after his return from Russia, he discovered his real poetic vein. He became the most exclusive satirist, caricaturist and humorist in the Czech literature, who, perhaps with more accomplished skill than just before him the poet František Ladislav Čelakovský, found his quite individual style in a close imitation of the folk-song and who, as the greatest Czech critic F. X. Šalda, stresses, “very happily based his poetic intuition upon all its rythmical and logical possibilities of intonation and expression.”
Besides a considerable number of sharp and witty epigrams Havlíček composed three longer poems of an imperishable value. First between 1848—1854 he wrote the brilliant satire of the Russian absolutism and religion, the “Křest sv. Vladimíra” (The Baptism of St. Vladimir) (translated into English by Ernest Altschul in Cleveland 1930), which first appeared in complete form 1870, fourteen years after its author’s death. In 1852 were conceived and in 1860 and 1861 published in book form the “Tyrolean elegies”, depicting in a half humoristic, half satirical mood Havlíček’s deportation to his involuntary exile in Brixen. Altough upon the surface there appears a light spirit of mockery and bravado, upon more intent listening we are able to discern some striking undertones of a sad and at times even desperate feeling. As third of the longer poems there was written in 1854 and published in 1870 “Král Lavra” (King Lavra) which in a popular form offers a version of the classical Midas story.
As a poet Havlíček broke with the oversweetened patriotic poetry of romanticism and laid the foundations of Czech literary realism which was brought to a perfection by Jan Neruda.
