1 50 16 https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/ae72ad20320a50fc785e801b2602e879.pdf 86f44198a453e1c904f5c7f2ff96e7e1 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 175 CONTRIBUTORS DA YID P. DANIEL is in the Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, he has published many articles on Slovak Reformation history and is active in several organizations on European history . MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX is in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Not of Slavic extraction herself, she has just completed her doctoral dissertation on Czech hymnology at the Sorbonne. F.G. GALAN is at the University of Texas in Austin, where his speciality is literary theory and semiotics. His book on the semiotics of film was recently published and one on the Prague Circle is expected shortly . WILLIAM E . HARKINS is at Columbia University, where he has been a pioneer of both Czech and Slovak studies, besides his work in Russian. He has long been active in national and international Slavic organizations. EV A SUSAN KUCEKOVA teaches Czech and Slovak at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She recently completed her dissertation on folk literature at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. PETER PETRO teaches comparative literature , Slovak, and Russian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His book on four modern satirists was rece ntl y published by M outon , a nd he is prepa ring an English history of modern Slovak literature. NORMAL. RUDINSKY is at Oregon Sta te University in Co rvallis. She has tra nsl ated stories by M a rtin Kukucfn and is currentl y prepa ring a collection of stories by Bozena Slan cfkov a Timrava. G ERALD J. SABO is at j ohn Carroll U nive rsity in Cleveland . His Yale dissertation will be published as a critical edition ofHugolfn G avlovic's Valaska Skala , and he is preparin g a n En glish hi story of earl y Slovak literature . JAROS LAV J. VAJDA is a n editor at Concordia Press, St. Louis, but is best known as a transla tor of Slovak poe try, including Hviezd oslav , Kras ko, and J anko Kral' . �176 SLOVAKIA Guidelines for Manuscripts Manuscripts of articles for possible publication should be sent to the editor . Articles should normally not exceed twenty-five pages in length , and should be submitted in triplicate, typed double-spaced, with generous margins for copyeditin g. Footnotes should also be typed double-spaced , numbered , and placed at the end of the paper. T ext and format should adhere to the style outlined in Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers. Proper orthography and diacritical m arks must be supplied for all foreign words . Manuscripts will not be returned unless specifically requested and postage is provided . Books for review are to be sent to the editor. Unsolicited book reviews are not encouraged . Individuals who wish to review books should request them from the editor. They should send a curriculum vitae with their request. When writing their reviews they should try to answer the following questions: What was the author's purpose in writing this book? What was the theme ? What methods did the author use? What did he (she) conclude? This can then be followed by criticism and observations. Normally the reviews should not exceed three double-spaced , typewritten pages. All bibliographic information (author , full title, publisher, place of publication, price, and number of pages) should be provided by the reviewer. ��THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA Organized in 1907 at Cleveland , Ohio EDWARD J . BEHUNCIK, K.S.G. President JOHN A . HOLY Secretary-Treasurer DANIEL F. TANZONE Vice Presidents ANNEZ. SAROSY MICHAEL BUCKO Executive Committee Edward J . Behuncik, John A . Holy, Andrew F. Hudak, Jr ., George N. Kantor Michael J . Krajsa , Louise M. Yash , Cecelia Sarocky, Margaret Pilosi , Joseph R. Kristofik , George J. Kostelnik Joseph Stefka, Stephen J. Kavulich Slovak League of America Ladies' Auxiliary Anna M. Vizza , President Regional Vice-Presidents : George Lupjan - New York , New Jersey, New England States John Herman - Eastern Pennsylvania John Gastan - Western Pennsylvania George Chura - Ohio Joseph Fecik - Michigan Ivan Kralik - Illinois Bernadine Wandke - Wisconsin Matthew Zvada - California John Hvasta - Washington, D.C. , Virginia Joseph Valen cik Auditors : Dolores J . Soska Paul Brunovsky SLOVAK FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS (Affiliated with the Slovak League of America) FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK LADIES ASSOCIATION Cleveland , Ohio FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK UNION OF THE U.S . AND CANADA Cleveland , Ohio SLOVAK CATHOLIC SOKOL Passaic, N.J. NATIONAL SLOVAK SOCIETY OF THE U.S.A. Pittsburgh, Pa. LADIES PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . FIRST SLOVAK WREATH OF THE FREE EAGLE Bridgeport, Conn. SLOVAK NEWSPAPERMEN ' S ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Joseph C. Krajsa , K.S.G., President SLOVAKIA $6.00 per annum Printed By JEDNOTA PRINTERY Middletown , Pennsylvania 17057 U.S.A . � SLOVAKIA 175 CONTRIBUTORS DA YID P. DANIEL is in the Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, he has published many articles on Slovak Reformation history and is active in several organizations on European history . MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX is in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Not of Slavic extraction herself, she has just completed her doctoral dissertation on Czech hymnology at the Sorbonne. F.G. GALAN is at the University of Texas in Austin, where his speciality is literary theory and semiotics. His book on the semiotics of film was recently published and one on the Prague Circle is expected shortly . WILLIAM E . HARKINS is at Columbia University, where he has been a pioneer of both Czech and Slovak studies, besides his work in Russian. He has long been active in national and international Slavic organizations. EV A SUSAN KUCEKOVA teaches Czech and Slovak at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She recently completed her dissertation on folk literature at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. PETER PETRO teaches comparative literature , Slovak, and Russian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His book on four modern satirists was rece ntl y published by M outon , a nd he is prepa ring an English history of modern Slovak literature. NORMAL. RUDINSKY is at Oregon Sta te University in Co rvallis. She has tra nsl ated stories by M a rtin Kukucfn and is currentl y prepa ring a collection of stories by Bozena Slan cfkov a Timrava. G ERALD J. SABO is at j ohn Carroll U nive rsity in Cleveland . His Yale dissertation will be published as a critical edition ofHugolfn G avlovic's Valaska Skala , and he is preparin g a n En glish hi story of earl y Slovak literature . JAROS LAV J. VAJDA is a n editor at Concordia Press, St. Louis, but is best known as a transla tor of Slovak poe try, including Hviezd oslav , Kras ko, and J anko Kral' . �176 SLOVAKIA Guidelines for Manuscripts Manuscripts of articles for possible publication should be sent to the editor . Articles should normally not exceed twenty-five pages in length , and should be submitted in triplicate, typed double-spaced, with generous margins for copyeditin g. Footnotes should also be typed double-spaced , numbered , and placed at the end of the paper. T ext and format should adhere to the style outlined in Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers. Proper orthography and diacritical m arks must be supplied for all foreign words . Manuscripts will not be returned unless specifically requested and postage is provided . Books for review are to be sent to the editor. Unsolicited book reviews are not encouraged . Individuals who wish to review books should request them from the editor. They should send a curriculum vitae with their request. When writing their reviews they should try to answer the following questions: What was the author's purpose in writing this book? What was the theme ? What methods did the author use? What did he (she) conclude? This can then be followed by criticism and observations. Normally the reviews should not exceed three double-spaced , typewritten pages. All bibliographic information (author , full title, publisher, place of publication, price, and number of pages) should be provided by the reviewer. ��THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA Organized in 1907 at Cleveland , Ohio EDWARD J . BEHUNCIK, K.S.G. President JOHN A . HOLY Secretary-Treasurer DANIEL F. TANZONE Vice Presidents ANNEZ. SAROSY MICHAEL BUCKO Executive Committee Edward J . Behuncik, John A . Holy, Andrew F. Hudak, Jr ., George N. Kantor Michael J . Krajsa , Louise M. Yash , Cecelia Sarocky, Margaret Pilosi , Joseph R. Kristofik , George J. Kostelnik Joseph Stefka, Stephen J. Kavulich Slovak League of America Ladies' Auxiliary Anna M. Vizza , President Regional Vice-Presidents : George Lupjan - New York , New Jersey, New England States John Herman - Eastern Pennsylvania John Gastan - Western Pennsylvania George Chura - Ohio Joseph Fecik - Michigan Ivan Kralik - Illinois Bernadine Wandke - Wisconsin Matthew Zvada - California John Hvasta - Washington, D.C. , Virginia Joseph Valen cik Auditors : Dolores J . Soska Paul Brunovsky SLOVAK FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS (Affiliated with the Slovak League of America) FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK LADIES ASSOCIATION Cleveland , Ohio FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK UNION OF THE U.S . AND CANADA Cleveland , Ohio SLOVAK CATHOLIC SOKOL Passaic, N.J. NATIONAL SLOVAK SOCIETY OF THE U.S.A. Pittsburgh, Pa. LADIES PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . FIRST SLOVAK WREATH OF THE FREE EAGLE Bridgeport, Conn. SLOVAK NEWSPAPERMEN ' S ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Joseph C. Krajsa , K.S.G., President SLOVAKIA $6.00 per annum Printed By JEDNOTA PRINTERY Middletown , Pennsylvania 17057 U.S.A . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 175 CONTRIBUTORS DA YID P. DANIEL is in the Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, he has published many articles on Slovak Reformation history and is active in several organizations on European history . MARIE-ELIZABETH DUCREUX is in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Not of Slavic extraction herself, she has just completed her doctoral dissertation on Czech hymnology at the Sorbonne. F.G. GALAN is at the University of Texas in Austin, where his speciality is literary theory and semiotics. His book on the semiotics of film was recently published and one on the Prague Circle is expected shortly . WILLIAM E . HARKINS is at Columbia University, where he has been a pioneer of both Czech and Slovak studies, besides his work in Russian. He has long been active in national and international Slavic organizations. EV A SUSAN KUCEKOVA teaches Czech and Slovak at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She recently completed her dissertation on folk literature at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. PETER PETRO teaches comparative literature , Slovak, and Russian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His book on four modern satirists was rece ntl y published by M outon , a nd he is prepa ring an English history of modern Slovak literature. NORMAL. RUDINSKY is at Oregon Sta te University in Co rvallis. She has tra nsl ated stories by M a rtin Kukucfn and is currentl y prepa ring a collection of stories by Bozena Slan cfkov a Timrava. G ERALD J. SABO is at j ohn Carroll U nive rsity in Cleveland . His Yale dissertation will be published as a critical edition ofHugolfn G avlovic's Valaska Skala , and he is preparin g a n En glish hi story of earl y Slovak literature . JAROS LAV J. VAJDA is a n editor at Concordia Press, St. Louis, but is best known as a transla tor of Slovak poe try, including Hviezd oslav , Kras ko, and J anko Kral' . 176 SLOVAKIA Guidelines for Manuscripts Manuscripts of articles for possible publication should be sent to the editor . Articles should normally not exceed twenty-five pages in length , and should be submitted in triplicate, typed double-spaced, with generous margins for copyeditin g. Footnotes should also be typed double-spaced , numbered , and placed at the end of the paper. T ext and format should adhere to the style outlined in Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers. Proper orthography and diacritical m arks must be supplied for all foreign words . Manuscripts will not be returned unless specifically requested and postage is provided . Books for review are to be sent to the editor. Unsolicited book reviews are not encouraged . Individuals who wish to review books should request them from the editor. They should send a curriculum vitae with their request. When writing their reviews they should try to answer the following questions: What was the author's purpose in writing this book? What was the theme ? What methods did the author use? What did he (she) conclude? This can then be followed by criticism and observations. Normally the reviews should not exceed three double-spaced , typewritten pages. All bibliographic information (author , full title, publisher, place of publication, price, and number of pages) should be provided by the reviewer. THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA Organized in 1907 at Cleveland , Ohio EDWARD J . BEHUNCIK, K.S.G. President JOHN A . HOLY Secretary-Treasurer DANIEL F. TANZONE Vice Presidents ANNEZ. SAROSY MICHAEL BUCKO Executive Committee Edward J . Behuncik, John A . Holy, Andrew F. Hudak, Jr ., George N. Kantor Michael J . Krajsa , Louise M. Yash , Cecelia Sarocky, Margaret Pilosi , Joseph R. Kristofik , George J. Kostelnik Joseph Stefka, Stephen J. Kavulich Slovak League of America Ladies' Auxiliary Anna M. Vizza , President Regional Vice-Presidents : George Lupjan - New York , New Jersey, New England States John Herman - Eastern Pennsylvania John Gastan - Western Pennsylvania George Chura - Ohio Joseph Fecik - Michigan Ivan Kralik - Illinois Bernadine Wandke - Wisconsin Matthew Zvada - California John Hvasta - Washington, D.C. , Virginia Joseph Valen cik Auditors : Dolores J . Soska Paul Brunovsky SLOVAK FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS (Affiliated with the Slovak League of America) FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK LADIES ASSOCIATION Cleveland , Ohio FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK UNION OF THE U.S . AND CANADA Cleveland , Ohio SLOVAK CATHOLIC SOKOL Passaic, N.J. NATIONAL SLOVAK SOCIETY OF THE U.S.A. Pittsburgh, Pa. LADIES PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . PENNSYLVANIA SLOVAK CATHOLIC UNION Wilkes-Barre, Pa . FIRST SLOVAK WREATH OF THE FREE EAGLE Bridgeport, Conn. SLOVAK NEWSPAPERMEN ' S ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Joseph C. Krajsa , K.S.G., President SLOVAKIA $6.00 per annum Printed By JEDNOTA PRINTERY Middletown , Pennsylvania 17057 U.S.A .  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Back Matter, Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56) Description An account of the resource includes Contributors; Guidelines for Manuscripts Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/84fc1576fce2ebe7a0f282dd1398c614.pdf 627d8e71ad728989ee286f3133c5db4b PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 36 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kancionaly in the Kingdom of Bohemia (1588-1683) Marie- Elizabeth Ducreux I) THE BACKGROUND It is surely unnecessary here to go deeply into the hi story of th e Counter Reformation in the Czech Kingdom , so intima tely linked in m y mind to its integration into the H apsburg Monarchy . In any case, exploring this history in detail is obviously beyond the scope of this paper , but to situate the context of my subj ect, I shall begin by sketching its general outline and suggesting a periodization. Four phases can be di stin gui shed in th e elaboration and application of the policy of co nversion . Th e first period, extending from th e arrival ofthejesuits in Prague (1556) to the d efeat at White M ountain (Nov. 8 , 1620), set the stage for what followed. The second period , from 1621 to the reign of Leopold I , witnessed active attempts to implement the poli cy of con ve rsion . This includes the Thirty Years' War, which seve rely h ampered effort s to convert the rural areas, a nd the milesto ne of 1650 , whi ch marked the energetic resurgence of the civil powers and th e archbishopric in supervi sing the population . Then , under L eopold I , followed a period of relative respite. Bohemia was then supposedl y Catholic, although proof ex ists of the persistence of m a ny non-C atholi cs, eve n in the ranks of the nobility. For inst ance, h ym nologist Vaclav Kleych (who was not an aristocrat) , born at Lazany near Litom ysl in 1682 , who emigrated with all his family to Zittau at the beginning of the 18th century . Finally the fourth period, from 1705 to 1780 , witnessed the tightening of rep ression and a search for heretics all over Bohem ia. 1 The judicial regulation of Joseph I ( 1705-1 711) made punishable by death the peddlin g of heretical books, preaching, and suspicious assembli es. �SLOVAKIA 37 The death penalty was confirmed by Charles VI ( 1711-1740) several times, with at least five patents from March 15, 1721 to February 4, 1 724. 2 He reinforced existing antiheretical legislation with a publication on Jan. 29, 1726, which was confirmed at least twenty-two times until 1770, i.e. a lso during the reign of Maria Theresa. 3 In this system of laws, heresy was punished by forced labor and, in case of relapse, the galleys, exile and death . This was, of course, also the time of the well-known bookburning - and, more often, book confiscation and rectification . 4 The patent of October 13, 1781 put an end to the repression by accepting - with reservations - the Lutheran, Calvinist and Greek Catholic confessions . But only 45,000 persons 5 publically proclaimed their adherence to these two Protestant denominations, and the adherents of popular sects (for example that of the "Lambs,'' Berankove) continued long after to be persecuted by being press-ganged into the army . 6 We shall be concerned here with only the first two periods of the Counter Reformation . They co nstitute the background for the emergency of a Catholic hymnology in Czech. II) POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM THE END OF THE 16TH CENTURY TO 1620 From the end of the 16th century to White Mountain, the Czech Counter-Reformation lacked the means to carry out its program, even though the Hapsburgs had made Catholicism one of the principal tools of their politics in Bohemia . The Diet was torn apart by the religious conflict. After 1575 and the elaboration of the Confessio Bohemica, 1 the Sub Utraque party acquired increasing importance . 8 The events leading up to the de finitive d estruction of religious coexistence in 1618, after it had finally been won in 1609 , are too well known to be gone into here. Despite this profound upheaval , part of the intellectual elite of Prague remained open to the ideas of religious tolerance. 9 In general, the towns and cities of Bohemia were mainly Neo-Utraquist (ci:-ypto-Lutheran), with the exception of Catholic Plzeii and some others. In the countrysid e, the great majority of the clergy seems also to have been NeoUtraquist; but it must be admitted that very little is known about the realities of rural religious life in 16th century Bohemia. Despite proceedings against them, 10 the Czech Brethren were well established in ce rtain areas, especially in Moravia. �38 SLOVAKIA Throughout Bohemia, where the archbishopric ' s seat remained vacant from 14 71 to 1561 ( the year of the enthronization of Brus of Mohelnice), the structures of the Catholic Church were in deep disarray. The lack of priests was so severe that it made itself felt until at least the last third of the 17th century. 11 Therefore, religious and missionary orders, especially the Jesuits , had a lot to do to fill the vacuum. Catholicism in Moravia seems to have been more resistant , for at least the episcopal seat in Olomouc never went empty. But the towns were mostly Lutheran, even as their patrician elite was perhaps more Germanized than elsewhere . Sects abounded: in the 16th century, as is well known, Moravia had become the refuge for all the heretics of Europe. 12 The bastions of the Czech Brethren were there, especially in the lands of the Zerotfns , where they printed many of their books in the second half of the century, including the famous Kralice Bible (1579-1593) . Since the beginning of the 16th century the Moravian Diet had counted freedom of religion among its acquired privileges. In the last third of the 16th century, as a party of Catholic activists and Hapsburg faithfuls was reconstituted among the great lords in the Diet of Bohemia (Zdenek and Ladislav of Lobkovic , Vilem Slavata, J aroslav Martinie, Vilem of Rozmberk and so on), Jesuits frequently had ~issions on the estates of the nobility which had been won over by the new style of the Counter-Reformation. But this still remained a sporadic phenomenon, affecting only individuals. In the last analysis, although the figures are not entirely trustworthy, the population of the Czech Kingdom around 1620 was at least 75 % non-Catholic; the figure of 90% has also been advanced and seems to be reliable for Bohemia (without Moravia) . 13 It was a hybrid " Protestantism," deeply affected by the popular sects. Unfortunately, space does not permit me to dwell upon the extremely particular case of Czech Protestantism as it developed after the period of Hussitism . 14 III) CZECH CATHOLIC HYMNOLOGY Tfanovskfs Cithara Sanctorum (Lyre of the Saints, 1636, Levoca) represented an entirely successful attempt to renew and unify the evangelical repertoire of both the Slovak and the Czech Protestants expelled from the kingdom of Bohemia after White Mountain. Nevertheless, Tfanovsky had also delved into the rich traditions of the Utraquists, the Brethren and even the Czech Lutherans , whose �SLOVAKIA 39 first printed songbooks went back to 1501 , Pfsnicky (Little Songs , Praha 1501 , editor Jan Severyn z Kapi'. Hory, a Czech Brethren songbook). 206 canticles in the 1636 edition, or 50 % , came from the abundant repertoire of his Czech predecessors . Thus even though Tfanovsky's efforts were innovative and in many respects uniqu e in contemporary Czech and Slovak Protestant hymnology, they were rooted in a rich past and inserted within a hymnological continuum. Could the same have been true for Czech Catholic hymnology? Did it possess Catholic models anterior to the Counter-Reformation? If not, what was its relationship to the repertoires of the Utraquists , the Brethren, and even Tfanovsky? Finally, why did the Counter- Reformation so consistently resort to songbooks in the vernacular throughout the 17th and 18th centuries? All these questions will guide the following investigation. 1) Quantification of Catholic canticles and anthologies from 1580 to the end of the 18th century First, to give an idea of the imposing dimensions of Czech Catholic hymnology , I would like to provide a few figures. The Utraquists, Czech Brethren and Czech Lutherans published at least 106 different collections of canticles in Czech between 1501 and 1620. 15 Between 1580 and 1800, 85 editions of Catholic anthologies appeared. This latter figure is minimal and partial, for with a few but significant exceptions, it includes only titles beginning with Pfsne, Pfsnicky, Kancional, Kancionalnfk and Kancionalek (Songs, Little Songs, Songbook , Little Songbook). 16 The sheer quantity of canticles involved is overwhelming: 24 of these anthologies are over 500 pages long, 21 of them are over 400 pages long, and some of their number contain almost 1,000 canticles (e .g. Steyer's songbooks). A few more data before we proceed: I myself have gone through and analyzed 29 of the most important collections . Taken together, they contain around 10 ,000 can tides . There is considerable overlap , and as it emerges from these 29 anthologies, some 2,330 canticles actually circulated in 17th and 18th ce ntury Bohemia and Morav ia. Included in this figure are 1,950 canticl es which first appeared between 1580 and the end of the 18th century. Ifl stick to the temporal limits ofmy paper, that is from 1588 to 1683, the fourteen pertin ent coll ections together �40 SLOVAKIA contain 1,941 canticles including 1,128 novelties, or 58 % of the 1,950 new canticles catalogued up to 1798. 2) Catholic coJlections of hymns from the beginning of the Counter-Reformation to 1683 and their relationship to Protestant Czech hymnol- ogy Before the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in Bohemia (circa 1555-1560), only one Catholic songbook existed in the face of the numerous anthologies of the Brethren, Utraquists and Lutherans. Published anonymously in Pizer\ in 1529, both its title, Pfsnicky velmi pekne a pffkladne na nedelnf ctenf do roka (Very pretty and exemplary songs on the Sunday Gospels of the year)' 7 and its contents are reminiscent of the contemporaneous publications of the Utraquist Mfrinsky (in 1522, 1531 , then 1567, 1577 and 1590). In 1550 and 1595, the poet - or rather versifier - Simon Lomnicky z Budce published his Pfsne na Evangelia (Songs on the Gospels of the year, Praha 1580) containing 115 new canticles, and his Pfsne historicke (H istorical Songs, Praha 1595) containing 51 new canticles versifying the lives of 51 Saints, for which he had delved into diverse legendary sources, including the Legenda Aurea . But Lomnicky's songbooks are not products of the Counter-Reformation. Their tone is different, and their author did not belong to the circles of those seeking the conversion of Bohemia. He was rather a provincial writer who took pleasure in converting everything coming into his hands into songs, and who belonged to the "learned middle classes," ifl am allowed to speak in such a way . He was a school master, and in publishing two songbooks he was following late sixteenth-century fashion in urban milieux which were essentially Utraquist. Furthermore, nothing indicates that Lomnicky's collections were destined for the Church , for liturgical or paraiiturgical use; on the contrary, their author himself conceived the possibility of simple reading as well as singing. 18 These three songbooks, of which two were anterior to the first hymnological efforts of the Counter-Reformation , could well have served as models for the editors of Catholic songbooks . But in fact neither the 1529 anthology nor the Pfsne na Evangelia of 1580 (with the exception of two canticles) left any traces , while Lomnicky ' s Pfsne historicke were widely used as canticles on the Saints in 1631, 1642, 1659 and then in 1712 and 1719 . 19 �SLOVAKIA 41 The first real songbook of the Counter-Reformation emerged only in 1588 in Prague, under the aegis of the Jesuits of St. Clement College . 20 Containing 91 canticles, it was entitled Pfsne nave, kratke naucenf kfestanskeho v sobe obsahujfcf, sjinymi nekterymi na vajrocnf slavnosti i k vsidnf potfebe pfidanymi, pro Mladez a sprostnejsf lid, v nave vydane .. . (New songs containing a brief instruction in the Christian religion , with others for the feast d ays of the year and daily requirements, newly published for the young and ignorant. .. , Praha 1588) . 21 The first twenty canticles adapted P eter Canisius's Parvus Catechismus and preserved its original order. The rest were divided into canticles for the feast s of the liturgical year, including the Virgin Mary and the Saints; occasion al canticles; and canticles for public and personal devotion, i.e. for mass , before and after the sermon, for the Parish patron Sa int's day (po svfcenf) , before and after meals , for morning and evening, Rogation d ays and pilgrimages; so-called "general " or "common" canticles or perhaps canticles " for the laity " (obecnf); and canticles about death (sometimes - but not always - funeral canticles) . The two big categories, the Liturgical Year and public and private needs , are the classic categories for all Catholic collections of hymns . Among the 71 canticles remaining after the catechism in the 1588 songbook, there are 34 Protestant canticles ( one of Hussite origin, 21 27 of Utraquist origin, 23 and 6 from the Czech Brethren 14 ), four earlier canticl es from the 12th to the 15th centuries, 25 and 33 novelties, almost all of which concern public and private devotional needs. 26 P aradoxically , at least in appearance, a little more than 65 % of the canticles co ncernin g the liturgical year a re of Protestant origin (25 out of 38), with special em phasis on Christmas, Easter , Lent , Ascension D ay, P entecost and Adven t. The recycling of songs used by contemporary Protestants is considerable and very interesting indeed , for four out of eight canticles for the m ass are from the Utraquists (Gloria , Cred o, Sanctus), or from the Czech Brethren (Kyrie M agn e Deus). Coincidences of thi s kind are frequ ent in the Catholic hymnology of the Counter- R efo rmation . All the collection s of hymns retain a high proportion of canticles of Utraquist or Czech Brethren origin until the end of the 18th century . 11 These Protestant canticles belon g to the unchan ged repertory of the Liturgical Year , especially Ascension D ay and Pentecost, both very rigid categories with nearl y unchan gin g repertory , but also to the more or less movin g contents of categories like Christ- �42 SLOVAKIA mas , Lent, Easter and Advent. 28 As for canticles for occasions of public and private devotional needs , the proportion varies from songbook to songbook, but recourse to Protestant canticles anterior to 1620 is a constant . Sometimes, it seems even to be incredible: for instance, the J esuit Steyer went so far as to incorporate 45 psalms of the Czech Brother Jirfk StrejcintohisKancional cesky( 1683 , then 1687 , 1697 , 171 2, 1727 and 1764), without changing a single word from the 1587 edition . Among the essential prayers - those we call '' doctrinal ,'' that is the Pater, Ave, Credo, Ten Commandments and so on - all the son gbooks include canticles of Protestant origin. A songbook of 1652, Pfsne rocnf (Songs for the Year, published by Ludmila Sipafova, printer Jirik Sipar's widow) and the 6 editions of Steyer ' s songbook even contain a Czech version of Luther's Credo, M y vsickni veffme v jednoho Boh a (Wir glauben all' an einen Gott), 29 reprinting it perhaps from the Cithara Sanctorum of 1636. 30 By the same token , up to 1683 , i.e. the first edition ofSteyer's songbook 31 but later also, whenever an anthology presents the heading "for the holy mass " it contains texts of Protestant origin (that is 6 out of 8 anthologies from 1588 until 1683) . 32 This remained the rule until the end of the 18th century, except in Kania.s 's songbooks.ll I have chosen to spend a rather long time writing about these Pfsne na ve (New Songs) of 1588, because they exemplify the orientations of early Catholic hymnology. Indeed, putting aside the three songbooks of the poet-musician Adam Michna z Otradovic (1600-1676 ?), i.e. Ceska marianska muzika (Czech Marian Music, Praha 1647), Loutna ceska (Czech Lute, Praha 1653) and Svatorocnf muzika (M u sic for the Feasts of the Year, Praha 1661), whose 197 canticles included 195 (or perhaps only 194) written by the poet himself in a very baroque and mystical lyricism, and also excludin g j eslicky (Little Cribs, Praha 1658) of the J esuit Bedrich Bride!, all the subsequent Catholic hymnbooks from 1601 to 1683 proceed accordin g to the sam e plan, with similar contents. So let us see now what exactly were these hymnbooks. In 160 1 appeared the K an cional of R ozenplut (355 canticles in Czech), and in 1622 the Pisne katolicke (Catholi c Songs) of Hlohovsky (234 canticles in Czech). Both were published at Olomouc , and both were official hymnbooks of the diocese of Moravia, with the approval of Cardinal Dietrichstein. I n Bohemia there appeared in 163 1 the Kancional (Songbook) of the Prague printer Pavel Sessius (formerly the Protestant printer of Prague University, who converted) with 325 canticles; in 1639 a little, �43 SLOVAKIA anonymou s songbook, K an cionalnfk , due to the J esu its ofKlatovy College and perhaps to Father Albrecht Chanovsky, 34 with 121 canticles ; in 1642 the Cesky D ekakord (Czech Decacorde) of the printer Jirfk Sipar (400 can ticles); then in 1652 the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year) by his widow Ludmila Sipafova ( 171 canticles) . 35 In 1659 the Cesky Dekakord of 1642 was reprinted by Urban Golias, still in Prague. The first edition of Steyer' s K ancional cesky (Czech Songbook) , also known as "sva tovacla ysk y" (St. W enceslas's songbook) , dates from 1683, as we already saw, with 828 canticles. 36 For the sake of completeness, a 1618 Postilla by the J esuit Vojtech Scipio Berlicka should be mentioned as containing canticles on the yearly gospels which appeared also in the collections of 163 1, 1642 and Steyer. All in all, without Berlicka , that brings us to nine anthologies, counting one reedition (in 1659), from 1588 to 1683 . Now, to finish with the relations between Czech Catholic and Protestant hymnologies, here are some percentages of Protestant and new canticles in these nine Catholic collections: Songbooks Canticles (in all) 1588 1601 1622 1631 1639 1642 (1659)* 1652 1683 91 355 234 325 121 400 (400) 171 828 Protestant Canticles 34 46 54 103 61 145 (145 131 280 37 % 13 % 23% 32 % 50 % 36% 36 %) 77 % 34% New Canticles 53 261 81 46 4 4 (0 8 328 58 % 73,5 % 34 % 14 % 3% 1% 0) 5% 40 % • R eediti on of 1642 Cesk y dekacord b y Urban Golias. Some of the Czech Catholic collections also had canticles from the Cithara Sanctorum: collection of 1639 1642 1653 1683 " 2 7 6 34 canticles from 1636 Cithara canticles " canticles '' canticles from 1636 and 1653 Cithara �44 SLOVAKIA The 1631 Czech songbook already had 3 canticles which were later put into the Cithara of 1636, and Steyer's book of 1683 includes also one canticle from the Amsterdam songbook by Jan Amos Komensky (Kancional, Amsterdam 1659). As a comparison, here are identical data concerning now the first Slovak Catholic songbook Cantus Catholici, which appeared in Levoca m 1655 : 37 Total number of canticles in Slovak (not Latin) Czech Protestant canticles (all in Slovak) Canticles from 1636 Cithara Sanctorum " 1653 " New Canticles 227 88 (38%) 20 (10%) 3 56 (25%) Thus the percentage of Protestant canticles in the Catholic songbooks of the first Counter-Reformation from 1588 to 1683 ( not including this latter collection) was approximately 38 % . If Rozenplut 's K ancional (1601), the only one which explicitly sought to exclude the Utraquist and Czech Brethren repertory , is left aside, the percentage increases to 42 % . Later, the average percentage declines (from 1683 to 1764, for twelve collections) but remains nonetheless at 30%. Inversely, from 1588 to 1683 (not including this one), the average percentage of novelties is only 24 %, and from 1683 to 1764, it attains 36 %. 