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Books: XI. student scientific conference of the Department of Czech Language and Literature: March 14, 2019

XI. Student Scientific Conference of the Czech Language and Literature Department
Location: Czech Republic

Author(s): Kateÿina Tesaÿová

Title: Motifs of death in the poetic works of Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice and JH Krchovský

Motifs of death in the poetic works of Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice and JH Krchovský
URL: https://www.ceeol.com/search/chapter-detail?id=1102486
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Motifs of death in the poetic works of Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice

and JH Krchovský

Kateÿina Tesaÿová

Keywords: poetic debuts, motifs of death, Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice, JH Krchovský, Walled windows, Nights after which

he doesn't come in the morning

Annotation: The contribution sets itself the task of affecting the diversity of forms and forms of death motifs in the early works of two Czech

poets, creating in different historical periods, which connect on the one hand the age of youth and on the other

motive of death. The poetic debut Walled Windows (1894) will be subjected to a motivic analysis in chronological order

Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice and Nights After which Morning Does Not Come (1991) by JH Krchovský.

Reflecting on the limitations of the human subject's life and realizing his inevitable sleep

into the arms of death is an elementary question affecting every individual regardless of the historical period,

in which he lives. The perception of the consciousness of finitude and coping with it logically developed and transformed,

which is also amply documented by literary texts, which on the one hand reflect contemporary ideas about death,

they point to the development of a philosophical and artistic understanding of the issue and, on the other hand, reveal

the private space of the author's suggestive experience and experiences that stimulated a special rendering

motives of death, which are taken into account in this text .

The motive, referring to the inevitable sleep of life, exposes the suggestive feelings of a person,

it unabashedly reveals sharpened character traits and exposes his innermost self. Death is not charmed

by far the dominant poets already sensing her approaching steps. Death has its unforgetables

representation in the works of young poets. The contribution aims to bring insight into the typology of motifs

of death in the poetic works of two authors working in different eras, whose work (or her

considerable part) the confrontation with the reality of death was symptomatically reflected.

Jiÿí Karásek from Lvovice entered the field of poetry with the decadent collection Zazdÿná okna

(1894). Its very name draws us into a dark (gloomy) space, forgotten by time, in which

we are gripped by anxious feelings of fear and loneliness. Preoccupation and fascination with the convergent sleep of life

of the human subject permeates the entire collection. Death here takes on the nature of an inevitable end, which

inexorably zooms in. Death like a "black drapery" covers the last signs of life. In the poem In

in memoriam, the lyrical subject feels the unyielding "claws" of death, which slowly squeeze him in an embrace:

"And it seems to me that it burrows into my body / The same hideous worm that swells into the shroud / And cracking Death

clothes me , / And that the softness of my hair, my friend, / Just like yours is already slowly growing". Death is

among other things also anticipated (expected) in the poem Miserere: "When finally Death extinguishes life in blood

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nachu, / My mother, we will merge, all in the vain of reconciliation, / Shadow in shadow we will go and mingle in the dust".

In the poem Krajina, the lyrical subject death anxiously apostrophizes: "I wanted to shout: Death! Death!

Death! / However, there was silence around – silence around…”.

The decadent poet ostentatiously turns away from the generally valid value criteria and ideas of the former society: he

opposes life to dreams, to active activity to fatigue and melancholy. He often finds beauty

in ugliness, for this reason we identify in decadent poetry so many motifs of decay and decay,

by which the poet emphasizes the deep decay of the shallow society, as stated by Med (2006: 50–51). Death

the accompanying motif of smoldering appears thickly in Walled Windows , sometimes in a crudely naturalistic manner

form.

Although human decay is a natural consequence of death, the descriptions of decay in the poems are gradual

in morbid images full of disgust. The poem In memoriam then contains some of the most evocative

smoldering motifs . The poet describes the decaying body of his friend , describes the once sharp smell of his hair, whose

beauty disappears irretrievably "in the terrible grave" . The contrast between the beautiful and the ugly is striking here. Body,

which was beautiful during life, the hair which was soft, the poet contrasts with decay which

he signs his friend's corpse in all its ugliness: " The beauty of your soft hair, my friend, / Now in the grave

slowly, slowly melts away in horror, / And the cracking, swollen shroud / Hides your rotting and disgusting body.”

