When writing about current events, perhaps the most difficult task for a poet is to find an effective perspective from which to write a lyric poem – one that meaningfully approaches specific events without relying too heavily on narrative or trite expressions of sentiment. In "Never at the Horse at Two", Slovak poet Milan Richter crafts a love poem set within a politically charged locale (and era) using metaphoric language that evokes imagery directly related to the contemporary events he means to address.
While the love story provides a context to indirectly illustrate those events, the poet's use of specific time references within the poem are curious, perhaps providing clues as to the poet’s personal thoughts while crafting the poem. In this article, we'll examine Richter’s thrice repeated reference to "ten years" and speculate as to what his purpose was in using it.
Establishing the Time Frame
Richter provides a date for the poem: January 16th, 1989. In a subsequent author's note, he states this as being the same day Vaclav Havel, with some friends, was arrested for attempting to commemorate Jan Palach’s self immolation near the Horse Statue in Wenceslas Square twenty years earlier. While the metaphoric imagery of the poem effectively illustrates both events, line five ("by the past ten years, for the next ten years") seems to imply an additional, unstated event.
On first reading, one might guess that line five sets the poem’s love story at a date midway between the other two events: 1979. Interestingly, this is the same year Havel and five others were sentenced to prison terms as leaders of Charter 77, a movement which criticized the Czechoslovakian government for repressing individual rights of free expression. In itself, this provides an important historic bridge connecting Palach's self-immolation to Havel's later commemorative act of civil disobedience. However, as the poem continues, the narrative structure seems (at least to someone unfamiliar with the specific history) more reminiscent of 1989, leaving a reader to wonder what the poet meant when he referred to "the next ten years".
The Poet's Connection to Charter 77
Led by these references to Charter 77, it is interesting to note that Richer himself was one of 243 Czechoslovak citizens who signed the original document. Consequently, he was officially banned from publishing his own poetry from 1977 through 1986 – a period of ten years. Is it merely coincidence that the poem's use of "ten years" mirrors the author's own life so closely?
It is not unthinkable that, with a backlog of unpublished poetry and translation work, Richter might not have been fully engaged in writing about current events until early in 1989. With that thought, the final two lines of the poem seem to take on a personal significance for the poet: "because it was supposed to have been our first date / in ten years". In short, his use of a love story on which to build a socially relevant lyric poem (commemorating specific events) may also have served as a metaphor for his own relationship to the new poetry he was beginning to write.
Further, at the time of this writing, it was by no means certain that a poem dealing with civil protest in Wenceslas Square would not incur punitive reaction from the government. Hence, the clause "for the next ten years" may well refer to the very real possibility of retaliatory sanctions against the poet.
The Personal and the Historic Intertwined
Being intimately familiar with such consequences, Richter may have crafted a metaphor for his own situation which also provided a meaningful perspective on which to build a poetic commentary about current events - illuminating not only their significance, but also providing a poignant human context through which they could be told. In such a way, lyric poems frequently contain depths that mirror the complexity of human experience, even on the realm of the unspoken influence. Still, only the poet knows these details for certain.
(Note: The translation used for this reading is an unpublished version of the poem by Eva Hudacova. In the treatment of the quoted 5th line, it differs significantly from the version linked to in this article.)
(Subsequent note: Please see Milan Richter's comment below which corrects several important details in this article)
More about Milan Richter and Prague:
Brief Biography of Richter (from the Centre for Information on Literature)
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