Martin Wagner’s photo exhibition illustrating Karel Hynek Macha’s poem May
Karel Hynek Macha has about the same significance for the Czech literature as do his contemporaries Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov for the Russian literature and poetry. Czechs learn Macha’s poetry at a very young age, his poetry is read on the stage, his writings are made into movies. A Macha cult has been very much alive and well among the Czech people for 150 years. His monument on the Petřín Hill in Prague is one of the most popular sculptures in Prague; locers geather under his monument every year on May 1.
The poet’s tragic biography as well as his poetry – clearly the work of genius – serve to perpetuate his fame. His poem May, Macha’s magnum opus, was published in 1836. The main character of the poem, Vilém, kills his father to defend the honor of his beloved, and is sentenced to death for his crime. Vilém‘s “Hamlet’s questions,” his fear and desperation of a young man on death row were prophetic for the poet’s own fate: Karel Hynek died of cholera days before his 26th birthday, months after publication of his poem, and two days before his scheduled wedding day.
" Time yet to come? Tomorrow's day?
Still, still some dream will time repay,
Or sleep too deep for dreaming?
Perhaps this life which here I live
Is but a sleep, and dawn will give
Only another seeming?
(Translation by Edith Pargeter)
In the 17th century, after its defeat in the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia (the predecessor kingdom of what eventually became the Czech Republic) found itself under the Habsburg rule. The German language became the language of the Czech elite, the language of culture, while the Czech language was reduced to the role of a vernacular spoken by the uneducated classes. Karel Hynek Macha was, without any exaggeration, the first significant poet of genius to write in Czech. The publication of May was enough for the next generation of Czech writers to enter the “big literature,” taking up Makha’s name as their banner. It is no accident that significant Russian poets like Konstantin Balmont, Anna Akhmativa, and David Samoilov were the ones who translated Macha’s poetry into Russian.
Macha was drawn to medieval castles, he drew them a lot in albums, writing prose about the Czech history. Castle ruins were to Macha a manifestation of the destructive power of time. However, death holds no power over eternal renewal in nature: night, the Moon, wind, mountains, and forests all stand vigil in a funeral service for the executed hero. Time and the Czech Land are the two primary elements of Macha’s poetry.
Distant are grown the towns, far as a cloud in air,
Beyond to the edge of seeing the dead eyes steadily stare,
To the edge of sight, to his youth-Oh, brief, bright childhood day!
Time in its headlong flight has carried that Spring away.
Far fled is his dream, a shadow no more found,
Like visions of white towns, deep in the waters drowned,
The last indignant thoughts of the defeated dead,
Their unremembered names, the clamour of old fights,
The worn-out northern lights, after their gleam is fled,
The untuned harp, whose strings distil no more delights,
The deeds of time gone by, quenched starlight overhead,
Heresy's pilgrimage, the loving, lovely dead,
The deep forgotten grave, eternal board and bed;
As the smoke of burned-out fires, as the shattered bell's chime,
Are the dead years of the dead, their beautiful childhood time!
(Translation by Edith Pargeter)
Martin Wagner’s photos were taken in the same locations Karel Hynek Macha used to love and describe in such loving detail, but they are not literal illustrations to Macha’s poem. Wagner’s photography has the romantic dusky atmosphere of Czech mountains, forests and half-ruined castles in common with Macha’s poetry. Photographs, just like poetry, talk about the unevenly matched struggle of man against time, and of the wild, pristine beauty of nature.
Martin’s photos follow the classical tradition in their style, and nothing in his work would reveal any sign of modernity. It is as though we were looking at the forests and mountains of Bohemia (the Czech Land) through the eyes of a 19th century poet, at the tower where Vilem was locked up, at wintry landscapes that forced Macha to think about futility of human life.
Martin Wagner is one of the leading young Czech documentary photographers, a multiple-times winner of the Czech Press Photo prize. The photographer spent several years working on projects dedicated to the Russian hinterland. He won the 2011 Czech Press Photo prize for his photos taken in Yekaterinburg.
