Abstract
This paper deals with "May", an 1836 poetic masterpiece by the Czech Romantic poet, Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836). First, it briefly recounts the findings of Jiří Levý (1950) and Stanislav Rubáš (2012) concerned with "May" in its renderings into English.
Having analysed various English versions of Mácha's poem, both translation scholars reveal how the poetic potential, or muse, of the respective translators have been moulded by their target language culture, especially in terms of the florid excess of Victorian poetry and of Romantic fatalism, the stock-in-trade of Romantic poetry, coined by George Gordon Byron. Second, the paper examines a new (so far unpublished) English translation of "May" by UIC Professor Alfred Thomas.
Juxtaposing some of the main passages of the original (mostly from Canto 1) with their new English version, the author reveals a number of metrical and semantic shifts, shortcomings as well as obvious mistakes. Third, for the sake of contrast and comparison, the present article shows how a 1932 translation of "May" made by Roderick A.
Ginsburg excels over the new rendering both in accuracy and poetic qualities.