Poetry
Zlomky epopeje
Not translated into English
Jaroslav Vrchlický · 1886
Synopsis
Forty-five poems, framed by a prologue and an epilogue, follow the course of time from the beginnings of the world to the poet's own Paris and Prague. Ancient Greece takes up the most space; then come Rome, Spartacus and Caligula, Abelard and Heloise, the Cid at rest, a Breton hermit of the twelfth century who preaches against the wealth of the Church, Nostradamus, Faust come to Prague, and poems of the East in which civilisation clashes with the peoples it subjugates.
Context
The collection appeared in 1886; its title page dates it 1883 to 1886, but a few poems had appeared in a review as early as 1881. Its title ended up naming a whole cycle, begun in 1878 and continued until 1906, without the author ever fixing what he placed in it. The model is Victor Hugo's Légende des siècles, whose poems he translated, and before it the Poèmes of Alfred de Vigny. From the second edition, one piece passed into another collection; more than half of the poems are dedicated, to Dvořák, to Myslbek or to fellow writers.
Who it is for
Poems of various lengths, mostly in rhymed iambic pentameters, in an ornate language rich in archaisms and references to antiquity. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
His most notable work, which gave its name to his entire epic cycle; the Česká knižnice reissued it in 2016 among its major epics.