Literackie ogrody Karla Hynka Máchy na tle ogrodowej koncepcji kultury czeskiej w dobie odrodzenia narodowego
Karel Hynek Mácha’s literary gardens against the background of garden conception of Czech culture in the times of national revival

Summary/Abstract: In the period of national revival Czechs popularize the garden conception of native culture in two variants: noble and middle-class. Representatives of the Czech patriotic nobility build in their estates sentimental parks in English style. These parks are the live monuments of great mediaeval tradition of the Czech Kingdom which is considered by noblemen to be the core of their identity. Patriotic middle-class men do not build gardens, they only use the garden metaphors to describe the peculiarity of Czech culture, especially literature. They want the culture to resemble the Biedermeier garden which joins aesthetical and pragmatic values. In both conceptions the national culture is idealized and its main task is to promote patriotism. The picture of a garden, created by Karel Hynek Mácha in several of his prose works, differs from the noble as well as the middle-class pattern of national Arcadia. Mácha passes for the only consistent Czech romantic writer and he demythologizes the revival gardens in a romantic way. In his interpretation nature is a variable, unforeseeable as well as internally conflicting phenomenon. It attracts as a source of life and freedom, but at a time it equally strongly repels because it puts to death and captivates. Human nature is the best example of this ambiguity which excludes the basis of the garden conception of culture that is the possibility of achieving the harmony between human beings as well as between human being and the nature. Therefore Mácha ironically contests the myth of garden, opposing it to the truth of nature. He transfers the attention from the garden, as the man’s seemingly perfect work, to the man, as the imperfect component of his own work.

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