38 The hymnbook of 1601 by Rozenplut , which is very co mbative , and to a lesser extent that of 1622 by Hlohovsky , tried to create hymnology and had less recourse than their successors to Protestant texts. But subsequently, and until 1660 , Catholic hymnbooks are characterized by a progressive return to Protestant sources. After 1683, as Steyer so amply demonstrates, Jesuit editors of hymnbooks ev in ce an astounding capacity to absorb texts from multifarious origins. Even the most " heretical" texts, as we have seen, could be admitted as long as they did not attack the Church or the Catholic doctrines themselves . Moreove r , in the 17th and 18th centuries, little hymnbooks without musical notation and destined to a more popular public, retained a much more conservative, static repertoire than the great official songbooks (like Steyer, Holan , Bozan and Konias 's songbooks). Such is the case of the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year), a series of little books having roots in the second halfofthe 16th century (and therefore Utraquist) and continuing until the 19th century (in the 1652 ed ition , as we saw, there were �SLOVAKIA 45 13 1 P rotes tan t canticles out of 171 !). For there were two parallel tracks in the produ ction of C atholic hy mnbooks : first , there was that of big volumes m eant fo r the Pa rish K antor and most directly controlled by the C hurch . Second , outside the official k an cionaly , was the production of little volumes or anonym ous booklets in which particular hymnologic tradition s of the 15th and 16th century Czech R eform survived . This very important point proves that can ticles actually sung in Bohemia du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries went way beyond the choice, albeit large, p roposed b y the anth ologies of the Counter-Reform a tion : vernacul ar religiou s so ngs continued to fl ourish , sha ping sensibility in a way relatively independent of the context of re-Catholicization. Obviously the production of these booklets did not escape the ecclesiastical and civil censorship . But in Bohemia, in the context of a triumphal but indeed still ve ry ill-rooted and badl y organized Catholicism , the canticle underwent the sa.{Tle fate as other in gred ients of wha t is called the " popular Baroqu e": its purity of origin was of little importance, provided that it m obili zed lay piety. 3) Places and uses of th e canticle But how and where was the Catholic canticl e supposed to mobilize thi s lay piety? Like its P rotes tant counterpart, the Catholic h ymnbook was fi rst and fo rem ost a coll ection of Church songs intended for the u se of P arish K an to ff (Cantors) and brotherhoods (mostly , for instance, socalled literack a bratrstva). Of course, in the C a tholic Church , the canticl e was no longe r at the heart of the H oly Service. Its role was to double the liturgy to stimul ate popula r participation and ardor, and in so doin g it d oubtless, in cidentall y, played also a significant role in m aintenance of the Czech lan gu age du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries . It was also employed in catechization , in mi ssionary contexts, and in diverse situat ions of d omestic or comm uni ty devotion s and praye rs. Th at will be m y fi rst conclu sion . T he second one I should like to point out is tha t from the thematic point of view, beginnin g with Steyer in 1683, there is a verita ble eruption of personal piety in can ticles. 39 Thus, alongside the traditional themes and the son gs for the litu rgical year, there appear canti cles " to combat a nxiety," " to bear one's cross," on " m an 's love for God " and som eti mes "even if H ell does not ex ist ," on "submi ssion to Divin e will ," " pat ience in cri ses," and so on , all evokin g contemporary Germ an �46 SLOVAKIA Pietism and manifesting great similarity with the collection of Evangelical emigres. Of course, it cannot be proved that all the canticles proposed by the songbooks were actually sung in community or in church . In particular, these last ones I just referred to seem rather to have been m eant for personal meditation . But I do hope to have provided a sense of the deep richness of Catholic Czech hymnology as well as of its fundamental ambivalence. The very success of the Catholic canticle was based upon this ambivalence, and upon its roots in a tradition of popular liturgy of Protestant origin (i.e . Utraquist or Brethren) origin. It thus became a privileged means of mass indoctrination for the Counter-Reformation , contributing to the reconversion of Bohemia to Catholicism. NOTES ' From 1670 ca to the end of the 17th century records kept in the Prague Archiepiscopal archives indicate only a very small number of heretics by pari sh . For instance, curates' answers (Relationes, R esponsae) to a 1677 questionnaire often do not know notoriou s or public heretics (heretici aperti) (see Statnf usti'ednf archiv, APA I , B 11/7 - B 13/4). I would like to suggest that the same conception of heresy was changing during the process of conversion . Ca 1700 , Viscars' visitations often suspect hidden heretics, especiall y in East and North Bohemia (Ci rcles of Caslav and Chrudim). Then around 17 25, some of the archbishopric Missionarii Ordinarii began to seek out both heretics a nd books all over the country. The Archiepiscopal archives also include various kinds of inquisition documents. ' However, these patents forbade the missionaries to personally imprison the accused and transferred the judgement of heretics from ecclesiastical courts to civil courts . In the same way , as of 1735 the functions of the "extra-ordinary" missionaries had to be handed ove r to 14 secular priests ( rather th an the previous 12 J esuits) . See Tomas Vaclav Bflek, R eform ace katolicka neboli obn ovenf naboienstvf k atolick eho v Kralovstvf ceskem po bitve belohorske (Praha 1892), p. 269-271 , 293. l Id., ibid. 4 See note 1 • 5 See T. V. Bflek, op. cit., p. 296. • See T. V . Bflek, op. cit., p . 296, and Antonin Rezek, Dejiny prostonarodnfho hnutf naboien sk eho v Cech ach , I (Praha 1887). ' Maximilian II only accepted this verball y in 1575 , and Rud olph II only ratified it, with the famous Letter of Majesty , as of 1609. ' The composition of the nobility present in the Diet of 1575 was as fo llows : Old Utraquists, 2 Lords (pani), including the Grand Chamberlain Jan ofValdstejn, 3 Kni ghts (rytffi); Neo-Utraquists , 4/ 5 of the attending nobility; Catholics, 1/8; Czech Brethren, 1/4. Figures are given by Jaroslav Panek, "Zapis o charakter ceske stavovske opozice a snem roku 1575 ," Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky, XXVIII ( 1980), 6, 878-880 . �SLOVAKIA 9 ' 0 " " 13 " " " 17 " " ' 0 " ll 47 See m y paper "The T welve Sons of Carnival," to be published in Fifteenth Century Studies (D etroit) . The first expulsion orders issued against the Czech Brethren d a te from the rei gn of Jiri of Podebrady, at the end of the 15th Centu ry . The last before White M ountain was issued in 1602, seven yea rs before the Letter of M ajesty. See the record s of the Archiepiscopal archives in Prague (APA I , B 11 /7 -B 13/4, for instance); see also Frantisek Kras!, Arno.st hra be H arrach , kardinal sv. cirkve i'fmske a kn fze arcibiskup prazsk y. Historick o- kritick e vypsan f nabozen sk ych pomeru v Cechach od roku 1623- 1667 (Praha 1886), p . 134. See J osef Polise nsky, T fi cetileta valk a a evropsk e krize 17. stoletf (Praha 1970), p . 59-60 . In fac t , there a re no m ode rn es tim ates of the number of P ro tes tants in Bohemia. H owever, see Zikm unt Win ter, Zivot cirkevn f v Cechach . Kulturn f historicky obraz XV. a XVI . stoletf, I-II (Praha 1895-1 896) ; see also J osef J anacek , Gesk e dejin y . D oba pfedbelohorska 1526-1 547 , l/ 1 (Praha, 2nd edition 197 1). It must be rem embered that , aft er 1436, both Catholicism and Utraquism were state religions in Bohemia whereas Lutheranism was not offi cially tolerated until 1609. The tables conta ining the confessional breakdown of these 106 son gbooks are in my D octoral disse rt ation : H ymnologia Bohemica. Cantinnaires tch equ es d e la ContreR eform e, 1588- 1764 , vol. I , p . 107, U nive rsite de Pa ri s - Ill , 1982. These figures are based on Zdenek Tobolka andJiri H orak , Knihopis ceskych a slovensk ych tisk u od doby n ejstarsi at do k once 18. stoletf. .. II. T isk y z let 1501 -1800 (Praha 1939) etc, and Vaclav Pumprla , Soupis starych tisku ve fondech Statnf vedeck e knihovn y v Olom ouci. I . T isk y vydan e na uzem f Cech a Moravy v letech 1501-1 800 , 12 vols. (Olomouc 1974- 1979) . Pfsni cky velm i pekn e a pi'fkladne na nedeln f C ten f do roka . T ez O Sva tych ze Ctenf take z postn fch Epistol i ze C ten f pfsn e a na p osledy vseck y tuto p ofadn e V n ove zpravney najdes. A znova tistene a opravene. V Plzni ujana Pekka. Leta M DCXXIX dn e X III! Unora m esfce. 8°, 122p. See the Pfedmluva k ctenafi (Preface to the reader) in the Pfsne Historick e (Historical Songs) of 1595. Lomnicky's songs can be found in the following songbooks: Sessius (K an cional, Prague 163 1), Sipai' (Cesk y D ekakord , Prague 1642) and its reprint by Golias (P ragu e 1659) , R osenmuller (Kancionalek historicky, Prague 1712), Steyer (K ancional cesk y , Prague, 1683 , 1687 , 1697, 1712, 172 7, 1764) , and Bozan (Slavfcek rajsky , H rad ec Kralove 1719). Antonfn Skarka attributes this work to th e J esuit Alexander Vojt, at that time Su perior a t St. C lem ent Coll ege . I n a ny case, d ue to his offi cia l positi on, V ojt would have had to approve a nd supervise its publication , as well as th at of th e transl ati on of Canisiu s's Parvus Ca cscchimus pu blished in 1584 by the sa me printer , Bu ryiin Valda . Printed by Buryiin V a lda. Otce Boze Vse m ohoud, j en z jsi nam dal clo vecenstvf, Syna sveho jedin eho . .. , acco rd ing to Jirecek, H ymnolog ia Bohemica (P ra ha 1878): 15th ce ntury, Tabor so ngbook, on Corpu s Christi. �48 SLOVAKIA " Canticles for Advent: I K e cti, k ch vale Krista krale Christm as: 6 Andelove, andelo ve Jsou zpfvali; Na.radii se Kristus Pan ; Na Bozf Narozenf radujf se AnJele; Nasca] nam den vesely,z rodu kralo vsk eh o; ZnameneJ, kfest'an vern y, Kristovo Vtelenf; ZvestuJem vam radost Lent: 4 - Nebesky Pan , at'by dokazal k nam dobrocu svou velikou; 0 velika milost Syna Boi fh o; Umucenf naseho Pana milostneho; PosloucheJte ialoby nebeskeho Otce Easter: 6 Vstalt'Jest teto ch v11e ctn y Vykupitel nas; Uteseny nam den nastal; Vzkffsenf Spasitele sveh o ch val k aidy clovek ; L eto chvfle teto vesele vydava; AJ ten siln y lev udatny; V eselyt' nam den nastal Ascension Day: 1 Boie Otce z velike milosti ucinils nam vice neili dosti Pentecost: 2 VftaJ sladk y tesiteli, temnosti osvetiteli; Seslanf Du cha S vateh o Holy Virgin: I Zdravas neJsveteJsf kralovno, milost i TroJice Svare osvfcena Holy Ma ss: 3 Ana zemi budii /idem pokoJ (Gloria); Vefmez v B oha Orce Stvofitele vseho (Credo); Vsemohoucf Stvofiteli, Orce Svaty (Sa nctus) Before th e sermon : 2 Boie Otce, seslii nam nynf Du cha Svateho; Otce nas, mily Pan e, deJi nam Du cha S vateh o "Common ": 1 Pam atiIJ, clo vece, proc re Pan Buh stvofil (For d eta ils and refe rences see m y Doctoral di ssertat ion, op. cit. , pp. 390-437). " Canticles for : Advent: 2 Pas/an Jest ArchanJel k M arii Panne; Vesele zpfveJm e, Boha Orce chvalme Parish Patron Saint D ay: I Chvalmei nynf Boha sveho z posvecenf mfsta Jeho Saints and Angels: I V moci moudrosti dobreh o chvalm ez Boha v Svatych Jeho H oly Mass: I Boie Orce nas, Jeni Jsi na nebesfch "Common ": I Pane Boie bud' pfi nas, kdyi budem e m ffti (For deta ils and references, see ibid., Joe. cit .). " Buh Vsemohoucf; Svaty Va.clave; Dnesn fh o dne vstal Stvofitel; VftaJ, m ily j ezu Kriste, vftaJ, Synu z Pann y ciste " Canticles for Advent: 5 Zaff pfeJasnou navstfvil Gabriel; Zdrava Bohem pozdravena, rodicku blah oslavena; Zdrava bud p feslavna matko J ezfsova; Zdravas Pann o cista, tys pfimluva Jista; Vyk vetla hill Aronova Christmas : I Tff krali znam enali hvezdu H oly Virgin: I O Maria, vsech ctn ostf zrcadlo neJkrassf Saints and Angels: 3j ezu Kriste Vsem ohoucf(St. Andrew); Pochvalm ez Boha vecneho (St. Nicholas); Vsickni Bohu ke cit, ch vale (S t . M a ry M agdalene) H oly M ass: 3 A na zemi budii lidem pokoJ, dobra ville vsechnem (Gloria); VftaJ vdecna, vftaJ vzactna, milosti z milosti dana (Eucharisi); Zdrav bud', mily jezu Kriste, Jeni narozen z Panny ciste ( Eucharist) After the serm on: 1 Poprosmez Svateho Du cha D eath : 2 Boie Orce nas, k cobe se m odlfm e; Boie Orce nebesky, prosfmJa rve milosci R ogacions, Pilgrimages: 3 H ospodin e uslys nas, spomeii na nas; - Orce Boie smiliIJ se, o Boie; - Ve Jmeno Bozfm kraceJme M orning: 7 D aru svetlych milosti; L askavy H ospodine, ch valfme Te v 1e10 hodine; M ocny Boie, sveta spravce; Nocnf temnost se zm eiiuJe; Nut vsicknipovstavse z Jute; Orce Svaty, tesiteli, vsech vernych osveticeli; VeJmenu Svaie TroJice k nebi zdvfham hffsne ru ce �SLOVAKIA 11 " " ' 0 " " " " " 36 " 49 Before and after dinn er: 2 Dfky Panu lask avemu vzd ejm ei (aft e r dinn er); Stedry darce vsech milostf (before dinn er) "Common " : 1 B oie, kteryi z sve velike milosti (For details a nd references see m y Doctoral di sse rta ti on , op . cit., pp . 390-43 7). Canticl es of Lutheran ori gin da tin g prior to 1620 a re mu ch less frequ ent . This is becau se th e rare anthologies con sidered to be " Lutheran " ran ge from 1576 to 1606, and a re little diffe rent from the U traqui st son gbooks. Although th e repertoire of C hri stm as canticles reta ins a perm an ent co re of I 5th and 16th century son gs , it is ren ewed in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The new repertory a ppears with R oze nplu t's anth ology ( 1601 ) and is henceforth reinforced from one collecti on to the nex t. The "Christmas canticle" catego ry is therefo re one of the most mobile of all. The same is tru e, to a mu ch lesser degree, of Advent son gs. On th e other ha nd , Easter ca nticl es a re mu ch more co nse rvati ve, despite the new elements which appear in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The Ascen sion and Pentecos t ca tego ri es a re ve ry traditi on al. In so far as Lent is co nce rned , thin gs are so mewh at different: canticles of Utraqui st origin and so ngs from th e C zech Brethren predomin a te until 1650 . Mi chn a's son gbooks ( 1647 a nd 1661 ) m ark the beginn ing of a renovation in th e theme of th e C ru cified Christ, whi ch is henceforth based upon a personal link with th e sinner . This th eme is continu all y enl arged upon unti l th e beginnin g of th e 18th ce ntury. If one can believe th e ca nticles, in the later thi rd of th e 17th ce ntury th e Czech Coun te r-R eform ation is "C hristological. " This te nden cy is also found in pa mphl ets featurin g a n ave rage of 1 to 4 canti cles. The numbe r of doc trin al canticl es re-used by Cath olic son gbooks now totals 14 (2 T en Co mm and m ents , 6 Pater , 2 canticles on th e Trin ity, 4 C red o). But th e Czech tex t is older than 163 6 . M atej V aclav Steye r , K an cion al cesk y, Praha 1683, 1687, 1697, 1712, 17 27 , 1764. 3 K y rie, 2 Gloria, 1 fo r th e Epi stle, 1 for th e G os pel, 2 C redo, 3 S an ctu s , in oth er word s a total of 12 canticl es. Antonin Konias, C itara Noveh o Zakona (The C ithara of the N ew T estament), Hradec Kralove 1727 , 1738 , 1746, 1750, Pra ha 1752, no date / mi d 18th century/, Hradec Kralove 1762, 1799 . So K oni as ' s m ain so n gbook was publi shed eight tim es between 1727 an d 1799. For fu rth er in for ma ti ons on Father C hanovsky see my D octoral di ssertat ion (op . cit. , pp . 2 16-222 an d pp . 225-227). J an Rozenplut z Svarcenbachu , K an cional , 4°, Olomouc 1601 ; Ji rik Hlohovsky, Pfs ne k atolick e, 8°, O lomouc 1622; Pavel Sessius, K ancional , 4°, Praha 163 1; Anonymous, K an cionalnfk , 8 ° , Praha 1639 ; Ji rik Sipai', Cesk y D ek ak ord , 4° , P raha 1642 ; Ludm ila Sipai'ova, P fs n e rocnf, 12° , Prah a 1652; Urb a n Goli as , Cesk y D ekak ord, 4° , P raha 1659. O th er ed itions of Steye r' s son gboo k contained th e fo llowing number of canticles: 1687: 883 (P ro testant: 32%) 1727: 927 (P rotest a nt: 32 % ) 1697: 896 (P rotestant: 32 % ) 1764: 927 (Protesta nt: 32 %) 1712: 947 (Protestant: 31,5 % ) Figures calcu lated on th e bas is of J an Vi li kovsky's "Cantus Catholici, " Trn avsky sbornik (Bratislava 1935) , pp 57-94. On the Levoca printi n g, see Jan Caplov ic, �50 38 39 SLOVAKIA Bibliogralia tla ci vyd an ych na Slovensku do roku 1700, Diel 1. (Martin: Matica slo· venska , 1972), p. 364. The· Catholic songbook can therefore be co mpared to contemporary Czech collec· tions, the only difference being th e much high er proportion of songs borrowed from the C ithara Sanctorum, which can be explained by their geogra phic proxi mit y. The Steyer a nd Konias songbooks co nta in 35 (for 1687- 1764 editions) and 24 (for 1752 a nd furth er editions) canticles from the 1636 Cithara Sanctorum. All of them are included in the so-called "common " or "general " canticles in Steyer's songbook. In Bozan 's and K onias's songbooks, th ey have their own categories be· sides "common " or "general" can ticles. Most of them insist on man ' s love for God . Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventeenth C entury Slovakia ," at th e AAASS co nvention in W ashin gton , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982 . � SLOVAKIA 36 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kancionaly in the Kingdom of Bohemia (1588-1683) Marie- Elizabeth Ducreux I) THE BACKGROUND It is surely unnecessary here to go deeply into the hi story of th e Counter Reformation in the Czech Kingdom , so intima tely linked in m y mind to its integration into the H apsburg Monarchy . In any case, exploring this history in detail is obviously beyond the scope of this paper , but to situate the context of my subj ect, I shall begin by sketching its general outline and suggesting a periodization. Four phases can be di stin gui shed in th e elaboration and application of the policy of co nversion . Th e first period, extending from th e arrival ofthejesuits in Prague (1556) to the d efeat at White M ountain (Nov. 8 , 1620), set the stage for what followed. The second period , from 1621 to the reign of Leopold I , witnessed active attempts to implement the poli cy of con ve rsion . This includes the Thirty Years' War, which seve rely h ampered effort s to convert the rural areas, a nd the milesto ne of 1650 , whi ch marked the energetic resurgence of the civil powers and th e archbishopric in supervi sing the population . Then , under L eopold I , followed a period of relative respite. Bohemia was then supposedl y Catholic, although proof ex ists of the persistence of m a ny non-C atholi cs, eve n in the ranks of the nobility. For inst ance, h ym nologist Vaclav Kleych (who was not an aristocrat) , born at Lazany near Litom ysl in 1682 , who emigrated with all his family to Zittau at the beginning of the 18th century . Finally the fourth period, from 1705 to 1780 , witnessed the tightening of rep ression and a search for heretics all over Bohem ia. 1 The judicial regulation of Joseph I ( 1705-1 711) made punishable by death the peddlin g of heretical books, preaching, and suspicious assembli es. �SLOVAKIA 37 The death penalty was confirmed by Charles VI ( 1711-1740) several times, with at least five patents from March 15, 1721 to February 4, 1 724. 2 He reinforced existing antiheretical legislation with a publication on Jan. 29, 1726, which was confirmed at least twenty-two times until 1770, i.e. a lso during the reign of Maria Theresa. 3 In this system of laws, heresy was punished by forced labor and, in case of relapse, the galleys, exile and death . This was, of course, also the time of the well-known bookburning - and, more often, book confiscation and rectification . 4 The patent of October 13, 1781 put an end to the repression by accepting - with reservations - the Lutheran, Calvinist and Greek Catholic confessions . But only 45,000 persons 5 publically proclaimed their adherence to these two Protestant denominations, and the adherents of popular sects (for example that of the "Lambs,'' Berankove) continued long after to be persecuted by being press-ganged into the army . 6 We shall be concerned here with only the first two periods of the Counter Reformation . They co nstitute the background for the emergency of a Catholic hymnology in Czech. II) POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM THE END OF THE 16TH CENTURY TO 1620 From the end of the 16th century to White Mountain, the Czech Counter-Reformation lacked the means to carry out its program, even though the Hapsburgs had made Catholicism one of the principal tools of their politics in Bohemia . The Diet was torn apart by the religious conflict. After 1575 and the elaboration of the Confessio Bohemica, 1 the Sub Utraque party acquired increasing importance . 8 The events leading up to the de finitive d estruction of religious coexistence in 1618, after it had finally been won in 1609 , are too well known to be gone into here. Despite this profound upheaval , part of the intellectual elite of Prague remained open to the ideas of religious tolerance. 9 In general, the towns and cities of Bohemia were mainly Neo-Utraquist (ci:-ypto-Lutheran), with the exception of Catholic Plzeii and some others. In the countrysid e, the great majority of the clergy seems also to have been NeoUtraquist; but it must be admitted that very little is known about the realities of rural religious life in 16th century Bohemia. Despite proceedings against them, 10 the Czech Brethren were well established in ce rtain areas, especially in Moravia. �38 SLOVAKIA Throughout Bohemia, where the archbishopric ' s seat remained vacant from 14 71 to 1561 ( the year of the enthronization of Brus of Mohelnice), the structures of the Catholic Church were in deep disarray. The lack of priests was so severe that it made itself felt until at least the last third of the 17th century. 11 Therefore, religious and missionary orders, especially the Jesuits , had a lot to do to fill the vacuum. Catholicism in Moravia seems to have been more resistant , for at least the episcopal seat in Olomouc never went empty. But the towns were mostly Lutheran, even as their patrician elite was perhaps more Germanized than elsewhere . Sects abounded: in the 16th century, as is well known, Moravia had become the refuge for all the heretics of Europe. 12 The bastions of the Czech Brethren were there, especially in the lands of the Zerotfns , where they printed many of their books in the second half of the century, including the famous Kralice Bible (1579-1593) . Since the beginning of the 16th century the Moravian Diet had counted freedom of religion among its acquired privileges. In the last third of the 16th century, as a party of Catholic activists and Hapsburg faithfuls was reconstituted among the great lords in the Diet of Bohemia (Zdenek and Ladislav of Lobkovic , Vilem Slavata, J aroslav Martinie, Vilem of Rozmberk and so on), Jesuits frequently had ~issions on the estates of the nobility which had been won over by the new style of the Counter-Reformation. But this still remained a sporadic phenomenon, affecting only individuals. In the last analysis, although the figures are not entirely trustworthy, the population of the Czech Kingdom around 1620 was at least 75 % non-Catholic; the figure of 90% has also been advanced and seems to be reliable for Bohemia (without Moravia) . 13 It was a hybrid " Protestantism," deeply affected by the popular sects. Unfortunately, space does not permit me to dwell upon the extremely particular case of Czech Protestantism as it developed after the period of Hussitism . 14 III) CZECH CATHOLIC HYMNOLOGY Tfanovskfs Cithara Sanctorum (Lyre of the Saints, 1636, Levoca) represented an entirely successful attempt to renew and unify the evangelical repertoire of both the Slovak and the Czech Protestants expelled from the kingdom of Bohemia after White Mountain. Nevertheless, Tfanovsky had also delved into the rich traditions of the Utraquists, the Brethren and even the Czech Lutherans , whose �SLOVAKIA 39 first printed songbooks went back to 1501 , Pfsnicky (Little Songs , Praha 1501 , editor Jan Severyn z Kapi'. Hory, a Czech Brethren songbook). 206 canticles in the 1636 edition, or 50 % , came from the abundant repertoire of his Czech predecessors . Thus even though Tfanovsky's efforts were innovative and in many respects uniqu e in contemporary Czech and Slovak Protestant hymnology, they were rooted in a rich past and inserted within a hymnological continuum. Could the same have been true for Czech Catholic hymnology? Did it possess Catholic models anterior to the Counter-Reformation? If not, what was its relationship to the repertoires of the Utraquists , the Brethren, and even Tfanovsky? Finally, why did the Counter- Reformation so consistently resort to songbooks in the vernacular throughout the 17th and 18th centuries? All these questions will guide the following investigation. 1) Quantification of Catholic canticles and anthologies from 1580 to the end of the 18th century First, to give an idea of the imposing dimensions of Czech Catholic hymnology , I would like to provide a few figures. The Utraquists, Czech Brethren and Czech Lutherans published at least 106 different collections of canticles in Czech between 1501 and 1620. 15 Between 1580 and 1800, 85 editions of Catholic anthologies appeared. This latter figure is minimal and partial, for with a few but significant exceptions, it includes only titles beginning with Pfsne, Pfsnicky, Kancional, Kancionalnfk and Kancionalek (Songs, Little Songs, Songbook , Little Songbook). 16 The sheer quantity of canticles involved is overwhelming: 24 of these anthologies are over 500 pages long, 21 of them are over 400 pages long, and some of their number contain almost 1,000 canticles (e .g. Steyer's songbooks). A few more data before we proceed: I myself have gone through and analyzed 29 of the most important collections . Taken together, they contain around 10 ,000 can tides . There is considerable overlap , and as it emerges from these 29 anthologies, some 2,330 canticles actually circulated in 17th and 18th ce ntury Bohemia and Morav ia. Included in this figure are 1,950 canticl es which first appeared between 1580 and the end of the 18th century. Ifl stick to the temporal limits ofmy paper, that is from 1588 to 1683, the fourteen pertin ent coll ections together �40 SLOVAKIA contain 1,941 canticles including 1,128 novelties, or 58 % of the 1,950 new canticles catalogued up to 1798. 2) Catholic coJlections of hymns from the beginning of the Counter-Reformation to 1683 and their relationship to Protestant Czech hymnol- ogy Before the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in Bohemia (circa 1555-1560), only one Catholic songbook existed in the face of the numerous anthologies of the Brethren, Utraquists and Lutherans. Published anonymously in Pizer\ in 1529, both its title, Pfsnicky velmi pekne a pffkladne na nedelnf ctenf do roka (Very pretty and exemplary songs on the Sunday Gospels of the year)' 7 and its contents are reminiscent of the contemporaneous publications of the Utraquist Mfrinsky (in 1522, 1531 , then 1567, 1577 and 1590). In 1550 and 1595, the poet - or rather versifier - Simon Lomnicky z Budce published his Pfsne na Evangelia (Songs on the Gospels of the year, Praha 1580) containing 115 new canticles, and his Pfsne historicke (H istorical Songs, Praha 1595) containing 51 new canticles versifying the lives of 51 Saints, for which he had delved into diverse legendary sources, including the Legenda Aurea . But Lomnicky's songbooks are not products of the Counter-Reformation. Their tone is different, and their author did not belong to the circles of those seeking the conversion of Bohemia. He was rather a provincial writer who took pleasure in converting everything coming into his hands into songs, and who belonged to the "learned middle classes," ifl am allowed to speak in such a way . He was a school master, and in publishing two songbooks he was following late sixteenth-century fashion in urban milieux which were essentially Utraquist. Furthermore, nothing indicates that Lomnicky's collections were destined for the Church , for liturgical or paraiiturgical use; on the contrary, their author himself conceived the possibility of simple reading as well as singing. 18 These three songbooks, of which two were anterior to the first hymnological efforts of the Counter-Reformation , could well have served as models for the editors of Catholic songbooks . But in fact neither the 1529 anthology nor the Pfsne na Evangelia of 1580 (with the exception of two canticles) left any traces , while Lomnicky ' s Pfsne historicke were widely used as canticles on the Saints in 1631, 1642, 1659 and then in 1712 and 1719 . 19 �SLOVAKIA 41 The first real songbook of the Counter-Reformation emerged only in 1588 in Prague, under the aegis of the Jesuits of St. Clement College . 20 Containing 91 canticles, it was entitled Pfsne nave, kratke naucenf kfestanskeho v sobe obsahujfcf, sjinymi nekterymi na vajrocnf slavnosti i k vsidnf potfebe pfidanymi, pro Mladez a sprostnejsf lid, v nave vydane .. . (New songs containing a brief instruction in the Christian religion , with others for the feast d ays of the year and daily requirements, newly published for the young and ignorant. .. , Praha 1588) . 21 The first twenty canticles adapted P eter Canisius's Parvus Catechismus and preserved its original order. The rest were divided into canticles for the feast s of the liturgical year, including the Virgin Mary and the Saints; occasion al canticles; and canticles for public and personal devotion, i.e. for mass , before and after the sermon, for the Parish patron Sa int's day (po svfcenf) , before and after meals , for morning and evening, Rogation d ays and pilgrimages; so-called "general " or "common" canticles or perhaps canticles " for the laity " (obecnf); and canticles about death (sometimes - but not always - funeral canticles) . The two big categories, the Liturgical Year and public and private needs , are the classic categories for all Catholic collections of hymns . Among the 71 canticles remaining after the catechism in the 1588 songbook, there are 34 Protestant canticles ( one of Hussite origin, 21 27 of Utraquist origin, 23 and 6 from the Czech Brethren 14 ), four earlier canticl es from the 12th to the 15th centuries, 25 and 33 novelties, almost all of which concern public and private devotional needs. 26 P aradoxically , at least in appearance, a little more than 65 % of the canticles co ncernin g the liturgical year a re of Protestant origin (25 out of 38), with special em phasis on Christmas, Easter , Lent , Ascension D ay, P entecost and Adven t. The recycling of songs used by contemporary Protestants is considerable and very interesting indeed , for four out of eight canticles for the m ass are from the Utraquists (Gloria , Cred o, Sanctus), or from the Czech Brethren (Kyrie M agn e Deus). Coincidences of thi s kind are frequ ent in the Catholic hymnology of the Counter- R efo rmation . All the collection s of hymns retain a high proportion of canticles of Utraquist or Czech Brethren origin until the end of the 18th century . 11 These Protestant canticles belon g to the unchan ged repertory of the Liturgical Year , especially Ascension D ay and Pentecost, both very rigid categories with nearl y unchan gin g repertory , but also to the more or less movin g contents of categories like Christ- �42 SLOVAKIA mas , Lent, Easter and Advent. 28 As for canticles for occasions of public and private devotional needs , the proportion varies from songbook to songbook, but recourse to Protestant canticles anterior to 1620 is a constant . Sometimes, it seems even to be incredible: for instance, the J esuit Steyer went so far as to incorporate 45 psalms of the Czech Brother Jirfk StrejcintohisKancional cesky( 1683 , then 1687 , 1697 , 171 2, 1727 and 1764), without changing a single word from the 1587 edition . Among the essential prayers - those we call '' doctrinal ,'' that is the Pater, Ave, Credo, Ten Commandments and so on - all the son gbooks include canticles of Protestant origin. A songbook of 1652, Pfsne rocnf (Songs for the Year, published by Ludmila Sipafova, printer Jirik Sipar's widow) and the 6 editions of Steyer ' s songbook even contain a Czech version of Luther's Credo, M y vsickni veffme v jednoho Boh a (Wir glauben all' an einen Gott), 29 reprinting it perhaps from the Cithara Sanctorum of 1636. 30 By the same token , up to 1683 , i.e. the first edition ofSteyer's songbook 31 but later also, whenever an anthology presents the heading "for the holy mass " it contains texts of Protestant origin (that is 6 out of 8 anthologies from 1588 until 1683) . 32 This remained the rule until the end of the 18th century, except in Kania.s 's songbooks.ll I have chosen to spend a rather long time writing about these Pfsne na ve (New Songs) of 1588, because they exemplify the orientations of early Catholic hymnology. Indeed, putting aside the three songbooks of the poet-musician Adam Michna z Otradovic (1600-1676 ?), i.e. Ceska marianska muzika (Czech Marian Music, Praha 1647), Loutna ceska (Czech Lute, Praha 1653) and Svatorocnf muzika (M u sic for the Feasts of the Year, Praha 1661), whose 197 canticles included 195 (or perhaps only 194) written by the poet himself in a very baroque and mystical lyricism, and also excludin g j eslicky (Little Cribs, Praha 1658) of the J esuit Bedrich Bride!, all the subsequent Catholic hymnbooks from 1601 to 1683 proceed accordin g to the sam e plan, with similar contents. So let us see now what exactly were these hymnbooks. In 160 1 appeared the K an cional of R ozenplut (355 canticles in Czech), and in 1622 the Pisne katolicke (Catholi c Songs) of Hlohovsky (234 canticles in Czech). Both were published at Olomouc , and both were official hymnbooks of the diocese of Moravia, with the approval of Cardinal Dietrichstein. I n Bohemia there appeared in 163 1 the Kancional (Songbook) of the Prague printer Pavel Sessius (formerly the Protestant printer of Prague University, who converted) with 325 canticles; in 1639 a little, �43 SLOVAKIA anonymou s songbook, K an cionalnfk , due to the J esu its ofKlatovy College and perhaps to Father Albrecht Chanovsky, 34 with 121 canticles ; in 1642 the Cesky D ekakord (Czech Decacorde) of the printer Jirfk Sipar (400 can ticles); then in 1652 the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year) by his widow Ludmila Sipafova ( 171 canticles) . 