KAREL HYNEK MACHA
THE PASSIONATE REBEL
(1810–1836)
"I am a volcano of Iceland.
All around me ice and snow,
but within me eternal fire."
Macha’s Note Book (1833–1835).
Karel Hynek Macha, who was destined to become the first Czech poet In the original Greek sense of the word, that is, a maker of "things of beauty" of an everlasting joyfulness, was born of poor parents on the 16th of November, 1810, in Prague. During his student years, both in the gymnasium and the university, Macha devoted much of his leisure to the reading of romantic poetry, especially that of German and Polish authors. Since 1831 he became one of the most zealous followers of Joseph Jungmann, at that time professor at the University of Prague. Jungmann was one of the acknowledged leaders who strived to bring about the rebirth of the Czech nation from the violently germanizing rule of Habsburgs. It is, therefore, not surprising at all that Macha, whose first attempts at poetry were composed in German as "Versuche des Ignaz Macha" (1829), henceforth chose his native Czech language as the vehicle for poetical expression. In 1836, the year when "May" was published, Macha was graduated from the law school of the University of Prague with great honors, and he entered the office of a justiciary in Litomerice. That year, at the peak of his creative abilities, Macha contracted pneumonia while helping to fight a fire and died November 5th, 1836, at the age of 26 years.
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