Babinský strašlivý lesů pán - Legenda a skutečnost – Štětinová Dagmar (2005)

The narrative by writer Dagmar Štětinová introduces contemporary readers to one of the particularly controversial figures of the 19th century, known to almost everyone in the Czech lands at the time. This most famous Czech outlaw and murderer has indelibly marked the events on the Czech-Saxon border and, during his lifetime, achieved what is only exceptionally possible – to become a legend that enters folk songs and the Austro-Hungarian press – and to which people still lay flowers at his grave in the monastery in Řeporyje. For the simple Czech folk, he became a mythical counterpart to the Slovak Jánošík; however, the humanistic tendencies of the 'terrible lord of the forests' must be taken with considerable caution in light of the facts. The fictional approach, based on now scarcely available publications from the First Republic, allowed the author to reflect on the influence of the then-fashionable 'bandit literature,' which marked many famous romantic creators, and to connect the temporal and geographical links between the bandit Babinský and our greatest poet K. H. Mácha: the former was born in Litoměřice and died in Prague, while the latter experienced the exact opposite. Both wandered through the region and passed each other by, both influenced literature and romantically inclined souls. Babinský, like Mácha, knew both hell and paradise, each in their own way...