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Karel Hynek Mácha’s Answers
Soon after this response, the wanderer emerges out of the wood. He is not Jewish but a Gypsy with no home. Lea’s lament is transparent. It is a tune whose language exploits a well-known inventory of biblical images, such as references to Jordan, palms, doves, etc. This basic idea was easy to understand for the Czech reader, since just as Jews would mourn their lost home, Czechs would mourn theirs. True, they had not experienced a diaspora, but they had reasons to lament the loss of their statehood and weep over the shattered symbols of their ancient power. And indeed, throughout Mácha’s poetry, the reader repeatedly runs into melancholy images of the sleeping Czech lion, or an imprisoned Czech king, a king denied of his subjects and subjects denied of their king. Historically, this is in line with the larger European picture in which episodes from Jewish history repeatedly served as a backdrop against which conditions of small European nations could be projected. From Handel’s Israel in Egypt (1739) to Byron’s Hebrew Melodies (1815), and Verdi’s Nabucco (1841) readers and audiences would invest their empathy into diaspora Jews, projecting feelings about their own loss of statehood and injustice inflicted on small nations. The Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) compared the Irish plight to that of Jews in his Irish Melodies in 1808 and a few years later Byron drew inspiration from Moore. The privileged status of the Old Testament and its literary qualities only enhanced the attraction that the world of ancient Jews exerted. Mácha pursued his philosemitism repeatedly but always in a patriotic sense.13 Lea is a tragic victim, well suited to remind the Czechs of their plight. She is essentially a Jew made Czech, perhaps Mácha’s other self. But despite this easy-sounding conclusion—essentially not very different from a remark made already by Oskar Donath (1923: 10)—there is more to this Jewish episode than a representation of national nostalgia. Mácha is not a mainstream nationalist, as his conception of the fatherland is not optimistic. He is largely nostalgic, taking interest in abandoned symbols of ancient Czech glory. The Czech literary scholar Vladimír Macura called this a tragic concept of the fatherland (Macura 1995), and indeed, Mácha’s decision to articulate national feelings
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Another example of Mácha’s biblical orientalism is the poem “Larches, Young Larches” [Modřínové, mladí modřínové]. What appears to be simple rhyming inspired by Slavic folklore echoes Psalm 137 (Mácha 1948: 1, 144).
Ukázka elektronické knihy, UID: KOS526118