And of all the Czech poets none deserves a place in English translations more justly than Vrchlicky who has done so much to introduce English poets to his Czech contemporaries . . . It was Vrchlicky who first translated Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," Poe's "Raven" and excerpts from the works of Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Swinburne and others . . . Perhaps, then, it is a sense of the debt of gratitude that led me, not rationally but emotionally to my choice of Vrchlicky, with whose epic presented herewith, I am making my first hesitant inroad into that vast and, as yet, only slightly trodden domain of Czech poetry.
In concluding this bit of personal reflection let me anticipate my Czech critics' censure, and assure them that I am fully aware that there are many works of Vrchlicky that are more typical of the man, and perhaps even better examples of his genius. Then knowing this why have I chosen Satanella? . . . My choice again was not rational or based on any analytical basis . . . I chose the poem almost subconsciously, being driven to it by the strong emotional appeal it made upon my youthful mind, when I first read Vrchlicky and his collection of Epic poetry . . . And so if I have not chosen the best or most characteristic of Vrchlicky's poems, I hope that the love of the one I did choose, compensated for my ill-choosing by enabling me to carry over into the translation the pathos and the lyric beauty of the original, without distortion, without resorting to forced, artificial modes of expression. How well I have succeeded or how badly I have failed is now left to the judgment of the reader, to whose emotional rather than analytical nature I present this translation.
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