Antonín Sova

He was born in Pacov, a small town in South Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, but from the age of two he grew up in nearby Lukavec.

He met the Písek-based poet Adolf Heyduk who helped him publish his first poems in literary magazines (he used the pen-names Ilja Georgov and for Lumír Valburga Turková).

[1] His first published poetry collections were Realistické sloky (Realistic strophes, 1890), Květy intimních nálad (Flowers of Intimate Moods, 1891), Z mého kraje (From My Country, 1893), Soucit a vzdor (Compassion and Defiance, 1894), and Zlomená duše (Broken Soul, 1895).

[1] Together with 11 other writers he signed the manifesto called Česká moderna in 1895 to demand free speech, social reforms and individualism in art.

In 1897 Theodor Mommsen wrote a nationalist letter addressed to Germans in Austria (An die Deutschen in Österreich) and it was published in Vienna's Neue Freie Presse.

The poem, in which he calls Mommsen a "covetous dotard" and an "arrogant spokesman of slavery",[4] became the national answer to the German imperialism of that time, and Sova started to be one of the most famous poets of his generation.