Antonín Sova (26 February 1864 – 16 August 1928) was a Czechpoet and the director of Prague Municipal Library.
He was born inPacov, a small town in South Bohemia, then part of theAustrian Empire, but from the age of two he grew up in nearbyLukavec.[1] His father, Jan, was ateacher andchoirmaster who occasionally composed.[2] His mother died when he was 15 and his father married again (Sova never had a positive relationship with his stepmother Sabina).[1] In Lukavec, Antonín, became acquainted with the sisters ofJaroslav Vrchlický. He studied at the grammar school inPelhřimov,Tábor, and from 1881 to 1885 inPísek. He met the Písek-based poetAdolf Heyduk who helped him publish his first poems in literary magazines (he used the pen-names Ilja Georgov and forLumír Valburga Turková).[1] While at school, he received the worst possible mark for morale because he ignored the interdict and wore a Czech tricolor tie in a park.[1]
He started studying law inPrague but he did not finish for lack of money.[2] Jaroslav Vrchlický helped him find employment inOtto's encyclopedia editorial department which lasted for only a year.[1] His next job was at the medical department of the Prague municipality. Eventually, from 1898 till he retired, he worked as a director of the Prague Municipal Library.[1] He married Marie Kovaříková, who was almost 20 years younger, in 1900, and had a son Jan with her a year later.[3] Their marriage broke up after several years. The poet contracted a disease that paralysed him for the last two decades of his life (probablysyphilis).[1]
After the constitution of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he lived in Prague and was often visited by younger poets of various styles and political inclinations.[1] In 1924, he moved "in his horsehair grave" to Pacov, where he died on a stormy August night in 1928.[1] The funeral took place in Prague but his ashes were taken to a granite stone in Pacov.[1]
In 1897, Sova was among the writers who established the first Czech official literary association, called Máj.[1] His first published poetry collections wereRealistické sloky (Realistic strophes, 1890),Květy intimních nálad (Flowers of Intimate Moods, 1891),Z mého kraje (From My Country, 1893),Soucit a vzdor (Compassion and Defiance, 1894), andZlomená duše (Broken Soul, 1895).
Sova was a supporter of the progressive national movement of the 1890s connected with theOmladina Trial.[1] Together with 11 other writers, he signed the manifesto called Česká moderna in 1895 to demand free speech, social reforms and individualism in art. The reflection of the manifesto in Sova's work is the collectionVybouřené smutky (Uprisen Griefs, 1897).
To you, who have treacherously assailed my nation, covetous dotard,
Brutish, overweening! To you, on the brink of the grave,
Arrogant bastard of Roman emperors and conquering Germania.
To you, dotard, blinded by vainglory,
I chant the infuriate song of a barbarian, aroused by the smiting of hoofs.
With metallic buffetings
Scornfully I smite your enwrinkled visage,
O bestial fanatic of relentless kaiserdom;
Your shrivelled temples I smite, your turgid Neronic lips I smite
Covered with foaming of impotent fury!
In 1897,Theodor Mommsen wrote a nationalist letter addressed to Germans in Austria (An die Deutschen in Österreich) which was published in Vienna'sNeue Freie Presse.[1] Mommsen calledCzechs "apostles of barbarism" and wrote that "the Czech skull is impervious to reason, but it is susceptible to blows".[4][5] Antonín Sova wrote an answer in verses,To Theodor Mommsen.
The poem, in which he calls Mommsen a "covetous dotard" and an "arrogant spokesman of slavery",[4] became the national answer to the German imperialism of that time, and Sova started to be one of the most famous poets of his generation.[1]
