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Jan Neruda

Jan (Nepomuk) Neruda (born July 9, 1834 in Prague, and died in Austria on August 22, 1891) was a Bohemian journalist and writer.



Life Neruda was born in the Lesser Side of Prague, in the steep Sporner Street at number 233/47 in the House of the Two Suns, as the son of a small merchant. His mother Barbora Nerudová (1795–1869) was a long-time housekeeper of the famous geologist Joachim Barrande, after whom the Barrandov district is named. Sporner Street was later renamed Nerudova Street after him. Jan Neruda spent almost his entire life there, with interruptions. Although he came from a modest background, he graduated from an academic high school in 1845 and studied for a few semesters at the philosophical faculty of Charles University in Prague, where he worked temporarily as a teacher and for newspapers. From 1856 he worked for the German-language daily newspaper from Bohemia, from 1865 to 1891 he was editor of the important liberal Czech newspaper Národní listy, later at Bilder der Heimat (Obrazy domova) and der Zeit (Čas). He co-founded the literary magazines Květy and Lumír and the poetry series Poetické besedy. Since the late 1950s he had been at the center of Czech cultural life, but in the 1980s, after becoming seriously ill, he became increasingly isolated and faced economic difficulties.


Over the course of his life, Jan Neruda wrote more than 2,000 editorials, published poems, dramas, travelogues and art reviews, sympathized with the Májovci artist group, felt connected to the task of Czech national rebirth and appreciated the novels of his contemporary Jules Verne. In 1871, he was called a traitor to the nation by unknown institutions, left Prague and traveled through other countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, came to Vienna and Graz and, according to him, found himself in Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Egypt . his travel reports from this period, which provide an interesting testimony to his life and contemporary society.


Jan Neruda remained unmarried, but dedicated many of his love poems to his first love, Anna Holinová. Another love was the married writer Karolína Světlá, whom he described as an ideal woman. His third wife, whom he loved and to whom he dedicated several of his publications, was Terezie Marie Macháčková (1847–1863), daughter of the civil servant and politician Josef Macháček, who died after a brief acquaintance. At the age of 50, he is said to have fallen in love with a young girl named Božena.


Because Neruda felt misunderstood all his life, he developed a negative attitude towards his fellow human beings, which was reinforced by a serious illness. He had alcohol problems and lived in difficult economic circumstances all his life.


Poverty is a recurring motif in all of Jan Neruda's publications. Nostalgic transfiguring elements alternate with the feeling of oppression, alienation and being buried alive. From the 1860s onwards he published several anti-Jewish texts, and in the publication The Fear of Judaism (Pro strach židovský) (1869), which was based on Richard Wagner's essay Judaism in Music, Neruda accused the Jews of being criminals because of their alleged affinity with money, a dangerous power that threatened the entire world, called on the peoples to unite more closely against this 'danger' (especially economic) and advocated 'emancipation away from Judaism'.


Chilean Nobel Prize winner for literature Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basualto chose the surname of his pseudonym Pablo Neruda in memory of Jan Neruda.

 

Jan Neruda introduced a special kind of realism to Czech literature of the 19th century. He expressed his confident journalistic commitment – ​​in a very modern and universal way – with the words: "Above all, it is necessary that we learn to understand people, that we needs, their joys and sufferings. So above all we need faithful stories from life, photographs of people from all walks of life, collections of true life stories." examples of an unimaginable and real experience.”



Working (overview)

  • Neruda wrote poems, travel stories, ballads, novels, art reviews, but also failed plays. As collected texts, last published by the Institute of Czech Literature and Literary Studies at Charles University in Prague in 49 volumes, from 1950. Not available in bookstores.

  • Cemetery flowers. Poems in Czech, 1858.

  • As a journalist, Jan Neruda is also known as the inventor of the Bohemian-Czech feature film section. In 1863 he brought Jules Verne's book Five Weeks in a Balloon from Paris. He would have considered it a curiosity worth sharing and translated it under the pseudonym J. Drn.

  • Photos from old Prague, Czech Republic: Arabesky a Jiné. 1864, German 1883/84, current edition: Stories from Old Prague, Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-15-008770-8, translated by Josef Mühlberger and Hans Gärtner.

  • Lesser Town Stories, Czech: Povídky malostranské 1877, German 1885; current edition translated by Franz Jurenka, Vitalis, Furth im Wald 2005, ISBN 3-89919-016-5. With an afterword by Hugo Rokyta and illustrations by Karel Hruška. The Lesser Town Stories are Jan Neruda's best-known publication. Based on his memories, he drew a picture of the Small Town of Prague before the Slav Congress and the Prague Pentecostal Uprising from June 2 to 19, 1848, which he experienced as a 14-year-old and describes the life of the lower middle class. class between the palaces and the backyards, and humorously describes them Characteristics, criticizes the local life of feudalism and provides insight into the beginnings of pan-Slavism.

  • Offensive and insulting jokes, in Czech, 1877.

  • Cosmic songs, in Czech, inspired by reading the writer Jules Verne, 1878.

  • Good Friday Songs, in Czech, 1896.

  • The Dogs of Constantinople: Travel Photos, DVA Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-05254-4, translated by Christa Rothmeier (Czech Library).


Some of his books contain illustrations by the very famous Czech illustrator Adolf Kašpar.



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