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Jan Neruda (1834-1891) |
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Czech writer, poet, one of the most prominent representantives of Czech Realism. Jan Neruda's poetry collections were based on contemporary spoken language. He was a member of "the May school", which dominated Czech literature in the 1860s and 1870s, and which opened doors to the currents in European literature. This cosmo-political group took its name from the title of Karel Mácha's (1810-1836) lyrico-epic poem, Máj, published shortly before the poet's premature death. Its plot centers on the execution of an outlaw, a victim of his passions and alienation from society. The May school desired to break away from the narrow provincialism and nationalism of the preceding period, and emphasized general human themes. It would be laughable for me to doubt that any of my readers should be unfamiliar with Malá Strana’s foremost restaurant, that is, Steinitz’s – the one in the first house past the Bridge Tower on the left, at the corner of Bridge and Bath streets, the house with the large windows and wide glass door – the only restaurant daring to occupy this most public of streets and opening directly on to the thoroughfare (the others are all in side streets or have inside entrances or are at least sheltered by an arcade with true Malá Strana modesty). That is why your Malá Strana native, son of those hushed, subdued streets full of poetic nooks and crannies, does not frequent Steinitz’s. It is frequented by functionaries, professors and officers swept into Malá Strana by fate, soon to be blown away again, as well as by a small number of pensioners and an occasional rich, old landlord who has long since entrusted his livelihood to others – that is all. Half bureaucratic, half aristocratic. ('Mr Ryšánek and Mr Schlegel,' in Prague Tales by Jan Neruda, translated by Michael Henry Heim, introduction by Ivan Klíma, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006, p. 108; first published in Czwech as Povídky malostranské in 1878) Jan Nepomuk Neruda was born in Prague, Bohemia, and grew up in a colorful part of old Prague called Malá Strana (Little Quarter). Neruda's father, Antonín, was an ex-serviceman. After being widowed, he married Barbora Nerudová, Neruda's mother, who worked a housekeeper. "For having helped to defeat Napoleon at Leipzing and occupy France as far as Lyon (yes, really!)," Neruda later said, "he was granted the position of porter or supplier at various barracs, which position rewarded the honest man so richly that my resourceful mother had to work here and there as a servant to keep them solvent." ('Introduction' by Ivan Klíma, Prague Tales, pp. xii-xiii) Eventually he started to run a small grocery shop in the Malá Strana; he died in 1857. Neruda maintained close ties with his mother, whose death in 1869 was a deep blow to him. Neruda was educated in Prague's German schools, but at the age
of thirteen he began attending lectures on the Czech language. He
studied law at his father's request for a period, then changed to
philosophy, but never graduated. Neruda worked as a teacher until 1860,
when he became a free-lance writer and journalist, contributing
influential essays to the major liberal Czech newspaper Národni
listy.
There
were many women in Neruda's life, some of them were married, but Neruda
himself remained a bachelor, for which he was criticized by
conservative circles. Neruda's close friend was the writer Karolina Svetlá, married to a piano teacher, whom she did not love. Neruda's relationship with Anna Holinova, which he formed in his youth, lasted over 10 years. He had also an affair with Tereza Machackova, who died in 1865. Her sudden death was a shock to Neruda. However, Karolina was his love of life. With the writer and journalist Vitezslav Hálek (1835-1874),
Neruda became the most prominent advocate of the new literary
trends. Like Hálek, he was associated with the journal Máj,
first published in 1858.
Neruda traveled widely in Europe and Near East, recording his
observations in numerous short sketches.
Altogether Neruda published
2,260 feuilletons on various subjets. As drama critic, he preferred
Shakespeare to the German classics. Neruda regarded drama as the
"foremost flower of every literature". ('Jan Neruda's use of Shakespeare in his journalism' by Lidmila Pantůčková, Brno Studies in English, Vol. 16, Iss. 1, 1985) In his poems, hymns and ballads
Neruda promoted the idea of rebirth of Czech patriotism. He
participated in all the central cultural and political struggles of his
generation, and gained a reputation as a sensitive critic. Along with the new rise of national movement, anti-Semitism
began to spread throughout the country. In his notorius pamphlet Pro strach židovský
(1870, For Fear of
the Jews), Neruda stated that he was a friend of the Jews in his school
years,
but they "are a nation entirely alien to us Czechs" and "[w]e
must view the Czech emancipation from the Jews above all as
emancipation from Jewish commerce, from the Jewish exploitation of the
labor of others. . . ." (The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A
Historical Reader, edited by Wilma Abeles Iggers, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992, pp.