The atmosphere of decay is often induced by sensory perception - smell. As if the smell

of decomposing bodies full of "lime smell" wafted through the entire collection. Rot affects both humans and

inanimate entities: "Everything has become flesh, virtue, passion, sin". In the poem Rozklad, which is already named explicitly

refers to posthumous ruin, everything is subject to decay, even the sun: "And the stench of decay is

everywhere, / Destruction pours its decaying poisons on everything, / Even the sun burns so sultry red”. lyric subject,

oscillating on the border between dream and wakefulness, in the poem Dream asks itself: "Am I alive or dead?". A gloomy dream

full of vanity brings him closer to the "bitter smell" of death. In darkened thoughts, springing from the depths

interior, and the images of ancient times are mixed with the vanishing and the long-vanished: "And I feel the mold that all

covers, / And the air that the dead breathe”. Naturalistic descriptions of the dying body also appear

in the poem Sickness: "The corrupted blood hisses , pours into the veins, / Which shrivel and dry in the parched flesh".

The poet also evokes the atmosphere of the decaying body with the help of color perceptions. Lyrical

the subject often finds himself in the space of the cemetery – in a silent space, full of ruin and foggy

memories. The poem Dead Hands is dominated by the color purple, which points to lifeless, rotting hands –

toenails . "Those hands, dead, cold and white / Hard fingers dig into my body. / I see them in fevers at nighttime / With purple

nails around the edge.; O hands, hands, long rotted in the grave”. Agonic or

the post-mortem state of bodies is widely associated with white, a sickly unhealthy color, in the poems. In the poem

Miserere's lyrical subject apostrophizes the dead of cemeteries, mistress and lover, smoldering father and brother,

he "wants to find the extinguished heat" of their visions, but instead finds only the omnipresent desolation of bloated bodies:

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"O dead cemeteries, into which the moon shines, / Being lilled with paleness as drunk, / rustling, / You in the crypts

smoldering, which shines white, / How the silvery vapor lightly surrounds them." The white fangs of the dead "and in the teeth

grins and laughter" evoke faded bony bodies, laid in "smelly and slimy beds" - graves.

In Rondela's poem, the dead rest "In the mold of closed graves." With strong colorful images, literally

the poem Roses of the Cemetery overflows, in which the colors white (dying and forgetting), pink (dead love), yellow (silence and piety)

and red (blood and curse) are combined: "O bloody blood of the roses of the cemetery! Flowers

cursed, poisoned / by the mystery of coffins, flowers sprouting from the rotting bodies of suicides, / oh bloody roses

cemeteries".

Everything is immobilized - deadened. A dead silence spreads through the poems . The air is stuffy and his

heaviness feeds the all-embracing dead void. The restlessness of the omnipresent awareness of mortality is consuming

everything around. " Gloomy Death's Victory Chant" echoes mournfully . The word dead is in the collection

repeated several times, it evokes the atmosphere of a sick world, which in agony awaits an early end.

Again, the accented word dead points to the all-encompassing ruin of death. In the poem Landscape in the soul

has an anaphoric function: “And the sun shines dead; Neither the traffic, nor the life of the wheels / In the cold space; All

dead, dead wheels; And again immobility / Into the desert enters, / And everything is dead / As in sleep / For thousands of years”.

The feeling of bygone stiffness is evoked in many poems by images of landscapes and their harrowing transformations.

In Narkosa's poem "It is dead everywhere". From the green grasses and bright flowers , death has sucked life - transformed

is " sick in whiteness". It evokes the idea of a quiet, sunny landscape, consisting in the embrace of emptiness and silence

poem The Horrible Ship: “On dead waters a deep calm. / In the darkened sky a moon shield / Without luster,

colorless, sad and mute”. Silence also extends over the "dead plain" in the poem Kalný západ, where

in the suffocating silence , only the croaks of frogs resound:

it drags through solidified and condensed air ”.

The mysterious silent landscape is most clearly pointed out in the poems Landscape and Siesta Music:

"And the way uncertain and silent / And dead, melted in the night". In the second mentioned poem, "The region died out all around."

