Otázky rukopisu Máchova Máje
Questions surrounding the manuscript of Mácha’s May

The forthcoming critical edition of the poem

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with one of the key topics relating to the forthcoming critical edition of Mácha’s Máj in the Kritická hybridní edice (KHE, Critical Hybrid Series) library, i.e. issues surrounding the only preserved manuscript of Mácha’s poem. It not only provides an analysis of this manuscript, which was discovered eighty years after the poet’s death and has not yet been appropriately examined, but also compares it with other surviving sources of Máj — particularly the first printed edition from 1836, while attempting to determine its textological status. The forthcoming edition has helped to refute the hypothesis that the manuscript was meant for the censor. The overall character of the manuscript and an analysis of its linguistic and graphic divergences and similarities with the printed version indicate that the manscript was most probably not written until after the printed edition of the poem was published (in April 1836), most likely as a transcript of it made by the poet himself, who died that same year (in November 1836). Mácha’s personal papers also include a similar manuscript — a fragment of a diary from 1835 (R57), which was created by an identical recording technique, clearly from the same batch of paper as the manuscript of Máj, thus evidently playing a similar role. However, this study does not focus on the final published version, which will be the task of the proposed publication.

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