Author: Zhorzheta Cholakova
Paisii Hilendarski umiversity of Plovdiv
Published in: Slavyanski dialozi, XIII, 2016, 18
Abstract: This essay reveals correspondences in the poetics of François Villon and Karel Hynek Mácha despite the different cultural and historical contexts to which they belong and the absence of readerʼs reception on the part of the Czech poet. We find similarites in the portrait and spiritual self-identification of their lyric personae, in their understanding of the doom of human life, in the obsessive premonition of death. These are motifs that clearly delineate the ideo-aesthetic and philosophical zone of melancholy when it is not understood as an emotion but as a worldview. Both Villon and Mácha shape the profile of the “doomed poet” type that will emerge with future generations, especially in the works of late-nineteenth-century decadent poets, among whom Paul Verlaine who particularly addicted to Villon.
Key words: François Villon, Karel Hynek Mácha, Paul Verlain, Romanticism, melancholy, doomed poet