Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/87
he published his “Modern Russian Poetry”, containing extracts from the most promient contemporary Russian poets in the original texts, with verse translations to correspond. This was followed by a more extensive and ambitious work, the “Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature”, which was completed in May 1918 and published a year later. This book represents an epitome of the whole of Selver’s Slavonic studies, and in remarkably concise form it includes some of the most striking work, both in prose and verse, which has been produced in recent years by Slavonic authors. Proportionally, Czech literature is better represented than any other. Much space in particular is devoted to Březina, Bezruč, Machar and Sova.
All this, however, does not exhaust Selvers’s activities as a translator. It would lead too far to consider them in any great detail, but it may be mentioned that he has also devoted much labour to Scandinavian poetry, and that two volumes containing selections from Obstfelder and J. P. Jacobsen respectively, are at present in the press. He is also preparing for publication a series of European poets including such diverse originals as Verlaine, Nietzsche, Strindberg, Liliencron, Pushkin, Drachmen, Björnson, Verwey, Mickiewicz, Presern, Dučič and Březina, amongst numerous others.
But Selver is not merely a translator. We have referred to his work as a satirical poet, and this is quite extensive. A selection from his verse satires is contained in the volume “Personalities” published in the year 1918. The main objects of his invectives are charlatans and materialists. This phase of his activity is derived in part from the influence of Byron and Browning, as far as form and style are concerned. On the one hand, poems in ottava rima written with the directness and energy which are so characteristic of “Don Juan”; on the other, blank verse poems with the rugged, condensed and slightly archaic phraseology found especially in Browning’s dramatic monologues. Other poems, again, recall the ballades of Laurent Tailhade. But in all these cases, it is only in more or less external features that these similarities can be observed. Subject-matter and treatment are altogether individual and distinctive.
Throughout his connection with “The New Age” Selver has been extensively occupied in literary criticism. For some time he contributed regular monthly articles on contemporary foreign literature. Later, he conducted the reviews of modern English poetry. More recently, he has begun to write speculatively on the theoretical principles of art and aesthetics. More especially he has utilised his long period as a translator to write a close critical study of the artistic processes involved in the translation of poetry. This study, which is based on the assumption that the translation of poetry is a branch of artistic creation, and is illustrated with copious examples derived from the most diverse sources, will probably be reprinted in volume form.
The prose style of these critical works is limpid and also conversational. It is prompted by Selver’s conviction that the principles of arts are capable of being understood in their broad outlines by the average reader, and that they therefore need not be obscured by the employment of philosophical terminology.
Selver’s work as a critic has not been confined to “The New Age”. He has also written for “The Athenaeum”. “Times Literary Supplement”, “The Poetry Review” (articles on modern Czech poetry and on Březina), “The Quest” (on Březina), “Today”, “The New Europe” etc. During the war he contributed articles on Czech literature to “La Nation Tchèque”.
There are still other aspects of Selver’s literary activities. His satires in prose, for instance, form a natural complement to those in verse. And he has written lyric poetry in which elegiac moods predominate. But these are matters which concern the future more than the present.
Comparison between Czechoslovakia and Poland is striking. Czechoslovaks start out with a public debt of 15 billion crowns, Poles with 150 billion; per capita indebtedness is 1000 and 5000 crowns respectively. The Czechoslovak Republic has a deficiency for 1919 of five billion crowns, Poland of 30 billion; one hundred Czechoslovak crowns costs now $1.80, one hundred Polish marks $1.00. A kilogram of white flour costs in Bohemia 1.70 K, in Poland from 10 to 20 K; a suit clothes in Prague costs from 400 to 800 K, in Warsaw 2000.
Several important publications have recently published articles about Czechoslovaks, all very complimentary; thus the Country Gentleman, the Etude and the Yale Review.