Tractate on Patriotism

That nook of earth wherein I grew and lived Through childhood, boyhood, and my years of youth With all sweet folly of first love, with all First pangs, deceit and misery of it; That one white township in the vale of Elbe With dusky forests on the far horizon, With its old castle, with its wild-grown park, Its placid market-square, its church, that shaped Outlandishly, peers forth with huddled tower Across the country-side; billowy fields; Avenued paths; the agony of God Where crossroads meet; the meadow-lands that flank Calm streams; our cherished hamlets round about;— That nook of earth is all for which I crave In the shrill streets of this afflicting city. Yet rather is it craving for the years Of youth I lived there… Since the soul portrays Fondly unto itself those places, craves Piningly for them, while,—fond thing,—it harbours A trembling hope that by returning thither It may turn back its years of youth … I know That I would likewise love another place If I had passed elsewhere my years of youth…

This is my native land. Naught else. I lack Aptness to worship that terrestrial Concept, which diplomats have glibly framed In their bureaus; which pedagogues to us Imparted out of atlases; the which Must needs, as each and all terrestrial Concepts, to-morrow, maybe, shrivel or expand, According as upon some battle-field, In dreadful strife which is not our affair, More striplings fall on that side or on this!

I have not found my pride in history, That temple of idolators, wherein Dreamers devoutly cast themselves to earth, And in a frenzy beat their breasts because They too are Czechs: nay, even as elsewhere, Our annals are a file of dreadful deeds (By us accomplished and by us endured) Of recreant men, of surging passion-throes, Betrayals, dominations and enslavements; And these befalling openly, became Clear-ringing currency of daily catchwords For tricksters of to-day, here as elsewhere.

Nor do I vaunt me of our own days. We Than others are no whit the better … We are but palterers and caitifts; where Power is, there do we bend our Decks to it In slavish wise; wherefore are we abased By evil lords. Time-serving braggarts we, Testy and witless, laughing-stocks amid Our pride, and palsied in vain peevishness. Felons we have, dotards and pillagers And hucksters dealing in pure love of country, And a mere handful of the men who are Ever untainted and downright,—but these All nations have elsewhere,—ye gods, is this To be, perchance, our fountain-head of pride?

I am no patriot, nor do I love My country, for I have none, know none, nor See cause for loving one … I am a Czech, even as I might be A German, Turk, Gypsy or negro, if I had been born elsewhere. My Czechdom is The portion of my life which I do feel Not as delight and bliss, but as a solemn And inborn fealty. My native land Is within me alone; and this will I Trim round at no man's beck, nor give it tinge To match with fashion's daily whim; nor shall They rob me of it; when above my tomb The grass has grown, it shall go living on In other souls,—and if, some day to be, In them it wither, then and only then Shall it be lifeless, as old Kollár sang.

And if I toil for it, then that is toil For Czechdom as I feel it in myself.

And if I ever pride me on it, then I pride me only on my life … Golgotha (1902).