Karel Jaromír Erben

A Bouquet: Of Czech Folktales

Trans. Marcela Sulak
A Bouquet: Of Czech Folktales A Bouquet: Of Czech Folktales
Twisted Spoon Press, 2012, 174 pp
Language: English
Poetry

Erben compiled and wrote A Bouquet based on his studies of Slavic folklore. First published in 1853, it is dotted with murder and mayhem : graves opening and the dead walking the earth, the animate becoming the inanimate and vice versa, ogres and monsters of lake and wood, human transformations reminiscent of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Written as ballads, Marcela Sulak’s new translation perfectly captures their cadence and rhythm in an English that is fresh and energetic. Through the years A Bouquet has come to be regarded as a masterpiece and wellspring of inspiration to artists of all stripes, including Antonín Dvořák, who composed a series of symphonic poems to some of these tales. Of the many illustrators who have contributed to the various editions that have appeared over the past century and a half, Alén Diviš’s artwork is generally considered the most powerful. This edition also includes Erben’s own notes explaining the origins of many of these tales.

 

About the author

Karel Jaromír Erben was born on November 7, 1811, in Miletín. After attending gymnasium in Hradec Králové, he studied history and law at university in Prague and later was a member of the Bohemian Society of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and served as archivist for the National Museum and later for the City of Prague. Having befriended Karel Hynek Mácha, Erben began to record his dreams, but eventually he became more fascinated with the mysteries contained in folklore and the original myth – as it was thought – hidden in its fragmentary nature. Influenced by the Brothers Grimm and the burgeoning study in Europe of folk literature, he thus began to collect (as well as translate those not originally in Czech) more than 2,200 Slavic fairy tales, folk songs, and legends, drawing on these to compile, in verse form, his most famous book, A Bouquet of Folktales (Kytice z pověstí národních), first published in 1853. He produced as well a collection of Czech fairy tales (published posthumously) and a five-volume compendium of Czech folk songs and nursery rhymes. And in 1869 he published his seminal Selected Folktales and Legends from Other Slavic Branches. Erben died in Prague on November 21, 1870.

Twisted Spoon Press, 2012, 174 pp
Language: English