Tuesday, May 3, 2011

May 1, Karel Mácha, and God Bless Blesk

May is a big time each year for the Czech poet Karel Mácha. This year pieces of his long poem May showed up in all sorts of unexpected places.

My particular favorite place was the tabloid Blesk. Blesk always spices up it's sensational articles and paparazzi photos with pictures of naked women (ah, Europe). But Blogger doesn't like that too much. So in order to show you what there was to celebrate this May, I had to crop these images very carefully. So here's a bit of Karel Mácha's famous spring poem getting a makeover. Wherever he is, Karel is psyched.


Czech: Byl pozdní večer - první máj - večerní máj - byl lásky čas. Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas, kde borový zaváněl háj.
English: Late evening, on the first of May - The twilit May - the time of love. Meltingly called the turtle-dove,Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay...

And continuing on the back:
Cz: O lásce šeptal tichý mech; květoucí strom lhal lásky žel, svou lásku slavík růži pěl, růžinu jevil vonný vzdech.

En: Whispered of love the mosses frail, The flowering tree as sweetly lied, The rose's fragrant sigh replied To love-songs of the nightingale.

There's a bit more to the actual photos than I can show. But you get the idea I guess. God bless the good people at Blesk for doing something to make poetry exciting.

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