183-190) The views expressed in the "political study," first
published as front page feuilletons in the newspaper Národni
listy, went far beyond the usual anti-Jewish discourse of the
period. Neruda
first entered the literary scene as a poet. As a short
story writer his fame rests on his satirical depiction of the petty
bourgeois of Prague. An exception among these pieces is 'Vampyr'
(1871, The Vampire), a horror tale, with connections to the rich
Continental tradition of vampire stories, Heinrich August Ossenfelder's
'Der Vampir' (1748), E. T. A. Hoffman's 'Vampirismus' from Die Serapionsbrüder (1821), Ernst Raupach's Laßt die Todten ruhen (1823), Gautier's La Morte amoureuse (1836), etc. A small group of travellers, sailing to Constantinople, is joined by a Greek artists. A hotel-keeper tells the narrator that they call him the Vampire: "He sketches only corpses. Just as soon as someone in Constantinople or here in the neighborhood dies, that very day he has a picture of the dead one completed. That fellow paints them beforehand—and he never makes a mistake—just like a vulture." ('The Vampire' by Jan Neruda, Czechoslovak Stories, translated from the original and edited with an introduction by Šárka B. Hrbková, New York: Dufffield and Company, 1920, p. 79) It turns out, to the horror of a mother, that the artist has just made a drawing of her daughter. Neruda links vampirism to artistic creation, his vampire isn't literally a blood-sucking creature. It is possible that Kafka knew the story. Povídky malostranské (1878, Tales of the Little Quarter; Prague Tales), Neruda's most popular prose work, was first translated into English in 1957 by the novelist and mystery writer Ellis Peters (pseudonym of Edith Pargeter). The tales take the reader to Malá Strana, to its streets and yards, shops, churches, houses, and restaurants. Neruda's rich gallery of people include Mr. Schlegl and Mr. Ryšánek, who cannot stand each other, Mr. Vojtišek, a beggar, who is ruined by rumors of his supposed two houses, a man who wakes up in his own funeral. Almost all allusions to Jewish men in Prague Tales are negative. ('The Image of Jews in Neruda's Tales of the Little Quarter and Anti-Jewish Discourse' by Marek Nekula, Judaica Bohemiae, Vol. XLVI, Issue 2, 2011) Behind Neruda's laughter and descriptions of human follies are also tragic tones, as in Gogol's short stories. Death and funerals are often present in the stories – Neruda himself had surgery for a malignant tumor at the age of forty. Struggling to cope with his mother's death and growing feelings of isolation, Neruda's thoughts went often back to his childhood. In
'The Three Lilies' (U tří lilií) the narrator – Neruda – sits outside a
small
pub. Graves in an old cemetery nearby have been opened. It is raining
heavily and he sees in a flash of lighting white human bones. A
beautiful girl dances inside the pub. She goes out in the rain, but
returns after some fifteen minutes. She says she just heard that her
mother died. The storm rages; the narrator walks with the girl under an
arcade and he feels the touch of her soft body, her wet dress clings to
his chest. He feels that it is his lot to drain the demonic spirit from
her. Neruda's poetry collections include Hřbitovní kvítí (1858), Knihy veršů (1867, contains
'Matičce'), Písně kosmické
(1878), which was
inspired by modern science, Prosté
motivy (1883), an intimate diary, Balady a romance (1883), a
collection of epic poems with political and social themes, and Zpěvy páteční (1896), published
posthumously. Know'st thou, dear mother, the golden sun, After Jan Neruda's death on August 22, 1891, one of the streets in Prague's Old Town, Nerudova ulice (Nerudagasse), was named after him. Neruda lived at 47 Nerudova. He is buried in Vyšehrad cemetery. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, took his pseudonym after Jan Neruda. For further reading: Nerudsa v dopisech by Albert Pražák (1941); Román lásky a cti: dramatická montáž o Janu Nerudovi a Karolině Světlé ve dvou dílech by Jindřich Honzl (1954); Jan Neruda a jeho doba by Stanislav Budín Stanislav (1960); Neruda prozaik by Aleš Haman (1968); Jan Neruda a konstituováni realismu v ceské literature by Anna Petrovna Solovjovová (1982); Jan Neruda: bibliografičeskij ukazatel' by I. A. Šmelkovová (1984); 'Jan Neruda's use of Shakespeare in his journalism' by Lidmila Pantůčková, Brno Studies in English, Vol. 16, Iss. 1 (1985); 'Introduction' by Ivan Klíma, in Praque Tales by Jan Neruda, translated Michael Henry Heim (1993); La calle Neruda: fantastická fraška, zhruba v tradici V. Rady a J. Žákaby Jan Kresadlo (1995); '"The Enchantment Has Gone." Anti-Jewish Views of Jan Neruda in the Context of Czech Liberal Journalism in the 1860s' by Michal Frankl, Judaica Bohemiae, Vol. XLVI, Issue 2 (2011); Tři stálice moderní české prózy: Neruda, Čapek, Kundera by Aleš Haman (2014); Čtení o Janu Nerudovi: utváření obrazu = Writings about Jan Neruda: The Creation of an Image, edited by Jakub Říha (2019); 'In search of an enemy: Jews according to Jan Neruda,' in Bohemia's Jews and Their Nineteenth Century: Texts, Contexts, Reassessments by Jindřich Toman (2023) - Suomeksi: runokäännöksiä mm. teoksessa Slaavilaisten kirjallisuuksien kultainen kirja, toim. V. K. Trast, WSOY (1936). Nerudan Prahalaistarinoita, suom. Eero Balk, ilmestyi Taifuunin kustantamana vuonna 2000. Selected works:
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