The Diary was written in 1835 by Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha was a Czech romantic poet.- Biography :Mácha grew up in Prague, the son of a foreman at a mill. He learned Latin and German in school...

, the best-known Czech romantic poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. After deciphering of the parts recorded in code, there was a discussion of the decision to publish the author's private affairs.

Contents

Ten pages of the manuscript contain 29 records from to 1835 (five more records were rewritten by Karel Sabina and so it is likely that the manuscript is just a fragment) and deal with varied topics: everyday life, theatre, Prague in the time of the visit of Emperor Ferdinand

Ferdinand I of Austria

Ferdinand I was Emperor of Austria, President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary and Bohemia , as well as associated dominions from the death of his father, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, until his abdication after the Revolutions of 1848.He married Maria Anna of Savoy, the sixth child...

 and Tsar Nicholas

Nicholas I of Russia

Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

, and the psychological background of Mácha's masterpieces Máj

Máj

Máj is a romantic poem by Karel Hynek Mácha in four cantos. It was fiercely criticized when first published, but since then has gained the status of one of the most prominent works of Czech literature; the poem now is memorized by schoolchildren and continuously in print.-Setting:According to the...

and Cikáni

Cikáni

Cikáni is an 1835 novel written by Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha with typical tokens of Romanticism: old castles, night sceneries and a romantic complicated plot. It is Mácha's only completed novel.- Plot :...

; the cipher parts treat of the poet's intimate relationship to Eleonora Šomková

Eleonora Šomková

Eleonora Šomková was the fiancée of Karel Hynek Mácha. The poet died two days before their intended wedding...

 revealing his possessiveness and jealousy.

Deciphering

The cipher was first decoded by Jakub Arbes

Jakub Arbes

Jakub Arbes was an influential Czech revolutionary, intellectual and writer. He was a sympathizer of the Májovci literary group and creator of the literary genre called romanetto.- Life and Politics :...

, who borrowed two pages from Umělecká Beseda institute in 1884 and published his results in Rozhledy literární magazine in 1886. 38 different ciphers were used 4,421 times altogether in the extant manuscript. The cipher was complicated by using both Czech and German language, and writing every second line from right to left.

Controversy and publishing

Jakub Arbes was the first to read the text of the cipher passages and the first to recommend not publishing all of it, because "some parts concerning most delicate matters are not advisable to be published". The question of publishing was opened on the occasion of the celebration of the poet's centenary in 1936. A group of surrealists and linguists (Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson

Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...

, Karel Teige

Karel Teige

Karel Teige was the major figure of the Czech avant-garde movement Devětsil in the 1920s, a graphic artist, photographer, and typographer...

, Vítězslav Nezval

Vítezslav Nezval

Vítězslav Nezval was one of the most prolific avant-garde Czech writers in the first half of the twentieth century and a co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia....

, and Bohuslav Brouk) argued against the poet's false cult and for publishing the secret parts of the diary. The complete text was eventually not published until the 1970s (but not officially in Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

) and widely distributed in the 1980s. The correctly decoded and critically analysed text was first published in 2007.

Context

In 1986 Pushkin's Secret Journal 1836–1837 was published which has very erotic contents.

At the end of the 19th century Journal Intime by Benjamin Constant

Benjamin Constant

Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...

was first published.