How dead. No traffic anywhere. / Everything is subject to silence”. The feeling of immobility and stiffness is also evident from the motif

death's eyes, whose burning stares in dreams frighten and disturb sleep: "do not be jealous of the eyes that

terrifies, motionless, numb, in terror / with wide and shy eyes! Through the eyes of those who fought".

The lyrical subject once again finds himself in the space of the cemetery - a place where the smell of bodies that have frozen

like the wax of burned-out cemetery candles. Where once there was life, now destruction is rampant. There wasn't any left

monuments - the voice of the soul has fallen silent and the bodies are rotting somewhere deep in damp graves; only pain comes to mind

burdened questions: “Where are the dancers, where are their smiles? Where are women's breasts, / and where are their sins?

A long time ago, a long time ago / sad and silent".

An important motif of the collection is also dying - the state between being and not being. The mind of the sick, who

he dies "in a faint premonition of the coming agony", describes the poem Illness. Ill see the last sunset,

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which flooded the window panes with "a frosty sadness of violet vapors". Death already lies in wait for the sufferer, it torments him. To

in the dark void, only the beating of the hands of the clock, whose warning strikes in anticipation of the approaching

at the end it sounds shrill : "Night. Sight shrouded in darkness, that I am dying, dreaming / In a faint premonition of the next

agony. / The voice of the clock beats hard into the darkness, / Which trembles under the sound of metal". The voice of the clock

only the hissing of the corrupt blood of the dying drowns out: "The last sound catches the ear: / The corrupt blood hisses ,

infused in his veins".

The lyrical subject accepts the bitter awareness of the grim reality of his own existence, but often with bitterness or

sadness. Death ends everything for him . After her there is nothing left - only ruin and after time oblivion will come,

which manifests , for example, the poem Guitar: "And I will die again and turn into dust, Then into another body and soul

I'll hide mine. / All will disappear forever – in silent memories”. The cold warns of the nearness of death ,

which permeates the landscape or the dying body's shame. In the poem My Mother, dying is associated with

through the cold autumn landscape, which awaits the blow of the deadly winter, when everything will die of frost: "I feel the cold

stubble, I know, I will not end in glory, / As the field in the autumn harvest dies a golden death. // There will be nothing left of me”.

In the poem Requiem, the lyrical subject returns to the past. He remembers his brother dying, who is pale

he lies limp "on the bed of destruction, / on the bed of ruin." His already apathetic body becomes ashamed, which the poet

demonstrates in the image of a cold forehead and frosty limbs. The atmosphere of death is always gloomy in poems.

It is evoked by the motifs of a black gloomy night, gloomy sadness and dark spaces - everything sinks in Karásk

in the shadows.

The poetic debut of JH Krchovský is Nights, after which the morning does not come (1991). It is in the collection

noticeable pronounced decadent stylization including the characteristic motifs of death, loneliness, distress, dream,

erotica, etc. Decadence from the end of the nineteenth century is often mentioned as a source of inspiration

Krchovsky's poems. Although the link between decadence and the poet's work is undeniable,

we also find differences. For example, in the perception of presence; Med (2006: 29–30) explains the diversion

decadents from the time in which they lived, as follows: "[…] decadent art did not sufficiently open itself to the future,

it did not anticipate development, but fixed its gaze on past values and actions that they could not activate

contemporary society and individuals." In this context, Stanÿk (1999: 21) points to a shift

Krchovský's poetry, because the present is reflected in his texts , the poems resonate with their time

actuality and the corresponding contemporary anchoring of the language, which is evidenced, for example, by this eight-verse: "PEOPLE,

LIGHT UP ALL THE LIGHTS / let your faces shine! / people, you beautiful people / angels

people of Prague / my greetings to you! / – Tempt and put out / otherwise I will hit you / or kick you in the head!”

Commonly used vulgarisms and words in general Czech also refer to the current use of the language :

"and the son of darkness / the moronic moon / lies down in the pram".

