early 17th century : from late Latin tetrametrus, originally neuter from Greek tetrametros 'having four measures,' from tetra- 'four' + metron 'measure'....

s, some of the longer non-narrative lyrical

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

 descriptions consist of longer lines. Sometimes the poet uses longer dashes to indicate stops that are nonetheless part of the line, such as in the second canto, where the dripping of water measures out the convict's time: "zní--hyne--zní a hyne-- / zní--hyne--zní a hyne zas--" ("sound--die--sound and die-- / sound--die--sound and die again").

Critical reception

As with many poets, of particular interest to scholars is the relationship between Mácha himself and his poetic work, which is "intensely personal, almost confessional." Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson

Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...

, for instance, published an essay called "Co je poesie?", focused on Mácha and his Máj, in which he "calls attention to the stark contrast between the devotional reverence of Macha's love poem and the cynically coarse references to its heroine in the poet's diary." This problem is "solved" in reference to the demands of literary genre

Literary genre

A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused...

: "The formulae of love poetry encouraged, indeed urged upon the poet, the tone of adoration, of worship."

Movie version

In 2008, Czech director F.A. Brabec made a movie, also called Máj, based on the poem.

External links

• May by K.H. Mácha (in Czech and English)
• May (translated by James Naughton) (in Czech and English)