Vrchlický, Jaroslav°
VRCHLICKÝ, JAROSLAV°
VRCHLICKÝ, JAROSLAV °, pseudonym of Emil Frída (1853–1912), Czech poet, playwright, and translator. Vrchlický was born in Louny, Bohemia. The most prolific and perhaps the greatest Czech writer of the 19th century, he wrote more than 160 books, and was professor of literature at the Czech University of Prague. Vrchlický was interested in Judaism and Jewish literature (Torah, Talmud) from his earliest years; at least a hundred of his poems and three of his plays are based on Jewish themes.
One of Vrchlický's greatest works is his dramatic 400-page poem Bar Kochba (1897). This was translated into German, as was his comedy Rabínská moudrost ("Rabbinic Wisdom," 1886), based on the life of R. *Judah Loew of Prague. Samson is the hero of a dramatic Trilogie o Simsonovi (1901), one part of which was set to music by J.B. Foerster. He translated many important poetic works from French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, and Portuguese into Czech. Vrchlický also translated into Czech many poems on Jewish themes by great foreign authors. In addition to *Byron's Hebrew Melodies, Vrchlický published translations of poems by *Judah Halevi and Ibn *Gabirol, and Morris *Rosenfeld's Songs of the Ghetto. To Rosenfeld he also dedicated two poems and an essay, Básník žargonu ("The Poet of Jargon," 1906). Vrchlický's Czech translations of the Hebrew poets were based on Selig Heller's German renderings, those from Rosenfeld's Yiddish on the English version by Leo Wiener. Vrchlický's Bar Kochba was translated into Hebrew by Abraham *Levinson. For a time, Vrchlický was a member of the Austrian parliament's Upper House. While practically all histories of Czech literature written before World War ii state that Vrchlický was of Jewish origin on his father's side, later studies reject this claim and the formerly accepted theory of Vrchlický's Jewishness seems now to be at least disputable.
bibliography:
F.X. Šalda, Duše a dílo (1913); F.V. Krejčí, Jaroslav Vrchlický (1913); Weingart, in: Sborník společnosti Jaroslava Vrchlického (1917); O. Donath, Židé a židovství v české literatuře 19. století (1923); P. Váša and A. Gregor, Katechismus dějin české literatury (1925). add. bibliography: A. Mikulášek et al., Literatura s hvězdou Davidovou, vol. 1 (1998); J. Hrabák, Dějiny české literatury iii (1961); Slovník českých spisovatelů (2000).
[Avigdor Dagan]