Soon after this response, the wanderer emerges out of the wood. He is not Jewish but a Gypsy with no home.
Lea’s lament is transparent. It is a tune whose language exploits a well-known inventory of biblical images, such as references to Jordan, palms, doves, etc. This basic idea was easy to understand for the Czech reader, since just as Jews would mourn their lost home, Czechs would mourn theirs. True, they had not experienced a diaspora, but they had reasons to lament the loss of their statehood and weep over the shattered symbols of their ancient power. And indeed, throughout Mácha’s poetry, the reader repeatedly runs into melancholy images of the sleeping Czech lion, or an imprisoned Czech king, a king denied of his subjects and subjects denied of their king.
Historically, this is in line with the larger European picture in which episodes from Jewish history repeatedly served as a backdrop against which conditions of small European nations could be projected. From Handel’s Israel in Egypt (1739) to Byron’s Hebrew Melodies (1815), and Verdi’s Nabucco (1841) readers and audiences would invest their empathy into diaspora Jews, projecting feelings about their own loss of statehood and injustice inflicted on small nations. The Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) compared the Irish plight to that of Jews in his Irish Melodies in 1808 and a few years later Byron drew inspiration from Moore. The privileged status of the Old Testament and its literary qualities only enhanced the attraction that the world of ancient Jews exerted.
Mácha pursued his philosemitism repeatedly but always in a patriotic sense.13 Lea is a tragic victim, well suited to remind the Czechs of their plight. She is essentially a Jew made Czech, perhaps Mácha’s other self. But despite this easy-sounding conclusion—essentially not very different from a remark made already by Oskar Donath (1923: 10)—there is more to this Jewish episode than a representation of national nostalgia. Mácha is not a mainstream nationalist, as his conception of the fatherland is not optimistic. He is largely nostalgic, taking interest in abandoned symbols of ancient Czech glory. The Czech literary scholar Vladimír Macura called this a tragic concept of the fatherland (Macura 1995), and indeed, Mácha’s decision to articulate national feelings
13 Another example of Mácha’s biblical orientalism is the poem “Larches, Young Larches” [Modřínové, mladí modřínové]. What appears to be simple rhyming inspired by Slavic folklore echoes Psalm 137 (Mácha 1948: 1, 144).
by eventually having Lea and her father pass away is quite compatible with this. The Jewish scene has no continuation in the remaining text. The episode abruptly closes on a stormy night that Lea and her father simply do not survive.
4.2.2 m ore than an allegory
Besides Lea, Gypsies cast Lea’s father, an old Jew. Although not lacking dignity and grandeur in moments of religious fervor or engagement for his only daughter, he eventually represents a standard Jewish stereotype: money is what his mind is incessantly revolving around. The range of choices thus gets restricted: the symbol of lost Czechdom can be a Jew, but not a male Jew. Obviously, a money-minded tavern keeper cannot possibly die a beautiful death that will elevate national feelings. By contrast, Lea can be a focus of empathy and she not only has the potential of becoming an allegorical character, but based on her beauty, she invites associations that save her from a mechanically conceived allegorical character:
A tall, slender figure, fantastically, rather than appropriately dressed. A black, silver-embroidered belt girdled her beautiful white dress that reached her bare feet. Her head was covered by a Turkish kerchief in the manner common with her nation’s females, who reside in Eastern lands. Flowing from under this headcover were thick, black tresses framing a pale, beautiful face and a pale neck. (Mácha 1835 [1949: 234])14
The passage is a variation on the motif of la belle Juive. Notably, Mácha departs from the stereotypical “southern” line in stressing Lea’s white complexion; i.e., he pursues the oxymoronic black-and-white line of a pale, often sickly woman, with dark hair. White, as a color of purity and innocence, is part of the image. Although reaching back to Mannerism, this was the current Romantic stereotype but perhaps more importantly, the imagery was in consonance
14 Another similar passage: “She stood in front of him [the young Gypsy] in the same eastern garment as yesterday; black tresses enhanced the lovely paleness of her gentle face. But those black eyes, smiling today for the first time, have not yet given up the lasting sorrow so that the young Gypsy […] felt he was beholding the face of the most beautiful daughter of Zion—a face smiling through tears over the ruins Jerusalem” (Mácha 1835 [1949: 234]).
with images of those unjustly pursued. The Czech nation was also unjustly pursued.15
Additional points add to this. Notably, Lea is an artist as well—she sings. This attribute will be denied to Jews in the stereotype of the mechanical Jew familiar from the German composer Richard Wagner, who stated fifteen years after Mácha that a Jew can be neither a poet nor a singer:
Singing is speech excited by the highest passion: music is the language of passion. If the Jew steps up his manner of speaking to singing—in which he can only present himself to us with ridiculous-looking, but never sympathetically touching passion—then he becomes straightforwardly unbearable. (Wagner 1869: 16–17)
Lea’s ability to sing is essential, and since her song was written by a Czech poet, we may conclude that Mácha is participating in Jewish discourse without being Jewish.
4.2.3 p ractical m atters—e xclusion
Almost at the same time as he was writing his Gypsies, Mácha published a fragment of his novel Křivoklad, where Křivoklad is the name of a medieval Bohemian castle. The fragment concludes with a brief “Afterword to Křivoklad”
[Dosloví ke Křivokladu] (1834), henceforth “Afterword.” This is a farcical dramatization of several concurring dialogues and monologues taking place in a seemingly random company of passengers traveling by coach from Prague to a provincial place, Mělník. Besides the author himself, the cast consists of two students, an unpleasant old woman, and a young and an old Jew. During the trip, the students start discussing Křivoklad and so the author gets involved, providing all sorts of explanations, halfway revealing, halfway concealing his identity. The young Jew, who has just admitted that he cannot read Czech, wants to participate as well and asks questions in German. The following dialogue evolves:
15 We may also note that Mácha’s contemporaries represented the death of a young woman as a peak of aesthetic experience; see Bronfen (1992) for important observations. Bronfen does not consider Jewish variants of this motif, though.