35 In 1659 the Cesky Dekakord of 1642 was reprinted by Urban Golias, still in Prague. The first edition of Steyer' s K ancional cesky (Czech Songbook) , also known as "sva tovacla ysk y" (St. W enceslas's songbook) , dates from 1683, as we already saw, with 828 canticles. 36 For the sake of completeness, a 1618 Postilla by the J esuit Vojtech Scipio Berlicka should be mentioned as containing canticles on the yearly gospels which appeared also in the collections of 163 1, 1642 and Steyer. All in all, without Berlicka , that brings us to nine anthologies, counting one reedition (in 1659), from 1588 to 1683 . Now, to finish with the relations between Czech Catholic and Protestant hymnologies, here are some percentages of Protestant and new canticles in these nine Catholic collections: Songbooks Canticles (in all) 1588 1601 1622 1631 1639 1642 (1659)* 1652 1683 91 355 234 325 121 400 (400) 171 828 Protestant Canticles 34 46 54 103 61 145 (145 131 280 37 % 13 % 23% 32 % 50 % 36% 36 %) 77 % 34% New Canticles 53 261 81 46 4 4 (0 8 328 58 % 73,5 % 34 % 14 % 3% 1% 0) 5% 40 % • R eediti on of 1642 Cesk y dekacord b y Urban Golias. Some of the Czech Catholic collections also had canticles from the Cithara Sanctorum: collection of 1639 1642 1653 1683 " 2 7 6 34 canticles from 1636 Cithara canticles " canticles '' canticles from 1636 and 1653 Cithara �44 SLOVAKIA The 1631 Czech songbook already had 3 canticles which were later put into the Cithara of 1636, and Steyer's book of 1683 includes also one canticle from the Amsterdam songbook by Jan Amos Komensky (Kancional, Amsterdam 1659). As a comparison, here are identical data concerning now the first Slovak Catholic songbook Cantus Catholici, which appeared in Levoca m 1655 : 37 Total number of canticles in Slovak (not Latin) Czech Protestant canticles (all in Slovak) Canticles from 1636 Cithara Sanctorum " 1653 " New Canticles 227 88 (38%) 20 (10%) 3 56 (25%) Thus the percentage of Protestant canticles in the Catholic songbooks of the first Counter-Reformation from 1588 to 1683 ( not including this latter collection) was approximately 38 % . If Rozenplut 's K ancional (1601), the only one which explicitly sought to exclude the Utraquist and Czech Brethren repertory , is left aside, the percentage increases to 42 % . Later, the average percentage declines (from 1683 to 1764, for twelve collections) but remains nonetheless at 30%. Inversely, from 1588 to 1683 (not including this one), the average percentage of novelties is only 24 %, and from 1683 to 1764, it attains 36 %. 38 The hymnbook of 1601 by Rozenplut , which is very co mbative , and to a lesser extent that of 1622 by Hlohovsky , tried to create hymnology and had less recourse than their successors to Protestant texts. But subsequently, and until 1660 , Catholic hymnbooks are characterized by a progressive return to Protestant sources. After 1683, as Steyer so amply demonstrates, Jesuit editors of hymnbooks ev in ce an astounding capacity to absorb texts from multifarious origins. Even the most " heretical" texts, as we have seen, could be admitted as long as they did not attack the Church or the Catholic doctrines themselves . Moreove r , in the 17th and 18th centuries, little hymnbooks without musical notation and destined to a more popular public, retained a much more conservative, static repertoire than the great official songbooks (like Steyer, Holan , Bozan and Konias 's songbooks). Such is the case of the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year), a series of little books having roots in the second halfofthe 16th century (and therefore Utraquist) and continuing until the 19th century (in the 1652 ed ition , as we saw, there were �SLOVAKIA 45 13 1 P rotes tan t canticles out of 171 !). For there were two parallel tracks in the produ ction of C atholic hy mnbooks : first , there was that of big volumes m eant fo r the Pa rish K antor and most directly controlled by the C hurch . Second , outside the official k an cionaly , was the production of little volumes or anonym ous booklets in which particular hymnologic tradition s of the 15th and 16th century Czech R eform survived . This very important point proves that can ticles actually sung in Bohemia du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries went way beyond the choice, albeit large, p roposed b y the anth ologies of the Counter-Reform a tion : vernacul ar religiou s so ngs continued to fl ourish , sha ping sensibility in a way relatively independent of the context of re-Catholicization. Obviously the production of these booklets did not escape the ecclesiastical and civil censorship . But in Bohemia, in the context of a triumphal but indeed still ve ry ill-rooted and badl y organized Catholicism , the canticle underwent the sa.{Tle fate as other in gred ients of wha t is called the " popular Baroqu e": its purity of origin was of little importance, provided that it m obili zed lay piety. 3) Places and uses of th e canticle But how and where was the Catholic canticl e supposed to mobilize thi s lay piety? Like its P rotes tant counterpart, the Catholic h ymnbook was fi rst and fo rem ost a coll ection of Church songs intended for the u se of P arish K an to ff (Cantors) and brotherhoods (mostly , for instance, socalled literack a bratrstva). Of course, in the C a tholic Church , the canticl e was no longe r at the heart of the H oly Service. Its role was to double the liturgy to stimul ate popula r participation and ardor, and in so doin g it d oubtless, in cidentall y, played also a significant role in m aintenance of the Czech lan gu age du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries . It was also employed in catechization , in mi ssionary contexts, and in diverse situat ions of d omestic or comm uni ty devotion s and praye rs. Th at will be m y fi rst conclu sion . T he second one I should like to point out is tha t from the thematic point of view, beginnin g with Steyer in 1683, there is a verita ble eruption of personal piety in can ticles. 39 Thus, alongside the traditional themes and the son gs for the litu rgical year, there appear canti cles " to combat a nxiety," " to bear one's cross," on " m an 's love for God " and som eti mes "even if H ell does not ex ist ," on "submi ssion to Divin e will ," " pat ience in cri ses," and so on , all evokin g contemporary Germ an �46 SLOVAKIA Pietism and manifesting great similarity with the collection of Evangelical emigres. Of course, it cannot be proved that all the canticles proposed by the songbooks were actually sung in community or in church . In particular, these last ones I just referred to seem rather to have been m eant for personal meditation . But I do hope to have provided a sense of the deep richness of Catholic Czech hymnology as well as of its fundamental ambivalence. The very success of the Catholic canticle was based upon this ambivalence, and upon its roots in a tradition of popular liturgy of Protestant origin (i.e . Utraquist or Brethren) origin. It thus became a privileged means of mass indoctrination for the Counter-Reformation , contributing to the reconversion of Bohemia to Catholicism. NOTES ' From 1670 ca to the end of the 17th century records kept in the Prague Archiepiscopal archives indicate only a very small number of heretics by pari sh . For instance, curates' answers (Relationes, R esponsae) to a 1677 questionnaire often do not know notoriou s or public heretics (heretici aperti) (see Statnf usti'ednf archiv, APA I , B 11/7 - B 13/4). I would like to suggest that the same conception of heresy was changing during the process of conversion . Ca 1700 , Viscars' visitations often suspect hidden heretics, especiall y in East and North Bohemia (Ci rcles of Caslav and Chrudim). Then around 17 25, some of the archbishopric Missionarii Ordinarii began to seek out both heretics a nd books all over the country. The Archiepiscopal archives also include various kinds of inquisition documents. ' However, these patents forbade the missionaries to personally imprison the accused and transferred the judgement of heretics from ecclesiastical courts to civil courts . In the same way , as of 1735 the functions of the "extra-ordinary" missionaries had to be handed ove r to 14 secular priests ( rather th an the previous 12 J esuits) . See Tomas Vaclav Bflek, R eform ace katolicka neboli obn ovenf naboienstvf k atolick eho v Kralovstvf ceskem po bitve belohorske (Praha 1892), p. 269-271 , 293. l Id., ibid. 4 See note 1 • 5 See T. V. Bflek, op. cit., p. 296. • See T. V . Bflek, op. cit., p . 296, and Antonin Rezek, Dejiny prostonarodnfho hnutf naboien sk eho v Cech ach , I (Praha 1887). ' Maximilian II only accepted this verball y in 1575 , and Rud olph II only ratified it, with the famous Letter of Majesty , as of 1609. ' The composition of the nobility present in the Diet of 1575 was as fo llows : Old Utraquists, 2 Lords (pani), including the Grand Chamberlain Jan ofValdstejn, 3 Kni ghts (rytffi); Neo-Utraquists , 4/ 5 of the attending nobility; Catholics, 1/8; Czech Brethren, 1/4. Figures are given by Jaroslav Panek, "Zapis o charakter ceske stavovske opozice a snem roku 1575 ," Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky, XXVIII ( 1980), 6, 878-880 . �SLOVAKIA 9 ' 0 " " 13 " " " 17 " " ' 0 " ll 47 See m y paper "The T welve Sons of Carnival," to be published in Fifteenth Century Studies (D etroit) . The first expulsion orders issued against the Czech Brethren d a te from the rei gn of Jiri of Podebrady, at the end of the 15th Centu ry . The last before White M ountain was issued in 1602, seven yea rs before the Letter of M ajesty. See the record s of the Archiepiscopal archives in Prague (APA I , B 11 /7 -B 13/4, for instance); see also Frantisek Kras!, Arno.st hra be H arrach , kardinal sv. cirkve i'fmske a kn fze arcibiskup prazsk y. Historick o- kritick e vypsan f nabozen sk ych pomeru v Cechach od roku 1623- 1667 (Praha 1886), p . 134. See J osef Polise nsky, T fi cetileta valk a a evropsk e krize 17. stoletf (Praha 1970), p . 59-60 . In fac t , there a re no m ode rn es tim ates of the number of P ro tes tants in Bohemia. H owever, see Zikm unt Win ter, Zivot cirkevn f v Cechach . Kulturn f historicky obraz XV. a XVI . stoletf, I-II (Praha 1895-1 896) ; see also J osef J anacek , Gesk e dejin y . D oba pfedbelohorska 1526-1 547 , l/ 1 (Praha, 2nd edition 197 1). It must be rem embered that , aft er 1436, both Catholicism and Utraquism were state religions in Bohemia whereas Lutheranism was not offi cially tolerated until 1609. The tables conta ining the confessional breakdown of these 106 son gbooks are in my D octoral disse rt ation : H ymnologia Bohemica. Cantinnaires tch equ es d e la ContreR eform e, 1588- 1764 , vol. I , p . 107, U nive rsite de Pa ri s - Ill , 1982. These figures are based on Zdenek Tobolka andJiri H orak , Knihopis ceskych a slovensk ych tisk u od doby n ejstarsi at do k once 18. stoletf. .. II. T isk y z let 1501 -1800 (Praha 1939) etc, and Vaclav Pumprla , Soupis starych tisku ve fondech Statnf vedeck e knihovn y v Olom ouci. I . T isk y vydan e na uzem f Cech a Moravy v letech 1501-1 800 , 12 vols. (Olomouc 1974- 1979) . Pfsni cky velm i pekn e a pi'fkladne na nedeln f C ten f do roka . T ez O Sva tych ze Ctenf take z postn fch Epistol i ze C ten f pfsn e a na p osledy vseck y tuto p ofadn e V n ove zpravney najdes. A znova tistene a opravene. V Plzni ujana Pekka. Leta M DCXXIX dn e X III! Unora m esfce. 8°, 122p. See the Pfedmluva k ctenafi (Preface to the reader) in the Pfsne Historick e (Historical Songs) of 1595. Lomnicky's songs can be found in the following songbooks: Sessius (K an cional, Prague 163 1), Sipai' (Cesk y D ekakord , Prague 1642) and its reprint by Golias (P ragu e 1659) , R osenmuller (Kancionalek historicky, Prague 1712), Steyer (K ancional cesk y , Prague, 1683 , 1687 , 1697, 1712, 172 7, 1764) , and Bozan (Slavfcek rajsky , H rad ec Kralove 1719). Antonfn Skarka attributes this work to th e J esuit Alexander Vojt, at that time Su perior a t St. C lem ent Coll ege . I n a ny case, d ue to his offi cia l positi on, V ojt would have had to approve a nd supervise its publication , as well as th at of th e transl ati on of Canisiu s's Parvus Ca cscchimus pu blished in 1584 by the sa me printer , Bu ryiin Valda . Printed by Buryiin V a lda. Otce Boze Vse m ohoud, j en z jsi nam dal clo vecenstvf, Syna sveho jedin eho . .. , acco rd ing to Jirecek, H ymnolog ia Bohemica (P ra ha 1878): 15th ce ntury, Tabor so ngbook, on Corpu s Christi. �48 SLOVAKIA " Canticles for Advent: I K e cti, k ch vale Krista krale Christm as: 6 Andelove, andelo ve Jsou zpfvali; Na.radii se Kristus Pan ; Na Bozf Narozenf radujf se AnJele; Nasca] nam den vesely,z rodu kralo vsk eh o; ZnameneJ, kfest'an vern y, Kristovo Vtelenf; ZvestuJem vam radost Lent: 4 - Nebesky Pan , at'by dokazal k nam dobrocu svou velikou; 0 velika milost Syna Boi fh o; Umucenf naseho Pana milostneho; PosloucheJte ialoby nebeskeho Otce Easter: 6 Vstalt'Jest teto ch v11e ctn y Vykupitel nas; Uteseny nam den nastal; Vzkffsenf Spasitele sveh o ch val k aidy clovek ; L eto chvfle teto vesele vydava; AJ ten siln y lev udatny; V eselyt' nam den nastal Ascension Day: 1 Boie Otce z velike milosti ucinils nam vice neili dosti Pentecost: 2 VftaJ sladk y tesiteli, temnosti osvetiteli; Seslanf Du cha S vateh o Holy Virgin: I Zdravas neJsveteJsf kralovno, milost i TroJice Svare osvfcena Holy Ma ss: 3 Ana zemi budii /idem pokoJ (Gloria); Vefmez v B oha Orce Stvofitele vseho (Credo); Vsemohoucf Stvofiteli, Orce Svaty (Sa nctus) Before th e sermon : 2 Boie Otce, seslii nam nynf Du cha Svateho; Otce nas, mily Pan e, deJi nam Du cha S vateh o "Common ": 1 Pam atiIJ, clo vece, proc re Pan Buh stvofil (For d eta ils and refe rences see m y Doctoral di ssertat ion, op. cit. , pp. 390-437). " Canticles for : Advent: 2 Pas/an Jest ArchanJel k M arii Panne; Vesele zpfveJm e, Boha Orce chvalme Parish Patron Saint D ay: I Chvalmei nynf Boha sveho z posvecenf mfsta Jeho Saints and Angels: I V moci moudrosti dobreh o chvalm ez Boha v Svatych Jeho H oly Mass: I Boie Orce nas, Jeni Jsi na nebesfch "Common ": I Pane Boie bud' pfi nas, kdyi budem e m ffti (For deta ils and references, see ibid., Joe. cit .). " Buh Vsemohoucf; Svaty Va.clave; Dnesn fh o dne vstal Stvofitel; VftaJ, m ily j ezu Kriste, vftaJ, Synu z Pann y ciste " Canticles for Advent: 5 Zaff pfeJasnou navstfvil Gabriel; Zdrava Bohem pozdravena, rodicku blah oslavena; Zdrava bud p feslavna matko J ezfsova; Zdravas Pann o cista, tys pfimluva Jista; Vyk vetla hill Aronova Christmas : I Tff krali znam enali hvezdu H oly Virgin: I O Maria, vsech ctn ostf zrcadlo neJkrassf Saints and Angels: 3j ezu Kriste Vsem ohoucf(St. Andrew); Pochvalm ez Boha vecneho (St. Nicholas); Vsickni Bohu ke cit, ch vale (S t . M a ry M agdalene) H oly M ass: 3 A na zemi budii lidem pokoJ, dobra ville vsechnem (Gloria); VftaJ vdecna, vftaJ vzactna, milosti z milosti dana (Eucharisi); Zdrav bud', mily jezu Kriste, Jeni narozen z Panny ciste ( Eucharist) After the serm on: 1 Poprosmez Svateho Du cha D eath : 2 Boie Orce nas, k cobe se m odlfm e; Boie Orce nebesky, prosfmJa rve milosci R ogacions, Pilgrimages: 3 H ospodin e uslys nas, spomeii na nas; - Orce Boie smiliIJ se, o Boie; - Ve Jmeno Bozfm kraceJme M orning: 7 D aru svetlych milosti; L askavy H ospodine, ch valfme Te v 1e10 hodine; M ocny Boie, sveta spravce; Nocnf temnost se zm eiiuJe; Nut vsicknipovstavse z Jute; Orce Svaty, tesiteli, vsech vernych osveticeli; VeJmenu Svaie TroJice k nebi zdvfham hffsne ru ce �SLOVAKIA 11 " " ' 0 " " " " " 36 " 49 Before and after dinn er: 2 Dfky Panu lask avemu vzd ejm ei (aft e r dinn er); Stedry darce vsech milostf (before dinn er) "Common " : 1 B oie, kteryi z sve velike milosti (For details a nd references see m y Doctoral di sse rta ti on , op . cit., pp . 390-43 7). Canticl es of Lutheran ori gin da tin g prior to 1620 a re mu ch less frequ ent . This is becau se th e rare anthologies con sidered to be " Lutheran " ran ge from 1576 to 1606, and a re little diffe rent from the U traqui st son gbooks. Although th e repertoire of C hri stm as canticles reta ins a perm an ent co re of I 5th and 16th century son gs , it is ren ewed in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The new repertory a ppears with R oze nplu t's anth ology ( 1601 ) and is henceforth reinforced from one collecti on to the nex t. The "Christmas canticle" catego ry is therefo re one of the most mobile of all. The same is tru e, to a mu ch lesser degree, of Advent son gs. On th e other ha nd , Easter ca nticl es a re mu ch more co nse rvati ve, despite the new elements which appear in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The Ascen sion and Pentecos t ca tego ri es a re ve ry traditi on al. In so far as Lent is co nce rned , thin gs are so mewh at different: canticles of Utraqui st origin and so ngs from th e C zech Brethren predomin a te until 1650 . Mi chn a's son gbooks ( 1647 a nd 1661 ) m ark the beginn ing of a renovation in th e theme of th e C ru cified Christ, whi ch is henceforth based upon a personal link with th e sinner . This th eme is continu all y enl arged upon unti l th e beginnin g of th e 18th ce ntury. If one can believe th e ca nticles, in the later thi rd of th e 17th ce ntury th e Czech Coun te r-R eform ation is "C hristological. " This te nden cy is also found in pa mphl ets featurin g a n ave rage of 1 to 4 canti cles. The numbe r of doc trin al canticl es re-used by Cath olic son gbooks now totals 14 (2 T en Co mm and m ents , 6 Pater , 2 canticles on th e Trin ity, 4 C red o). But th e Czech tex t is older than 163 6 . M atej V aclav Steye r , K an cion al cesk y, Praha 1683, 1687, 1697, 1712, 17 27 , 1764. 3 K y rie, 2 Gloria, 1 fo r th e Epi stle, 1 for th e G os pel, 2 C redo, 3 S an ctu s , in oth er word s a total of 12 canticl es. Antonin Konias, C itara Noveh o Zakona (The C ithara of the N ew T estament), Hradec Kralove 1727 , 1738 , 1746, 1750, Pra ha 1752, no date / mi d 18th century/, Hradec Kralove 1762, 1799 . So K oni as ' s m ain so n gbook was publi shed eight tim es between 1727 an d 1799. For fu rth er in for ma ti ons on Father C hanovsky see my D octoral di ssertat ion (op . cit. , pp . 2 16-222 an d pp . 225-227). J an Rozenplut z Svarcenbachu , K an cional , 4°, Olomouc 1601 ; Ji rik Hlohovsky, Pfs ne k atolick e, 8°, O lomouc 1622; Pavel Sessius, K ancional , 4°, Praha 163 1; Anonymous, K an cionalnfk , 8 ° , Praha 1639 ; Ji rik Sipai', Cesk y D ek ak ord , 4° , P raha 1642 ; Ludm ila Sipai'ova, P fs n e rocnf, 12° , Prah a 1652; Urb a n Goli as , Cesk y D ekak ord, 4° , P raha 1659. O th er ed itions of Steye r' s son gboo k contained th e fo llowing number of canticles: 1687: 883 (P ro testant: 32%) 1727: 927 (P rotest a nt: 32 % ) 1697: 896 (P rotestant: 32 % ) 1764: 927 (Protesta nt: 32 %) 1712: 947 (Protestant: 31,5 % ) Figures calcu lated on th e bas is of J an Vi li kovsky's "Cantus Catholici, " Trn avsky sbornik (Bratislava 1935) , pp 57-94. On the Levoca printi n g, see Jan Caplov ic, �50 38 39 SLOVAKIA Bibliogralia tla ci vyd an ych na Slovensku do roku 1700, Diel 1. (Martin: Matica slo· venska , 1972), p. 364. The· Catholic songbook can therefore be co mpared to contemporary Czech collec· tions, the only difference being th e much high er proportion of songs borrowed from the C ithara Sanctorum, which can be explained by their geogra phic proxi mit y. The Steyer a nd Konias songbooks co nta in 35 (for 1687- 1764 editions) and 24 (for 1752 a nd furth er editions) canticles from the 1636 Cithara Sanctorum. All of them are included in the so-called "common " or "general " canticles in Steyer's songbook. In Bozan 's and K onias's songbooks, th ey have their own categories be· sides "common " or "general" can ticles. Most of them insist on man ' s love for God . Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventeenth C entury Slovakia ," at th e AAASS co nvention in W ashin gton , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982 . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 36 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kancionaly in the Kingdom of Bohemia (1588-1683) Marie- Elizabeth Ducreux I) THE BACKGROUND It is surely unnecessary here to go deeply into the hi story of th e Counter Reformation in the Czech Kingdom , so intima tely linked in m y mind to its integration into the H apsburg Monarchy . In any case, exploring this history in detail is obviously beyond the scope of this paper , but to situate the context of my subj ect, I shall begin by sketching its general outline and suggesting a periodization. Four phases can be di stin gui shed in th e elaboration and application of the policy of co nversion . Th e first period, extending from th e arrival ofthejesuits in Prague (1556) to the d efeat at White M ountain (Nov. 8 , 1620), set the stage for what followed. The second period , from 1621 to the reign of Leopold I , witnessed active attempts to implement the poli cy of con ve rsion . This includes the Thirty Years' War, which seve rely h ampered effort s to convert the rural areas, a nd the milesto ne of 1650 , whi ch marked the energetic resurgence of the civil powers and th e archbishopric in supervi sing the population . Then , under L eopold I , followed a period of relative respite. Bohemia was then supposedl y Catholic, although proof ex ists of the persistence of m a ny non-C atholi cs, eve n in the ranks of the nobility. For inst ance, h ym nologist Vaclav Kleych (who was not an aristocrat) , born at Lazany near Litom ysl in 1682 , who emigrated with all his family to Zittau at the beginning of the 18th century . Finally the fourth period, from 1705 to 1780 , witnessed the tightening of rep ression and a search for heretics all over Bohem ia. 1 The judicial regulation of Joseph I ( 1705-1 711) made punishable by death the peddlin g of heretical books, preaching, and suspicious assembli es. SLOVAKIA 37 The death penalty was confirmed by Charles VI ( 1711-1740) several times, with at least five patents from March 15, 1721 to February 4, 1 724. 2 He reinforced existing antiheretical legislation with a publication on Jan. 29, 1726, which was confirmed at least twenty-two times until 1770, i.e. a lso during the reign of Maria Theresa. 3 In this system of laws, heresy was punished by forced labor and, in case of relapse, the galleys, exile and death . This was, of course, also the time of the well-known bookburning - and, more often, book confiscation and rectification . 4 The patent of October 13, 1781 put an end to the repression by accepting - with reservations - the Lutheran, Calvinist and Greek Catholic confessions . But only 45,000 persons 5 publically proclaimed their adherence to these two Protestant denominations, and the adherents of popular sects (for example that of the "Lambs,'' Berankove) continued long after to be persecuted by being press-ganged into the army . 6 We shall be concerned here with only the first two periods of the Counter Reformation . They co nstitute the background for the emergency of a Catholic hymnology in Czech. II) POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM THE END OF THE 16TH CENTURY TO 1620 From the end of the 16th century to White Mountain, the Czech Counter-Reformation lacked the means to carry out its program, even though the Hapsburgs had made Catholicism one of the principal tools of their politics in Bohemia . The Diet was torn apart by the religious conflict. After 1575 and the elaboration of the Confessio Bohemica, 1 the Sub Utraque party acquired increasing importance . 8 The events leading up to the de finitive d estruction of religious coexistence in 1618, after it had finally been won in 1609 , are too well known to be gone into here. Despite this profound upheaval , part of the intellectual elite of Prague remained open to the ideas of religious tolerance. 9 In general, the towns and cities of Bohemia were mainly Neo-Utraquist (ci:-ypto-Lutheran), with the exception of Catholic Plzeii and some others. In the countrysid e, the great majority of the clergy seems also to have been NeoUtraquist; but it must be admitted that very little is known about the realities of rural religious life in 16th century Bohemia. Despite proceedings against them, 10 the Czech Brethren were well established in ce rtain areas, especially in Moravia. 38 SLOVAKIA Throughout Bohemia, where the archbishopric ' s seat remained vacant from 14 71 to 1561 ( the year of the enthronization of Brus of Mohelnice), the structures of the Catholic Church were in deep disarray. The lack of priests was so severe that it made itself felt until at least the last third of the 17th century. 11 Therefore, religious and missionary orders, especially the Jesuits , had a lot to do to fill the vacuum. Catholicism in Moravia seems to have been more resistant , for at least the episcopal seat in Olomouc never went empty. But the towns were mostly Lutheran, even as their patrician elite was perhaps more Germanized than elsewhere . Sects abounded: in the 16th century, as is well known, Moravia had become the refuge for all the heretics of Europe. 12 The bastions of the Czech Brethren were there, especially in the lands of the Zerotfns , where they printed many of their books in the second half of the century, including the famous Kralice Bible (1579-1593) . Since the beginning of the 16th century the Moravian Diet had counted freedom of religion among its acquired privileges. In the last third of the 16th century, as a party of Catholic activists and Hapsburg faithfuls was reconstituted among the great lords in the Diet of Bohemia (Zdenek and Ladislav of Lobkovic , Vilem Slavata, J aroslav Martinie, Vilem of Rozmberk and so on), Jesuits frequently had ~issions on the estates of the nobility which had been won over by the new style of the Counter-Reformation. But this still remained a sporadic phenomenon, affecting only individuals. In the last analysis, although the figures are not entirely trustworthy, the population of the Czech Kingdom around 1620 was at least 75 % non-Catholic; the figure of 90% has also been advanced and seems to be reliable for Bohemia (without Moravia) . 13 It was a hybrid " Protestantism," deeply affected by the popular sects. Unfortunately, space does not permit me to dwell upon the extremely particular case of Czech Protestantism as it developed after the period of Hussitism . 14 III) CZECH CATHOLIC HYMNOLOGY Tfanovskfs Cithara Sanctorum (Lyre of the Saints, 1636, Levoca) represented an entirely successful attempt to renew and unify the evangelical repertoire of both the Slovak and the Czech Protestants expelled from the kingdom of Bohemia after White Mountain. Nevertheless, Tfanovsky had also delved into the rich traditions of the Utraquists, the Brethren and even the Czech Lutherans , whose SLOVAKIA 39 first printed songbooks went back to 1501 , Pfsnicky (Little Songs , Praha 1501 , editor Jan Severyn z Kapi'. Hory, a Czech Brethren songbook). 206 canticles in the 1636 edition, or 50 % , came from the abundant repertoire of his Czech predecessors . Thus even though Tfanovsky's efforts were innovative and in many respects uniqu e in contemporary Czech and Slovak Protestant hymnology, they were rooted in a rich past and inserted within a hymnological continuum. Could the same have been true for Czech Catholic hymnology? Did it possess Catholic models anterior to the Counter-Reformation? If not, what was its relationship to the repertoires of the Utraquists , the Brethren, and even Tfanovsky? Finally, why did the Counter- Reformation so consistently resort to songbooks in the vernacular throughout the 17th and 18th centuries? All these questions will guide the following investigation. 1) Quantification of Catholic canticles and anthologies from 1580 to the end of the 18th century First, to give an idea of the imposing dimensions of Czech Catholic hymnology , I would like to provide a few figures. The Utraquists, Czech Brethren and Czech Lutherans published at least 106 different collections of canticles in Czech between 1501 and 1620. 15 Between 1580 and 1800, 85 editions of Catholic anthologies appeared. This latter figure is minimal and partial, for with a few but significant exceptions, it includes only titles beginning with Pfsne, Pfsnicky, Kancional, Kancionalnfk and Kancionalek (Songs, Little Songs, Songbook , Little Songbook). 16 The sheer quantity of canticles involved is overwhelming: 24 of these anthologies are over 500 pages long, 21 of them are over 400 pages long, and some of their number contain almost 1,000 canticles (e .g. Steyer's songbooks). A few more data before we proceed: I myself have gone through and analyzed 29 of the most important collections . Taken together, they contain around 10 ,000 can tides . There is considerable overlap , and as it emerges from these 29 anthologies, some 2,330 canticles actually circulated in 17th and 18th ce ntury Bohemia and Morav ia. Included in this figure are 1,950 canticl es which first appeared between 1580 and the end of the 18th century. Ifl stick to the temporal limits ofmy paper, that is from 1588 to 1683, the fourteen pertin ent coll ections together 40 SLOVAKIA contain 1,941 canticles including 1,128 novelties, or 58 % of the 1,950 new canticles catalogued up to 1798. 2) Catholic coJlections of hymns from the beginning of the Counter-Reformation to 1683 and their relationship to Protestant Czech hymnol- ogy Before the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in Bohemia (circa 1555-1560), only one Catholic songbook existed in the face of the numerous anthologies of the Brethren, Utraquists and Lutherans. Published anonymously in Pizer\ in 1529, both its title, Pfsnicky velmi pekne a pffkladne na nedelnf ctenf do roka (Very pretty and exemplary songs on the Sunday Gospels of the year)' 7 and its contents are reminiscent of the contemporaneous publications of the Utraquist Mfrinsky (in 1522, 1531 , then 1567, 1577 and 1590). In 1550 and 1595, the poet - or rather versifier - Simon Lomnicky z Budce published his Pfsne na Evangelia (Songs on the Gospels of the year, Praha 1580) containing 115 new canticles, and his Pfsne historicke (H istorical Songs, Praha 1595) containing 51 new canticles versifying the lives of 51 Saints, for which he had delved into diverse legendary sources, including the Legenda Aurea . But Lomnicky's songbooks are not products of the Counter-Reformation. Their tone is different, and their author did not belong to the circles of those seeking the conversion of Bohemia. He was rather a provincial writer who took pleasure in converting everything coming into his hands into songs, and who belonged to the "learned middle classes," ifl am allowed to speak in such a way . He was a school master, and in publishing two songbooks he was following late sixteenth-century fashion in urban milieux which were essentially Utraquist. Furthermore, nothing indicates that Lomnicky's collections were destined for the Church , for liturgical or paraiiturgical use; on the contrary, their author himself conceived the possibility of simple reading as well as singing. 18 These three songbooks, of which two were anterior to the first hymnological efforts of the Counter-Reformation , could well have served as models for the editors of Catholic songbooks . But in fact neither the 1529 anthology nor the Pfsne na Evangelia of 1580 (with the exception of two canticles) left any traces , while Lomnicky ' s Pfsne historicke were widely used as canticles on the Saints in 1631, 1642, 1659 and then in 1712 and 1719 . 19 SLOVAKIA 41 The first real songbook of the Counter-Reformation emerged only in 1588 in Prague, under the aegis of the Jesuits of St. Clement College . 20 Containing 91 canticles, it was entitled Pfsne nave, kratke naucenf kfestanskeho v sobe obsahujfcf, sjinymi nekterymi na vajrocnf slavnosti i k vsidnf potfebe pfidanymi, pro Mladez a sprostnejsf lid, v nave vydane .. . (New songs containing a brief instruction in the Christian religion , with others for the feast d ays of the year and daily requirements, newly published for the young and ignorant. .. , Praha 1588) . 21 The first twenty canticles adapted P eter Canisius's Parvus Catechismus and preserved its original order. The rest were divided into canticles for the feast s of the liturgical year, including the Virgin Mary and the Saints; occasion al canticles; and canticles for public and personal devotion, i.e. for mass , before and after the sermon, for the Parish patron Sa int's day (po svfcenf) , before and after meals , for morning and evening, Rogation d ays and pilgrimages; so-called "general " or "common" canticles or perhaps canticles " for the laity " (obecnf); and canticles about death (sometimes - but not always - funeral canticles) . The two big categories, the Liturgical Year and public and private needs , are the classic categories for all Catholic collections of hymns . Among the 71 canticles remaining after the catechism in the 1588 songbook, there are 34 Protestant canticles ( one of Hussite origin, 21 27 of Utraquist origin, 23 and 6 from the Czech Brethren 14 ), four earlier canticl es from the 12th to the 15th centuries, 25 and 33 novelties, almost all of which concern public and private devotional needs. 26 P aradoxically , at least in appearance, a little more than 65 % of the canticles co ncernin g the liturgical year a re of Protestant origin (25 out of 38), with special em phasis on Christmas, Easter , Lent , Ascension D ay, P entecost and Adven t. The recycling of songs used by contemporary Protestants is considerable and very interesting indeed , for four out of eight canticles for the m ass are from the Utraquists (Gloria , Cred o, Sanctus), or from the Czech Brethren (Kyrie M agn e Deus). Coincidences of thi s kind are frequ ent in the Catholic hymnology of the Counter- R efo rmation . All the collection s of hymns retain a high proportion of canticles of Utraquist or Czech Brethren origin until the end of the 18th century . 11 These Protestant canticles belon g to the unchan ged repertory of the Liturgical Year , especially Ascension D ay and Pentecost, both very rigid categories with nearl y unchan gin g repertory , but also to the more or less movin g contents of categories like Christ- 42 SLOVAKIA mas , Lent, Easter and Advent. 28 As for canticles for occasions of public and private devotional needs , the proportion varies from songbook to songbook, but recourse to Protestant canticles anterior to 1620 is a constant . Sometimes, it seems even to be incredible: for instance, the J esuit Steyer went so far as to incorporate 45 psalms of the Czech Brother Jirfk StrejcintohisKancional cesky( 1683 , then 1687 , 1697 , 171 2, 1727 and 1764), without changing a single word from the 1587 edition . Among the essential prayers - those we call '' doctrinal ,'' that is the Pater, Ave, Credo, Ten Commandments and so on - all the son gbooks include canticles of Protestant origin. A songbook of 1652, Pfsne rocnf (Songs for the Year, published by Ludmila Sipafova, printer Jirik Sipar's widow) and the 6 editions of Steyer ' s songbook even contain a Czech version of Luther's Credo, M y vsickni veffme v jednoho Boh a (Wir glauben all' an einen Gott), 29 reprinting it perhaps from the Cithara Sanctorum of 1636. 