Vrchlicky published about seventy volumes of original lyric and epic poetry, more than thirty dramas, fifteen volumes of prose-criticism, essays and stories.
In addition to his exuberant productivity he was unquestionably a poet of God's grace, a perfect magician of the Czech letters, a master of form and versification, an inspiring teacher who opened new horizons to the creative faculties of his nation in the field of poetry.
An equally important part in the literary work of Vrchlicky are his prolific translations, from the Romance languages including Victor Hugo and the rest of the Parnassiens, Baudelaire and Verlaine, representatives of French poetry, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Michael Angelo, Parini, Giuseppe Carducci and other Italian poets, Calderon, Camoens, and Verdaguer, the principal Spanish authors. From English and American literature Vrchlicky translated Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Swinburne, Poe, Whitman; and from the German, Goethe (the whole of his "Faust"), Schiller, and Robert Hamerling. Among others his translations include Ibsen, Mickiewicz, the Magyar poets, Petofi, Aranyi and Madach, the Persian poet Hafiz and the Chinese "Shi-King" (collaborating with Professor Rudolph Dvorak) besides several voluminous anthologies of Italian, French and English modern poetry.
The most amazing fact about this enormous quantity of Vrchlicky's literary work, is that it was produced by a man who was not merely a writer and scholar, but who also, in a unique manner, understood the difficult art of living, who was a refined "bon viveur" in the Rabelaisian sense of the word; and who was a model husband to his wife and a loving and doting father to his daughter Eve, who at present is one of the prominent actresses of the National Theatre in Prague.
9
