Zeyer’s Epicism and Lyricism

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the literary creations of the Czech poet Julius Zeyer (1841–1901) within the complexity of his poetic works, except dramas. The poet, prosaist, and dramatist Julius Zeyer ranks among the classic Czech authors active in the second half of the 19th century. Literary historians traditionally link him with the Lumír generation but he is often grouped also with the New Romantics contributing to periodicals Ruch, Lumír, and Květy, or, possibly, with the ‘sensitives’ of the 19th-century European culture.His works comprise texts of indisputable, time-honoured value, beside the texts on the verge of conventional fiction. Quantitatively, the literary production of Julius Zeyer comprises more than two thirds of epic works; almost two fifths are dramas; only a few of them are (purely) lyrical poems representing just a fraction of his comprehensive output. The proportions of the explored poetry and prose also feature two-third ratio in favour of prose against (in Zeyer, mostly epic) poetry.The starting point of our search for specific features of his authorial style was the accentuation of Zeyer’s “epicism” and “lyricism” in references, i.e. throughout the overall reception of the poet’s texts, regardless of literary genres, often coexisting in contradictory meanings. Specifically, this study aims at the identification and linguistic analysis of selected devices to convey epic and lyric aspects in Zeyer’s epic poetry and prose.Despite the dominant representation of epics and prose, Zeyer’s style shows distinctly lyrical features, even within the extent of his production as a whole. The lyrical nature of his epic works is enhanced by his exclusively visual imagery, purposely different from common speech, with stylistically marked bookish and archaic elements, bearing the marks of literary art nouveau.In the middle and final stages of the poet’s creative career, his lyricism is enhanced by the changing rhythm of his narrative accentuated by the receding textual dramatization; by a greater share of non-narrative segments in the story; and through the tension ensuing from the contrasts between subjectivity / objectivity; between personification / impersonality; or between outer / inner perspective of the narrative, based on the linguistic form of concrete fictional texts and on the concrete perspective in which the story is actually mediated. Displayed in all of his literary works, lyricism is a characteristic and permanent feature of Julius Zeyer’s authorial style.