30 By the same token , up to 1683 , i.e. the first edition ofSteyer's songbook 31 but later also, whenever an anthology presents the heading "for the holy mass " it contains texts of Protestant origin (that is 6 out of 8 anthologies from 1588 until 1683) . 32 This remained the rule until the end of the 18th century, except in Kania.s 's songbooks.ll I have chosen to spend a rather long time writing about these Pfsne na ve (New Songs) of 1588, because they exemplify the orientations of early Catholic hymnology. Indeed, putting aside the three songbooks of the poet-musician Adam Michna z Otradovic (1600-1676 ?), i.e. Ceska marianska muzika (Czech Marian Music, Praha 1647), Loutna ceska (Czech Lute, Praha 1653) and Svatorocnf muzika (M u sic for the Feasts of the Year, Praha 1661), whose 197 canticles included 195 (or perhaps only 194) written by the poet himself in a very baroque and mystical lyricism, and also excludin g j eslicky (Little Cribs, Praha 1658) of the J esuit Bedrich Bride!, all the subsequent Catholic hymnbooks from 1601 to 1683 proceed accordin g to the sam e plan, with similar contents. So let us see now what exactly were these hymnbooks. In 160 1 appeared the K an cional of R ozenplut (355 canticles in Czech), and in 1622 the Pisne katolicke (Catholi c Songs) of Hlohovsky (234 canticles in Czech). Both were published at Olomouc , and both were official hymnbooks of the diocese of Moravia, with the approval of Cardinal Dietrichstein. I n Bohemia there appeared in 163 1 the Kancional (Songbook) of the Prague printer Pavel Sessius (formerly the Protestant printer of Prague University, who converted) with 325 canticles; in 1639 a little, 43 SLOVAKIA anonymou s songbook, K an cionalnfk , due to the J esu its ofKlatovy College and perhaps to Father Albrecht Chanovsky, 34 with 121 canticles ; in 1642 the Cesky D ekakord (Czech Decacorde) of the printer Jirfk Sipar (400 can ticles); then in 1652 the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year) by his widow Ludmila Sipafova ( 171 canticles) . 35 In 1659 the Cesky Dekakord of 1642 was reprinted by Urban Golias, still in Prague. The first edition of Steyer' s K ancional cesky (Czech Songbook) , also known as "sva tovacla ysk y" (St. W enceslas's songbook) , dates from 1683, as we already saw, with 828 canticles. 36 For the sake of completeness, a 1618 Postilla by the J esuit Vojtech Scipio Berlicka should be mentioned as containing canticles on the yearly gospels which appeared also in the collections of 163 1, 1642 and Steyer. All in all, without Berlicka , that brings us to nine anthologies, counting one reedition (in 1659), from 1588 to 1683 . Now, to finish with the relations between Czech Catholic and Protestant hymnologies, here are some percentages of Protestant and new canticles in these nine Catholic collections: Songbooks Canticles (in all) 1588 1601 1622 1631 1639 1642 (1659)* 1652 1683 91 355 234 325 121 400 (400) 171 828 Protestant Canticles 34 46 54 103 61 145 (145 131 280 37 % 13 % 23% 32 % 50 % 36% 36 %) 77 % 34% New Canticles 53 261 81 46 4 4 (0 8 328 58 % 73,5 % 34 % 14 % 3% 1% 0) 5% 40 % • R eediti on of 1642 Cesk y dekacord b y Urban Golias. Some of the Czech Catholic collections also had canticles from the Cithara Sanctorum: collection of 1639 1642 1653 1683 " 2 7 6 34 canticles from 1636 Cithara canticles " canticles '' canticles from 1636 and 1653 Cithara 44 SLOVAKIA The 1631 Czech songbook already had 3 canticles which were later put into the Cithara of 1636, and Steyer's book of 1683 includes also one canticle from the Amsterdam songbook by Jan Amos Komensky (Kancional, Amsterdam 1659). As a comparison, here are identical data concerning now the first Slovak Catholic songbook Cantus Catholici, which appeared in Levoca m 1655 : 37 Total number of canticles in Slovak (not Latin) Czech Protestant canticles (all in Slovak) Canticles from 1636 Cithara Sanctorum " 1653 " New Canticles 227 88 (38%) 20 (10%) 3 56 (25%) Thus the percentage of Protestant canticles in the Catholic songbooks of the first Counter-Reformation from 1588 to 1683 ( not including this latter collection) was approximately 38 % . If Rozenplut 's K ancional (1601), the only one which explicitly sought to exclude the Utraquist and Czech Brethren repertory , is left aside, the percentage increases to 42 % . Later, the average percentage declines (from 1683 to 1764, for twelve collections) but remains nonetheless at 30%. Inversely, from 1588 to 1683 (not including this one), the average percentage of novelties is only 24 %, and from 1683 to 1764, it attains 36 %. 38 The hymnbook of 1601 by Rozenplut , which is very co mbative , and to a lesser extent that of 1622 by Hlohovsky , tried to create hymnology and had less recourse than their successors to Protestant texts. But subsequently, and until 1660 , Catholic hymnbooks are characterized by a progressive return to Protestant sources. After 1683, as Steyer so amply demonstrates, Jesuit editors of hymnbooks ev in ce an astounding capacity to absorb texts from multifarious origins. Even the most " heretical" texts, as we have seen, could be admitted as long as they did not attack the Church or the Catholic doctrines themselves . Moreove r , in the 17th and 18th centuries, little hymnbooks without musical notation and destined to a more popular public, retained a much more conservative, static repertoire than the great official songbooks (like Steyer, Holan , Bozan and Konias 's songbooks). Such is the case of the Pfsne rocnf (Songs of the Year), a series of little books having roots in the second halfofthe 16th century (and therefore Utraquist) and continuing until the 19th century (in the 1652 ed ition , as we saw, there were SLOVAKIA 45 13 1 P rotes tan t canticles out of 171 !). For there were two parallel tracks in the produ ction of C atholic hy mnbooks : first , there was that of big volumes m eant fo r the Pa rish K antor and most directly controlled by the C hurch . Second , outside the official k an cionaly , was the production of little volumes or anonym ous booklets in which particular hymnologic tradition s of the 15th and 16th century Czech R eform survived . This very important point proves that can ticles actually sung in Bohemia du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries went way beyond the choice, albeit large, p roposed b y the anth ologies of the Counter-Reform a tion : vernacul ar religiou s so ngs continued to fl ourish , sha ping sensibility in a way relatively independent of the context of re-Catholicization. Obviously the production of these booklets did not escape the ecclesiastical and civil censorship . But in Bohemia, in the context of a triumphal but indeed still ve ry ill-rooted and badl y organized Catholicism , the canticle underwent the sa.{Tle fate as other in gred ients of wha t is called the " popular Baroqu e": its purity of origin was of little importance, provided that it m obili zed lay piety. 3) Places and uses of th e canticle But how and where was the Catholic canticl e supposed to mobilize thi s lay piety? Like its P rotes tant counterpart, the Catholic h ymnbook was fi rst and fo rem ost a coll ection of Church songs intended for the u se of P arish K an to ff (Cantors) and brotherhoods (mostly , for instance, socalled literack a bratrstva). Of course, in the C a tholic Church , the canticl e was no longe r at the heart of the H oly Service. Its role was to double the liturgy to stimul ate popula r participation and ardor, and in so doin g it d oubtless, in cidentall y, played also a significant role in m aintenance of the Czech lan gu age du rin g the 17th and 18th centuries . It was also employed in catechization , in mi ssionary contexts, and in diverse situat ions of d omestic or comm uni ty devotion s and praye rs. Th at will be m y fi rst conclu sion . T he second one I should like to point out is tha t from the thematic point of view, beginnin g with Steyer in 1683, there is a verita ble eruption of personal piety in can ticles. 39 Thus, alongside the traditional themes and the son gs for the litu rgical year, there appear canti cles " to combat a nxiety," " to bear one's cross," on " m an 's love for God " and som eti mes "even if H ell does not ex ist ," on "submi ssion to Divin e will ," " pat ience in cri ses," and so on , all evokin g contemporary Germ an 46 SLOVAKIA Pietism and manifesting great similarity with the collection of Evangelical emigres. Of course, it cannot be proved that all the canticles proposed by the songbooks were actually sung in community or in church . In particular, these last ones I just referred to seem rather to have been m eant for personal meditation . But I do hope to have provided a sense of the deep richness of Catholic Czech hymnology as well as of its fundamental ambivalence. The very success of the Catholic canticle was based upon this ambivalence, and upon its roots in a tradition of popular liturgy of Protestant origin (i.e . Utraquist or Brethren) origin. It thus became a privileged means of mass indoctrination for the Counter-Reformation , contributing to the reconversion of Bohemia to Catholicism. NOTES ' From 1670 ca to the end of the 17th century records kept in the Prague Archiepiscopal archives indicate only a very small number of heretics by pari sh . For instance, curates' answers (Relationes, R esponsae) to a 1677 questionnaire often do not know notoriou s or public heretics (heretici aperti) (see Statnf usti'ednf archiv, APA I , B 11/7 - B 13/4). I would like to suggest that the same conception of heresy was changing during the process of conversion . Ca 1700 , Viscars' visitations often suspect hidden heretics, especiall y in East and North Bohemia (Ci rcles of Caslav and Chrudim). Then around 17 25, some of the archbishopric Missionarii Ordinarii began to seek out both heretics a nd books all over the country. The Archiepiscopal archives also include various kinds of inquisition documents. ' However, these patents forbade the missionaries to personally imprison the accused and transferred the judgement of heretics from ecclesiastical courts to civil courts . In the same way , as of 1735 the functions of the "extra-ordinary" missionaries had to be handed ove r to 14 secular priests ( rather th an the previous 12 J esuits) . See Tomas Vaclav Bflek, R eform ace katolicka neboli obn ovenf naboienstvf k atolick eho v Kralovstvf ceskem po bitve belohorske (Praha 1892), p. 269-271 , 293. l Id., ibid. 4 See note 1 • 5 See T. V. Bflek, op. cit., p. 296. • See T. V . Bflek, op. cit., p . 296, and Antonin Rezek, Dejiny prostonarodnfho hnutf naboien sk eho v Cech ach , I (Praha 1887). ' Maximilian II only accepted this verball y in 1575 , and Rud olph II only ratified it, with the famous Letter of Majesty , as of 1609. ' The composition of the nobility present in the Diet of 1575 was as fo llows : Old Utraquists, 2 Lords (pani), including the Grand Chamberlain Jan ofValdstejn, 3 Kni ghts (rytffi); Neo-Utraquists , 4/ 5 of the attending nobility; Catholics, 1/8; Czech Brethren, 1/4. Figures are given by Jaroslav Panek, "Zapis o charakter ceske stavovske opozice a snem roku 1575 ," Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky, XXVIII ( 1980), 6, 878-880 . SLOVAKIA 9 ' 0 " " 13 " " " 17 " " ' 0 " ll 47 See m y paper "The T welve Sons of Carnival," to be published in Fifteenth Century Studies (D etroit) . The first expulsion orders issued against the Czech Brethren d a te from the rei gn of Jiri of Podebrady, at the end of the 15th Centu ry . The last before White M ountain was issued in 1602, seven yea rs before the Letter of M ajesty. See the record s of the Archiepiscopal archives in Prague (APA I , B 11 /7 -B 13/4, for instance); see also Frantisek Kras!, Arno.st hra be H arrach , kardinal sv. cirkve i'fmske a kn fze arcibiskup prazsk y. Historick o- kritick e vypsan f nabozen sk ych pomeru v Cechach od roku 1623- 1667 (Praha 1886), p . 134. See J osef Polise nsky, T fi cetileta valk a a evropsk e krize 17. stoletf (Praha 1970), p . 59-60 . In fac t , there a re no m ode rn es tim ates of the number of P ro tes tants in Bohemia. H owever, see Zikm unt Win ter, Zivot cirkevn f v Cechach . Kulturn f historicky obraz XV. a XVI . stoletf, I-II (Praha 1895-1 896) ; see also J osef J anacek , Gesk e dejin y . D oba pfedbelohorska 1526-1 547 , l/ 1 (Praha, 2nd edition 197 1). It must be rem embered that , aft er 1436, both Catholicism and Utraquism were state religions in Bohemia whereas Lutheranism was not offi cially tolerated until 1609. The tables conta ining the confessional breakdown of these 106 son gbooks are in my D octoral disse rt ation : H ymnologia Bohemica. Cantinnaires tch equ es d e la ContreR eform e, 1588- 1764 , vol. I , p . 107, U nive rsite de Pa ri s - Ill , 1982. These figures are based on Zdenek Tobolka andJiri H orak , Knihopis ceskych a slovensk ych tisk u od doby n ejstarsi at do k once 18. stoletf. .. II. T isk y z let 1501 -1800 (Praha 1939) etc, and Vaclav Pumprla , Soupis starych tisku ve fondech Statnf vedeck e knihovn y v Olom ouci. I . T isk y vydan e na uzem f Cech a Moravy v letech 1501-1 800 , 12 vols. (Olomouc 1974- 1979) . Pfsni cky velm i pekn e a pi'fkladne na nedeln f C ten f do roka . T ez O Sva tych ze Ctenf take z postn fch Epistol i ze C ten f pfsn e a na p osledy vseck y tuto p ofadn e V n ove zpravney najdes. A znova tistene a opravene. V Plzni ujana Pekka. Leta M DCXXIX dn e X III! Unora m esfce. 8°, 122p. See the Pfedmluva k ctenafi (Preface to the reader) in the Pfsne Historick e (Historical Songs) of 1595. Lomnicky's songs can be found in the following songbooks: Sessius (K an cional, Prague 163 1), Sipai' (Cesk y D ekakord , Prague 1642) and its reprint by Golias (P ragu e 1659) , R osenmuller (Kancionalek historicky, Prague 1712), Steyer (K ancional cesk y , Prague, 1683 , 1687 , 1697, 1712, 172 7, 1764) , and Bozan (Slavfcek rajsky , H rad ec Kralove 1719). Antonfn Skarka attributes this work to th e J esuit Alexander Vojt, at that time Su perior a t St. C lem ent Coll ege . I n a ny case, d ue to his offi cia l positi on, V ojt would have had to approve a nd supervise its publication , as well as th at of th e transl ati on of Canisiu s's Parvus Ca cscchimus pu blished in 1584 by the sa me printer , Bu ryiin Valda . Printed by Buryiin V a lda. Otce Boze Vse m ohoud, j en z jsi nam dal clo vecenstvf, Syna sveho jedin eho . .. , acco rd ing to Jirecek, H ymnolog ia Bohemica (P ra ha 1878): 15th ce ntury, Tabor so ngbook, on Corpu s Christi. 48 SLOVAKIA " Canticles for Advent: I K e cti, k ch vale Krista krale Christm as: 6 Andelove, andelo ve Jsou zpfvali; Na.radii se Kristus Pan ; Na Bozf Narozenf radujf se AnJele; Nasca] nam den vesely,z rodu kralo vsk eh o; ZnameneJ, kfest'an vern y, Kristovo Vtelenf; ZvestuJem vam radost Lent: 4 - Nebesky Pan , at'by dokazal k nam dobrocu svou velikou; 0 velika milost Syna Boi fh o; Umucenf naseho Pana milostneho; PosloucheJte ialoby nebeskeho Otce Easter: 6 Vstalt'Jest teto ch v11e ctn y Vykupitel nas; Uteseny nam den nastal; Vzkffsenf Spasitele sveh o ch val k aidy clovek ; L eto chvfle teto vesele vydava; AJ ten siln y lev udatny; V eselyt' nam den nastal Ascension Day: 1 Boie Otce z velike milosti ucinils nam vice neili dosti Pentecost: 2 VftaJ sladk y tesiteli, temnosti osvetiteli; Seslanf Du cha S vateh o Holy Virgin: I Zdravas neJsveteJsf kralovno, milost i TroJice Svare osvfcena Holy Ma ss: 3 Ana zemi budii /idem pokoJ (Gloria); Vefmez v B oha Orce Stvofitele vseho (Credo); Vsemohoucf Stvofiteli, Orce Svaty (Sa nctus) Before th e sermon : 2 Boie Otce, seslii nam nynf Du cha Svateho; Otce nas, mily Pan e, deJi nam Du cha S vateh o "Common ": 1 Pam atiIJ, clo vece, proc re Pan Buh stvofil (For d eta ils and refe rences see m y Doctoral di ssertat ion, op. cit. , pp. 390-437). " Canticles for : Advent: 2 Pas/an Jest ArchanJel k M arii Panne; Vesele zpfveJm e, Boha Orce chvalme Parish Patron Saint D ay: I Chvalmei nynf Boha sveho z posvecenf mfsta Jeho Saints and Angels: I V moci moudrosti dobreh o chvalm ez Boha v Svatych Jeho H oly Mass: I Boie Orce nas, Jeni Jsi na nebesfch "Common ": I Pane Boie bud' pfi nas, kdyi budem e m ffti (For deta ils and references, see ibid., Joe. cit .). " Buh Vsemohoucf; Svaty Va.clave; Dnesn fh o dne vstal Stvofitel; VftaJ, m ily j ezu Kriste, vftaJ, Synu z Pann y ciste " Canticles for Advent: 5 Zaff pfeJasnou navstfvil Gabriel; Zdrava Bohem pozdravena, rodicku blah oslavena; Zdrava bud p feslavna matko J ezfsova; Zdravas Pann o cista, tys pfimluva Jista; Vyk vetla hill Aronova Christmas : I Tff krali znam enali hvezdu H oly Virgin: I O Maria, vsech ctn ostf zrcadlo neJkrassf Saints and Angels: 3j ezu Kriste Vsem ohoucf(St. Andrew); Pochvalm ez Boha vecneho (St. Nicholas); Vsickni Bohu ke cit, ch vale (S t . M a ry M agdalene) H oly M ass: 3 A na zemi budii lidem pokoJ, dobra ville vsechnem (Gloria); VftaJ vdecna, vftaJ vzactna, milosti z milosti dana (Eucharisi); Zdrav bud', mily jezu Kriste, Jeni narozen z Panny ciste ( Eucharist) After the serm on: 1 Poprosmez Svateho Du cha D eath : 2 Boie Orce nas, k cobe se m odlfm e; Boie Orce nebesky, prosfmJa rve milosci R ogacions, Pilgrimages: 3 H ospodin e uslys nas, spomeii na nas; - Orce Boie smiliIJ se, o Boie; - Ve Jmeno Bozfm kraceJme M orning: 7 D aru svetlych milosti; L askavy H ospodine, ch valfme Te v 1e10 hodine; M ocny Boie, sveta spravce; Nocnf temnost se zm eiiuJe; Nut vsicknipovstavse z Jute; Orce Svaty, tesiteli, vsech vernych osveticeli; VeJmenu Svaie TroJice k nebi zdvfham hffsne ru ce SLOVAKIA 11 " " ' 0 " " " " " 36 " 49 Before and after dinn er: 2 Dfky Panu lask avemu vzd ejm ei (aft e r dinn er); Stedry darce vsech milostf (before dinn er) "Common " : 1 B oie, kteryi z sve velike milosti (For details a nd references see m y Doctoral di sse rta ti on , op . cit., pp . 390-43 7). Canticl es of Lutheran ori gin da tin g prior to 1620 a re mu ch less frequ ent . This is becau se th e rare anthologies con sidered to be " Lutheran " ran ge from 1576 to 1606, and a re little diffe rent from the U traqui st son gbooks. Although th e repertoire of C hri stm as canticles reta ins a perm an ent co re of I 5th and 16th century son gs , it is ren ewed in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The new repertory a ppears with R oze nplu t's anth ology ( 1601 ) and is henceforth reinforced from one collecti on to the nex t. The "Christmas canticle" catego ry is therefo re one of the most mobile of all. The same is tru e, to a mu ch lesser degree, of Advent son gs. On th e other ha nd , Easter ca nticl es a re mu ch more co nse rvati ve, despite the new elements which appear in the 17th and 18th centuri es. The Ascen sion and Pentecos t ca tego ri es a re ve ry traditi on al. In so far as Lent is co nce rned , thin gs are so mewh at different: canticles of Utraqui st origin and so ngs from th e C zech Brethren predomin a te until 1650 . Mi chn a's son gbooks ( 1647 a nd 1661 ) m ark the beginn ing of a renovation in th e theme of th e C ru cified Christ, whi ch is henceforth based upon a personal link with th e sinner . This th eme is continu all y enl arged upon unti l th e beginnin g of th e 18th ce ntury. If one can believe th e ca nticles, in the later thi rd of th e 17th ce ntury th e Czech Coun te r-R eform ation is "C hristological. " This te nden cy is also found in pa mphl ets featurin g a n ave rage of 1 to 4 canti cles. The numbe r of doc trin al canticl es re-used by Cath olic son gbooks now totals 14 (2 T en Co mm and m ents , 6 Pater , 2 canticles on th e Trin ity, 4 C red o). But th e Czech tex t is older than 163 6 . M atej V aclav Steye r , K an cion al cesk y, Praha 1683, 1687, 1697, 1712, 17 27 , 1764. 3 K y rie, 2 Gloria, 1 fo r th e Epi stle, 1 for th e G os pel, 2 C redo, 3 S an ctu s , in oth er word s a total of 12 canticl es. Antonin Konias, C itara Noveh o Zakona (The C ithara of the N ew T estament), Hradec Kralove 1727 , 1738 , 1746, 1750, Pra ha 1752, no date / mi d 18th century/, Hradec Kralove 1762, 1799 . So K oni as ' s m ain so n gbook was publi shed eight tim es between 1727 an d 1799. For fu rth er in for ma ti ons on Father C hanovsky see my D octoral di ssertat ion (op . cit. , pp . 2 16-222 an d pp . 225-227). J an Rozenplut z Svarcenbachu , K an cional , 4°, Olomouc 1601 ; Ji rik Hlohovsky, Pfs ne k atolick e, 8°, O lomouc 1622; Pavel Sessius, K ancional , 4°, Praha 163 1; Anonymous, K an cionalnfk , 8 ° , Praha 1639 ; Ji rik Sipai', Cesk y D ek ak ord , 4° , P raha 1642 ; Ludm ila Sipai'ova, P fs n e rocnf, 12° , Prah a 1652; Urb a n Goli as , Cesk y D ekak ord, 4° , P raha 1659. O th er ed itions of Steye r' s son gboo k contained th e fo llowing number of canticles: 1687: 883 (P ro testant: 32%) 1727: 927 (P rotest a nt: 32 % ) 1697: 896 (P rotestant: 32 % ) 1764: 927 (Protesta nt: 32 %) 1712: 947 (Protestant: 31,5 % ) Figures calcu lated on th e bas is of J an Vi li kovsky's "Cantus Catholici, " Trn avsky sbornik (Bratislava 1935) , pp 57-94. On the Levoca printi n g, see Jan Caplov ic, 50 38 39 SLOVAKIA Bibliogralia tla ci vyd an ych na Slovensku do roku 1700, Diel 1. (Martin: Matica slo· venska , 1972), p. 364. The· Catholic songbook can therefore be co mpared to contemporary Czech collec· tions, the only difference being th e much high er proportion of songs borrowed from the C ithara Sanctorum, which can be explained by their geogra phic proxi mit y. The Steyer a nd Konias songbooks co nta in 35 (for 1687- 1764 editions) and 24 (for 1752 a nd furth er editions) canticles from the 1636 Cithara Sanctorum. All of them are included in the so-called "common " or "general " canticles in Steyer's songbook. In Bozan 's and K onias's songbooks, th ey have their own categories be· sides "common " or "general" can ticles. Most of them insist on man ' s love for God . Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventeenth C entury Slovakia ," at th e AAASS co nvention in W ashin gton , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982 .  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kancionály in the Kingdom of Bohemia (1588-1683) Description An account of the resource Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 36-50 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ducreux, Marie-Elizabeth Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/ac676f26d9bccebffe071ba5dbbb8c3e.pdf 6ed8b369e24e99e25b74347fae78df41 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 61 Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka's Hortulus Animae Piae G erald J . Sabo In Slovak areas during the seventeenth ce ntury , n ation ali st ic turmoil and religious strife were prominent features of life a nd society. Ethnic consciousness and religious commitment so pe rvaded political r elations that they pitted Hungarian s, Germans, and Slovaks against o ne another in shifting alliances. R eli gion, though, remain ed the " leadin g force" for virtually the entire ce ntury. 1 Indeed , the writings of thi s period Slovak and L a tin - clearly bear this out. 2 Hymnals, hom il etic writing, religious disputa tion s, doctrinal a nd d evo tion al lite ra ture, school plays related to religious formation, as well as accounts of imprisonment and/or ex ile for religious r eason s occupy a promin ent place among the Slovak/Latin writin gs of this e ra. Among the distinctive cultural figures of thi s century is the Lutheran family of Sinapius-Horcicka. 3 The father Mi chal a nd two of his sons , Jan a nd D ani el, stand out n ot only for their religiou s zeal but esp ec ially for their eruditio n and writin gs. 4 Indeed , a numbe r of these writings have earned them a significant place in Slovak cultural history. The father Michal (d. 1653) was a pastor in Hricov and Sucany a nd a prominent church elder in the Tre ncfn ecclesiastical (Lutheran) district. During his studies at Wittenberg as a young man , he presented two public Latin di sputatio n s: one on the definition and divisio n of m etaphysics and another on the intell ect a nd w ill of intelli ge nt be in gs. 5 Mi ch al's commi tmen t to eruditio n must ce r tainly have influ en c~d his so n s J a n a nd D aniel as evidenced by th e latter's activities and writin gs. Like their fath er , th e sons devoted the ir scholarl y training to serv in g their fellow Lutheran s as p astors a nd sc hool offi cials, in exile as well as in Slovak areas. It is their wr itin gs, however, th at have establi shed th e ir places in Slovak cultu ral history. Virtually all of J an 's extan t writings are written in Latin o r German. 6 Among them are: 1. a Latin d evo tional work for stu dents, H orologium sacrum (Sacred H o urs or C lock),7 where eve ry hour of the day is directed to religious form ation ; 2. a L a tin play 8 H enoch (E noch) ; an d Ornithica sacra (Sacred Ornithology) written in German �62 SLOVAKIA about birds with religious significance. 9 The writings of D aniel are composed in Latin or a vernacular Slovak 10 that shows the influence of and commitment to Kralice-Biblical-Czech in his reli giou s training and liturgical practice. Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka was born around 1640 in Sucany. 11 H e was rector of the Lutheran school in J elsava from 1663-65, 12 a pastor in K am enan/ 3 from 1665-67, 14 and from 1667-70 in Liptovska Tepla, and finally from 1670 in R advan. In September, 1673 , Daniel was among thirty-two Lutheran pastors summoned to trial befo re the Catholic Archbishop of E sztergom . 1~ After the trial , he went into exile first to Brieg (today Brzeg) and then in the winter of 16 74 to Breslau (Wroclaw) , and finally in November, 1677 16 to a certain Bojanowo in P oland , 17 where he was rector of a school. 18 H orcicka returned from exi le some time in 1683, fir st to his former pastorate in R ad van, then in 1684 to a pastorate and position of school official in L evoca. H e remained in Levoca un ti! his death in 1688. Some eighteen works 19 are attributed to D aniel Sinapius-Horcicka. Am ong the writings prominent in Slovak cultural history are : 1. H orcicka' s 1684 enlarged edition of the Lutheran hymnal Cithara sanctorum (Zither of the Saints), also known as Tran osciu s after its compiler Ju raj Tranovsky;2° 2. the 1682 wedding verse-composition in Latin, Coelum Bojan ovien se (Bojanowo H eaven);2 1 3. Neoforum latino-slavonicum (New L atin-Slavonic Forum) , a 1678 coll ection of popular/folk sayings in L atin and Slovak;2 2 4. Perlicka ditek Bozich (The Little Pearl of God's Children), a 1685 devotional work segm ented on the basis of the fi ve divisions in Luther's catechi sm; 23 and 5. H ortulu s animae piae (The Little Garden of the Piou s Soul), a 1676 devotional work and the subject of this article. 24 The L atin title of H orc icka 's 1676 work - H ortulu s animae piae is intri guing. H ortulu s (Hortus) animae is the title for a type of[Latin and/or German] devotional book of praye rs intended for the [Catholic] laity , that was widespread in Germany in the early sixteenth century .... The H ortuli .. . were similar in general content and arrangement to many of the L atin H orae or book of hours, or to the English primers , from which they developed; howeve r , they were more popular in character. The H ortuli contain ed the Little Office of Our L ad y, extracts from the Gospel accounts of the passion, the �SLOVAKIA 63 Penitential Psalms, and the Litany of the Saints , with a large selection of supplementary d evotional matter. This material of private prayer had the tendency to increase size and in extravagan ce. For example, promises of spurious indulgences and complete forgiveness of sins became attached to man y prayers . . . The Council of Trent legislated against the accretions , the false promises of indulgences, and the incorrect versions of the Little Office of Our Lady. A bull of Pius V (March 11, 1571) demanded rigorous censorship of all editions. 25 The article on " Hortus/ Hortulus " in Dictionnaire de Spiritualite traces the extensive number of devotional works associated with this title and type of writing. 26 The phrase " Hortulus animae" is derived not from the aesthetic but from the utilitarian aspects of a garden as is evident from three Latin distichs that usually prefixed many such writings. The first two lines are as follows: Ortulus exiguus varias ut saepe salubres Herbas producit, quas medicina probat. (A small garden often produces a variety of salutary herbs of which medicine knows the value.) 21 In his articles on the Hortulus animae , Herbert Thurston notes that in 1569, a certain Lu the ran adaptation was published and called Der Lustgarten der Seelen (The Pleasure Garden of the Soul). 28 F. Wulf, though , notes that a Georg Rhaw (Rhau) produced a Lutheran version in 154 7, in Wittenberg; it was published in 1559 and was composed on the basis of printed Hortuli forbidden by the Spanish lnquisition . 29 Among the d evotional literature written by Slovak Lutherans , the title for Horcicka 's composition - Hortulus animae piae - is unique. Nor is the title Der Lustgarten der Seelen or some Slovak rendition to be found among Slovak Lutheran writings_ Jo Thus , it remains an open question why Horcicka cho se a title more closely associated with Catholic devotional writing rather than one from his own Lutheran tradition. JI The introdu ctory portion of Horcicka ' s HortulusJ 2 has several divisions. On the title page, the full title reads: Hortulu s Animae Piae, Zahradka Dussicky pobozne, Wkterez se clowek Krestiansky Suzitkem prochazeti muze (The Little Garden of the Pi ou s Soul in Which a Christian Person Can Walk w ith Usefulness/ Profit). After the title page com es that with Horcicka 's dedication of the book to "P . Markowy Hor vv (w) ath-Stansith of Gradetz/Hradec? in the Stolica (Cou nty) of Spis and �64 SLOVAKIA to hi s w ife Zoffy, n ee M a riasse/M a ri asove? from Markussowic/Markusovce,'' whom H o rcicka calls Km otrum (God pare nt s) a nd Dobrodin cu m (Be n efactors) . 33 In the fourt ee n pages that follow, H orcicka es ta blishes in Slovak th e basis or rationale for writing his Hortulus. H e d raws on Scriptu re as well as classical literature for refe ren ce material. Two further p ages ( 15 and 16 in sequ e nce as these p ages a re unnumbered) are devoted to the " Laskawemu Ctenari (Dear R eader). " After these sixteen pages of basically Slovak prose, in the version studied by m e there foll ow twelve pages in L a tin with dist inct parts. On p age seventeen (in sequ en ce), H orcicka's brothe r J a n comm ents on the Hortulu s. Then, a close friend , P etr Sext ius, 34 addresses Daniel himself as the form e r speaks on the H ortulus (pages 17-20). J a n Milochovinsky, 35 elder in the Zilina ecclesiastical district , h as a on e- page, addressed comm ent for D a ni el (page 21 ) . In the course of his comme n ts on the H ortulus, J a n Sextius, 36 called an "amico pectore ( close fri end)" by D a niel , addresses the '' P a nn onian offspring' ' and en courages them to show gratitude to God an d the author of the Hortulu s (pages 22-23). In hi s nearly three- page co mmentary , Jan Buriu s 37 draws on a number of sources, theological a nd classical litera ry (pages 23-25). On pages 26 and 2 7 of this introdu ctory portion, Horcicka addresses a certain M a tthias Albrecht whom he d esignates as ''Pas. in Elect. Dresda ... Vallens Hung. " 38 Fin all y, o n the final page of the int roducto ry portion (28), the author of the H ortulu s addresses the b ook itself: 39 "A uthor ad Libellum (Author to th e Little Book .)" At the bottom of this page, a plaited wreath illu stration encompasses the following: '' D omini Sum us, Dum Spiro Spero, D ominus Providebit (W e Are the Lord's, While I Breathe, I Hope, The Lord Will Provide .)" With this succinct statem ent of purpose a nd ou tl ook , Horcicka concludes the in trod u ctory portion of his H ortulu s . The m ain portion of the H ortulus consists of four hundred and eight numbered pages virtually all in Slovak with some L atin wri ting and even a few Greek words . (The Lat in and Greek are also transla ted into H orcicka 's vernacul ar Slovak.) H orcicka divid es the paginated portion into twelve uneven sections. The division into twelve may have symbolic value - twelve apostl es/twelve tri bes of Israel. 40 Each of these twelve sect ions is called a " Prochadzka (Walk )." Each ''Proch adzka '' begins in the same way . After the Roman num eral indi cati ng the proper " Walk " are found the words: "wniZ �SLOVAKIA 65 premyssluge pobozna dusse (in which the pious soul reflects)." In each of the twelve ''walks ,'' the pious soul reflects on a different object: 1. the garden in general; 2. the tree of this garden; 3. the well of this garden ; 4 . the dove in this garden; 5. the mirror hangin g in this garden; 6. the winds that blow through this garden; 7. the palm (tree); 8. the vine stock/ root; 9 . the fig (tree); 10. myrrh; 11. the rose; and 12 . the lily. In his comments on these twelve objects for reflection, Horcicka engages the senses of the reader. 41 Words that help conjure up "sense pictures" of the objects for reflection enable the reader the better to assimilate the theological truth presented in association with the objects . Indeed, in the presentation order of his objects , H orcicka gradually refines the focus of his reader from a garden in general to a small object like a flower. After the object for a specific "walk " is named , Horcicka cites a relevant passage from the Biblical book Song of Songs (also known as th e Canticle of Canticles or Song of Solomon). In a comparison of H orcicka ' s citat ions from the Song of Songs with two editions of the Kralice Bible (1579-93 and 161 3), 41 it is clear that Horcicka adapts the verses somewhat, probably for the sake of better creating his verbal sense-picture of the object for reflection. 4 3 For "Walk X ," Horcicka' s verse quotation from the Song of So ngs is virtually an exact quotation of this verse according to the 161 3 edition of the Kralice Bible. For " Walk II ," however, Horcicka' s citation see ms to be drawn from the 1579-93 editio n of the Kralice Bible . At present, though, there is no way of de termining whe ther Horci cka u sed these versions of the Bible, a nd , if so , which of th e two , or som e othe r version. Horcicka ' s choi ce of th e Song of Songs as the Biblical basis for the Hortulus seems natural , perhaps even predictabl e from the tradi tion of C hristian writings about thi s Biblical book. F rom a s earl y as 200 AD , Christia n writers have commented on a nd inte rpreted the Song of Songs, usually allegorically , even eroti cally. 