Poetry
Silesian Songs
Slezské písně
Petr Bezruč · 1909
Synopsis
Ballads about the Silesia of Těšín, Opava and Ostrava at the end of the nineteenth century: miners, peasants and orphans crushed by landowners, by the German of the schools and by the Polish of the neighbours. The poet presents himself there as the last bard of the Beskids; we meet Maryčka Magdónova, who steals wood to warm her orphaned brothers and sisters, the schoolmaster Halfar, and a Marquis Gero, a figure of those who take.
Context
The poems were sent from 1899, under a pseudonym, to the editor of the review Čas, Jan Herben, who the first time could publish only one in three because of censorship. Herben gathered them in 1903 in a special issue, Slezské číslo, of thirty-one poems, then in 1909 under the title Slezské písně, fifty-one poems adorned with woodcuts by Vojtěch Preissig, without the author's participation. The collection grew until the author's death; a scholarly conference in 1963 took the 1928 edition as its reference text.
Who it is for
Social ballads and a few intimate poems. A selection in English appeared in 1966; in French, only isolated poems, in journals and anthologies.
Prizes and reception
Its author's principal work, translated into many languages; the attribution of certain poems has been disputed in favour of his friend Ondřej Boleslav Petr.