Seated Girl (Jarmila) in Kampa Park, Prague (1958)
Hána was enthralled by poetry since his youth, namely by the Romantic poem May by the Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha (1810 – 1836). He intended to express Mácha’s poetry in sculpture. As a result, the lyrical statue Jarmila was created, reminiscent of the girl from the poem. The author visited many times the scenery around Staré Splavy where the storied "Jarmila's cliff" that stretches above the lake is mentioned in an emotional narrative in the prologue to the poem May in which Jarmila thinks back to her lover:
"A fair girl at the rim of land / Watches the evening's rosy phases; / Under the oak-tree by the strand / Far out across the lakes she gazes." (translated by Edith Pargeter)
Seated Girl (Jarmila), h. 150 cm, stone
Jan Hána sculpting Jarmily