44 Horcicka probably wa nted a Biblical work that is co n cern ed not only wi th a garden , but contain s the various objects for refl ection tha t he cites. Onl y th e Son g of Son gs co uld give him such varie ty . In the co mm e nta ry th a t foll ows the verse(s) from the Son g of So ngs in each " walk ," H o rcicka dra ws on a va ri ety of so urces fo r m a te rial s to suppo rt hi s co mm ent s. As is to be ex pec ted , Script u re is a n a bundant so urce of ma teri al. R efe rence to ve rses from books of the O ld a nd New T es ta m e nt can be fo und in eve ry " walk " in la r ge num be rs. 4 5 I ndeed , in " W alk V ," H orcicka gives som e two hun d red and twenty-six �66 SLOVAKIA distinct references from the Bible as authoritative corroboration for whatever interpretation and religious/moral instruction he has written. Curiously, he cites verses from Sirach (some fifteen instances), from Wisdom (some four instances) , and once each from the first and second Book of Maccabees . None of these Old Testament books were considered canonical enough for inclusion in any edition of the Kralice Bible or probably any non-Catholic version through Horcicka's time. They are found in Catholic versions of the Bible since well before Horcicka's time. 46 Horcicka refers to prominent Christian writers from early Christian times into his own era. References to various works by Augustine , to the writings of Luther, Gregory Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Tertullian , Origen, Ambrose, and to the history of Eusebius of Caesarea are noted and footnoted, at times with even the folio/page numbers. References to the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, especially with regard to the Song of Songs, are probably no surprise; Bernard wrote eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs alone. Indeed, Horci cka notes sermon 61 where Bernard says that the Song's love pair are the Word of God and a Soul. 47 Curiously, Horcicka notes two references from Cornelius a Lapide, a Jesuit (d . 1637), a prolific Biblical exegete and interpreter. Interestingly, Horcicka also has a single reference to a 1622 Czech translation of the Bible and to a Prague printing of Th e Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (p. 171 ) . 48 In the Hortulus, there are a number of works noted and footnoted that were probably well-known in Horcicka's time. (At the present time, copies of some of these books are con sidered rare in many US libraries.) Among these writings are: 1. Schola pietatis by Johann G erhard (1582-1637), a Lutheran theologian; 49 2. Analecta sacra by J ohann Heinrich Ursin (1608-67); 3. Arboretum biblicum, also by Ursin; and 4. "Hortus aromaticus," which is part 3 of U rsin 's Continuatio historiae plantarum biblicae. I have found references for two authors whose names resemble those footnoted by Horcicka but nothing about the works cited as theirs. According to Horcicka, a certain Johann Michal Dilherr (a poet and Lutheran theologian, 1604-69) wrote Welt, Feld, and Gartenbetrachtung, 50 and a certain Johann Hu elsemann (Lutheran theologian, 1602-61) is believed to have written Pentagonium christian um. 51 With other books noted and footnoted by Horcicka , I have been unable to find any reference for them or their authors. Among these are: 1. Nicol(s) Roper's Helleuchtend Spiegel der Liebe ; 2. Mich(al) �SLOVAKIA 67 Ba um a nn 's L exicon Allegorico Evangelicum; 3. Laur( entius) Halvard(i/ us) ' s Speculum amoris; and 4 . Hist(oria) Boh(emica) by a certain Dubrav( ius) . 51 In the Hortulus, there is also a good number of books footnot ed only a few times or less . The classical authors cited b y Horcicka are well-known figures from Greek a nd Latin literature. From the Greeks, Herodotus, Homer, X enophon , a nd Strabo, eve n Ari stotle provide supportive material for Horcicka. Of the Latin writers , there are Cicero, Horace, Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and even the outstanding classical specialist, the Dutchman Joest Qustus) Lipsius (1547-1606) . Horcicka's use of these authors in a d evotional wo rk is not unusual for his time; classical literature continued to provide exempla tive material for writers in Slovak areas through the eighteenth century . At the conclusion of each ''walk ,'' Horcicka places Slovak ' ' Modlitby (Prayers)." U sually there are three distinct prayers, except for " Walks VII a nd XII ," with only two . These prayers are mostly in prose, though some are in verse, i.e . distichs combined in paired or enclosing rhymes. 53 The various verse compositions in the Hortulus range from six to seventysix verses . Three of the shortest follow , with a literal tra nslation . To my knowledge they h ave not elsewhere b een reprinted . 54 Ach prigd Pane gezissi prigd zen ichu neykrazssi Nawsstew wernu iwu du ssi at ljby twug hlas slissi A wmile Zahradce swe Bud' odpocinuti twe (p. 14) Com e oh Lord J esus come most handsome bridegroom Visit the tru e i va of the soul May it hear your kind voice And in your dear Garden Be your rest 2 KR ys te deg nam wwjre stalost odegmi ss kodn u wrtkawost Bychom cyle wi ry dossli Zsmni casne do Nebe ssli Na to rjka m Amen/ Amen/ Spas nas Gezu Kryste Amen. (p. 245) C hri st give us steadfastness in fa ith take away harmful fickleness That the goals of faith be attained Went in time from death to H eaven To this I say Amen/ Amen/ Save us J esus C hrist Am en . 3 Pos pess o ma dusse ho/sweho Kwytanj ze nicha ct neho Kteryz na dum tweho srdce Ruku mi los ti swe tlu ce Otewri swe brany gemu Pekne promluw/ a rcy kn emu Prigd mi ly mug/ fada m tebe Nechcy ziti gs uc bez tebe. (p. 337) H as ten o my sou l him/ of your Flowerin g the honorable bridegroom Who upon the house of your heart With th e hand of his love knocks Open your gates to him Nicely speak/ a nd say to hi m : Come my dear/ I beg you I do not wish to live being without you . �68 SLOVAKIA Whil e the literary value of the verse compositi ons in the H ortulus is limited , in the narrow sense, they can be considered examples of early Slovak ve rse writing . Each of the prayers at the end of the "walks" - verse or prose - is designated for som e definite purpose ; for instan ce: " For the dear presence of God; " "For the proper purity of heart , for sincerity, and piety;" "For the recognition of people's woes and God ' s good acts;" " For patience in crises and firmn ess in faith ;" and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful ," the last praye r and part of the Hortulus . According to Hurban, the H ortulu s had appended to it " M ensje jeho basne (his/ Horcicka's/sm aller verses). " 55 Whether Hurban might be referring to some of the verse compositions in the H ortulus or to some other ve rses not part of the H ortulus in itself is not clear . In the version of the Hortulus studied b y m e, the last two prayers (pages 404-408) are '' For the forgiveness of forgetfulness which we allow while receiving God 's gifts, " and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful. " For H orcicka, these subjects may have seem ed an apt conclusion fo r his devotion al work . There is no reason to suspect that there was more writing related to the Hortulu s which for some reason is not in the bound copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Indeed , Rizn er notes that the H ortulu s has four hundred and eight numbered pages, as does Tablic - the number found in the Lycealna copy of the H ortulus. As a fi gure in Slovak cultural hi story, D ani el Sinapius-Horcicka occupies a definite place. In his H ortulus animae piae, as in other writings , he manifests a Slovak ethnic consciousness that stands out in the seve nteenth ce ntury. 56 Through hi s religious zeal, erudition , and talent , he also provides hi s fellow Lutherans wi th devo tion al writin g to co nsole them in their time of exile and trials . In effect, he has composed a notewo rthy example of early Slovak writing. Through not strictly literary, the Slovak prose a nd verse of H orcicka's Hortulus m erit far more attention and study th an they have rece ived - practicall y speaking, virtu ally none. It is hoped that thi s study is but the bare beginnin g of research on the H ortulu s and its author, Daniel Sinapiu s-Horcicka . NOTES ' J a n Du rov ic, Evanjelick a liceracura d o colerancie (Turcia nsky Sviity M a nin : M a ti ca slove nska, 1940), p . 5 1. ' This is shown by a peru sal of th e following : J a n Durovic, Evangelicka liceracura a nd �SLOVAKIA ' ' ' 6 1 ' ' ' 0 69 also his Prehl'ad literarnych dejin slovenskych eva njelikov (Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas: Tra noscius, 1948); " Barak ," D ejin y starsej slovenskej /iteratury (Bratislava: V ydava tel'stvo Slovensk ej akademie vied , 1958), pp . 155 -298; Literarna rukovat', 2nd ed. (Bra tisl ava: Slove nske pedagogicke nak ladatel's tvo , 1981 ) pp. 72-97. M an y Lutheran famili es adop ted Latin renditions of the family na mes as new surnames. This hyphena ted name is used for Horcicka family members in Slovak litera ry hi stories and criti cism as well as in th e a rticl es on them in Encyklopedia Slovenska , V ( 198 1). J an the younger , son of J a n th e elder - Daniel's brother - also wrote a number of works: l'.udovft Rizner, Bibliogra fia pisomnictva slovenskeho , V (Turciansky Svaty Martin: M a ri ca slova neka, 1933), 80-81. ( H ereafter , Rizn er , volume in Rom a n numeral , page(s) in Arabic num eral(s) .) Also , J an Misianik, Doplnky k Rizn erovej bib/iogra fii , 1946 , 2nd revised and enlarged edition (Martin : Matica slovenska, 1971), pp. 252 -253 . Jan and Dani el' s sister Elena married into prominent Luthera n families such as La ni a nd Lad ive r - Jan Slavik, D ejin y zvolenskeho evanjelickeh o a. v. bra1s1va a senioratu (Banska Sti avn ica: NakJad vdovy a syna AugustaJoergesa, 1921 ), p . 344. Rizn er, V , 8 1; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p. 62 , incompl ete Latin titles. Rizn er , V , 79-80 ; Durovic, Evanje/ick a Iiteratura , pp. 142-43 , 348; Alexander Lomba rdini, "J a n Sina pi us (H orcicka), #38, " "Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovensk e pohl'ady, 7, No. 4 ( 1887), 82-83; Misia nik , D oplnky , P . 252. Durovic , Evanje/icka literatura, p. 69 Durovic, Prehl'ad , p . 40 , a nd Evanjelicka literatura , pp . 9 1-92 has " play, " but Erce (pseudonym of Celes tin R advany i) , Slovenska krv (Bratislava : Vydavatel'stvo lexikalneho di ela " Slovenska krv, " 1942), p. 160 calls it a " praye r book for intellect uals." J an di ed in ex ile in H alle on August 4, 1682: Rizn er , V , 79 ; Bohuslav Tablic, Pameti cesk o-slovenskych basnifuv an eb versovcuv , origin all y published in 1800' s, Bi og raphi ca-Pra mene, zv. 1 (M a rtin : M a rica slovenska , 1972) , p . LXV (65) , and in Pam ati cesko-slovenskych basnikov alebo versovcov, Rudo Brtai\, tr. (Bratislava : T at ran , 1974), p. 57; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, V (1981) , sub verbo " SinapiusH orcicka, J a n , st. " The ve rn acula r Slovak used by Daniel is called " Slovakized Czech " by Jozef Minarik in Li1erarna rukova t', p. 72 , in both editions. Discussion a bout this la ngu age a nd its prope r desc ripti ve na me co ntinu es. Fo r instance , l',ubomfr Durovic writes that " throu gh th e increased use of Czech with local Slovak features in th e administration of W es t Slova k town s (Bratislava , Trnava, Trencfn , Zilina , etc .), a kind of regional administra tive koin e spo nt a neously developed in th e sixtee nth and seve ntee nth centuri es .. called ' cultural Wes tern Slova k' (kulturna zapadoslovencina)," in "Slovak," �70 SLOVAKIA The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development , Alexande r Schenker a nd Edward Stankiewicz, eds. (New H ave n : Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980), p . 2 12. Durovic' s a nalysis shows features of this koine th at a re fou nd in H orcicka's H ortulu s , though how co nsisten tl y a nd exte nsively this is so is a m a tt er fo r further study by histo ri cal lin gu ists. Durovic continu es: Another language integrati on a rea in the seventeenth ce ntury was Central Slovakia [the area of H orcicka's pastoral act ivity), where the Central Slovak dialects became a basis for a new regional koine. The use of this "cultural Central Slovak " is a ttested in city administrat ion , pri vate correspondence, occasional poetry, and in some religious, non-liturgical fun ctions. This koine was in m an y respec ts ve ry similar to the spoken literary Slovak of today. (p. 2 12) " ,i " " " The related but distinctive process of Slovak ethni c consciousness fo r the period 1620- 1750 must also have been play ing a role in the process of lin guistic development and systematization . After extensive documentary resea rch and study , Josef M acu rek co nte nds that it was during thi s peri od that "the political and geographical border , M oravian-Sl ovak .. . , becam e an ethn ographic boundary ," in " Ceske ze me a Slovensko ( 1620-1750),'' Spisy university j. E . Purkyne v Brne: Filosoficka fakult a, 147 ( 1969), pp . 78-79 ; see also pp. 69-75 with related footnotes and appended documents on pp . 83-3 I 3. On the basis of his study, M acurek shows that in this border area , the co nsciousness of Slovaks and M oravians (Czechs) as di stin ct ethnic groups was es peciall y developed , Thus, H orcicka says he is writing in "slowenskem gazyku " (Cf note 56 below). For more on this point see also my article on Hu golfn G avlovic in this issue of Slovakia , note 3. 1 have used the foll owing for the biogra ph y of Daniel Sina piu s- H orcicka: Bohu slav Tablic, Pameti/ Pam aci , pp . LXI-LXXI (6 1-71)/55-62; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, pp. 120-121, note 75 ; Lombard ini , " Daniel Sinapius ( H o rci cka ), #37 ," in " Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovenske pohl'ady , 7, No . 4 (1887), 80-82 ; Erce, p . 160 ; J ozef Minarik , D ejin y starsej slovensk ej literatury, pp. 266-70 ; J ozef Hurba n , "Slovensko a jeho zivot litera rni ," Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umenja a literaturu, Djel I , Svazok 2 ( 1847), rpt. (Bratislava : Slovenske vydavatel'stvo krasnej literatury , 1957), 6-9 (ori ginal pagination); En cyklop edia Slovenska, V ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapius- H orcicka, D aniel"; and Misian ik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-252. The date of H o rcicka 's birth is given by Durovic as circa 1630 and th at of his death as 1706 b y Durovic, Erce, and Lomba rdini , an d yet Minarik and En cyklopedia Slovenska give l 640 a nd 1688 respec tively. I have accepted th e latter as evidence of more rece nt scholarship on Sinapius-Horcicka . These d ates a re in En cyklopedia Slovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sin apius-Horcicka, D a ni el. '' Lomba rdini names K ameiian y by its Hun garia n appe llat ion (cf. Vlastivedny slovnik obci na Sloven sku ( 19 77) , sub verbo " K ameiiany. " ) Dates for years in K ameiiany and Liptovska T epla in Encyklopedia S/ovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapiu s- H o rcicka, Da niel"; T ablic, Pam eti/ Pam aci , P. LXII (62)/55. Slav ik , Dejiny, p. 85 notes 33 pastors , but Jan Kvacala, D ejiny reformacie na Sloven - �SLOVAKIA " 17 " 19 '° " " " " " 16 " 71 sku (Liptovsky Sviity Mikulas : Tranoscius , 1935), p . 235 writes 32 Lutheran pastors and 1 Reformed pastor. Tablic, Pameti/Pamiiti, P. LXII (62)/55. Those authors who have written about Horcicka give variation s on the name of this Polish town. Tablic (Pameti, PP. LXII-LXIII) has Bojanow(o) , Erce, Bojanov(o) near Lesno/ Leszno , and Tablic (Pama.ti , pp . 55-56), Nov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o), and Encyklopedia Slo venska, Nov(y/e) Boja nov (-/o) . On pp . 266-67, Minarik speaks of a Nov(y/e) Bojanow(o) nea r Lesno/ Leszno . From my own resea rch, I have decided on presentday Bojanowo , southeast of Leszno. The Slownik nazv geograficznych po/ski zachodnej i polnocnej, Stanislaw Rospond, ed . (Warszawa and Wroclaw : Polskie towarzystwo geografi czne, 195 1), p . 17 sub verbo " Bojanow" desc ribes a village near R aciborz. H oweve r , two further reference works make me choose Boj anowo near Leszno . They are: Slownik geograficzny kr6lestwa polskiego , Filip Sulimi ersky and Wl adyslaw Walewsky, ed . (Warszawa: Druk " Wieku ," 1880), pp. 292-294 , sub verbo " Bojanowo" ; and Wielka encyklopedia powszechna (1963), sub verbo " Bojanowo." These two works mention that in this town's hi story there was/is a significa nt evangeli cal/protestant background and that here th ere was a protestant gymna zwm . Hurba n , p . 6 (original pagination of article); Lomba rdini , p . 80 ; T ablic, Pameti/ Pamiiti , p. LXII (62)/55 ; Minarik, p . 266: Encyklopedia Slovenska, sub verbo " Sinap ius-H orcicka , Daniel. " Rudo Brtan in " Daniel Sinapius , '' Slovensky literarny album (Bratislava: Obzor, 1968) , p . 44 notes that Sinapius-Horcicka stayed on th e estate of th e Lords Leszczynski ( 1677-83) as rector of th e Latin school in ov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o). Rizn er , V, 77-79 , li sts twelve : Lombardini li sts fourt een ; Misianik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-5 2 , add s six more; Misia ni k has two works listed by Lombardini but not by Rizn er. They all sha re eleve n in common. For so me co mm enta r y, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura , pp. 143-45. For so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic , Evanjelicka literatura, p. 91. Hurban , pp . 6-9 (o ri gin al pagina tion of article); Minarik , pp. 267-69; a nd Literarna ruk ovl', pp . 90-92. Fo r so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a literatura , pp . 12 1-22 . T he works th at I have listed in numbers 2 , 3, 5, probably l , a nd perh aps 4 we re published a nd/or co mposed durin g Horcicka's period of exi le. Th e New Ca th olic En cyclopedia ( 1967), sub verbo '' H ortulu s animae.'' Diciionnaire de Spiriru alite ( l 969), sub verbo " Hortus , Hortu lus/J a rdin spiritu el," especiall y columns 777 -783. (In column 779, it is noted that th e J esuit Peter Cani siu s publi shed in 1563 in Dillin ge n H orru/us animae. Der See/en C arten .) Herbert Thursto n , " The Print ing Press in th e Service of th e C hurch : I , The Original Garden of th e Soul, " Am erica n Ecclesias rical R eview, 26 (Februa ry, 1902), 170 , no tes it was prin ted in 1569 in N urembe rg a nd a co py is at th e Bodl eia n Libra ry, Oxford whi ch co ncludes wit h a n histori cal account of Luth er's p rotes t aga in st in d ul ge nces. In hi s Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( 19 10) a rticl e on '' H o nul us an ima e, '' T hurston notes th at thi s 1569 Luthera n re nditi on " perh a ps co r respond s bes t to the oth er fa mou s Cath ol ic prayer book the' Pa rad isus Anim ae. ' " In his A m erican Ee- �72 SLOVAKIA clesiastical Review art icle cited above, Thurston is discussing primaril y a German version entitled Der Selen Wurt zgart (first published in 1483), found in th e British Mu seum (p. 170 in article). He th en m enti ons in a footnote of thi s a rticl e that a Nuremberg edition of th e same year as th e German H orculu s he is di scussing is entitl ed Hortulus Animae, th e dude Selen wurt-ga rden gen ant , printed by F . P ypus. Finall y, on pages 174- 75 of this same art icle, Thurston qu otes th e translated introduction of his German Hortulus under di scussion: Hereafter follows a right pleasant and useful matter; and it is called the H erb-garden of th e Soul; since ju st as the body of man derives manifold pleasant savours from clove , gilliflowers, rosemary and other herbs, in like mann er th e soul receives man y d ifferent en tertainments, both pleasant and ghostly , from the goodly teachin g and examples whi ch are gathered together in thi s book. This present book is divided into four pa rt s. Each part is translated into German and derived from the writings of honou red teache rs and histories worth y of credit. 19 30 31 31 This introduction th en shows clearly the utilita ri an characte r of the H orculus. L exikon fur Th eologie und Kirch e ( 1960), sub verbo " H ortulus animae. " On George Rh aw ( 1488-1 548), responsible for this 1547 (composed) work, see: The Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Rh a u , George." In this encyclo ped ia, in the articl e " D evo tion al Litera ture, " it is noted that Rhaw 's ve rsion of th e H orculu s dates from 1548, a nd that an offshoot of Rhaw 's version was Nicol aus Cramer's Wurtzgaerclein d er Seelen of 15 73 . In my research in several librar ies at universities and theological centers, I have found only one book on Lutheran devotion al literature: P aul Althaus , Forschungen z ur Evangelischen Gebetsliteracur, 1927 ed ., rpt. (Hildesheim: Georg Olm s V erl agsbuchhandlung, 1966). This book , howeve r, has no comm entary abo ut th e Lutheran ve rsion of the H ortulu s; it does spea k of th e Ca tholi c Hortuli . I have found no references anywhere else to a Lutheran H orculus or to a book entitled D er Lustgart en der Seelen , the titl ed noted by Thurston. In Evanjelicka literatura, page 111 , Durovic notes that the Lutheran clergyman Daniel Pribi s added a section entitled R osarium an imae (Rose-garden of the Soul) to hi s 1634 editi on (cf. Prehl'ad , p. 34) of the 16 12 Slovak rendition of Luther's catech ism. It mi ght be noted here th at Luther "was ... eage r to replace the ordinary Catholic prayer books, above all th e com mon popular forms of H orculu s animae ('The Soul 's Garden') , and thu s his [Luther' s] B etbu chlein (' Prayer Bookl et') of 1522 appea red.": Th e Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo "Devotional Literature.'' In Dictionnaire de Spiricualite, column 783, it is observed th at a J esui t, Andrej Zachon (d. 1700), wrote and had published in Olomouc in 1669 a H ortulu s spiritualis vernantiae seu libellus precum floriferarium (Littl e Spiritual Ga rd en of Springtime or The Little Book of Flowerbearin g Entrea ti es). I am usi ng a mi crofilm of Horcicka 's H ortulu s made from a copy of this book fou nd in the Lycealn a kni zn ica in Bratislava with no signa ture number. Rizn er, V, 77 and Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p . 12 1 noted two ex ta nt co pies of the H orculu s one in the Kni znica Tranovskeho a nd another in th e Hun garian National Museum. �SLOVAKIA ll " " " " " 73 It would seem likely that th e copy in the Kniznica Tranovskeho is now the copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Howeve r, as will be evident from my commentary , the copy studi ed by me has more introductory, unnumbered pages than Rizner indicates 28 instead ofRizner' s 16. In his book , TanovskehoPam eti/Pamati, pp . LXIV-LXV (64-65)/5 7) tablic notes virtuall y all of these ex tra La tin pages, although he is silent ab t the sixteen , basically Slovak (unnumbered) pages tha t preced e these Latin ones in the introductory portion of the H ortulus. Tablic (Pame1i/Pama.1i, pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1) notes th a t there are illu strations and verses in each of th e twelve divisions of the mai n body ; this format is th en similar to that of emblematic poetry which has a co upl et-ve rse, a n illu stration , a nd then some furth er verses/commentary: John L. Lievsay, '' Emblem , ' ' Th e Prin ceton En cyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , enlarged editi on , Alex Premin ge r et al. , ed. (Prince ton: Prince ton University Press, 1974) . Thi s feature - th e illustration - is not found in the H ortulus version studi ed b y me. In hi s D oplnky, p . 25 1, Misianik a nd in Pameti/Pam ati , p. LXX (70)/61, Tablic not e th a t H orcicka trans lated his Slovak Hortulu s into German, and this Germa n ve rsion was published in 1680 in Lesno/Leszno. Finally , m y memory of the actual book wou ld be th at when closed , it would measure so mething like an inch b y three inches, ap tl y a "little" garde n. T a blic (Pameti/ Pam ati , p . LXIV (6 4)/57) notes the book is dedi cated to a ce rtain " Jil'fmu R advan skemu , dedicnemu pan u V R advani, V Skubfne, Malachove, slov utn eho ispanstvf aneb vidieku zvolenskeho pl'ednfmu assessorovi ajeho man zelce V. u . pa nfJ ohann e Ka tal'in e, rozene M ari a.save z M a rku sovic (G eo rge R adv ansky, heredita ry lord of R ad van, Skubin a, M alachov, the p ro min ent assesso r of the wellkn own count y of Zvolen a nd environs and to his wife , th e great?, noble? , lad y Joanna Cath erine, n ee M ariasova from M a rku sovce . '' ) Thi dedi cation va ri es from th a t in th e ve rsion of th e H ortulus studi ed by me. In the dedi cation to his N eoforum latinos/avon icum , H orcicka na mes a ce rtain J a n R adva nsky of R advai\ , heir to Skubyn and M alachau/ M a lachov, perha ps son of Jil'f/Juraj menti oned by T ablic: Edition of J. V . Novak an d V . Flajshan s in P rague, 1908, p . 3. On this same page , H orcicka menti ons a ce rt ain H orwath -Sta nsithioru m in Spfs. This H orwath-S tansithiorum (ge niti ve plural) is rend ered H orwa th-Stancicovce (nominative plural) by Jan Tibensky, Chvaly a obrany sloven skeh o naroda (Brati slava: Slovenske vyd ava tel'stvo krasnej li tera tury, 1965), p . 48 . For some comm ent a ry on Petr Sextiu s, see : Durovic, E vanjelicka lii eratura, pp . I I 9- 120. H e is m enti oned by Lomba rdini in hi s commentary on Milichov insky, #56 in " Slove nsky Plutarc h ," Slo ven ske pohl'ad y, 7, No . 6 (1887), 135. On Miloc hovinsky, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura, pp . 62 , 177-78 , and Lombard ini, p. 135. On J an Sextius, see: Durovic, Eva njelick a lit eratura , p. 62, a nd Lomb a rdini again . On J a n Buriu s, see: Durovic, Evangelick a lii eracura, pp . 8 1-82, 145 . H orcicka call s Buriu s a G erman, th ough Du rov ic specul a tes that he m ay have bee n Slovak; he was born in Lip tov. Al so, on page 84 of hi s cited work , Durovic notes th at J an Sex ti us and J a n Burius wro te a hi story of a ce rt a in Juraj La ni in 1676. I have fo und no reference fo r thi s person . Th e phrase " Pas. in Elecc. Dresda. Va /Jens Hung. " ca n possibly be rendered " ~ in th e Electo rat e of Dresde n �74 SLOVAKIA Wall achian of Hun gary . " Such an address of auth or to book was done nearl y a ce ntury later ( 1758) by Hu golin G avlovic as he concluded the introductory portion of his Sk ala Krest'ansk a (A C hristian School): signature MJ 33 1, Litera rn y a rchiv M ati ce sloven skej in Mart in , p . 16 with title- page as page one . Interestingly, T ablic does n ot m enti on H orcicka's address to the book in hi s, T a blic's, d escrip tion of the int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus. 40 In composin g hi s later devoti onal wo rk , Perlicka ditek B ozich (The Little Pearl of G od 's Ch ild ren) , publi shed in 1685, H orcicka purposely structured it accordin g to the fi ve d ivisions of Luther 's catechi sm : D u rovic, Evanjelick a literatura, pp . 12 1-22. 41 It is interestin g th at in 1685 , H o rcicka published in Levoca K om en sky's/Comenius' Orbis pictu s sen sualium , on e of th e o utstandin g books of th e seventee nth century where th e se nses a re u sed th e bette r to in culca te certa in knowled ge a m o ng children and/or adults: Min arik, p . 270 ; E rce, p . 160; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, sub verbo " Sinapius- H orci c_ka, D a ni el. " R ecall also th at accord in g to T a blic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1, th ere we re illustrati o ns wit h Latin or Slovak verse m o ttoes. " Bibli svata podle p uvodniho vydani Kra/ick eh o z let 1579-93 (Kutn a H o ra : Ceska biblicka p race , 1942), and B ibli svata p odle posledn ih o vydani Kralick eh o z roku 1613 (P raha: n .p., 1945). " C ita ti ons b y H orcicka from the Song of So ngs are: I . Song 4 : 12; 2. So ng 4: 13 (but also v. 14); 3. So ng 4: 15; 4. So n g 2 :13- 14 ; 5. So ng 1:5 -6; 6. Song 4: 16; 7. So ng 7: 8-9 (bu t actu all y vv. 7-8 in eit her vers ion of the Kralice Bible con sulted); 8. Song 7: 11 (bu t also v. 12) ; 9. Son g 2 : 11- 12 (bu t actu all y citati on sta rts in the midd le of verse 10 and includes also a pa rt of ve rse l 3); 10. So ng I : 13; 11 . So ng 2 :2; and I 2. Son g 2: 1. 44 Song of Songs, M a rv in Pope, in tro. and com. , Ancho r Bi ble Series (Ga rd en City , New York: Dou bleday and Company , 1977) , especiall y pp. 114-129. Also see : Diction naire de Spiritualite , colum n s 769-76. On page 126 of hi s com mentary, Pope notes that Lut her rej ected th e allegori cal interpretat ion of th e Song - na m ely, the allegorical fan cies of the Fathers as well as the literal erotic se nse. R at her , Luther believed that "the Bride of the Song is the ha ppy and peaceful state under Solomon's ru le and that th e Song is a h ymn in which Solomon thanks God for the d ivine gift of obedience.'' Concerning thi s, see also: Luther, ''Lectures on th e Song of Solomon ,'' J an Siggins, tr ., Luther's Works, 15 (St. Louis: Concord ia Publishin g, 1972), 191-95. I assume that H orcicka would have been aware of Luther' s views, but thi s in no way limits his int erpretati ve use of this Biblica l book. At present, it can not be said whether an y o th er Luth era n view of the So ng of So ngs such as that by Johann es Coccae us Uohann K och, 1603-69), Pope, pp . 128-29, was known b y Horcicka. " Bes ides hi s cita ti ons from th e Song of Songs at the beginning of each "walk, " H orcicka refers to verses from this book some thi rtee n tim es, only once repeating a verse from th ose introdu cin g " Walk IX." 46 On numbered page I 98 of th e H ortulus , Horcicka not es a Czec h ve rsion of the Bible published in 163 I in Wittenberg. 47 H ortulus, numbered page 103; Pope , Song of Songs , p. 123. 39 �SLOVAKIA 75 " In T h e Encyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " D evo tional Literature," it is no ted th a t ii K empis ' Imitation of Christ was popula r devotional read in g in Luthera n la nd s. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church . ( 1965), sub verbo " G erh a rd , Johann ." I have, howeve r , fo und no reference fo r presuma bl y this Ge rha rd 's Postill(ae) cited by H orcicka. '° Th e Encyclopedia of th e Luthera n Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Dilherr , J ohann Michael," but no reference to his Feld-, Welt- etc. work . In two editions of an anthology of old Slova k literature, Misianik notes th a t th e Feld- work by this Dilherr was published in ure m be rg in 1648 a nd 165 1: An tol6gia starsej slovensej literatury ( Brati slava: Yydavatel'stvo Slove nskej a kademie vied , 1964), p . 6 18, a nd 1981 editi on , p . 583. Misia nik gives the title as Feld- W elt - G artenbetrachtung. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965) , sub verbo" Huelsemann , Johann ." " H orcicka a lso refers to th e Centuries of M agd eburg on numbered page 176. " T ablic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXVI -LXIX (66-69)/5 7-61 , qu otes in Czechi zed form two of th e verse units on numbered pages 122-23 a nd 402-03. The proper rendition of these ve rses can be found in th e two Misianik a nthologies, pp . 395 -96 and 399/ 373-74 respectively. Misia nik also cites two further ve rse units: H ortulus, numbered pages 82-83 and 370-75/ M isia ni k, pp. 395, 397 -399 and 370- 73 respec ti vely for th e two Misianik editi ons. Fina ll y, th ese fo ur ve rse units can also be fo und inJa miluji, nesmim providaci: antol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran , 1977), pp. 93-99. In a ll , th ere a re fo urtee n ve rse units. T ablic qu otes two a nd gives page numbers for eleve n oth ers; he missed the page numbers fo r one verse unit according to th e ve rsion of th e H ortulu s studi ed by me. The fo urtee n ve rse units a re as follows - numbered pages th en the number of verses in th e unit-: I. 14/6 2 . 82 -83/ 12; 3. 87-88/2 4; 4. 100/4 La tin a nd 4 Slovak; 5. 114-15/ 11; 6 . 122-23/36 ; 7. 186/8; 8. 191/4 La tin and 4 Slovak, a nd aga in 4 La tin and 4 Slovak; 9. 245/6; 10 . 33 7-38/8; 11. 340-43/76; 12. 365-66/ 12, not mention ed by T ablic; 13. 370-75/ 60; and 14. 402 -03/ 18. ,. The orth ograp hy used a t th a t time shows g instead of j (though g was also used for g), ss for s, w for v, the grave accen t fo r ad verbial endin gs, a nd (som etim es) a dot fo r a long mark ove r y. " Hu rba n , p . 6 (o riginal pagin ati on of the articl e) . " O n unn um bered page 15 , th at is, in th e int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus, Horc icka spea ks to the " Dea r R ead e r " in " Slowen sk em gazyku (Slovak language/to ngue), " as well as uses the adj ectival fo rms " Slowen sk ych " a nd " Slowenske " fo r "Slova k." In C h valy a obran y sloven sk eh o n arod a, pp . 48- 51, J a n Tibensky notes H orcicka's Slovak consciousness and quotes from th e introducti on to the latte r 's Neoforum latin o-slavon icum as evide nce of it . Prese n ted in Pa nel 99 , " Devo ti onal Literature in Seventeenth Ce ntury Slova ki a," a t the AAASS conve ntion in Washin gton , D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982 . Parts were prepared at the 1982 Summer Slavic Semin a r at the Unive rsity of Illinois in C ha mpa ign-Urbana . � SLOVAKIA 61 Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka's Hortulus Animae Piae G erald J . Sabo In Slovak areas during the seventeenth ce ntury , n ation ali st ic turmoil and religious strife were prominent features of life a nd society. Ethnic consciousness and religious commitment so pe rvaded political r elations that they pitted Hungarian s, Germans, and Slovaks against o ne another in shifting alliances. R eli gion, though, remain ed the " leadin g force" for virtually the entire ce ntury. 1 Indeed , the writings of thi s period Slovak and L a tin - clearly bear this out. 2 Hymnals, hom il etic writing, religious disputa tion s, doctrinal a nd d evo tion al lite ra ture, school plays related to religious formation, as well as accounts of imprisonment and/or ex ile for religious r eason s occupy a promin ent place among the Slovak/Latin writin gs of this e ra. Among the distinctive cultural figures of thi s century is the Lutheran family of Sinapius-Horcicka. 3 The father Mi chal a nd two of his sons , Jan a nd D ani el, stand out n ot only for their religiou s zeal but esp ec ially for their eruditio n and writin gs. 4 Indeed , a numbe r of these writings have earned them a significant place in Slovak cultural history. The father Michal (d. 1653) was a pastor in Hricov and Sucany a nd a prominent church elder in the Tre ncfn ecclesiastical (Lutheran) district. During his studies at Wittenberg as a young man , he presented two public Latin di sputatio n s: one on the definition and divisio n of m etaphysics and another on the intell ect a nd w ill of intelli ge nt be in gs. 5 Mi ch al's commi tmen t to eruditio n must ce r tainly have influ en c~d his so n s J a n a nd D aniel as evidenced by th e latter's activities and writin gs. Like their fath er , th e sons devoted the ir scholarl y training to serv in g their fellow Lutheran s as p astors a nd sc hool offi cials, in exile as well as in Slovak areas. It is their wr itin gs, however, th at have establi shed th e ir places in Slovak cultu ral history. Virtually all of J an 's extan t writings are written in Latin o r German. 