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INTRODUCTION
31

several of Ibsen’s plays in which his wonderfully talented wife, the celebrated actress Hana Kvapilova, played the leading rôle.

Alois and Vilém Mrštík, two brothers, collaborated in the collection of stories called “Bavlnkovy Ženy” (The Cotton Women) and in the play “Maryša” though the former wrote independently many lovely stories of the Slovaks in the Carpathian region and the latter many naturalistic tales.

Karel Pippich has written one valuable drama, “Slavomam” (The Greed for Glory), and some comedies.

COSMOPOLITANISM OF CZECH LITERATURE

The cosmopolitanism of modern Czech literature is apparent in many prodigiously industrious writers not only active in their translations from foreign literatures but remarkable for their output of thoroughly good original matter—poems, novels, dramas and short stories. These writers through travel and wide reading in the literatures of other lands have imbibed the spirit of those countries which they present in literary masterpieces. The Czechs and Slováks no longer are content to be provincial, the local traditions do not suffice. The themes which other nations admire they examine and discuss through the means afforded by their own gifted literary interpreters.

Joseph V. Sládek was one of the first Czech literary men to visit America. As a youth of twenty-four who