Among the decadents, we also find a constellation of motifs of decay and extinction, with which they emphasize the deep

company decline . In the collection Nights after which morning does not come, the lyrical subject is not only disgusted

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the surrounding world, but also oneself. Although the approaches to death differ in individual poems, they are connected

difficult reflections related to the polarity of life and death, connected with the search for the meaning of one's being. View

it is focused one-way on the experience of the I of the lyrical hero, to whom everything is subordinated. Surrounding societies him

she is not interested - she is not able to answer the burdensome question of his existence. Motives of extinction are more like that

expressing an inner fear of death and a tense search for one's own existence. The lyrical subject wonders whether everything

ends, continues, or begins with death: "BEHIND DEATH A DOT, COLON, OR QUESTION MARK... / creation, life, extinction...

End or re-creation? / I don't know the answer; I don't want to know her

not yet / – if I die, I lose my life! No, he will lose me..." The poet also raises the question of whether he is

possible to put an equal word between the words exist and live :

after death / so you're still not alive!”.

The lyrical subject literally communicates with death - he plays with the idea of suicide, in which he describes it

the poet often goes into morbid details. We find such an image of potential suicide

in the poems from the collection Bestial Tenderness: "IF I WANT TO DISAPPEAR WITHOUT A TRACE / I will not drown in the river / -

lay my skin lazily / at the bottom of a tub of acid / while I take a bath / think and tame

fear: / – how, when I'm devoured / will I then pull the plug out of the bath? / I'll help myself with mechanics! / – I will connect

with the wire of a stopper with a handle / and when someone grabs the handle / they will bury me even without gravediggers". A morbid vision

dead, etched by acid, is seemingly belittled and ironized - beneath the comical skin

because they hide painful dramas: " my whole face will hurt / from laughter and from helplessness..." On this

most of Krchovský's poems are built on this principle , in which the tragic and the comic constantly collide

blends. We find a similar approach to life in the following quatrain: "I only publish today

screams / talking already offends me / I'm going to the bridge to drink from the river / I'm thirsty , even weights..." Lyrical subject

he notes that he is thirsty, that is, one of the physiological drives that urges him to preserve life,

however, at the end of the poem , he laconically adds that he also has a weight that would end his life. Thoughts

the lyrical hero oscillates almost continuously between life and death - life is painful for him

a paradox.

We also find the characteristic divisiveness of the lyrical subject in connection with death.

In several poems we identify a lyrical subject who finds himself in the position of both a murderer and a suicide:

"NO, I'M NOT THAT POOR YET / I'd be afraid of my death / and yet I'm not going to turn myself in /

that today I want to kill a man / and send him floating down the rivers / – that would only be a traitor to myself... / however

the dead man whom I now see in Svratka / when I call him by my name / roars: I am not your corpse! /

and with a smile he continues to sail the Svratka / and I'd rather go home by a shortcut / - after all, he must think of me as an ox!'

The mind of the lyrical subject is often chaotic. By uttering a thought, one confirms its truth,

but immediately negates it. The poet compares the sleep of the child inside the mother's womb to the sleep of the dead

in the grave; so is there a dividing line between life and death? "I do not desire, as at other times, to fall asleep forever /

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and I do not claim as before ( time changes me too) / that the perfect horror of suicide / lies in its

unrealization / I just want to fall asleep and sleep sweetly / and wake up tomorrow; glad to be woken up by thrushes / want

sleep, sleep sweetly like a child in its mother / or like a dead man in the grave, - what a difference..." Here Krchovský

poses a chilling question - does the horror of suicide lie in the impossibility of committing it? It is not easy to say

that death ends life , even if the lyrical subject would like it to - "just fall asleep"? Death is no longer a certainty

which frees a person from a bitter and pain -laden life. It is "just" a step towards the eternal

existence - bitter to existence.

In the context of Christian belief , eternal life means salvation and hope, it is associated with the positive

emotions. For the lyrical subject, however, it is not a desired existence, as it is in Christianity, it is a vision

quite pessimistic: "closer to death than old age / closer to a coffin than a cradle / closer to decay than

fusion of skulls / but all the closer to escape... / is life really 'unique'?! / maybe there won't be more of them? / one is enough for

me / – an evil weasel / in my ruined chicken coop!”. The anxious question suggests that the vision

of the next (eternal) life means only further hardship for the lyrical subject - an even deeper dive into

depression, because even after death, more pain and suffering awaits a person . Fear of the future is also reflected

in the poem from Spring Elegies: “why do you cry, little larva? / – he's scared, mom answers... / – that's right

I'm in a mask and in a weird costume?! / the future, he fears it / until his sheets are wet!” In the poem

from Beastly Tenderness, the basic need of every person who thinks about his death rises to the surface -

leave something behind . Here, with exaggeration, the poet reflects on what is often accepted in contemporary society

the vision that life ends with death (and therefore should be enjoyed): “Anything to say? – What and to whom?! / you idiot

laugh at it! / – at the end when you are out of breath / everyone's life will end with you!”