6 Among them are: 1. a Latin d evo tional work for stu dents, H orologium sacrum (Sacred H o urs or C lock),7 where eve ry hour of the day is directed to religious form ation ; 2. a L a tin play 8 H enoch (E noch) ; an d Ornithica sacra (Sacred Ornithology) written in German �62 SLOVAKIA about birds with religious significance. 9 The writings of D aniel are composed in Latin or a vernacular Slovak 10 that shows the influence of and commitment to Kralice-Biblical-Czech in his reli giou s training and liturgical practice. Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka was born around 1640 in Sucany. 11 H e was rector of the Lutheran school in J elsava from 1663-65, 12 a pastor in K am enan/ 3 from 1665-67, 14 and from 1667-70 in Liptovska Tepla, and finally from 1670 in R advan. In September, 1673 , Daniel was among thirty-two Lutheran pastors summoned to trial befo re the Catholic Archbishop of E sztergom . 1~ After the trial , he went into exile first to Brieg (today Brzeg) and then in the winter of 16 74 to Breslau (Wroclaw) , and finally in November, 1677 16 to a certain Bojanowo in P oland , 17 where he was rector of a school. 18 H orcicka returned from exi le some time in 1683, fir st to his former pastorate in R ad van, then in 1684 to a pastorate and position of school official in L evoca. H e remained in Levoca un ti! his death in 1688. Some eighteen works 19 are attributed to D aniel Sinapius-Horcicka. Am ong the writings prominent in Slovak cultural history are : 1. H orcicka' s 1684 enlarged edition of the Lutheran hymnal Cithara sanctorum (Zither of the Saints), also known as Tran osciu s after its compiler Ju raj Tranovsky;2° 2. the 1682 wedding verse-composition in Latin, Coelum Bojan ovien se (Bojanowo H eaven);2 1 3. Neoforum latino-slavonicum (New L atin-Slavonic Forum) , a 1678 coll ection of popular/folk sayings in L atin and Slovak;2 2 4. Perlicka ditek Bozich (The Little Pearl of God's Children), a 1685 devotional work segm ented on the basis of the fi ve divisions in Luther's catechi sm; 23 and 5. H ortulu s animae piae (The Little Garden of the Piou s Soul), a 1676 devotional work and the subject of this article. 24 The L atin title of H orc icka 's 1676 work - H ortulu s animae piae is intri guing. H ortulu s (Hortus) animae is the title for a type of[Latin and/or German] devotional book of praye rs intended for the [Catholic] laity , that was widespread in Germany in the early sixteenth century .... The H ortuli .. . were similar in general content and arrangement to many of the L atin H orae or book of hours, or to the English primers , from which they developed; howeve r , they were more popular in character. The H ortuli contain ed the Little Office of Our L ad y, extracts from the Gospel accounts of the passion, the �SLOVAKIA 63 Penitential Psalms, and the Litany of the Saints , with a large selection of supplementary d evotional matter. This material of private prayer had the tendency to increase size and in extravagan ce. For example, promises of spurious indulgences and complete forgiveness of sins became attached to man y prayers . . . The Council of Trent legislated against the accretions , the false promises of indulgences, and the incorrect versions of the Little Office of Our Lady. A bull of Pius V (March 11, 1571) demanded rigorous censorship of all editions. 25 The article on " Hortus/ Hortulus " in Dictionnaire de Spiritualite traces the extensive number of devotional works associated with this title and type of writing. 26 The phrase " Hortulus animae" is derived not from the aesthetic but from the utilitarian aspects of a garden as is evident from three Latin distichs that usually prefixed many such writings. The first two lines are as follows: Ortulus exiguus varias ut saepe salubres Herbas producit, quas medicina probat. (A small garden often produces a variety of salutary herbs of which medicine knows the value.) 21 In his articles on the Hortulus animae , Herbert Thurston notes that in 1569, a certain Lu the ran adaptation was published and called Der Lustgarten der Seelen (The Pleasure Garden of the Soul). 28 F. Wulf, though , notes that a Georg Rhaw (Rhau) produced a Lutheran version in 154 7, in Wittenberg; it was published in 1559 and was composed on the basis of printed Hortuli forbidden by the Spanish lnquisition . 29 Among the d evotional literature written by Slovak Lutherans , the title for Horcicka 's composition - Hortulus animae piae - is unique. Nor is the title Der Lustgarten der Seelen or some Slovak rendition to be found among Slovak Lutheran writings_ Jo Thus , it remains an open question why Horcicka cho se a title more closely associated with Catholic devotional writing rather than one from his own Lutheran tradition. JI The introdu ctory portion of Horcicka ' s HortulusJ 2 has several divisions. On the title page, the full title reads: Hortulu s Animae Piae, Zahradka Dussicky pobozne, Wkterez se clowek Krestiansky Suzitkem prochazeti muze (The Little Garden of the Pi ou s Soul in Which a Christian Person Can Walk w ith Usefulness/ Profit). After the title page com es that with Horcicka 's dedication of the book to "P . Markowy Hor vv (w) ath-Stansith of Gradetz/Hradec? in the Stolica (Cou nty) of Spis and �64 SLOVAKIA to hi s w ife Zoffy, n ee M a riasse/M a ri asove? from Markussowic/Markusovce,'' whom H o rcicka calls Km otrum (God pare nt s) a nd Dobrodin cu m (Be n efactors) . 33 In the fourt ee n pages that follow, H orcicka es ta blishes in Slovak th e basis or rationale for writing his Hortulus. H e d raws on Scriptu re as well as classical literature for refe ren ce material. Two further p ages ( 15 and 16 in sequ e nce as these p ages a re unnumbered) are devoted to the " Laskawemu Ctenari (Dear R eader). " After these sixteen pages of basically Slovak prose, in the version studied by m e there foll ow twelve pages in L a tin with dist inct parts. On p age seventeen (in sequ en ce), H orcicka's brothe r J a n comm ents on the Hortulu s. Then, a close friend , P etr Sext ius, 34 addresses Daniel himself as the form e r speaks on the H ortulus (pages 17-20). J a n Milochovinsky, 35 elder in the Zilina ecclesiastical district , h as a on e- page, addressed comm ent for D a ni el (page 21 ) . In the course of his comme n ts on the H ortulus, J a n Sextius, 36 called an "amico pectore ( close fri end)" by D a niel , addresses the '' P a nn onian offspring' ' and en courages them to show gratitude to God an d the author of the Hortulu s (pages 22-23). In hi s nearly three- page co mmentary , Jan Buriu s 37 draws on a number of sources, theological a nd classical litera ry (pages 23-25). On pages 26 and 2 7 of this introdu ctory portion, Horcicka addresses a certain M a tthias Albrecht whom he d esignates as ''Pas. in Elect. Dresda ... Vallens Hung. " 38 Fin all y, o n the final page of the int roducto ry portion (28), the author of the H ortulu s addresses the b ook itself: 39 "A uthor ad Libellum (Author to th e Little Book .)" At the bottom of this page, a plaited wreath illu stration encompasses the following: '' D omini Sum us, Dum Spiro Spero, D ominus Providebit (W e Are the Lord's, While I Breathe, I Hope, The Lord Will Provide .)" With this succinct statem ent of purpose a nd ou tl ook , Horcicka concludes the in trod u ctory portion of his H ortulu s . The m ain portion of the H ortulus consists of four hundred and eight numbered pages virtually all in Slovak with some L atin wri ting and even a few Greek words . (The Lat in and Greek are also transla ted into H orcicka 's vernacul ar Slovak.) H orcicka divid es the paginated portion into twelve uneven sections. The division into twelve may have symbolic value - twelve apostl es/twelve tri bes of Israel. 40 Each of these twelve sect ions is called a " Prochadzka (Walk )." Each ''Proch adzka '' begins in the same way . After the Roman num eral indi cati ng the proper " Walk " are found the words: "wniZ �SLOVAKIA 65 premyssluge pobozna dusse (in which the pious soul reflects)." In each of the twelve ''walks ,'' the pious soul reflects on a different object: 1. the garden in general; 2. the tree of this garden; 3. the well of this garden ; 4 . the dove in this garden; 5. the mirror hangin g in this garden; 6. the winds that blow through this garden; 7. the palm (tree); 8. the vine stock/ root; 9 . the fig (tree); 10. myrrh; 11. the rose; and 12 . the lily. In his comments on these twelve objects for reflection, Horcicka engages the senses of the reader. 41 Words that help conjure up "sense pictures" of the objects for reflection enable the reader the better to assimilate the theological truth presented in association with the objects . Indeed, in the presentation order of his objects , H orcicka gradually refines the focus of his reader from a garden in general to a small object like a flower. After the object for a specific "walk " is named , Horcicka cites a relevant passage from the Biblical book Song of Songs (also known as th e Canticle of Canticles or Song of Solomon). In a comparison of H orcicka ' s citat ions from the Song of Songs with two editions of the Kralice Bible (1579-93 and 161 3), 41 it is clear that Horcicka adapts the verses somewhat, probably for the sake of better creating his verbal sense-picture of the object for reflection. 4 3 For "Walk X ," Horcicka' s verse quotation from the Song of So ngs is virtually an exact quotation of this verse according to the 161 3 edition of the Kralice Bible. For " Walk II ," however, Horcicka' s citation see ms to be drawn from the 1579-93 editio n of the Kralice Bible . At present, though, there is no way of de termining whe ther Horci cka u sed these versions of the Bible, a nd , if so , which of th e two , or som e othe r version. Horcicka ' s choi ce of th e Song of Songs as the Biblical basis for the Hortulus seems natural , perhaps even predictabl e from the tradi tion of C hristian writings about thi s Biblical book. F rom a s earl y as 200 AD , Christia n writers have commented on a nd inte rpreted the Song of Songs, usually allegorically , even eroti cally. 44 Horcicka probably wa nted a Biblical work that is co n cern ed not only wi th a garden , but contain s the various objects for refl ection tha t he cites. Onl y th e Son g of Son gs co uld give him such varie ty . In the co mm e nta ry th a t foll ows the verse(s) from the Son g of So ngs in each " walk ," H o rcicka dra ws on a va ri ety of so urces fo r m a te rial s to suppo rt hi s co mm ent s. As is to be ex pec ted , Script u re is a n a bundant so urce of ma teri al. R efe rence to ve rses from books of the O ld a nd New T es ta m e nt can be fo und in eve ry " walk " in la r ge num be rs. 4 5 I ndeed , in " W alk V ," H orcicka gives som e two hun d red and twenty-six �66 SLOVAKIA distinct references from the Bible as authoritative corroboration for whatever interpretation and religious/moral instruction he has written. Curiously, he cites verses from Sirach (some fifteen instances), from Wisdom (some four instances) , and once each from the first and second Book of Maccabees . None of these Old Testament books were considered canonical enough for inclusion in any edition of the Kralice Bible or probably any non-Catholic version through Horcicka's time. They are found in Catholic versions of the Bible since well before Horcicka's time. 46 Horcicka refers to prominent Christian writers from early Christian times into his own era. References to various works by Augustine , to the writings of Luther, Gregory Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Tertullian , Origen, Ambrose, and to the history of Eusebius of Caesarea are noted and footnoted, at times with even the folio/page numbers. References to the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, especially with regard to the Song of Songs, are probably no surprise; Bernard wrote eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs alone. Indeed, Horci cka notes sermon 61 where Bernard says that the Song's love pair are the Word of God and a Soul. 47 Curiously, Horcicka notes two references from Cornelius a Lapide, a Jesuit (d . 1637), a prolific Biblical exegete and interpreter. Interestingly, Horcicka also has a single reference to a 1622 Czech translation of the Bible and to a Prague printing of Th e Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (p. 171 ) . 48 In the Hortulus, there are a number of works noted and footnoted that were probably well-known in Horcicka's time. (At the present time, copies of some of these books are con sidered rare in many US libraries.) Among these writings are: 1. Schola pietatis by Johann G erhard (1582-1637), a Lutheran theologian; 49 2. Analecta sacra by J ohann Heinrich Ursin (1608-67); 3. Arboretum biblicum, also by Ursin; and 4. "Hortus aromaticus," which is part 3 of U rsin 's Continuatio historiae plantarum biblicae. I have found references for two authors whose names resemble those footnoted by Horcicka but nothing about the works cited as theirs. According to Horcicka, a certain Johann Michal Dilherr (a poet and Lutheran theologian, 1604-69) wrote Welt, Feld, and Gartenbetrachtung, 50 and a certain Johann Hu elsemann (Lutheran theologian, 1602-61) is believed to have written Pentagonium christian um. 51 With other books noted and footnoted by Horcicka , I have been unable to find any reference for them or their authors. Among these are: 1. Nicol(s) Roper's Helleuchtend Spiegel der Liebe ; 2. Mich(al) �SLOVAKIA 67 Ba um a nn 's L exicon Allegorico Evangelicum; 3. Laur( entius) Halvard(i/ us) ' s Speculum amoris; and 4 . Hist(oria) Boh(emica) by a certain Dubrav( ius) . 51 In the Hortulus, there is also a good number of books footnot ed only a few times or less . The classical authors cited b y Horcicka are well-known figures from Greek a nd Latin literature. From the Greeks, Herodotus, Homer, X enophon , a nd Strabo, eve n Ari stotle provide supportive material for Horcicka. Of the Latin writers , there are Cicero, Horace, Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and even the outstanding classical specialist, the Dutchman Joest Qustus) Lipsius (1547-1606) . Horcicka's use of these authors in a d evotional wo rk is not unusual for his time; classical literature continued to provide exempla tive material for writers in Slovak areas through the eighteenth century . At the conclusion of each ''walk ,'' Horcicka places Slovak ' ' Modlitby (Prayers)." U sually there are three distinct prayers, except for " Walks VII a nd XII ," with only two . These prayers are mostly in prose, though some are in verse, i.e . distichs combined in paired or enclosing rhymes. 53 The various verse compositions in the Hortulus range from six to seventysix verses . Three of the shortest follow , with a literal tra nslation . To my knowledge they h ave not elsewhere b een reprinted . 54 Ach prigd Pane gezissi prigd zen ichu neykrazssi Nawsstew wernu iwu du ssi at ljby twug hlas slissi A wmile Zahradce swe Bud' odpocinuti twe (p. 14) Com e oh Lord J esus come most handsome bridegroom Visit the tru e i va of the soul May it hear your kind voice And in your dear Garden Be your rest 2 KR ys te deg nam wwjre stalost odegmi ss kodn u wrtkawost Bychom cyle wi ry dossli Zsmni casne do Nebe ssli Na to rjka m Amen/ Amen/ Spas nas Gezu Kryste Amen. (p. 245) C hri st give us steadfastness in fa ith take away harmful fickleness That the goals of faith be attained Went in time from death to H eaven To this I say Amen/ Amen/ Save us J esus C hrist Am en . 3 Pos pess o ma dusse ho/sweho Kwytanj ze nicha ct neho Kteryz na dum tweho srdce Ruku mi los ti swe tlu ce Otewri swe brany gemu Pekne promluw/ a rcy kn emu Prigd mi ly mug/ fada m tebe Nechcy ziti gs uc bez tebe. (p. 337) H as ten o my sou l him/ of your Flowerin g the honorable bridegroom Who upon the house of your heart With th e hand of his love knocks Open your gates to him Nicely speak/ a nd say to hi m : Come my dear/ I beg you I do not wish to live being without you . �68 SLOVAKIA Whil e the literary value of the verse compositi ons in the H ortulus is limited , in the narrow sense, they can be considered examples of early Slovak ve rse writing . Each of the prayers at the end of the "walks" - verse or prose - is designated for som e definite purpose ; for instan ce: " For the dear presence of God; " "For the proper purity of heart , for sincerity, and piety;" "For the recognition of people's woes and God ' s good acts;" " For patience in crises and firmn ess in faith ;" and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful ," the last praye r and part of the Hortulus . According to Hurban, the H ortulu s had appended to it " M ensje jeho basne (his/ Horcicka's/sm aller verses). " 55 Whether Hurban might be referring to some of the verse compositions in the H ortulus or to some other ve rses not part of the H ortulus in itself is not clear . In the version of the Hortulus studied b y m e, the last two prayers (pages 404-408) are '' For the forgiveness of forgetfulness which we allow while receiving God 's gifts, " and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful. " For H orcicka, these subjects may have seem ed an apt conclusion fo r his devotion al work . There is no reason to suspect that there was more writing related to the Hortulu s which for some reason is not in the bound copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Indeed , Rizn er notes that the H ortulu s has four hundred and eight numbered pages, as does Tablic - the number found in the Lycealna copy of the H ortulus. As a fi gure in Slovak cultural hi story, D ani el Sinapius-Horcicka occupies a definite place. In his H ortulus animae piae, as in other writings , he manifests a Slovak ethnic consciousness that stands out in the seve nteenth ce ntury. 56 Through hi s religious zeal, erudition , and talent , he also provides hi s fellow Lutherans wi th devo tion al writin g to co nsole them in their time of exile and trials . In effect, he has composed a notewo rthy example of early Slovak writing. Through not strictly literary, the Slovak prose a nd verse of H orcicka's Hortulus m erit far more attention and study th an they have rece ived - practicall y speaking, virtu ally none. It is hoped that thi s study is but the bare beginnin g of research on the H ortulu s and its author, Daniel Sinapiu s-Horcicka . NOTES ' J a n Du rov ic, Evanjelick a liceracura d o colerancie (Turcia nsky Sviity M a nin : M a ti ca slove nska, 1940), p . 5 1. ' This is shown by a peru sal of th e following : J a n Durovic, Evangelicka liceracura a nd �SLOVAKIA ' ' ' 6 1 ' ' ' 0 69 also his Prehl'ad literarnych dejin slovenskych eva njelikov (Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas: Tra noscius, 1948); " Barak ," D ejin y starsej slovenskej /iteratury (Bratislava: V ydava tel'stvo Slovensk ej akademie vied , 1958), pp . 155 -298; Literarna rukovat', 2nd ed. (Bra tisl ava: Slove nske pedagogicke nak ladatel's tvo , 1981 ) pp. 72-97. M an y Lutheran famili es adop ted Latin renditions of the family na mes as new surnames. This hyphena ted name is used for Horcicka family members in Slovak litera ry hi stories and criti cism as well as in th e a rticl es on them in Encyklopedia Slovenska , V ( 198 1). J an the younger , son of J a n th e elder - Daniel's brother - also wrote a number of works: l'.udovft Rizner, Bibliogra fia pisomnictva slovenskeho , V (Turciansky Svaty Martin: M a ri ca slova neka, 1933), 80-81. ( H ereafter , Rizn er , volume in Rom a n numeral , page(s) in Arabic num eral(s) .) Also , J an Misianik, Doplnky k Rizn erovej bib/iogra fii , 1946 , 2nd revised and enlarged edition (Martin : Matica slovenska, 1971), pp. 252 -253 . Jan and Dani el' s sister Elena married into prominent Luthera n families such as La ni a nd Lad ive r - Jan Slavik, D ejin y zvolenskeho evanjelickeh o a. v. bra1s1va a senioratu (Banska Sti avn ica: NakJad vdovy a syna AugustaJoergesa, 1921 ), p . 344. Rizn er, V , 8 1; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p. 62 , incompl ete Latin titles. Rizn er , V , 79-80 ; Durovic, Evanje/ick a Iiteratura , pp. 142-43 , 348; Alexander Lomba rdini, "J a n Sina pi us (H orcicka), #38, " "Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovensk e pohl'ady, 7, No. 4 ( 1887), 82-83; Misia nik , D oplnky , P . 252. Durovic , Evanje/icka literatura, p. 69 Durovic, Prehl'ad , p . 40 , a nd Evanjelicka literatura , pp . 9 1-92 has " play, " but Erce (pseudonym of Celes tin R advany i) , Slovenska krv (Bratislava : Vydavatel'stvo lexikalneho di ela " Slovenska krv, " 1942), p. 160 calls it a " praye r book for intellect uals." J an di ed in ex ile in H alle on August 4, 1682: Rizn er , V , 79 ; Bohuslav Tablic, Pameti cesk o-slovenskych basnifuv an eb versovcuv , origin all y published in 1800' s, Bi og raphi ca-Pra mene, zv. 1 (M a rtin : M a rica slovenska , 1972) , p . LXV (65) , and in Pam ati cesko-slovenskych basnikov alebo versovcov, Rudo Brtai\, tr. (Bratislava : T at ran , 1974), p. 57; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, V (1981) , sub verbo " SinapiusH orcicka, J a n , st. " The ve rn acula r Slovak used by Daniel is called " Slovakized Czech " by Jozef Minarik in Li1erarna rukova t', p. 72 , in both editions. Discussion a bout this la ngu age a nd its prope r desc ripti ve na me co ntinu es. Fo r instance , l',ubomfr Durovic writes that " throu gh th e increased use of Czech with local Slovak features in th e administration of W es t Slova k town s (Bratislava , Trnava, Trencfn , Zilina , etc .), a kind of regional administra tive koin e spo nt a neously developed in th e sixtee nth and seve ntee nth centuri es .. called ' cultural Wes tern Slova k' (kulturna zapadoslovencina)," in "Slovak," �70 SLOVAKIA The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development , Alexande r Schenker a nd Edward Stankiewicz, eds. (New H ave n : Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980), p . 2 12. Durovic' s a nalysis shows features of this koine th at a re fou nd in H orcicka's H ortulu s , though how co nsisten tl y a nd exte nsively this is so is a m a tt er fo r further study by histo ri cal lin gu ists. Durovic continu es: Another language integrati on a rea in the seventeenth ce ntury was Central Slovakia [the area of H orcicka's pastoral act ivity), where the Central Slovak dialects became a basis for a new regional koine. The use of this "cultural Central Slovak " is a ttested in city administrat ion , pri vate correspondence, occasional poetry, and in some religious, non-liturgical fun ctions. This koine was in m an y respec ts ve ry similar to the spoken literary Slovak of today. (p. 2 12) " ,i " " " The related but distinctive process of Slovak ethni c consciousness fo r the period 1620- 1750 must also have been play ing a role in the process of lin guistic development and systematization . After extensive documentary resea rch and study , Josef M acu rek co nte nds that it was during thi s peri od that "the political and geographical border , M oravian-Sl ovak .. . , becam e an ethn ographic boundary ," in " Ceske ze me a Slovensko ( 1620-1750),'' Spisy university j. E . Purkyne v Brne: Filosoficka fakult a, 147 ( 1969), pp . 78-79 ; see also pp. 69-75 with related footnotes and appended documents on pp . 83-3 I 3. On the basis of his study, M acurek shows that in this border area , the co nsciousness of Slovaks and M oravians (Czechs) as di stin ct ethnic groups was es peciall y developed , Thus, H orcicka says he is writing in "slowenskem gazyku " (Cf note 56 below). For more on this point see also my article on Hu golfn G avlovic in this issue of Slovakia , note 3. 1 have used the foll owing for the biogra ph y of Daniel Sina piu s- H orcicka: Bohu slav Tablic, Pameti/ Pam aci , pp . LXI-LXXI (6 1-71)/55-62; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, pp. 120-121, note 75 ; Lombard ini , " Daniel Sinapius ( H o rci cka ), #37 ," in " Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovenske pohl'ady , 7, No . 4 (1887), 80-82 ; Erce, p . 160 ; J ozef Minarik , D ejin y starsej slovensk ej literatury, pp. 266-70 ; J ozef Hurba n , "Slovensko a jeho zivot litera rni ," Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umenja a literaturu, Djel I , Svazok 2 ( 1847), rpt. (Bratislava : Slovenske vydavatel'stvo krasnej literatury , 1957), 6-9 (ori ginal pagination); En cyklop edia Slovenska, V ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapius- H orcicka, D aniel"; and Misian ik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-252. The date of H o rcicka 's birth is given by Durovic as circa 1630 and th at of his death as 1706 b y Durovic, Erce, and Lomba rdini , an d yet Minarik and En cyklopedia Slovenska give l 640 a nd 1688 respec tively. I have accepted th e latter as evidence of more rece nt scholarship on Sinapius-Horcicka . These d ates a re in En cyklopedia Slovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sin apius-Horcicka, D a ni el. '' Lomba rdini names K ameiian y by its Hun garia n appe llat ion (cf. Vlastivedny slovnik obci na Sloven sku ( 19 77) , sub verbo " K ameiiany. " ) Dates for years in K ameiiany and Liptovska T epla in Encyklopedia S/ovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapiu s- H o rcicka, Da niel"; T ablic, Pam eti/ Pam aci , P. LXII (62)/55. Slav ik , Dejiny, p. 85 notes 33 pastors , but Jan Kvacala, D ejiny reformacie na Sloven - �SLOVAKIA " 17 " 19 '° " " " " " 16 " 71 sku (Liptovsky Sviity Mikulas : Tranoscius , 1935), p . 235 writes 32 Lutheran pastors and 1 Reformed pastor. Tablic, Pameti/Pamiiti, P. LXII (62)/55. Those authors who have written about Horcicka give variation s on the name of this Polish town. Tablic (Pameti, PP. LXII-LXIII) has Bojanow(o) , Erce, Bojanov(o) near Lesno/ Leszno , and Tablic (Pama.ti , pp . 55-56), Nov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o), and Encyklopedia Slo venska, Nov(y/e) Boja nov (-/o) . On pp . 266-67, Minarik speaks of a Nov(y/e) Bojanow(o) nea r Lesno/ Leszno . From my own resea rch, I have decided on presentday Bojanowo , southeast of Leszno. The Slownik nazv geograficznych po/ski zachodnej i polnocnej, Stanislaw Rospond, ed . (Warszawa and Wroclaw : Polskie towarzystwo geografi czne, 195 1), p . 17 sub verbo " Bojanow" desc ribes a village near R aciborz. H oweve r , two further reference works make me choose Boj anowo near Leszno . They are: Slownik geograficzny kr6lestwa polskiego , Filip Sulimi ersky and Wl adyslaw Walewsky, ed . (Warszawa: Druk " Wieku ," 1880), pp. 292-294 , sub verbo " Bojanowo" ; and Wielka encyklopedia powszechna (1963), sub verbo " Bojanowo." These two works mention that in this town's hi story there was/is a significa nt evangeli cal/protestant background and that here th ere was a protestant gymna zwm . Hurba n , p . 6 (original pagination of article); Lomba rdini , p . 80 ; T ablic, Pameti/ Pamiiti , p. LXII (62)/55 ; Minarik, p . 266: Encyklopedia Slovenska, sub verbo " Sinap ius-H orcicka , Daniel. " Rudo Brtan in " Daniel Sinapius , '' Slovensky literarny album (Bratislava: Obzor, 1968) , p . 44 notes that Sinapius-Horcicka stayed on th e estate of th e Lords Leszczynski ( 1677-83) as rector of th e Latin school in ov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o). Rizn er , V, 77-79 , li sts twelve : Lombardini li sts fourt een ; Misianik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-5 2 , add s six more; Misia ni k has two works listed by Lombardini but not by Rizn er. They all sha re eleve n in common. For so me co mm enta r y, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura , pp. 143-45. For so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic , Evanjelicka literatura, p. 91. Hurban , pp . 6-9 (o ri gin al pagina tion of article); Minarik , pp. 267-69; a nd Literarna ruk ovl', pp . 90-92. Fo r so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a literatura , pp . 12 1-22 . T he works th at I have listed in numbers 2 , 3, 5, probably l , a nd perh aps 4 we re published a nd/or co mposed durin g Horcicka's period of exi le. Th e New Ca th olic En cyclopedia ( 1967), sub verbo '' H ortulu s animae.'' Diciionnaire de Spiriru alite ( l 969), sub verbo " Hortus , Hortu lus/J a rdin spiritu el," especiall y columns 777 -783. (In column 779, it is noted that th e J esuit Peter Cani siu s publi shed in 1563 in Dillin ge n H orru/us animae. Der See/en C arten .) Herbert Thursto n , " The Print ing Press in th e Service of th e C hurch : I , The Original Garden of th e Soul, " Am erica n Ecclesias rical R eview, 26 (Februa ry, 1902), 170 , no tes it was prin ted in 1569 in N urembe rg a nd a co py is at th e Bodl eia n Libra ry, Oxford whi ch co ncludes wit h a n histori cal account of Luth er's p rotes t aga in st in d ul ge nces. In hi s Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( 19 10) a rticl e on '' H o nul us an ima e, '' T hurston notes th at thi s 1569 Luthera n re nditi on " perh a ps co r respond s bes t to the oth er fa mou s Cath ol ic prayer book the' Pa rad isus Anim ae. ' " In his A m erican Ee- �72 SLOVAKIA clesiastical Review art icle cited above, Thurston is discussing primaril y a German version entitled Der Selen Wurt zgart (first published in 1483), found in th e British Mu seum (p. 170 in article). He th en m enti ons in a footnote of thi s a rticl e that a Nuremberg edition of th e same year as th e German H orculu s he is di scussing is entitl ed Hortulus Animae, th e dude Selen wurt-ga rden gen ant , printed by F . P ypus. Finall y, on pages 174- 75 of this same art icle, Thurston qu otes th e translated introduction of his German Hortulus under di scussion: Hereafter follows a right pleasant and useful matter; and it is called the H erb-garden of th e Soul; since ju st as the body of man derives manifold pleasant savours from clove , gilliflowers, rosemary and other herbs, in like mann er th e soul receives man y d ifferent en tertainments, both pleasant and ghostly , from the goodly teachin g and examples whi ch are gathered together in thi s book. This present book is divided into four pa rt s. Each part is translated into German and derived from the writings of honou red teache rs and histories worth y of credit. 19 30 31 31 This introduction th en shows clearly the utilita ri an characte r of the H orculus. L exikon fur Th eologie und Kirch e ( 1960), sub verbo " H ortulus animae. " On George Rh aw ( 1488-1 548), responsible for this 1547 (composed) work, see: The Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Rh a u , George." In this encyclo ped ia, in the articl e " D evo tion al Litera ture, " it is noted that Rhaw 's ve rsion of th e H orculu s dates from 1548, a nd that an offshoot of Rhaw 's version was Nicol aus Cramer's Wurtzgaerclein d er Seelen of 15 73 . In my research in several librar ies at universities and theological centers, I have found only one book on Lutheran devotion al literature: P aul Althaus , Forschungen z ur Evangelischen Gebetsliteracur, 1927 ed ., rpt. (Hildesheim: Georg Olm s V erl agsbuchhandlung, 1966). This book , howeve r, has no comm entary abo ut th e Lutheran ve rsion of the H ortulu s; it does spea k of th e Ca tholi c Hortuli . I have found no references anywhere else to a Lutheran H orculus or to a book entitled D er Lustgart en der Seelen , the titl ed noted by Thurston. In Evanjelicka literatura, page 111 , Durovic notes that the Lutheran clergyman Daniel Pribi s added a section entitled R osarium an imae (Rose-garden of the Soul) to hi s 1634 editi on (cf. Prehl'ad , p. 34) of the 16 12 Slovak rendition of Luther's catech ism. It mi ght be noted here th at Luther "was ... eage r to replace the ordinary Catholic prayer books, above all th e com mon popular forms of H orculu s animae ('The Soul 's Garden') , and thu s his [Luther' s] B etbu chlein (' Prayer Bookl et') of 1522 appea red.": Th e Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo "Devotional Literature.'' In Dictionnaire de Spiricualite, column 783, it is observed th at a J esui t, Andrej Zachon (d. 1700), wrote and had published in Olomouc in 1669 a H ortulu s spiritualis vernantiae seu libellus precum floriferarium (Littl e Spiritual Ga rd en of Springtime or The Little Book of Flowerbearin g Entrea ti es). I am usi ng a mi crofilm of Horcicka 's H ortulu s made from a copy of this book fou nd in the Lycealn a kni zn ica in Bratislava with no signa ture number. Rizn er, V, 77 and Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p . 12 1 noted two ex ta nt co pies of the H orculu s one in the Kni znica Tranovskeho a nd another in th e Hun garian National Museum. �SLOVAKIA ll " " " " " 73 It would seem likely that th e copy in the Kniznica Tranovskeho is now the copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Howeve r, as will be evident from my commentary , the copy studi ed by me has more introductory, unnumbered pages than Rizner indicates 28 instead ofRizner' s 16. In his book , TanovskehoPam eti/Pamati, pp . LXIV-LXV (64-65)/5 7) tablic notes virtuall y all of these ex tra La tin pages, although he is silent ab t the sixteen , basically Slovak (unnumbered) pages tha t preced e these Latin ones in the introductory portion of the H ortulus. Tablic (Pame1i/Pama.1i, pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1) notes th a t there are illu strations and verses in each of th e twelve divisions of the mai n body ; this format is th en similar to that of emblematic poetry which has a co upl et-ve rse, a n illu stration , a nd then some furth er verses/commentary: John L. Lievsay, '' Emblem , ' ' Th e Prin ceton En cyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , enlarged editi on , Alex Premin ge r et al. , ed. (Prince ton: Prince ton University Press, 1974) . Thi s feature - th e illustration - is not found in the H ortulus version studi ed b y me. In hi s D oplnky, p . 25 1, Misianik a nd in Pameti/Pam ati , p. LXX (70)/61, Tablic not e th a t H orcicka trans lated his Slovak Hortulu s into German, and this Germa n ve rsion was published in 1680 in Lesno/Leszno. Finally , m y memory of the actual book wou ld be th at when closed , it would measure so mething like an inch b y three inches, ap tl y a "little" garde n. T a blic (Pameti/ Pam ati , p . LXIV (6 4)/57) notes the book is dedi cated to a ce rtain " Jil'fmu R advan skemu , dedicnemu pan u V R advani, V Skubfne, Malachove, slov utn eho ispanstvf aneb vidieku zvolenskeho pl'ednfmu assessorovi ajeho man zelce V. u . pa nfJ ohann e Ka tal'in e, rozene M ari a.save z M a rku sovic (G eo rge R adv ansky, heredita ry lord of R ad van, Skubin a, M alachov, the p ro min ent assesso r of the wellkn own count y of Zvolen a nd environs and to his wife , th e great?, noble? , lad y Joanna Cath erine, n ee M ariasova from M a rku sovce . '' ) Thi dedi cation va ri es from th a t in th e ve rsion of th e H ortulus studi ed by me. In the dedi cation to his N eoforum latinos/avon icum , H orcicka na mes a ce rtain J a n R adva nsky of R advai\ , heir to Skubyn and M alachau/ M a lachov, perha ps son of Jil'f/Juraj menti oned by T ablic: Edition of J. V . Novak an d V . Flajshan s in P rague, 1908, p . 