On reading Narrative Poems I, a particular music enters the mind: The echo of a ballad. It doesn’t happen by chance. It is the tragic and mysterious ballad Máj by the Czech romantic poet K. H. Mácha, that impressed Holan with its characters and its ritornello as a wonderful way of telling stories in the popular style. In 1938, the menace of war made Czech poets react and face the Nazi occupation bravely. Holan, in particular, changed his style to be clearer, to fight, and become the one people knew by heart. So the fight for the freedom went together with being closer to people. This tendency is represented by the three poems of this book: První Testament (The First Testament), Terezka Planetová and Cesta mraku (The Trail of a Cloud). The poems contain reflections of the war, with strong epical elements, with regular strophes and very complicated system of rhyme. And the musical scheme is so powerful, beautiful and clear that it enters our ears like the voice of a stream.
Clara Janés
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