# The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/The Smiles of The Time

The Smiles of The Time
Otokar Březina.
There is no pain in the soul which may not be soothed by mysterious whispering voices. There is no darkness in the soul, disclosed only at night, during which there are not the night butterflies seeking their blossoms. There is no road so sad on which we might meet such an odor of fragrance which will make us halt—overcome.
Fatigued by life, from the springs of time we draw new strength. The morning, breaking from the polarized life of the earth emerging from the greatness of the ages, is healing to our visions. For, like the light, time, the first strong springs of thousands of years ago, has also these mirrored reflections and the coming moon is beaming on better worlds in the far distance. Every glance is capable to meet these etherial bodies in the different geographical altitudes in their eternity. For the moment time has become nontransparent to our eyes—the earthly light is dimming while our eyes are closing because of their heaviness.
Everything which we value in life, we value mysteriously, depending on the hope cherished by all things. Thought becomes deeper the more space and the more of those twilights it has, which could be sparkling through the light within which to stretch the wings of the dream. But all thoughts tear down and carry away a stream of the same movement through which all the lives and worlds whirl upward.
For us the sights that gave us their secrets are dead. They are cisterns whose waters have been lifted by the glowing wisdom of the Sun to refresh unknown springs in the far away. Therefore, the love, whose hope was ripening on the lowest and most accessible branches of the miraculous tree, the tree of knowledge, yield so many disappointments to those who had no information that the highest branches grow in the light and that they are merely those on which, for centuries, is ripening the fruit which for its height cannot be plucked, but will some time fall in the path of chosen ones. Fall is the hope of its weight but the lights and song are the hope of the etherical vibration.
The staunchest life is the life of the highest altitude of hopes. The wider the mighty branches spread the more abundant will be the plucking of blossoms from the heights. But in the auroras of their beauty innumerable springs are rejoicing though kept back only by the law of this life, otherwise, they would shout at once from the opening of innumerable lips for the deep draft of light as the clouds of golden seeds are gently carried by the playful winds into the future. The greater the strength of the soul the more certain is the conviction of its mysterious liberty, the more glorious and chilling are the dizzy heights of responsibility.
The evolution of our hopes is one of the most difficult through which we are passing. In the lowest and near countries we begin, and in the last, the unknown, flying through the azure behind all horizons, we end. The higher we mount the mightier are the winds of time blowing about us. Then the greater are the yearnings to embrace everything with one look—all seas, mountains, countries, like a million of brothers as the sparkling dust in the wide lightening path of the shooting star. The resultant feeling of intoxication gives us everything that belongs to us. But also is deeper the perception that above everything we love best is that which we are expecting, that which is unborn. Our impatience is constantly growing through the strengthening of our visions; hence that grief with which we return from the thundering of the tempest of times to life of ordinary moments, where everything seems to be as immovable as the stonebeds of the innumerable streams of strength are idly flowing by.
But all this life evolving with hope, this eagerness of movement and happiness of flight is only evidence, that our life is not in itself ended, but that we are living because of the mysterious hope of the soul.
OTOKAR BŘEZINA, the pen name of VÁCLAV JEBAVÝ, is the greatest living Czech poet, and recently has been mentioned for the Nobel Literary Prize, which he deserves. Březina was born in 1868, and has given to Czechoslovakia several books of essays and poems of great literary value. Březina is not a follower of old ways, but a seeker of new paths in the world of beauty, the unseen and the unknown. (Ed.)
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.