3. On this same page , H orcicka menti ons a ce rt ain H orwath -Sta nsithioru m in Spfs. This H orwath-S tansithiorum (ge niti ve plural) is rend ered H orwa th-Stancicovce (nominative plural) by Jan Tibensky, Chvaly a obrany sloven skeh o naroda (Brati slava: Slovenske vyd ava tel'stvo krasnej li tera tury, 1965), p . 48 . For some comm ent a ry on Petr Sextiu s, see : Durovic, E vanjelicka lii eratura, pp . I I 9- 120. H e is m enti oned by Lomba rdini in hi s commentary on Milichov insky, #56 in " Slove nsky Plutarc h ," Slo ven ske pohl'ad y, 7, No . 6 (1887), 135. On Miloc hovinsky, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura, pp . 62 , 177-78 , and Lombard ini, p. 135. On J an Sextius, see: Durovic, Eva njelick a lit eratura , p. 62, a nd Lomb a rdini again . On J a n Buriu s, see: Durovic, Evangelick a lii eracura, pp . 8 1-82, 145 . H orcicka call s Buriu s a G erman, th ough Du rov ic specul a tes that he m ay have bee n Slovak; he was born in Lip tov. Al so, on page 84 of hi s cited work , Durovic notes th at J an Sex ti us and J a n Burius wro te a hi story of a ce rt a in Juraj La ni in 1676. I have fo und no reference fo r thi s person . Th e phrase " Pas. in Elecc. Dresda. Va /Jens Hung. " ca n possibly be rendered " ~ in th e Electo rat e of Dresde n �74 SLOVAKIA Wall achian of Hun gary . " Such an address of auth or to book was done nearl y a ce ntury later ( 1758) by Hu golin G avlovic as he concluded the introductory portion of his Sk ala Krest'ansk a (A C hristian School): signature MJ 33 1, Litera rn y a rchiv M ati ce sloven skej in Mart in , p . 16 with title- page as page one . Interestingly, T ablic does n ot m enti on H orcicka's address to the book in hi s, T a blic's, d escrip tion of the int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus. 40 In composin g hi s later devoti onal wo rk , Perlicka ditek B ozich (The Little Pearl of G od 's Ch ild ren) , publi shed in 1685, H orcicka purposely structured it accordin g to the fi ve d ivisions of Luther 's catechi sm : D u rovic, Evanjelick a literatura, pp . 12 1-22. 41 It is interestin g th at in 1685 , H o rcicka published in Levoca K om en sky's/Comenius' Orbis pictu s sen sualium , on e of th e o utstandin g books of th e seventee nth century where th e se nses a re u sed th e bette r to in culca te certa in knowled ge a m o ng children and/or adults: Min arik, p . 270 ; E rce, p . 160; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, sub verbo " Sinapius- H orci c_ka, D a ni el. " R ecall also th at accord in g to T a blic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1, th ere we re illustrati o ns wit h Latin or Slovak verse m o ttoes. " Bibli svata podle p uvodniho vydani Kra/ick eh o z let 1579-93 (Kutn a H o ra : Ceska biblicka p race , 1942), and B ibli svata p odle posledn ih o vydani Kralick eh o z roku 1613 (P raha: n .p., 1945). " C ita ti ons b y H orcicka from the Song of So ngs are: I . Song 4 : 12; 2. So ng 4: 13 (but also v. 14); 3. So ng 4: 15; 4. So n g 2 :13- 14 ; 5. So ng 1:5 -6; 6. Song 4: 16; 7. So ng 7: 8-9 (bu t actu all y vv. 7-8 in eit her vers ion of the Kralice Bible con sulted); 8. Song 7: 11 (bu t also v. 12) ; 9. Son g 2 : 11- 12 (bu t actu all y citati on sta rts in the midd le of verse 10 and includes also a pa rt of ve rse l 3); 10. So ng I : 13; 11 . So ng 2 :2; and I 2. Son g 2: 1. 44 Song of Songs, M a rv in Pope, in tro. and com. , Ancho r Bi ble Series (Ga rd en City , New York: Dou bleday and Company , 1977) , especiall y pp. 114-129. Also see : Diction naire de Spiritualite , colum n s 769-76. On page 126 of hi s com mentary, Pope notes that Lut her rej ected th e allegori cal interpretat ion of th e Song - na m ely, the allegorical fan cies of the Fathers as well as the literal erotic se nse. R at her , Luther believed that "the Bride of the Song is the ha ppy and peaceful state under Solomon's ru le and that th e Song is a h ymn in which Solomon thanks God for the d ivine gift of obedience.'' Concerning thi s, see also: Luther, ''Lectures on th e Song of Solomon ,'' J an Siggins, tr ., Luther's Works, 15 (St. Louis: Concord ia Publishin g, 1972), 191-95. I assume that H orcicka would have been aware of Luther' s views, but thi s in no way limits his int erpretati ve use of this Biblica l book. At present, it can not be said whether an y o th er Luth era n view of the So ng of So ngs such as that by Johann es Coccae us Uohann K och, 1603-69), Pope, pp . 128-29, was known b y Horcicka. " Bes ides hi s cita ti ons from th e Song of Songs at the beginning of each "walk, " H orcicka refers to verses from this book some thi rtee n tim es, only once repeating a verse from th ose introdu cin g " Walk IX." 46 On numbered page I 98 of th e H ortulus , Horcicka not es a Czec h ve rsion of the Bible published in 163 I in Wittenberg. 47 H ortulus, numbered page 103; Pope , Song of Songs , p. 123. 39 �SLOVAKIA 75 " In T h e Encyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " D evo tional Literature," it is no ted th a t ii K empis ' Imitation of Christ was popula r devotional read in g in Luthera n la nd s. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church . ( 1965), sub verbo " G erh a rd , Johann ." I have, howeve r , fo und no reference fo r presuma bl y this Ge rha rd 's Postill(ae) cited by H orcicka. '° Th e Encyclopedia of th e Luthera n Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Dilherr , J ohann Michael," but no reference to his Feld-, Welt- etc. work . In two editions of an anthology of old Slova k literature, Misianik notes th a t th e Feld- work by this Dilherr was published in ure m be rg in 1648 a nd 165 1: An tol6gia starsej slovensej literatury ( Brati slava: Yydavatel'stvo Slove nskej a kademie vied , 1964), p . 6 18, a nd 1981 editi on , p . 583. Misia nik gives the title as Feld- W elt - G artenbetrachtung. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965) , sub verbo" Huelsemann , Johann ." " H orcicka a lso refers to th e Centuries of M agd eburg on numbered page 176. " T ablic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXVI -LXIX (66-69)/5 7-61 , qu otes in Czechi zed form two of th e verse units on numbered pages 122-23 a nd 402-03. The proper rendition of these ve rses can be found in th e two Misianik a nthologies, pp . 395 -96 and 399/ 373-74 respectively. Misia nik also cites two further ve rse units: H ortulus, numbered pages 82-83 and 370-75/ M isia ni k, pp. 395, 397 -399 and 370- 73 respec ti vely for th e two Misianik editi ons. Fina ll y, th ese fo ur ve rse units can also be fo und inJa miluji, nesmim providaci: antol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran , 1977), pp. 93-99. In a ll , th ere a re fo urtee n ve rse units. T ablic qu otes two a nd gives page numbers for eleve n oth ers; he missed the page numbers fo r one verse unit according to th e ve rsion of th e H ortulu s studi ed by me. The fo urtee n ve rse units a re as follows - numbered pages th en the number of verses in th e unit-: I. 14/6 2 . 82 -83/ 12; 3. 87-88/2 4; 4. 100/4 La tin a nd 4 Slovak; 5. 114-15/ 11; 6 . 122-23/36 ; 7. 186/8; 8. 191/4 La tin and 4 Slovak, a nd aga in 4 La tin and 4 Slovak; 9. 245/6; 10 . 33 7-38/8; 11. 340-43/76; 12. 365-66/ 12, not mention ed by T ablic; 13. 370-75/ 60; and 14. 402 -03/ 18. ,. The orth ograp hy used a t th a t time shows g instead of j (though g was also used for g), ss for s, w for v, the grave accen t fo r ad verbial endin gs, a nd (som etim es) a dot fo r a long mark ove r y. " Hu rba n , p . 6 (o riginal pagin ati on of the articl e) . " O n unn um bered page 15 , th at is, in th e int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus, Horc icka spea ks to the " Dea r R ead e r " in " Slowen sk em gazyku (Slovak language/to ngue), " as well as uses the adj ectival fo rms " Slowen sk ych " a nd " Slowenske " fo r "Slova k." In C h valy a obran y sloven sk eh o n arod a, pp . 48- 51, J a n Tibensky notes H orcicka's Slovak consciousness and quotes from th e introducti on to the latte r 's Neoforum latin o-slavon icum as evide nce of it . Prese n ted in Pa nel 99 , " Devo ti onal Literature in Seventeenth Ce ntury Slova ki a," a t the AAASS conve ntion in Washin gton , D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982 . Parts were prepared at the 1982 Summer Slavic Semin a r at the Unive rsity of Illinois in C ha mpa ign-Urbana . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 61 Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka's Hortulus Animae Piae G erald J . Sabo In Slovak areas during the seventeenth ce ntury , n ation ali st ic turmoil and religious strife were prominent features of life a nd society. Ethnic consciousness and religious commitment so pe rvaded political r elations that they pitted Hungarian s, Germans, and Slovaks against o ne another in shifting alliances. R eli gion, though, remain ed the " leadin g force" for virtually the entire ce ntury. 1 Indeed , the writings of thi s period Slovak and L a tin - clearly bear this out. 2 Hymnals, hom il etic writing, religious disputa tion s, doctrinal a nd d evo tion al lite ra ture, school plays related to religious formation, as well as accounts of imprisonment and/or ex ile for religious r eason s occupy a promin ent place among the Slovak/Latin writin gs of this e ra. Among the distinctive cultural figures of thi s century is the Lutheran family of Sinapius-Horcicka. 3 The father Mi chal a nd two of his sons , Jan a nd D ani el, stand out n ot only for their religiou s zeal but esp ec ially for their eruditio n and writin gs. 4 Indeed , a numbe r of these writings have earned them a significant place in Slovak cultural history. The father Michal (d. 1653) was a pastor in Hricov and Sucany a nd a prominent church elder in the Tre ncfn ecclesiastical (Lutheran) district. During his studies at Wittenberg as a young man , he presented two public Latin di sputatio n s: one on the definition and divisio n of m etaphysics and another on the intell ect a nd w ill of intelli ge nt be in gs. 5 Mi ch al's commi tmen t to eruditio n must ce r tainly have influ en c~d his so n s J a n a nd D aniel as evidenced by th e latter's activities and writin gs. Like their fath er , th e sons devoted the ir scholarl y training to serv in g their fellow Lutheran s as p astors a nd sc hool offi cials, in exile as well as in Slovak areas. It is their wr itin gs, however, th at have establi shed th e ir places in Slovak cultu ral history. Virtually all of J an 's extan t writings are written in Latin o r German. 6 Among them are: 1. a Latin d evo tional work for stu dents, H orologium sacrum (Sacred H o urs or C lock),7 where eve ry hour of the day is directed to religious form ation ; 2. a L a tin play 8 H enoch (E noch) ; an d Ornithica sacra (Sacred Ornithology) written in German 62 SLOVAKIA about birds with religious significance. 9 The writings of D aniel are composed in Latin or a vernacular Slovak 10 that shows the influence of and commitment to Kralice-Biblical-Czech in his reli giou s training and liturgical practice. Daniel Sinapius-Horcicka was born around 1640 in Sucany. 11 H e was rector of the Lutheran school in J elsava from 1663-65, 12 a pastor in K am enan/ 3 from 1665-67, 14 and from 1667-70 in Liptovska Tepla, and finally from 1670 in R advan. In September, 1673 , Daniel was among thirty-two Lutheran pastors summoned to trial befo re the Catholic Archbishop of E sztergom . 1~ After the trial , he went into exile first to Brieg (today Brzeg) and then in the winter of 16 74 to Breslau (Wroclaw) , and finally in November, 1677 16 to a certain Bojanowo in P oland , 17 where he was rector of a school. 18 H orcicka returned from exi le some time in 1683, fir st to his former pastorate in R ad van, then in 1684 to a pastorate and position of school official in L evoca. H e remained in Levoca un ti! his death in 1688. Some eighteen works 19 are attributed to D aniel Sinapius-Horcicka. Am ong the writings prominent in Slovak cultural history are : 1. H orcicka' s 1684 enlarged edition of the Lutheran hymnal Cithara sanctorum (Zither of the Saints), also known as Tran osciu s after its compiler Ju raj Tranovsky;2° 2. the 1682 wedding verse-composition in Latin, Coelum Bojan ovien se (Bojanowo H eaven);2 1 3. Neoforum latino-slavonicum (New L atin-Slavonic Forum) , a 1678 coll ection of popular/folk sayings in L atin and Slovak;2 2 4. Perlicka ditek Bozich (The Little Pearl of God's Children), a 1685 devotional work segm ented on the basis of the fi ve divisions in Luther's catechi sm; 23 and 5. H ortulu s animae piae (The Little Garden of the Piou s Soul), a 1676 devotional work and the subject of this article. 24 The L atin title of H orc icka 's 1676 work - H ortulu s animae piae is intri guing. H ortulu s (Hortus) animae is the title for a type of[Latin and/or German] devotional book of praye rs intended for the [Catholic] laity , that was widespread in Germany in the early sixteenth century .... The H ortuli .. . were similar in general content and arrangement to many of the L atin H orae or book of hours, or to the English primers , from which they developed; howeve r , they were more popular in character. The H ortuli contain ed the Little Office of Our L ad y, extracts from the Gospel accounts of the passion, the SLOVAKIA 63 Penitential Psalms, and the Litany of the Saints , with a large selection of supplementary d evotional matter. This material of private prayer had the tendency to increase size and in extravagan ce. For example, promises of spurious indulgences and complete forgiveness of sins became attached to man y prayers . . . The Council of Trent legislated against the accretions , the false promises of indulgences, and the incorrect versions of the Little Office of Our Lady. A bull of Pius V (March 11, 1571) demanded rigorous censorship of all editions. 25 The article on " Hortus/ Hortulus " in Dictionnaire de Spiritualite traces the extensive number of devotional works associated with this title and type of writing. 26 The phrase " Hortulus animae" is derived not from the aesthetic but from the utilitarian aspects of a garden as is evident from three Latin distichs that usually prefixed many such writings. The first two lines are as follows: Ortulus exiguus varias ut saepe salubres Herbas producit, quas medicina probat. (A small garden often produces a variety of salutary herbs of which medicine knows the value.) 21 In his articles on the Hortulus animae , Herbert Thurston notes that in 1569, a certain Lu the ran adaptation was published and called Der Lustgarten der Seelen (The Pleasure Garden of the Soul). 28 F. Wulf, though , notes that a Georg Rhaw (Rhau) produced a Lutheran version in 154 7, in Wittenberg; it was published in 1559 and was composed on the basis of printed Hortuli forbidden by the Spanish lnquisition . 29 Among the d evotional literature written by Slovak Lutherans , the title for Horcicka 's composition - Hortulus animae piae - is unique. Nor is the title Der Lustgarten der Seelen or some Slovak rendition to be found among Slovak Lutheran writings_ Jo Thus , it remains an open question why Horcicka cho se a title more closely associated with Catholic devotional writing rather than one from his own Lutheran tradition. JI The introdu ctory portion of Horcicka ' s HortulusJ 2 has several divisions. On the title page, the full title reads: Hortulu s Animae Piae, Zahradka Dussicky pobozne, Wkterez se clowek Krestiansky Suzitkem prochazeti muze (The Little Garden of the Pi ou s Soul in Which a Christian Person Can Walk w ith Usefulness/ Profit). After the title page com es that with Horcicka 's dedication of the book to "P . Markowy Hor vv (w) ath-Stansith of Gradetz/Hradec? in the Stolica (Cou nty) of Spis and 64 SLOVAKIA to hi s w ife Zoffy, n ee M a riasse/M a ri asove? from Markussowic/Markusovce,'' whom H o rcicka calls Km otrum (God pare nt s) a nd Dobrodin cu m (Be n efactors) . 33 In the fourt ee n pages that follow, H orcicka es ta blishes in Slovak th e basis or rationale for writing his Hortulus. H e d raws on Scriptu re as well as classical literature for refe ren ce material. Two further p ages ( 15 and 16 in sequ e nce as these p ages a re unnumbered) are devoted to the " Laskawemu Ctenari (Dear R eader). " After these sixteen pages of basically Slovak prose, in the version studied by m e there foll ow twelve pages in L a tin with dist inct parts. On p age seventeen (in sequ en ce), H orcicka's brothe r J a n comm ents on the Hortulu s. Then, a close friend , P etr Sext ius, 34 addresses Daniel himself as the form e r speaks on the H ortulus (pages 17-20). J a n Milochovinsky, 35 elder in the Zilina ecclesiastical district , h as a on e- page, addressed comm ent for D a ni el (page 21 ) . In the course of his comme n ts on the H ortulus, J a n Sextius, 36 called an "amico pectore ( close fri end)" by D a niel , addresses the '' P a nn onian offspring' ' and en courages them to show gratitude to God an d the author of the Hortulu s (pages 22-23). In hi s nearly three- page co mmentary , Jan Buriu s 37 draws on a number of sources, theological a nd classical litera ry (pages 23-25). On pages 26 and 2 7 of this introdu ctory portion, Horcicka addresses a certain M a tthias Albrecht whom he d esignates as ''Pas. in Elect. Dresda ... Vallens Hung. " 38 Fin all y, o n the final page of the int roducto ry portion (28), the author of the H ortulu s addresses the b ook itself: 39 "A uthor ad Libellum (Author to th e Little Book .)" At the bottom of this page, a plaited wreath illu stration encompasses the following: '' D omini Sum us, Dum Spiro Spero, D ominus Providebit (W e Are the Lord's, While I Breathe, I Hope, The Lord Will Provide .)" With this succinct statem ent of purpose a nd ou tl ook , Horcicka concludes the in trod u ctory portion of his H ortulu s . The m ain portion of the H ortulus consists of four hundred and eight numbered pages virtually all in Slovak with some L atin wri ting and even a few Greek words . (The Lat in and Greek are also transla ted into H orcicka 's vernacul ar Slovak.) H orcicka divid es the paginated portion into twelve uneven sections. The division into twelve may have symbolic value - twelve apostl es/twelve tri bes of Israel. 40 Each of these twelve sect ions is called a " Prochadzka (Walk )." Each ''Proch adzka '' begins in the same way . After the Roman num eral indi cati ng the proper " Walk " are found the words: "wniZ SLOVAKIA 65 premyssluge pobozna dusse (in which the pious soul reflects)." In each of the twelve ''walks ,'' the pious soul reflects on a different object: 1. the garden in general; 2. the tree of this garden; 3. the well of this garden ; 4 . the dove in this garden; 5. the mirror hangin g in this garden; 6. the winds that blow through this garden; 7. the palm (tree); 8. the vine stock/ root; 9 . the fig (tree); 10. myrrh; 11. the rose; and 12 . the lily. In his comments on these twelve objects for reflection, Horcicka engages the senses of the reader. 41 Words that help conjure up "sense pictures" of the objects for reflection enable the reader the better to assimilate the theological truth presented in association with the objects . Indeed, in the presentation order of his objects , H orcicka gradually refines the focus of his reader from a garden in general to a small object like a flower. After the object for a specific "walk " is named , Horcicka cites a relevant passage from the Biblical book Song of Songs (also known as th e Canticle of Canticles or Song of Solomon). In a comparison of H orcicka ' s citat ions from the Song of Songs with two editions of the Kralice Bible (1579-93 and 161 3), 41 it is clear that Horcicka adapts the verses somewhat, probably for the sake of better creating his verbal sense-picture of the object for reflection. 4 3 For "Walk X ," Horcicka' s verse quotation from the Song of So ngs is virtually an exact quotation of this verse according to the 161 3 edition of the Kralice Bible. For " Walk II ," however, Horcicka' s citation see ms to be drawn from the 1579-93 editio n of the Kralice Bible . At present, though, there is no way of de termining whe ther Horci cka u sed these versions of the Bible, a nd , if so , which of th e two , or som e othe r version. Horcicka ' s choi ce of th e Song of Songs as the Biblical basis for the Hortulus seems natural , perhaps even predictabl e from the tradi tion of C hristian writings about thi s Biblical book. F rom a s earl y as 200 AD , Christia n writers have commented on a nd inte rpreted the Song of Songs, usually allegorically , even eroti cally. 44 Horcicka probably wa nted a Biblical work that is co n cern ed not only wi th a garden , but contain s the various objects for refl ection tha t he cites. Onl y th e Son g of Son gs co uld give him such varie ty . In the co mm e nta ry th a t foll ows the verse(s) from the Son g of So ngs in each " walk ," H o rcicka dra ws on a va ri ety of so urces fo r m a te rial s to suppo rt hi s co mm ent s. As is to be ex pec ted , Script u re is a n a bundant so urce of ma teri al. R efe rence to ve rses from books of the O ld a nd New T es ta m e nt can be fo und in eve ry " walk " in la r ge num be rs. 4 5 I ndeed , in " W alk V ," H orcicka gives som e two hun d red and twenty-six 66 SLOVAKIA distinct references from the Bible as authoritative corroboration for whatever interpretation and religious/moral instruction he has written. Curiously, he cites verses from Sirach (some fifteen instances), from Wisdom (some four instances) , and once each from the first and second Book of Maccabees . None of these Old Testament books were considered canonical enough for inclusion in any edition of the Kralice Bible or probably any non-Catholic version through Horcicka's time. They are found in Catholic versions of the Bible since well before Horcicka's time. 46 Horcicka refers to prominent Christian writers from early Christian times into his own era. References to various works by Augustine , to the writings of Luther, Gregory Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Tertullian , Origen, Ambrose, and to the history of Eusebius of Caesarea are noted and footnoted, at times with even the folio/page numbers. References to the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, especially with regard to the Song of Songs, are probably no surprise; Bernard wrote eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs alone. Indeed, Horci cka notes sermon 61 where Bernard says that the Song's love pair are the Word of God and a Soul. 47 Curiously, Horcicka notes two references from Cornelius a Lapide, a Jesuit (d . 1637), a prolific Biblical exegete and interpreter. Interestingly, Horcicka also has a single reference to a 1622 Czech translation of the Bible and to a Prague printing of Th e Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (p. 171 ) . 48 In the Hortulus, there are a number of works noted and footnoted that were probably well-known in Horcicka's time. (At the present time, copies of some of these books are con sidered rare in many US libraries.) Among these writings are: 1. Schola pietatis by Johann G erhard (1582-1637), a Lutheran theologian; 49 2. Analecta sacra by J ohann Heinrich Ursin (1608-67); 3. Arboretum biblicum, also by Ursin; and 4. "Hortus aromaticus," which is part 3 of U rsin 's Continuatio historiae plantarum biblicae. I have found references for two authors whose names resemble those footnoted by Horcicka but nothing about the works cited as theirs. According to Horcicka, a certain Johann Michal Dilherr (a poet and Lutheran theologian, 1604-69) wrote Welt, Feld, and Gartenbetrachtung, 50 and a certain Johann Hu elsemann (Lutheran theologian, 1602-61) is believed to have written Pentagonium christian um. 51 With other books noted and footnoted by Horcicka , I have been unable to find any reference for them or their authors. Among these are: 1. Nicol(s) Roper's Helleuchtend Spiegel der Liebe ; 2. Mich(al) SLOVAKIA 67 Ba um a nn 's L exicon Allegorico Evangelicum; 3. Laur( entius) Halvard(i/ us) ' s Speculum amoris; and 4 . Hist(oria) Boh(emica) by a certain Dubrav( ius) . 51 In the Hortulus, there is also a good number of books footnot ed only a few times or less . The classical authors cited b y Horcicka are well-known figures from Greek a nd Latin literature. From the Greeks, Herodotus, Homer, X enophon , a nd Strabo, eve n Ari stotle provide supportive material for Horcicka. Of the Latin writers , there are Cicero, Horace, Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and even the outstanding classical specialist, the Dutchman Joest Qustus) Lipsius (1547-1606) . Horcicka's use of these authors in a d evotional wo rk is not unusual for his time; classical literature continued to provide exempla tive material for writers in Slovak areas through the eighteenth century . At the conclusion of each ''walk ,'' Horcicka places Slovak ' ' Modlitby (Prayers)." U sually there are three distinct prayers, except for " Walks VII a nd XII ," with only two . These prayers are mostly in prose, though some are in verse, i.e . distichs combined in paired or enclosing rhymes. 53 The various verse compositions in the Hortulus range from six to seventysix verses . Three of the shortest follow , with a literal tra nslation . To my knowledge they h ave not elsewhere b een reprinted . 54 Ach prigd Pane gezissi prigd zen ichu neykrazssi Nawsstew wernu iwu du ssi at ljby twug hlas slissi A wmile Zahradce swe Bud' odpocinuti twe (p. 14) Com e oh Lord J esus come most handsome bridegroom Visit the tru e i va of the soul May it hear your kind voice And in your dear Garden Be your rest 2 KR ys te deg nam wwjre stalost odegmi ss kodn u wrtkawost Bychom cyle wi ry dossli Zsmni casne do Nebe ssli Na to rjka m Amen/ Amen/ Spas nas Gezu Kryste Amen. (p. 245) C hri st give us steadfastness in fa ith take away harmful fickleness That the goals of faith be attained Went in time from death to H eaven To this I say Amen/ Amen/ Save us J esus C hrist Am en . 3 Pos pess o ma dusse ho/sweho Kwytanj ze nicha ct neho Kteryz na dum tweho srdce Ruku mi los ti swe tlu ce Otewri swe brany gemu Pekne promluw/ a rcy kn emu Prigd mi ly mug/ fada m tebe Nechcy ziti gs uc bez tebe. (p. 337) H as ten o my sou l him/ of your Flowerin g the honorable bridegroom Who upon the house of your heart With th e hand of his love knocks Open your gates to him Nicely speak/ a nd say to hi m : Come my dear/ I beg you I do not wish to live being without you . 68 SLOVAKIA Whil e the literary value of the verse compositi ons in the H ortulus is limited , in the narrow sense, they can be considered examples of early Slovak ve rse writing . Each of the prayers at the end of the "walks" - verse or prose - is designated for som e definite purpose ; for instan ce: " For the dear presence of God; " "For the proper purity of heart , for sincerity, and piety;" "For the recognition of people's woes and God ' s good acts;" " For patience in crises and firmn ess in faith ;" and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful ," the last praye r and part of the Hortulus . According to Hurban, the H ortulu s had appended to it " M ensje jeho basne (his/ Horcicka's/sm aller verses). " 55 Whether Hurban might be referring to some of the verse compositions in the H ortulus or to some other ve rses not part of the H ortulus in itself is not clear . In the version of the Hortulus studied b y m e, the last two prayers (pages 404-408) are '' For the forgiveness of forgetfulness which we allow while receiving God 's gifts, " and "For the good realization of a life short and woeful. " For H orcicka, these subjects may have seem ed an apt conclusion fo r his devotion al work . There is no reason to suspect that there was more writing related to the Hortulu s which for some reason is not in the bound copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Indeed , Rizn er notes that the H ortulu s has four hundred and eight numbered pages, as does Tablic - the number found in the Lycealna copy of the H ortulus. As a fi gure in Slovak cultural hi story, D ani el Sinapius-Horcicka occupies a definite place. In his H ortulus animae piae, as in other writings , he manifests a Slovak ethnic consciousness that stands out in the seve nteenth ce ntury. 56 Through hi s religious zeal, erudition , and talent , he also provides hi s fellow Lutherans wi th devo tion al writin g to co nsole them in their time of exile and trials . In effect, he has composed a notewo rthy example of early Slovak writing. Through not strictly literary, the Slovak prose a nd verse of H orcicka's Hortulus m erit far more attention and study th an they have rece ived - practicall y speaking, virtu ally none. It is hoped that thi s study is but the bare beginnin g of research on the H ortulu s and its author, Daniel Sinapiu s-Horcicka . NOTES ' J a n Du rov ic, Evanjelick a liceracura d o colerancie (Turcia nsky Sviity M a nin : M a ti ca slove nska, 1940), p . 5 1. ' This is shown by a peru sal of th e following : J a n Durovic, Evangelicka liceracura a nd SLOVAKIA ' ' ' 6 1 ' ' ' 0 69 also his Prehl'ad literarnych dejin slovenskych eva njelikov (Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas: Tra noscius, 1948); " Barak ," D ejin y starsej slovenskej /iteratury (Bratislava: V ydava tel'stvo Slovensk ej akademie vied , 1958), pp . 155 -298; Literarna rukovat', 2nd ed. (Bra tisl ava: Slove nske pedagogicke nak ladatel's tvo , 1981 ) pp. 72-97. M an y Lutheran famili es adop ted Latin renditions of the family na mes as new surnames. This hyphena ted name is used for Horcicka family members in Slovak litera ry hi stories and criti cism as well as in th e a rticl es on them in Encyklopedia Slovenska , V ( 198 1). J an the younger , son of J a n th e elder - Daniel's brother - also wrote a number of works: l'.udovft Rizner, Bibliogra fia pisomnictva slovenskeho , V (Turciansky Svaty Martin: M a ri ca slova neka, 1933), 80-81. ( H ereafter , Rizn er , volume in Rom a n numeral , page(s) in Arabic num eral(s) .) Also , J an Misianik, Doplnky k Rizn erovej bib/iogra fii , 1946 , 2nd revised and enlarged edition (Martin : Matica slovenska, 1971), pp. 252 -253 . Jan and Dani el' s sister Elena married into prominent Luthera n families such as La ni a nd Lad ive r - Jan Slavik, D ejin y zvolenskeho evanjelickeh o a. v. bra1s1va a senioratu (Banska Sti avn ica: NakJad vdovy a syna AugustaJoergesa, 1921 ), p . 344. Rizn er, V , 8 1; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p. 62 , incompl ete Latin titles. Rizn er , V , 79-80 ; Durovic, Evanje/ick a Iiteratura , pp. 142-43 , 348; Alexander Lomba rdini, "J a n Sina pi us (H orcicka), #38, " "Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovensk e pohl'ady, 7, No. 4 ( 1887), 82-83; Misia nik , D oplnky , P . 252. Durovic , Evanje/icka literatura, p. 69 Durovic, Prehl'ad , p . 40 , a nd Evanjelicka literatura , pp . 9 1-92 has " play, " but Erce (pseudonym of Celes tin R advany i) , Slovenska krv (Bratislava : Vydavatel'stvo lexikalneho di ela " Slovenska krv, " 1942), p. 160 calls it a " praye r book for intellect uals." J an di ed in ex ile in H alle on August 4, 1682: Rizn er , V , 79 ; Bohuslav Tablic, Pameti cesk o-slovenskych basnifuv an eb versovcuv , origin all y published in 1800' s, Bi og raphi ca-Pra mene, zv. 1 (M a rtin : M a rica slovenska , 1972) , p . LXV (65) , and in Pam ati cesko-slovenskych basnikov alebo versovcov, Rudo Brtai\, tr. (Bratislava : T at ran , 1974), p. 57; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, V (1981) , sub verbo " SinapiusH orcicka, J a n , st. " The ve rn acula r Slovak used by Daniel is called " Slovakized Czech " by Jozef Minarik in Li1erarna rukova t', p. 72 , in both editions. Discussion a bout this la ngu age a nd its prope r desc ripti ve na me co ntinu es. Fo r instance , l',ubomfr Durovic writes that " throu gh th e increased use of Czech with local Slovak features in th e administration of W es t Slova k town s (Bratislava , Trnava, Trencfn , Zilina , etc .), a kind of regional administra tive koin e spo nt a neously developed in th e sixtee nth and seve ntee nth centuri es .. called ' cultural Wes tern Slova k' (kulturna zapadoslovencina)," in "Slovak," 70 SLOVAKIA The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development , Alexande r Schenker a nd Edward Stankiewicz, eds. (New H ave n : Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980), p . 2 12. Durovic' s a nalysis shows features of this koine th at a re fou nd in H orcicka's H ortulu s , though how co nsisten tl y a nd exte nsively this is so is a m a tt er fo r further study by histo ri cal lin gu ists. Durovic continu es: Another language integrati on a rea in the seventeenth ce ntury was Central Slovakia [the area of H orcicka's pastoral act ivity), where the Central Slovak dialects became a basis for a new regional koine. The use of this "cultural Central Slovak " is a ttested in city administrat ion , pri vate correspondence, occasional poetry, and in some religious, non-liturgical fun ctions. This koine was in m an y respec ts ve ry similar to the spoken literary Slovak of today. (p. 2 12) " ,i " " " The related but distinctive process of Slovak ethni c consciousness fo r the period 1620- 1750 must also have been play ing a role in the process of lin guistic development and systematization . After extensive documentary resea rch and study , Josef M acu rek co nte nds that it was during thi s peri od that "the political and geographical border , M oravian-Sl ovak .. . , becam e an ethn ographic boundary ," in " Ceske ze me a Slovensko ( 1620-1750),'' Spisy university j. E . Purkyne v Brne: Filosoficka fakult a, 147 ( 1969), pp . 78-79 ; see also pp. 69-75 with related footnotes and appended documents on pp . 83-3 I 3. On the basis of his study, M acurek shows that in this border area , the co nsciousness of Slovaks and M oravians (Czechs) as di stin ct ethnic groups was es peciall y developed , Thus, H orcicka says he is writing in "slowenskem gazyku " (Cf note 56 below). For more on this point see also my article on Hu golfn G avlovic in this issue of Slovakia , note 3. 1 have used the foll owing for the biogra ph y of Daniel Sina piu s- H orcicka: Bohu slav Tablic, Pameti/ Pam aci , pp . LXI-LXXI (6 1-71)/55-62; Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, pp. 120-121, note 75 ; Lombard ini , " Daniel Sinapius ( H o rci cka ), #37 ," in " Slovensky Plutarch ," Slovenske pohl'ady , 7, No . 4 (1887), 80-82 ; Erce, p . 