The Czech Republic lies in the very heart of Europe. It encompasses several ‘crown lands’ of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire – Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and, most importantly, Bohemia. Bohemia is easy to find on the European map – it looks like a quadrilateral standing on one corner, with mountain ranges clearly marking each side. Along the South-West lies the Boehmerwald, the famous ‘Bohemian Woods’, marking the border with Bavaria.
The Bohemian Woods are primeval and steeped in romantic legend. Apart from one railway and one road, they have never been penetrated by man. They create the backdrop for Schiller’s ‘The Robbers’, a play about disinherited noblemen turned robber (not unlike the Robin Hood legend) and Weber’s supernatural opera ‘Der Freischuetz’. Somewhere between the rocks and the woods in the South-West lies the source of the Vltava.
The river Vltava (also known by its German name ‘Moldau’) is the Vltava of Smetana’s tone poem. It is the national river of the Czech people. It winds a path through rapids and gorges before turning northward to flow through open, gently rolling countryside. Every square inch of that country is cultivated – field abuts field, orchard adjoins orchard, there is no open grassland for sheep or cattle to graze on. There are villages of thatched cottages nestled around church and pond, with no hedges to obstruct the view of sky and fields.
In this rural idyll peasant boys and girls danced the polka and furiant, as depicted in Smetana’s other tone poem ‘From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields’. Eventually the river reaches the great capital Prague, which it divides into two unequal halves. That is where Smetana’s hymn to the Vltava ends, but the river flows on, to join its less friendly sister the Lab.
The Lab is held in much lower esteem, at least in Bohemia. It only skirts the North-Eastern corner of the country, and, after swallowing the Vltava, punches a hole through the mountain wall to become powerful, mighty, and German: the river Elbe. The Elbe has no pleasant associations for the Northern Slavs. It blocked their passage westwards, and they were driven from its banks by German expansion.
The Czechs, the last descendents of the ‘Elbe Slavs’, console themselves with the thought that, without the Vltava, the Elbe would not be what it is. Prague certainly would not be what it is without the Vltava. In Prague, the Vltava flows as proud and wide as the Thames at Westminster. Discover the history of a great city in the heart of Europe: Prague.
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