Julius Zeyer


Julius Zeyer was a Czech prose writer, poet, and playwright.

Personal life

Zeyer was born in Prague, the son of Elisabeth Eleonora and French nobleman Jan Zeyer, a carpenter and timber merchant. His father came from French nobility, and his mother was from a German Jewish family, which had converted to Catholicism. 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.

Works

Zeyer's prose and poems are restless, nostalgic, mystical, depressive, and usually end tragically. He often blended foreign legends with national themes particular to Czech society and history. Like the Decadents, his work often combines religious and erotic imagery. He was associated with the "Lumír" school, a group of writers that grouped around the magazine of the same name and took their influences from Western Europe, in particular France.
Zeyer's epic poems, including Vyšehrad, Šárka or Karolinská epopej, 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, French history and Scandinavian myths. 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 deals with the tragic nature of an artist. Zeyer's dramatic works were written in a similar style. His work “Tři legendy o krucifixu” uses the story of Christ's crucifixion to explore themes of Czech Nationalism and the value of art. The first story, “Inultus” follows the story of an Italian sculptress who attempts to create a realistic depiction of the crucifixion. The idea of an artist driven mad by their work is explored in the story and leads to the death of her model, a Czech vagabond named Inultus, whom she murders in a fit of creative insanity.
Josef Suk composed his Pohádka on the play "Radúz a Mahulen" by Zeyer. Composer Leoš Janáček used his theater play about a Slavonic heroine Šárka as a libretto for his opera.