Tři podoby Ofélie v poezii Vladimíra Holana
Three forms of Ophelia in Vladimír Holan’s poetry

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the relations between Vladimír Holan’s poetry and the character of Ophelia, the young woman who tragically drowned in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Holan admired Shakespeare and focused on the character of Hamlet in his last work Noc s Hamletem (A Night with Hamlet), which was followed on by his uncompleted work Noc s Ofélií (A Night with Ophelia). Much earlier, we find Holan to be fascinated by the character of Ophelia and her complex, as defined by Gaston Bachelard, which we find is dealt with in Holan’s poem Návrat (The Return), first published in 1948 in the form of the suicide of the young Anežka. Holan’s work from the latter half of the 1940s also includes the poem But Never Doubt I Love, which deals with the aesthetics of ugliness associated with the poetics of the French poètes maudits and the German Expressionists. Elsewhere the study deals with the composition of Noc s Ofélií from the latter half of the 1960s. Holan’s Ophelia becomes independent of traditionally perceived models of this character; she becomes a wanderer through Europe and an itinerant actress playing herself. In Holan’s poetry the Ophelia figure repeatedly flashes past, but no longer as the various key manifestations in the previous three examples. Hence she does not become a central motif, but she assumes the form of a secondary motif, as in the poem Ano, znáš (Yes, You Know), from the collection Na postupu (Advancing), which was first published in 1964, but was actually written between 1943 and 1948. Likewise the inclusion of this motif in the introduction to the poem Ano, ale co vy… (Yes, but What About You?) from the collection Na sotnách (On the Bier), written 1961–1965 and published in 1967, is also discreet. In the collection Bolest (Pain), published in 1965 (but written 1949–1955) the motif of the drowned Ophelia resonates in the poem Prach (Dust). Ophelia takes on a special status in Vladimír Holan’s poetic space, populated by various great figures from world art. Her tragic fate, as depicted by William Shakespeare, gives rise in Holan’s imagination to whole clusters of micro-narratives referring back both to Holan’s own poetry and to other literary traditions. With the colourful diversity of her manifestations and their unique distinctiveness, “Holan’s” Ophelia displays the strong inspirational potential of this literary figure.

• Details
• Contents