Confiteor – Zde by mly kvst re… Machar Svatopluk Josef (2012)

This Czech-language volume brings together Josef Svatopluk Machars first collection, Confiteor (1887), which caused one of the most turbulent scandals in the history of Czech literature, and the collection of verse stories Zde by mly kvst re (1894). Machars poetic work stands at the foundations of modern Czech poetry. The factual realism, provocative irony and pronounced individualism of his verse reject the ideals of the Ruch and Lumr generations and establish a new poetic style. The verse stories portray women who become victims of hypocrisy and conventional morality, making Machar appear, from todays perspective, as a precursor of gender criticism of bourgeois society.