The name of the collection Nights, after which the morning does not come, is quite significant , because from the point of view of the time of day

the poems are densely set in the night or in the interface between night and day, when it is "time to close pubs

and opening graves". Krchovský's verses seem to be constantly covered with a black veil, because "from

from morning to night everywhere is gloom”. The lyrical subject often finds himself "in a dark abode", tossed about

with bitter feelings of anxiety: "I can't help but keep shouting into the night: / where am I, am I here? / am here, / or

there or over there behind the wall?" Night time is often associated with visions of death or with questions directed towards it:

"EVEN TODAY AT NIGHT WHEN I RETURN / I walk cautiously down the street / step by step I sneak

to the door / – I'm afraid when I lift the buttonhole / that someone with a long needle / has just waited for the moment

appropriate / when I return, and now it stabs me / that needle with an eye in my head / it stops at the skull..." With the night

sleep and the re-vision of death are also connected : "I fall asleep, a dream comes over me / I fall asleep, swinging in the electric

chairs".

The motif of night and early morning is also closely connected in the poems with the space associated with death,

most often with a cemetery. In one poem from the collection My Skull's Shadow, the place of the last "rest" has a strong effect

on the sense of smell: " FRESHLY DIGGED CLAY SMELLS INTO THE NIGHT / it's probably dawn,

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the song of the nightingales dies down …” The freshly dug dirt can be considered as an allusion to the grave that is waiting for

the deceased. Quite emblematically, the title of the Urn Walk collection refers to the area of the cemetery

I'm defending. On an autumn morning, the lyrical subject crawls through "wet leaves / across the tombs in Olšany".

Other times he goes to the cemetery in the early evening to instill in himself what it means not to live.

In the poem I WAS SO SAD TODAY... the fear of death is evident, especially in

verses, where the lyrical subject anxiously waits to see if the snowflakes will feel the warmth of his body in his hair

dissolves and proves that his body shows signs of life, or on his dead cold body

does not dissolve, which would mean that he is dead: "I do not want to leave, I stand before the gate /

and I look with fear at the flakes in my hair / if they will melt in them, or if they will stay..." In the end

the voice of the gravedigger is heard in the poem , calling him to leave with the words: "the dead want to sleep too" -

is leaving, a pressing question comes to mind: "for God's sake, where to?!" / – I return to the alley of cemeteries

trees". Rarely, the lyrical subject finds himself in another space, intrinsically connected with death, in

incinerator: "it destroys us not to find out / who is inside and who is outside... / in an abandoned incinerator".

We can state that we find recurring motifs, even if some of them are affected by time

and subjective experiences of the author transformed. In Walled Windows , death has a constant nature

accented and inevitable end. The poet reflects it through the prism of ruin and unceasing

vanities, which is helped by setting the poems in the space of the cemetery and the rich symbolism representing

death. Decay and dying represent the dominant motifs associated with the terminality of human life . On

the all-embracing barren emptiness is also highlighted by abundant evocations of death and stiffness, evoked images

metamorphosed landscapes. The nights after which the morning does not come bring a somewhat different view of

the finitude of human existence. Unlike Walled Windows, the motifs of decay and dying do not dominate the collection.

However, the space of the cemetery similarly emerges from the poems , which takes on the nature of a "reminder" of

convergent direction of life.

Literature
KARÁSEK ZE LVOVIC, J. (1921) Walled windows. Prague: Otakar Štorch Marien. KRCHOVSKY,

JH (1997) Nights that never come in the morning. Brno: Host.

MED, J. (2006) From skepticism to hope: studies and reflections on Czech literature. Dawns: Trinitas.

STANÿK, J. (1999) Classic. Shape, No. 7.

Contact information:

M.Sc. Kateÿina Tesaÿová

tesarova.ka@seznam.cz

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