Maggio
If there is a poem that best embodies and symbolizes Czech identity, it is surely “May” – by the poet and highest representative of Czech Romanticism, Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836). The famous poem, written in 1836, is notable for being the most printed, studied and celebrated literary work in Czech literature. By means of its musical and seductive verse, full of romantic suggestions and metaphors and by means of high poetics, the poem recounts the sad love affair between Jarmila and Vilém, with her suicide and his sentence to death for murdering his own father, the seducer of his beloved maiden. The rather gloomy poem on the transience of human existence is, perhaps, the result of the sad experience of the poet, following the death of Marinka Štichová, the woman he loved. The poem is an exemplary model of classic Romanticism themes that contain philosophical meditations and considerations on nature in spring, during its full vigor, as an attempt to soothe the torments of the soul.
Karel Hynek Mácha,
Maggio (by Annalisa Cosentino,
translated by Alessandra Mura),
Marsilio: Venice 2013,
116 pages