Julius Zeyer
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This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Czech Wikipedia. (December 2009) Click [show] on the right for instructions.
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Julius Zeyer (April 26, 1841 – January 29, 1901) was a Czech prose writer, poet, and playwright.
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[edit] Personal life
Zeyer was born in Prague, the son of Eleonora (née Weissel) and Jan Zeyer, a timber merchant.[1] His father came from French (Alsatian) nobility, and his mother was from a Jewish family, and had converted to Catholicism.[2][3] Zeyer learned the Czech language from his nanny. He was expected to take over the family's factory but instead decided to learn carpentering. Attempts to study high school and university were unsuccessful. During his life he frequently traveled in Europe and the Orient. After 1877 he moved to Vodňany, where he spent over a decade with literary work. Afterwards, he returned to Prague. He died in Prague.
[edit] Works
Zeyer's prose and poems are restless, nostalgic, mystical, depressive, and usually end tragically.
Zeyer's epic poems, including Vyšehrad (1880), and Karolinská epopeja (1896), draw from Czech and French legends respectively, and celebrate the glorious past of ancients, compared to the bleak present. He took inspiration from the Czech, Russian, Irish, and French history. His novels describe persons trying to live a better life under the romantic ideals and people who find peace only at the moment of death. His semi-autobiographical novel Jan Maria Plojhar (1891) deals with the tragic nature of an artist. Zeyer's dramatic works were written in a similar style.
Josef Suk composed his Pohádka (Fairy Tale) on a play by Zeyer.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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- 1841 births
- 1901 deaths
- 19th-century Czech people
- Czech novelists
- Czech poets
- Czech dramatists and playwrights
- People of Alsatian-German descent
- Czech people of German descent
- Czech people of French descent
- French nobility
- Czech Jews
- People from Prague
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