Bozena Nemcova Views

• Books

The unknown date of her birth and the extraordinary favour of the nobility towards this daughter of a common serf, creates the impression that Terezie and Jan Pankl were only Bozena Nemcova's adoptive parents and that the writer was given up for adoption by some aristcratic parents. Prince Metternich, Count Karel Clam-Martinic or even General Windischgratz. As for the mother, the most frequent conjectures were two beautiful ladies, the Duchess Katerina Zahanska herself or her younger sister Dorothea, or possibly Lady Perigordova-Talleyrandova, the lover and later heiress of the famous French politician, intriguer, and Napoleonic and Bourbon Minister of Foreign Affairs. Each of these hypotheses about Nemcova's parents has its holes, so the only thing that seems to be certain is that the Pankls were only her adoptive parents.

Something else strange in Nemcova's life is that it appears that the concern of the nobility for her fate ended abruptly the moment she married, and the Duchess presented her in place of a dowry and dress only gold earrings. The mystery thus remains, how the Raciborz family could consider as a sufficent partner for such a favoured girl the substantially older finance and customs official Jan Nemec. The happy beginning of this beautiful and talented girl's life would come to an end in 1837 with her marriage to Jan Nemec, with whom she had no hope of living free of conflict due to an absolute divergence of personalities. This rough, primitive man with inclinations to brutality, despite his patriotism and displays of courage worthy of a man, could never win the love of a woman as intelligent, delicate, and idealistic as Bozena Nemcova was. At the same time, he wasn't able to get over loving her and give her up because she was too beautiful and fascinating.

Bozena Nemcova (1820 to 1862, with some speculation about the exact year of birth - Wilma A Iggers, in Women of Prague: Ethnic diversity and social change from the 18th century to the present, suggests 1817) was by any standards an unconventional and emancipated woman. At the age of 17 she married Josef Nemec, a man 15 years her elder, and entered a marriage that would turn out to be difficult and unhappy. In 1842, he brought her to Prague and introduced her to the Czech intellectual life of the capital. Nemcova immediately attracted a great deal of attention, as much for her brilliant mind as for her beauty. Both she and her husband were active in nationalist circles, and she formed friendships with some of the leading writers of the time, such as Erben and Karel Havlicek Borovsky. She also became romantically involved with a variety of young men - something quite shocking at the time, of course.

Hello and welcome to Czech Books, which this week will be looking at the Czech icon and -in the words of Milan Kundera - the mother of Czech prose, Bozena Nemcova. We'd like today to dig a bit deeper into the reality of the woman behind the image, which is embedded in Czech culture. Nemcova lived from 1820 to 1862 and was a major figure in the Czech national revival. She's most famous for her book about an idealized rural community in the early 19th century, Babicka - The Grandmother. This book has been translated into many languages and is known by all Czechs as part of their school reading. Nemcova's image is also very much a part of Czech culture. Here are a few lines from Babicka in a 19th century translation by Frances Gregor.