Anthony Burger
on translating Václav Jaromír Picek
I am drawn to poems partly because of their meaning and partly because of the skill it takes to follow rules in making them. I found Picek’s piece while looking for Czech poetry online, and appreciated the moment it described as well as the rhyme scheme it maintained. I therefore chose to approximate the structure of the poem as best I could in my translation. Naturally, translating to maintain both meaning and rhyme is a balancing act, and leads to sacrifices on certain counts.
In this poem, the last two lines were the hardest to translate: “A co anděl míroplodný / Duši nad hvězdy provází.” These lines describe an angel that brings peace and leads the soul above the stars. The constraints of rhyming, however, led me to take poetic license and choose a slightly strange word order.
Another difficult aspect was the somewhat archaic language used. The poem was published in 1851, and as such, much of the language now sounds old-fashioned to a modern reader. I did not attempt to imitate this use of language, as the poem was written in the 1850s for an audience in the 1850s, however a translator could just as easily have decided to attempt to simulate old-fashioned English, as though a reader were reading an 1850s poem in English and looking back from the modern day.
This poem was the first translation I attempted from Czech into English, and it was a fun challenge. I hope that my translation brings the reader a sense of peace unbroken by any liberties I have taken.
about the author
Václav Jaromír Picek (1812-1869) was a Czech poet in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, known primarily for the inclusion of his poems in a few patriotic songs, including the lyrics to the song “Čechy krásné, Čechy mé” (“Beautiful Bohemia, My Bohemia”). Professionally, he also had a career as a civil servant and judge. He was part of the early Romantic literary movement in the region, and drew inspiration from growing nationalism as well as from other poets of the time. His poems are largely forgotten today, and he is often considered to be a lesser follower of František Ladislav Čelakovský.
Picek was born in the Austrian Empire in 1812, the son of a farmer. He studied philosophy and law in Prague until 1938, and became the head of the Liblín estate in 1841. He joined the civil service as a lawyer in 1849, and was the editor of the Prague newspaper from 1850-1852. He later worked as a civil servant in Smíchov and Příbram. In his personal life, Picek supported nationalism and education, and often donated to libraries. He became a district judge in Nový Venátky in 1868, and died there in 1869.
about the translator
Anthony Burger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and has a soft spot for Slavic languages. He grew up speaking Czech at home, but never significantly interacted with Czech literature until college. After taking a course on German literature at Penn and discovering the joy of poetry, he started looking for poems in Czech online — Anthony felt that he was long overdue in exploring the literature of his second homeland. Picek’s poem about a skull in a graveyard reminds him of my grandmother’s small town, where the graveyard is indeed the home of many flowers, and quite honestly a quaint place to walk around. Fortunately, in all the times he's visited, he's never come across a human skull there.
photo by Ryan Hardy
