In the footsteps of Hanuš Jelínek

1. FAMILY HOUSE

Hanuš Jelínek, the son of a town clerk, was born on 3 September 1878 in Příbram in the once famous inn "U Sebastopol".

2. JACOB

The baptism took place in the Church of St. James, the godfather was the mayor of Pribram, Karel Hail. After graduating from the municipal school, he entered the real grammar school, where his classmates included, among others, the poet Karel Toman, then still Antonín Bernášek.

3. BIRCH MOUNTAINS

Jelínek was only fifteen when his sonnet, written for the first anniversary of the Birch Mountain mining disaster, was published in the regional magazine Horymír. After graduating from high school in 1896, he went on to the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, where he studied mainly Czech, German and French literature. He spent six of his eight semesters in Bohemia, and the remaining two winter semesters as a scholarship student at the Sorbonne in Paris. He became thoroughly acquainted with French literature, especially poetry, improved his French, and worked as a journalist and translator. In 1900, the Parisian magazine Mercure de France published a study of modern Czech poetry.

He finished his studies at the university in 1900. After that he taught French first at the higher secondary school in Prague, Žižkov, and from September 1901 at the Czechoslovak Trade Academy in Resslova Street. In 1905 he was appointed a full professor; in the same year he married Božena, the eldest of the six daughters of the writer Alois Jirásek, a prominent Czech painter.

In 1908 Jelínek received his doctorate for his dissertation Melancholics (Studies in the History of Sensibility in French Literature). On the basis of this thesis he was offered the opportunity to lecture on Czech literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. After completing the necessary formalities, he left for Paris in the autumn of 1909, and gave his first lecture in January 1910. He re-established contact with his former friends and became a correspondent for the newly founded daily Comoedia, where he informed French readers about cultural life in Bohemia.

Thanks to his perfect knowledge of French, Jelínek contributed to the consolidation of Czech-French cultural relations, and his first translations of poetry were published in the magazine Lumír shortly before the First World War. In 1919, as a member of the foreign commission, he took part in the peace negotiations in Paris, a year later he was appointed a trade union councillor in the Foreign Ministry, in 1925 he worked in Geneva and in the spring of 1926 he became a government representative in Paris. He remained in this position until his retirement.

After translating Baudelaire's Little Poems in Prose and the committee From Contemporary French Poetry from Symbolism to Dadaism, one of the highlights of his translation work, Songs of Sweet France, a committee of French folk poetry from the 15th to the 18th centuries, appeared in 1925. The essence of the success of this translation lies both in Jelinek's intimate knowledge of French and, above all, in his knowledge of Czech song. In addition to poetry, Jelínek also translated prose and drama - among them Stendhal's Cartouche de Parma, Barbusse's Fire, and the plays of Molière and Musset. In 1931, he also published New Songs of Sweet France and a three-volume history of Czech literature in French, covering the time span from the two Manuscripts to Vilém Závada.

4. HŘBITOV

In 1927 Jelinek was stricken with a serious throat ailment, lost his vocal cords after an operation, and eventually his deteriorating health forced him to apply for retirement in June 1931. In the last years of his life, Hanuš Jelínek almost went blind and underwent an eye operation, but he had to dictate part of his book of memories Zahučaly lesy (The Woods Are Noisy). He died at the age of sixty-five on 27 April 1944 in Prague. Although he and his wife are buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery, his father and grandfather - a burgher and gardener who contributed to the creation of the town's orchards - rest in Příbram. Today they are called Jirásek's Orchards.
The book of memoirs was published after his death in 1947.

Unfortunately, what happened to Hanus Jelinek happened to many other important Czech personalities - he is much more recognised abroad than in his homeland. In Příbram, he is known thanks to the vocal-instrumental ensemble Chairé, which has in its repertoire poems set to music from the Songs of Sweet France, the Jan Drda Library has regularly since 1997 announced a competition for young writers called "Příbram of Hanus Jelinek" and in September 2010 a memorial plaque was placed on his birthplace.

She elaborated: Hana Pegová

Photographs: Karolina Ketmanová