MACHA, KAREL HYNEK

born Nov. 16, 1810, Prague died Nov. 5, 1836, Litomerice, Bohemia, Austrian Empire literary artist who is considered the greatest poet of Czech Romanticism. Born of poor parents, Mcha was influenced as a student by the Czech national revival and by English and Polish Romantic literature. After wandering amid ruined castles in the Bohemian countryside and a journey to northern Italy (1834), he took up a legal post in Litomerice in 1836 but soon succumbed to pneumonia, when not quite 26 years old. After schoolboy attempts to write in German, Mcha had begun (1830) to write poems, sketches, and novels in Czech. Practically all his prose works remained unfinished, but they exhibit a mastery not previously attained by writers in the newly revived literary language. His best work is the lyrical epic Mj (1836; May, 1932, 1949). Coldly received at the time, Mj has exercised an almost magical fascination on Czech poets and critics of the 20th century. Mcha's letters and diaries, Dlo Karla Hynka Mchy, edited by K. Jansk (3 vol., 194850), are an essential supplement and background to his poetry.