Holy Mountain and poems

"I was very surprised that we do not have this book in the regional archive library. It is a very beautiful, poetic poem. It exudes a deep respect for Svatá Hora and a love for Brda," Věra Smolová answers the question of what made her so enchanted by the poem Na Svaté Hora. Hanuš Jelínek wrote the work in 1933, at a time when his health was deteriorating. Hidden in the text is a memory of his youth and a desire to return to it - and to become a student again, a poet with long arms. "I completely fell into what his exuberant youth might have been like as I read the poem."

At that time, Jelínek lived in old Příbram, in a house on the corner of Palackého and Dlouhá streets, where the U Koníčka inn used to stand, and he could regularly watch the processions that travelled to Svatá Hora. The young Jelinek was more interested in the girls in these processions, yet the poem is also a good description of what the processions looked like, what statues were worn or what songs were sung during them. "It's a kind of - I don't want to say satirical, that's not appropriate, but - a funny look at them," Smolova said.

"Jelinek describes these processions in a cheerful way, but strangely enough, the poem also contains the mystery of the Holy Mountain. These modern people of the last century may have made fun of it all, but on the other hand, a considerable respect for the sacred place is definitely present in the poem." Hanuš Jelínek was a typical traditional Catholic, for him faith was part of life. "I don't think he experienced it in any particular way. It was a healthy faith, where I respect certain rules, I don't doubt some things, but I adapt my faith according to my age. A young boy is usually more interested in young girls than in God."

"One returns to memories at the end of life"

Unlike other works by Hanus Jelinek, this poem stood out of the limelight for a long time. "The book was produced as an unsold copy for the authors and publishers, who published it as a Christmas and New Year's greeting," explains Věra Smolová why this was the case. She herself had it in her hands for the first time in the National Museum Library three years ago, when the exhibition Hanuš Jelínek and Příbram was being prepared. "It was a private print, a kind of Christmas present. But if we connect it with the circumstances under which Jelínek wrote the poem, it is a truly wonderful memory of his lost youth and his hometown."

In 1927 Jelinek began to experience his first health problems, and four years later he applied for early retirement. "He knew he was ill and that his life might not be long." In its conception, the poem On Holy Mountain is reminiscent of his later and much better known book, Zahučaly lesy / The Woods Have Rustled. He wrote it during the war. "One returns to memories at the end of one's life or when one is in difficulty. It is directly symbolic that he looked back on his life during the Second World War, when he was ill and almost blind, so he had to dictate the whole book."

"I can recommend everyone to read it. The Pribram part in particular is very beautiful because he captured the local conditions perfectly." As a small-town man who lost his father prematurely as a child, he was used to having to earn everything himself. "He was incredibly perceptive and talented and always loved Příbram." At the age of 15, for example, he published a sonnet in Horymír to mark the first anniversary of the March Mountain mining disaster. "It is also important for the young man that he experienced his first love here," Smolová recalls.

Kupek's bookworm

A crucial moment was therefore when Hanuš Jelínek met (and later married) Božena Jirásková, daughter of the writer Alois Jirásek. Suddenly he found himself on a completely different social level. Gradually, he entered the circles of the main actors who were close to the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. He was very well acquainted with Edvard Beneš, for example, and he was also present at the signing of the peace treaties - and this makes him one of the important personalities of our national movement.

He also met František Kupka in Paris in his youth. Again, it was an interesting coincidence that led Vera Smolová to discover who the bookworm in the painting of the same name by the now world-famous painter František Kupka was. "I was deeply interested in this painting at the exhibition The Road to Amorfa, because I knew completely different paintings by Kupka. At that time I had no idea, I confess, that the man in the painting was Hanuš Jelínek. In his book, The Woods Are Noisy, he does say that he painted it, but I had read it long before that. It wasn't until I started preparing for his exhibition that I reread the book to bring it to life - and then suddenly it all came together."

"The fact that he was a translator from French and that he taught the language kept him close to the political events of the time." He first worked in the Foreign Ministry, later gaining a prominent post as director of the CTK in Paris. "Today we don't understand its importance so much, but France and French literature were much more important for the foreign policy of the First Republic and its cultural ties than, say, English and English literature."

■ Václav Bešt'ák