Poetry
Tyrolean Elegies
Tyrolské elegie
Karel Havlíček Borovský · 1860
Synopsis
Exiled far from home, a journalist takes the moon as his confidante and tells her how he came to be there. One night, a police commission came to drag him out of bed with a letter from Vienna which, under the pretext of caring for his health, sent him away for a change of air. He said goodbye to his family, then took the road under escort, past the bell tower of his childhood village, across Bohemia and as far as the Alps, where the gendarmes buy him drinks and the horses take fright.
Context
Begun in Brixen in 1852, the poem could not be published under absolutism and circulated in manuscript copies. It was first printed after its author's death, in the review Čas, from December 1860 to February 1861, then in June 1861 in Obrazy života. By August 1861, the review Lumír was announcing a Croatian translation published in Zagreb. The first volume came only in 1870, in the works published by the Svatobor society, and Mikoláš Aleš's illustrations have accompanied it since 1883.
Who it is for
Nine cantos in rhymed quatrains, in a spoken language sprinkled with journalists' words and Germanisms. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the masterpieces of Czech satire, the poem has gone through nearly fifty editions in volume form.