JEBAVY, VACLAV (1868-1929), Czech poet, universally known as Ottokar Bfezina, was born at Pontky, Bohemia, on Sept. 13, 1868. He taught in a secondary school at Jaromefic, Moravia, where he lived a life of contemplative seclusion, declin ing the honours and material advantages offered him by the Gov ernment. His published works consist of five books of poetry: Secret Distances (1895) ; Dawn in the West (1896) ; Polar Winds (1897); Temple Builders (1899) and The Haitds (1901), and a volume of prose essays, Music of the Springs (1903) ; besides a number of poems scattered in various literary papers.
Bfezina is admittedly the greatest modern Czech poet, and is even judged by some foreign critics to be the greatest contempo rary mystic poet of all nations. His development as a mystic phil osopher and religious visionary passed from the subjective pessi mism of his early poems, through a transcendental revelation of mystic realities, to an evolutionary optimism and a joyful belief in cosmic brotherhood. His diction is so concentrated and pregnant
with thought that it presents considerable difficulty at first read ing; but this is more than compensated for by the superlative beauty and entrancing music of his verse, the remarkable wealth of his imagery and the extraordinarily human and personal appeal of his philosophy which has its roots in the mystic tradition of the mediaeval Czech religious sects. He died in April, 1929.
See Paul Selver, Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature (1919) ; Modern Czech Poetry (1920), and A Study in Czech Literature (1921).