Editing Karel Hynek Mácha (section)

== Works ==
[[File:Original edition of "Máj", by Karel Hynek Mácha (1836).png|thumb|160px|Original edition of ''Máj'' (1836)]]
[[File:Karel Hynek Macha statue.jpeg|thumb|left|220px|Statue of Karel Hynek Mácha in Petřín Park, Prague]]
His lyrical epic poem ''[[Máj]]'' (''May''), published in 1836 shortly before his death, was judged by his contemporaries as confusing, too individualistic, and not in harmony with the national ideas.<ref name="may">Marcela Sulak, "Introduction," in {{Cite book|last = Mácha|first = Karel Hynek|others=Marcela Sulak (trans.)|title = May|publisher=Twisted Spoon Press|year = 2005|location = Prague|pages = 7–18|isbn = 80-86264-22-X}}</ref> Czech playwright [[Josef Kajetán Tyl]] even wrote a parody of Mácha's style, "Rozervanec" (The Chaotic). "Máj" was rejected by publishers, and was published by a vanity press at Mácha's own expense, not long before his early death. [[Josef Bohuslav Foerster]] set May for choir and orchestra as his Op.159.

Mácha's genius was discovered and glorified much later by the poets and novelists of the 1850s (e.g., [[Jan Neruda]], [[Vítězslav Hálek]], and [[Karolina Světlá]]) and "Máj" is now regarded as the classic work of Czech [[Romanticism]] and is considered one of the best Czech poems ever written.<ref>{{cite web |title=Karel Hynek Mácha |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karel-Hynek-Macha |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. |access-date=28 January 2020}}</ref> It contains forebodings of many of the tendencies of 20th-century literature: existentialism, alienation, isolation, surrealism, and so on.

Mácha also authored a collection of autobiographical sketches titled ''Pictures From My Life'', the 1835–36 novel ''[[Cikáni]]'' (Gypsies),<ref>Although the text of the novel ''Cikáni'' has been usually attributed to K.H. Mácha, there is a widespread hypothesis that its final shape was substantially influenced by his friend K. Sabina. See:
Zenkov A.V., Mistecky M. The Romantic Clash: Influence of Karel Sabina over Macha’s Cikani from the Perspective of the Numerals Usage Statistics, Glottometrics. 2019, Vol. 46, pp. 12–28.
https://www.ram-verlag.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/g46zeit.pdf</ref> and several individual poems, as well as a journal in which, among other things, he detailed his sexual encounters with Šomková.<ref name="may" /> The ''[[Travel to Italy (Mácha)|Diary of Travel to Italy]]'' describes his journey to [[Venice]], [[Trieste]], and [[Ljubljana]] (where he met the [[Slovenes|Slovene]] national poet [[France Prešeren]]) in 1834. The ''[[Diary of 1835 (Mácha)|Secret Diary]]'' describes his daily life in autumn 1835 with cipher passages concerning his relationship with Eleonora Šomková.<ref>Karel Hynek Mácha: Deníky. Zápisníky. Korespondence. Prague 1929</ref>