160 ; J ozef Minarik , D ejin y starsej slovensk ej literatury, pp. 266-70 ; J ozef Hurba n , "Slovensko a jeho zivot litera rni ," Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umenja a literaturu, Djel I , Svazok 2 ( 1847), rpt. (Bratislava : Slovenske vydavatel'stvo krasnej literatury , 1957), 6-9 (ori ginal pagination); En cyklop edia Slovenska, V ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapius- H orcicka, D aniel"; and Misian ik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-252. The date of H o rcicka 's birth is given by Durovic as circa 1630 and th at of his death as 1706 b y Durovic, Erce, and Lomba rdini , an d yet Minarik and En cyklopedia Slovenska give l 640 a nd 1688 respec tively. I have accepted th e latter as evidence of more rece nt scholarship on Sinapius-Horcicka . These d ates a re in En cyklopedia Slovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sin apius-Horcicka, D a ni el. '' Lomba rdini names K ameiian y by its Hun garia n appe llat ion (cf. Vlastivedny slovnik obci na Sloven sku ( 19 77) , sub verbo " K ameiiany. " ) Dates for years in K ameiiany and Liptovska T epla in Encyklopedia S/ovenska ( 198 1), sub verbo "Sinapiu s- H o rcicka, Da niel"; T ablic, Pam eti/ Pam aci , P. LXII (62)/55. Slav ik , Dejiny, p. 85 notes 33 pastors , but Jan Kvacala, D ejiny reformacie na Sloven - SLOVAKIA " 17 " 19 '° " " " " " 16 " 71 sku (Liptovsky Sviity Mikulas : Tranoscius , 1935), p . 235 writes 32 Lutheran pastors and 1 Reformed pastor. Tablic, Pameti/Pamiiti, P. LXII (62)/55. Those authors who have written about Horcicka give variation s on the name of this Polish town. Tablic (Pameti, PP. LXII-LXIII) has Bojanow(o) , Erce, Bojanov(o) near Lesno/ Leszno , and Tablic (Pama.ti , pp . 55-56), Nov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o), and Encyklopedia Slo venska, Nov(y/e) Boja nov (-/o) . On pp . 266-67, Minarik speaks of a Nov(y/e) Bojanow(o) nea r Lesno/ Leszno . From my own resea rch, I have decided on presentday Bojanowo , southeast of Leszno. The Slownik nazv geograficznych po/ski zachodnej i polnocnej, Stanislaw Rospond, ed . (Warszawa and Wroclaw : Polskie towarzystwo geografi czne, 195 1), p . 17 sub verbo " Bojanow" desc ribes a village near R aciborz. H oweve r , two further reference works make me choose Boj anowo near Leszno . They are: Slownik geograficzny kr6lestwa polskiego , Filip Sulimi ersky and Wl adyslaw Walewsky, ed . (Warszawa: Druk " Wieku ," 1880), pp. 292-294 , sub verbo " Bojanowo" ; and Wielka encyklopedia powszechna (1963), sub verbo " Bojanowo." These two works mention that in this town's hi story there was/is a significa nt evangeli cal/protestant background and that here th ere was a protestant gymna zwm . Hurba n , p . 6 (original pagination of article); Lomba rdini , p . 80 ; T ablic, Pameti/ Pamiiti , p. LXII (62)/55 ; Minarik, p . 266: Encyklopedia Slovenska, sub verbo " Sinap ius-H orcicka , Daniel. " Rudo Brtan in " Daniel Sinapius , '' Slovensky literarny album (Bratislava: Obzor, 1968) , p . 44 notes that Sinapius-Horcicka stayed on th e estate of th e Lords Leszczynski ( 1677-83) as rector of th e Latin school in ov(y/e) Bojanow(-/o). Rizn er , V, 77-79 , li sts twelve : Lombardini li sts fourt een ; Misianik , Doplnky , pp . 25 1-5 2 , add s six more; Misia ni k has two works listed by Lombardini but not by Rizn er. They all sha re eleve n in common. For so me co mm enta r y, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura , pp. 143-45. For so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic , Evanjelicka literatura, p. 91. Hurban , pp . 6-9 (o ri gin al pagina tion of article); Minarik , pp. 267-69; a nd Literarna ruk ovl', pp . 90-92. Fo r so me co mm enta ry, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a literatura , pp . 12 1-22 . T he works th at I have listed in numbers 2 , 3, 5, probably l , a nd perh aps 4 we re published a nd/or co mposed durin g Horcicka's period of exi le. Th e New Ca th olic En cyclopedia ( 1967), sub verbo '' H ortulu s animae.'' Diciionnaire de Spiriru alite ( l 969), sub verbo " Hortus , Hortu lus/J a rdin spiritu el," especiall y columns 777 -783. (In column 779, it is noted that th e J esuit Peter Cani siu s publi shed in 1563 in Dillin ge n H orru/us animae. Der See/en C arten .) Herbert Thursto n , " The Print ing Press in th e Service of th e C hurch : I , The Original Garden of th e Soul, " Am erica n Ecclesias rical R eview, 26 (Februa ry, 1902), 170 , no tes it was prin ted in 1569 in N urembe rg a nd a co py is at th e Bodl eia n Libra ry, Oxford whi ch co ncludes wit h a n histori cal account of Luth er's p rotes t aga in st in d ul ge nces. In hi s Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( 19 10) a rticl e on '' H o nul us an ima e, '' T hurston notes th at thi s 1569 Luthera n re nditi on " perh a ps co r respond s bes t to the oth er fa mou s Cath ol ic prayer book the' Pa rad isus Anim ae. ' " In his A m erican Ee- 72 SLOVAKIA clesiastical Review art icle cited above, Thurston is discussing primaril y a German version entitled Der Selen Wurt zgart (first published in 1483), found in th e British Mu seum (p. 170 in article). He th en m enti ons in a footnote of thi s a rticl e that a Nuremberg edition of th e same year as th e German H orculu s he is di scussing is entitl ed Hortulus Animae, th e dude Selen wurt-ga rden gen ant , printed by F . P ypus. Finall y, on pages 174- 75 of this same art icle, Thurston qu otes th e translated introduction of his German Hortulus under di scussion: Hereafter follows a right pleasant and useful matter; and it is called the H erb-garden of th e Soul; since ju st as the body of man derives manifold pleasant savours from clove , gilliflowers, rosemary and other herbs, in like mann er th e soul receives man y d ifferent en tertainments, both pleasant and ghostly , from the goodly teachin g and examples whi ch are gathered together in thi s book. This present book is divided into four pa rt s. Each part is translated into German and derived from the writings of honou red teache rs and histories worth y of credit. 19 30 31 31 This introduction th en shows clearly the utilita ri an characte r of the H orculus. L exikon fur Th eologie und Kirch e ( 1960), sub verbo " H ortulus animae. " On George Rh aw ( 1488-1 548), responsible for this 1547 (composed) work, see: The Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Rh a u , George." In this encyclo ped ia, in the articl e " D evo tion al Litera ture, " it is noted that Rhaw 's ve rsion of th e H orculu s dates from 1548, a nd that an offshoot of Rhaw 's version was Nicol aus Cramer's Wurtzgaerclein d er Seelen of 15 73 . In my research in several librar ies at universities and theological centers, I have found only one book on Lutheran devotion al literature: P aul Althaus , Forschungen z ur Evangelischen Gebetsliteracur, 1927 ed ., rpt. (Hildesheim: Georg Olm s V erl agsbuchhandlung, 1966). This book , howeve r, has no comm entary abo ut th e Lutheran ve rsion of the H ortulu s; it does spea k of th e Ca tholi c Hortuli . I have found no references anywhere else to a Lutheran H orculus or to a book entitled D er Lustgart en der Seelen , the titl ed noted by Thurston. In Evanjelicka literatura, page 111 , Durovic notes that the Lutheran clergyman Daniel Pribi s added a section entitled R osarium an imae (Rose-garden of the Soul) to hi s 1634 editi on (cf. Prehl'ad , p. 34) of the 16 12 Slovak rendition of Luther's catech ism. It mi ght be noted here th at Luther "was ... eage r to replace the ordinary Catholic prayer books, above all th e com mon popular forms of H orculu s animae ('The Soul 's Garden') , and thu s his [Luther' s] B etbu chlein (' Prayer Bookl et') of 1522 appea red.": Th e Encyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965), sub verbo "Devotional Literature.'' In Dictionnaire de Spiricualite, column 783, it is observed th at a J esui t, Andrej Zachon (d. 1700), wrote and had published in Olomouc in 1669 a H ortulu s spiritualis vernantiae seu libellus precum floriferarium (Littl e Spiritual Ga rd en of Springtime or The Little Book of Flowerbearin g Entrea ti es). I am usi ng a mi crofilm of Horcicka 's H ortulu s made from a copy of this book fou nd in the Lycealn a kni zn ica in Bratislava with no signa ture number. Rizn er, V, 77 and Durovic, Evanjelicka lit eratura, p . 12 1 noted two ex ta nt co pies of the H orculu s one in the Kni znica Tranovskeho a nd another in th e Hun garian National Museum. SLOVAKIA ll " " " " " 73 It would seem likely that th e copy in the Kniznica Tranovskeho is now the copy in the Lycealna knizni ca. Howeve r, as will be evident from my commentary , the copy studi ed by me has more introductory, unnumbered pages than Rizner indicates 28 instead ofRizner' s 16. In his book , TanovskehoPam eti/Pamati, pp . LXIV-LXV (64-65)/5 7) tablic notes virtuall y all of these ex tra La tin pages, although he is silent ab t the sixteen , basically Slovak (unnumbered) pages tha t preced e these Latin ones in the introductory portion of the H ortulus. Tablic (Pame1i/Pama.1i, pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1) notes th a t there are illu strations and verses in each of th e twelve divisions of the mai n body ; this format is th en similar to that of emblematic poetry which has a co upl et-ve rse, a n illu stration , a nd then some furth er verses/commentary: John L. Lievsay, '' Emblem , ' ' Th e Prin ceton En cyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , enlarged editi on , Alex Premin ge r et al. , ed. (Prince ton: Prince ton University Press, 1974) . Thi s feature - th e illustration - is not found in the H ortulus version studi ed b y me. In hi s D oplnky, p . 25 1, Misianik a nd in Pameti/Pam ati , p. LXX (70)/61, Tablic not e th a t H orcicka trans lated his Slovak Hortulu s into German, and this Germa n ve rsion was published in 1680 in Lesno/Leszno. Finally , m y memory of the actual book wou ld be th at when closed , it would measure so mething like an inch b y three inches, ap tl y a "little" garde n. T a blic (Pameti/ Pam ati , p . LXIV (6 4)/57) notes the book is dedi cated to a ce rtain " Jil'fmu R advan skemu , dedicnemu pan u V R advani, V Skubfne, Malachove, slov utn eho ispanstvf aneb vidieku zvolenskeho pl'ednfmu assessorovi ajeho man zelce V. u . pa nfJ ohann e Ka tal'in e, rozene M ari a.save z M a rku sovic (G eo rge R adv ansky, heredita ry lord of R ad van, Skubin a, M alachov, the p ro min ent assesso r of the wellkn own count y of Zvolen a nd environs and to his wife , th e great?, noble? , lad y Joanna Cath erine, n ee M ariasova from M a rku sovce . '' ) Thi dedi cation va ri es from th a t in th e ve rsion of th e H ortulus studi ed by me. In the dedi cation to his N eoforum latinos/avon icum , H orcicka na mes a ce rtain J a n R adva nsky of R advai\ , heir to Skubyn and M alachau/ M a lachov, perha ps son of Jil'f/Juraj menti oned by T ablic: Edition of J. V . Novak an d V . Flajshan s in P rague, 1908, p . 3. On this same page , H orcicka menti ons a ce rt ain H orwath -Sta nsithioru m in Spfs. This H orwath-S tansithiorum (ge niti ve plural) is rend ered H orwa th-Stancicovce (nominative plural) by Jan Tibensky, Chvaly a obrany sloven skeh o naroda (Brati slava: Slovenske vyd ava tel'stvo krasnej li tera tury, 1965), p . 48 . For some comm ent a ry on Petr Sextiu s, see : Durovic, E vanjelicka lii eratura, pp . I I 9- 120. H e is m enti oned by Lomba rdini in hi s commentary on Milichov insky, #56 in " Slove nsky Plutarc h ," Slo ven ske pohl'ad y, 7, No . 6 (1887), 135. On Miloc hovinsky, see: Durovic, Evanjelick a lit eratura, pp . 62 , 177-78 , and Lombard ini, p. 135. On J an Sextius, see: Durovic, Eva njelick a lit eratura , p. 62, a nd Lomb a rdini again . On J a n Buriu s, see: Durovic, Evangelick a lii eracura, pp . 8 1-82, 145 . H orcicka call s Buriu s a G erman, th ough Du rov ic specul a tes that he m ay have bee n Slovak; he was born in Lip tov. Al so, on page 84 of hi s cited work , Durovic notes th at J an Sex ti us and J a n Burius wro te a hi story of a ce rt a in Juraj La ni in 1676. I have fo und no reference fo r thi s person . Th e phrase " Pas. in Elecc. Dresda. Va /Jens Hung. " ca n possibly be rendered " ~ in th e Electo rat e of Dresde n 74 SLOVAKIA Wall achian of Hun gary . " Such an address of auth or to book was done nearl y a ce ntury later ( 1758) by Hu golin G avlovic as he concluded the introductory portion of his Sk ala Krest'ansk a (A C hristian School): signature MJ 33 1, Litera rn y a rchiv M ati ce sloven skej in Mart in , p . 16 with title- page as page one . Interestingly, T ablic does n ot m enti on H orcicka's address to the book in hi s, T a blic's, d escrip tion of the int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus. 40 In composin g hi s later devoti onal wo rk , Perlicka ditek B ozich (The Little Pearl of G od 's Ch ild ren) , publi shed in 1685, H orcicka purposely structured it accordin g to the fi ve d ivisions of Luther 's catechi sm : D u rovic, Evanjelick a literatura, pp . 12 1-22. 41 It is interestin g th at in 1685 , H o rcicka published in Levoca K om en sky's/Comenius' Orbis pictu s sen sualium , on e of th e o utstandin g books of th e seventee nth century where th e se nses a re u sed th e bette r to in culca te certa in knowled ge a m o ng children and/or adults: Min arik, p . 270 ; E rce, p . 160; and En cyklopedia Sloven ska, sub verbo " Sinapius- H orci c_ka, D a ni el. " R ecall also th at accord in g to T a blic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXIX-LXX (69- 70)/6 1, th ere we re illustrati o ns wit h Latin or Slovak verse m o ttoes. " Bibli svata podle p uvodniho vydani Kra/ick eh o z let 1579-93 (Kutn a H o ra : Ceska biblicka p race , 1942), and B ibli svata p odle posledn ih o vydani Kralick eh o z roku 1613 (P raha: n .p., 1945). " C ita ti ons b y H orcicka from the Song of So ngs are: I . Song 4 : 12; 2. So ng 4: 13 (but also v. 14); 3. So ng 4: 15; 4. So n g 2 :13- 14 ; 5. So ng 1:5 -6; 6. Song 4: 16; 7. So ng 7: 8-9 (bu t actu all y vv. 7-8 in eit her vers ion of the Kralice Bible con sulted); 8. Song 7: 11 (bu t also v. 12) ; 9. Son g 2 : 11- 12 (bu t actu all y citati on sta rts in the midd le of verse 10 and includes also a pa rt of ve rse l 3); 10. So ng I : 13; 11 . So ng 2 :2; and I 2. Son g 2: 1. 44 Song of Songs, M a rv in Pope, in tro. and com. , Ancho r Bi ble Series (Ga rd en City , New York: Dou bleday and Company , 1977) , especiall y pp. 114-129. Also see : Diction naire de Spiritualite , colum n s 769-76. On page 126 of hi s com mentary, Pope notes that Lut her rej ected th e allegori cal interpretat ion of th e Song - na m ely, the allegorical fan cies of the Fathers as well as the literal erotic se nse. R at her , Luther believed that "the Bride of the Song is the ha ppy and peaceful state under Solomon's ru le and that th e Song is a h ymn in which Solomon thanks God for the d ivine gift of obedience.'' Concerning thi s, see also: Luther, ''Lectures on th e Song of Solomon ,'' J an Siggins, tr ., Luther's Works, 15 (St. Louis: Concord ia Publishin g, 1972), 191-95. I assume that H orcicka would have been aware of Luther' s views, but thi s in no way limits his int erpretati ve use of this Biblica l book. At present, it can not be said whether an y o th er Luth era n view of the So ng of So ngs such as that by Johann es Coccae us Uohann K och, 1603-69), Pope, pp . 128-29, was known b y Horcicka. " Bes ides hi s cita ti ons from th e Song of Songs at the beginning of each "walk, " H orcicka refers to verses from this book some thi rtee n tim es, only once repeating a verse from th ose introdu cin g " Walk IX." 46 On numbered page I 98 of th e H ortulus , Horcicka not es a Czec h ve rsion of the Bible published in 163 I in Wittenberg. 47 H ortulus, numbered page 103; Pope , Song of Songs , p. 123. 39 SLOVAKIA 75 " In T h e Encyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church ( 1965), sub verbo " D evo tional Literature," it is no ted th a t ii K empis ' Imitation of Christ was popula r devotional read in g in Luthera n la nd s. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Luth eran Church . ( 1965), sub verbo " G erh a rd , Johann ." I have, howeve r , fo und no reference fo r presuma bl y this Ge rha rd 's Postill(ae) cited by H orcicka. '° Th e Encyclopedia of th e Luthera n Church ( 1965), sub verbo " Dilherr , J ohann Michael," but no reference to his Feld-, Welt- etc. work . In two editions of an anthology of old Slova k literature, Misianik notes th a t th e Feld- work by this Dilherr was published in ure m be rg in 1648 a nd 165 1: An tol6gia starsej slovensej literatury ( Brati slava: Yydavatel'stvo Slove nskej a kademie vied , 1964), p . 6 18, a nd 1981 editi on , p . 583. Misia nik gives the title as Feld- W elt - G artenbetrachtung. " Th e En cyclopedia of th e Lutheran Church ( 1965) , sub verbo" Huelsemann , Johann ." " H orcicka a lso refers to th e Centuries of M agd eburg on numbered page 176. " T ablic, Pam eti/Pam ati , pp . LXVI -LXIX (66-69)/5 7-61 , qu otes in Czechi zed form two of th e verse units on numbered pages 122-23 a nd 402-03. The proper rendition of these ve rses can be found in th e two Misianik a nthologies, pp . 395 -96 and 399/ 373-74 respectively. Misia nik also cites two further ve rse units: H ortulus, numbered pages 82-83 and 370-75/ M isia ni k, pp. 395, 397 -399 and 370- 73 respec ti vely for th e two Misianik editi ons. Fina ll y, th ese fo ur ve rse units can also be fo und inJa miluji, nesmim providaci: antol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran , 1977), pp. 93-99. In a ll , th ere a re fo urtee n ve rse units. T ablic qu otes two a nd gives page numbers for eleve n oth ers; he missed the page numbers fo r one verse unit according to th e ve rsion of th e H ortulu s studi ed by me. The fo urtee n ve rse units a re as follows - numbered pages th en the number of verses in th e unit-: I. 14/6 2 . 82 -83/ 12; 3. 87-88/2 4; 4. 100/4 La tin a nd 4 Slovak; 5. 114-15/ 11; 6 . 122-23/36 ; 7. 186/8; 8. 191/4 La tin and 4 Slovak, a nd aga in 4 La tin and 4 Slovak; 9. 245/6; 10 . 33 7-38/8; 11. 340-43/76; 12. 365-66/ 12, not mention ed by T ablic; 13. 370-75/ 60; and 14. 402 -03/ 18. ,. The orth ograp hy used a t th a t time shows g instead of j (though g was also used for g), ss for s, w for v, the grave accen t fo r ad verbial endin gs, a nd (som etim es) a dot fo r a long mark ove r y. " Hu rba n , p . 6 (o riginal pagin ati on of the articl e) . " O n unn um bered page 15 , th at is, in th e int rodu cto ry portion of the H ortulus, Horc icka spea ks to the " Dea r R ead e r " in " Slowen sk em gazyku (Slovak language/to ngue), " as well as uses the adj ectival fo rms " Slowen sk ych " a nd " Slowenske " fo r "Slova k." In C h valy a obran y sloven sk eh o n arod a, pp . 48- 51, J a n Tibensky notes H orcicka's Slovak consciousness and quotes from th e introducti on to the latte r 's Neoforum latin o-slavon icum as evide nce of it . Prese n ted in Pa nel 99 , " Devo ti onal Literature in Seventeenth Ce ntury Slova ki a," a t the AAASS conve ntion in Washin gton , D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982 . Parts were prepared at the 1982 Summer Slavic Semin a r at the Unive rsity of Illinois in C ha mpa ign-Urbana .  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Daniel Sinapius-Horčička's Hortulus Animae Piae Description An account of the resource Gerald J. Sabo Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 61-75 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sabo, Gerald J., 1945–2020 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF+dates https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/0e8530e3c6c123e852af74a8134a4771.pdf 4028a1593468c0393b5c9ae34a28d5c0 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 1982-83 Publi shed By THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA ����SLOVAKIA VOLUME XXX NUMBERS 55-56 1982-83 A schola rl y a nnual devoted to the hi story , li terature and culture of Slovaks the world over Guesc Editor NORMAL. R U DINSKY Oregon State U ni ve rsit y Editor M . MARK STOLARIK The Balch Institute for Ethni c Studies Edicorial Boa rd DA YID P DANIEL Concordia Theological Seminary MICHAEL NOVAK American Ent erprise Institute OWEN V . JOHNSON Ind iana University STAN LEY Z . PECH Unive rsity of British Columbia THOMAS D . MARZIK Saint J oseph 's U ni vers ity NORMA L. R U DINSKY Oregon State University Slovak League Advisory Board EDWARDJ. BEHUNC IK DRAGA DIVI NS KA JOHN A . H OLY DANIEL F. TANZONE JOS EPH C . KRAJ SA Publisher The Slovak League of America cl o J ohn A. H oly, Secretary-Treasurer 870 Rifl e Camp Road W est Paterson , NJ. 07424 Inquiries regarding subscriptions shou ld be add ressed to J ohn H oly M a nu sc ri pts for possible publi cati on a nd books for review should be sent to M . M ark Stolarik , Editor , Slovakia, 700 Penfield Ave. , H ave rtow n , Pa . 19083. ��SLOVAKIA 5 Table of Contents Guest Editor 's Note Norma L. Rudinsk y 7 Introduction - Slova k Literature: Wha t , Where from , and Whither? F. W . Galan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Ku cekova .... .. ..... ... . . .... ..... .. . .... . . 12 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kan cionaly in the Kin gdom of Bohemia ( 1588-1683) M arie-Elizabeth Ducreux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Influence of Juraj Tra novsky's Cithara San ctorum in Slovakia J aros/av ]. V ajda ..... .... .. .. . . . ..... . . . .... .. ....... 51 Daniel Sinapius-Horc icka 's H ortulus Animae Piae Gerald]. Sabo .............. .... .... . ... . ........ . ... 61 Some Observations o n D evotio nal Literature and Culture : R esponse David P. D aniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Hu golfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala a nd Skala Krest'an ska G erald ]. Sabo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Vaj ans ky a nd Turgenev William E. H arkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J .R.R . Tolkien 's " Eucatastrophe" in the Reali st ic Stories of M a rtin Kukucfn Norma L . Rudinsk y ............ ... . . ..... . ..... . ...... 100 Kukucfn's Vill age Stories and Shukshin 's " Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald ]. Sabo ............... . . . . . .. . .. .. . . .... . ..... 112 J ozef Cfge r-Hronsky: C hronology a nd Part ial Bibliograph y Norm a L . Rudinsky .. ..... . ...... .. ................ . .. 128 �6 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A M aj or Slovak Novelist Peter Petro . .. .. .. . . .... .. . .... ... . . ... . . .. . . .. . ..... 142 Modern Slovak Fiction : The Sixties , a Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro .. . . ... .. .. . .... . . . . ... . .. ... . . . .. . .. .... . 153 The Lyrical Prose of V incent Sikula Peter Petro . ... .. . . ..... . .. ... ... .. . . ... . .. ... . .. .. . . 165 Contributors ... . . . . . .. . .... . .... . . .. . ... . . . ..... . ..... . . . 175 Guidelines for Manuscripts . . . .. .. . .. . .... . . .... .... . .. . . . . . 176 �SLOVAKIA 7 GUEST EDITOR'S NOTE This issue of Slovakia is devoted to English studies of Slovak literature. In all of the Slavic cultures, literature has often played an extraliterary role, frequently with political or even economic force. In Slovak culture, especially, literary creation and criticism have more often been seen as a defensive and partisan political activity than as an esthetic activity. In the present studies, however, we wanted to consider Slovak literature esthetically as literary art. This new approach is now possible because the tendentious political definitions that formerly plagued Slovak studies have been laid to rest with the abandonment of the theory of a single ''Czechoslovak language'' and the concept of Slovak literature as a regional derivative of Czech literature. Therefore, the consequent national defensiveness can also be laid to rest. Slovak culture can now be considered on its own merits. These papers were presented under the sponsorship of the Slovak Studies Association at the four past annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies: on November 5-8, 1980 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; on September 20-23, 1981 in Asilomar, California ; on October 14-17, 1982 in Washington , D. C . ; and on October 22-25, 1983 in Kansas City, Missouri . Given here in the chronological order of their subject matter , not of their presentation, these papers show an elementary outline of much of Slovak literature. In keeping with the current position of Slovak literary historians in Bratislava, we are taking "literature" not only as an ethnic or language category, i .e. literature in the Slovak language , but also as a geographic category, i.e. literature produced within the borders of present-day Slovakia and including works written in Latin, German, Magyar, or Czech by Slovaks or other residents of Slovakia if that literature resulted from and/or influenced literary trends in Slovakia. This is the standard p ractice of literary historians with Latin literature written when Latin was the universal language and the vernacular languages were only beginning, and also with bilingual countries such as Canada or Belgium . There is little difficulty with the German and Magyar languages, but there h as been a major problem with the Czech lan guage for several historical reasons that must be summarized here because they �8 SLOVAKIA directly affect five of our papers on the early written (not folk) literature , and indirectly they have affected all study of Slovak literature. Slovak and Czech developed separately as parallel West Slavic languages, but not on the same schedule: Czech was formed very early as a literary language (because of the political/cultural center of Prague, Holy Roman Emperor Karel IV, a major medieval university , Jan Hus ' s vernacular translations, etc .) , and Slovak was formed as a literary language very late (because of the lack of a political/cultural center , the long adherence to Latin in Hungary , etc.). Furthermore, the Czech language became a substitute for Slovak from the 15th century on, first when clerks of many nationalities educated at Prague University used Czech as an administrative language in Austria and Hungary, then second when many religious and accompanying political controversies were debated in Czech instead of Latin from Hus through much of the Catholic Counter-Reformation . By replacing Latin and constricting the use of German and Magyar , Czech with its similarity and relative comprehensibility for Slovaks fostered the development of Slovak within its disadvantaged position in Hungary. But, on the other hand , it became a crutch that slowed Slovak development because it somewhat filled the need for a vernacular and delayed or obscured the natural stimulus toward codification of spoken Slovak that finally occurred with Bernolak and Stur. Our papers illustrate this situation. Two concern the standard Czech-language Protestant hymnals that became partial sources for the Czech Catholic hymnals in Bohemia and Moravia that Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux writes of and also sources for the Czech-language hymnal written and published in Slovakia thatjaroslav Vajda writes of; the Czech form of the name Tfanovsky, used on his h ym nal and continu ed by historians of his place in Czech literature, was domesticated to the Slovak form Trano vsk y by the Lutheran tradition and is so used by historians of his place in Slovak literature. A century later another Pole (like Tranovsky) , Hugolfn Gavlovic, now wrote not in Czech but in an uncodified Western Slovak with Czech elem ents. Between Tranovsky and Gavlovic, the three m embers of the Sinapius-Horcicka family , all Slovak born , wrote in Latin , German, Slovakized Czech, or Slovak with Czech elements. Thus , the complexity of the language situation in the Slovak R enaissance and Baroque periods has to be understood before taking up the esthet ic value of a work, and in some cases a transitional work must be appreciated without a �SLOVAKIA 9 final decision on whether it is in Czech with Slovak features or Slovak with Czech features. On the later literature, two papers are comparative with Russian and one with English literature, and the two papers on J. C. Hronsky testify to our belief that he was a major European writer who has not yet received the attention due him outside Slovak literary criticism. The final two papers concern contemporary fiction . Not all the papers give purely esthetic studies, as we wished, because many Slovak literary subjects still require basic historical and biographical investigation . We are grateful to the regular editors of Slovakia for this opportunity to make a beginning. Norma L . Rudinsky � SLOVAKIA 1982-83 Publi shed By THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA ����SLOVAKIA VOLUME XXX NUMBERS 55-56 1982-83 A schola rl y a nnual devoted to the hi story , li terature and culture of Slovaks the world over Guesc Editor NORMAL. R U DINSKY Oregon State U ni ve rsit y Editor M . MARK STOLARIK The Balch Institute for Ethni c Studies Edicorial Boa rd DA YID P DANIEL Concordia Theological Seminary MICHAEL NOVAK American Ent erprise Institute OWEN V . JOHNSON Ind iana University STAN LEY Z . PECH Unive rsity of British Columbia THOMAS D . MARZIK Saint J oseph 's U ni vers ity NORMA L. R U DINSKY Oregon State University Slovak League Advisory Board EDWARDJ. BEHUNC IK DRAGA DIVI NS KA JOHN A . H OLY DANIEL F. TANZONE JOS EPH C . KRAJ SA Publisher The Slovak League of America cl o J ohn A. H oly, Secretary-Treasurer 870 Rifl e Camp Road W est Paterson , NJ. 07424 Inquiries regarding subscriptions shou ld be add ressed to J ohn H oly M a nu sc ri pts for possible publi cati on a nd books for review should be sent to M . M ark Stolarik , Editor , Slovakia, 700 Penfield Ave. , H ave rtow n , Pa . 19083. ��SLOVAKIA 5 Table of Contents Guest Editor 's Note Norma L. Rudinsk y 7 Introduction - Slova k Literature: Wha t , Where from , and Whither? F. W . Galan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Ku cekova .... .. ..... ... . . .... ..... .. . .... . . 12 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kan cionaly in the Kin gdom of Bohemia ( 1588-1683) M arie-Elizabeth Ducreux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Influence of Juraj Tra novsky's Cithara San ctorum in Slovakia J aros/av ]. V ajda ..... .... .. .. . . . ..... . . . .... .. ....... 51 Daniel Sinapius-Horc icka 's H ortulus Animae Piae Gerald]. Sabo .............. .... .... . ... . ........ . ... 61 Some Observations o n D evotio nal Literature and Culture : R esponse David P. D aniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Hu golfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala a nd Skala Krest'an ska G erald ]. Sabo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Vaj ans ky a nd Turgenev William E. H arkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J .R.R . Tolkien 's " Eucatastrophe" in the Reali st ic Stories of M a rtin Kukucfn Norma L . Rudinsk y ............ ... . . ..... . ..... . ...... 100 Kukucfn's Vill age Stories and Shukshin 's " Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald ]. Sabo ............... . . . . . .. . .. .. . . .... . ..... 112 J ozef Cfge r-Hronsky: C hronology a nd Part ial Bibliograph y Norm a L . Rudinsky .. ..... . ...... .. ................ . .. 128 �6 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A M aj or Slovak Novelist Peter Petro . .. .. .. . . .... .. . .... ... . . ... . . .. . . .. . ..... 142 Modern Slovak Fiction : The Sixties , a Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro .. . . ... .. .. . .... . . . . ... . .. ... . . . .. . .. .... . 153 The Lyrical Prose of V incent Sikula Peter Petro . ... .. . . ..... . .. ... ... .. . . ... . .. ... . .. .. . . 165 Contributors ... . . . . . .. . .... . .... . . .. . ... . . . ..... . ..... . . . 175 Guidelines for Manuscripts . . . .. .. . .. . .... . . .... .... . .. . . . . . 176 �SLOVAKIA 7 GUEST EDITOR'S NOTE This issue of Slovakia is devoted to English studies of Slovak literature. In all of the Slavic cultures, literature has often played an extraliterary role, frequently with political or even economic force. In Slovak culture, especially, literary creation and criticism have more often been seen as a defensive and partisan political activity than as an esthetic activity. In the present studies, however, we wanted to consider Slovak literature esthetically as literary art. This new approach is now possible because the tendentious political definitions that formerly plagued Slovak studies have been laid to rest with the abandonment of the theory of a single ''Czechoslovak language'' and the concept of Slovak literature as a regional derivative of Czech literature. Therefore, the consequent national defensiveness can also be laid to rest. Slovak culture can now be considered on its own merits. These papers were presented under the sponsorship of the Slovak Studies Association at the four past annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies: on November 5-8, 1980 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; on September 20-23, 1981 in Asilomar, California ; on October 14-17, 1982 in Washington , D. C . ; and on October 22-25, 1983 in Kansas City, Missouri . Given here in the chronological order of their subject matter , not of their presentation, these papers show an elementary outline of much of Slovak literature. In keeping with the current position of Slovak literary historians in Bratislava, we are taking "literature" not only as an ethnic or language category, i .e. literature in the Slovak language , but also as a geographic category, i.e. literature produced within the borders of present-day Slovakia and including works written in Latin, German, Magyar, or Czech by Slovaks or other residents of Slovakia if that literature resulted from and/or influenced literary trends in Slovakia. This is the standard p ractice of literary historians with Latin literature written when Latin was the universal language and the vernacular languages were only beginning, and also with bilingual countries such as Canada or Belgium . There is little difficulty with the German and Magyar languages, but there h as been a major problem with the Czech lan guage for several historical reasons that must be summarized here because they �8 SLOVAKIA directly affect five of our papers on the early written (not folk) literature , and indirectly they have affected all study of Slovak literature. Slovak and Czech developed separately as parallel West Slavic languages, but not on the same schedule: Czech was formed very early as a literary language (because of the political/cultural center of Prague, Holy Roman Emperor Karel IV, a major medieval university , Jan Hus ' s vernacular translations, etc .) , and Slovak was formed as a literary language very late (because of the lack of a political/cultural center , the long adherence to Latin in Hungary , etc.). Furthermore, the Czech language became a substitute for Slovak from the 15th century on, first when clerks of many nationalities educated at Prague University used Czech as an administrative language in Austria and Hungary, then second when many religious and accompanying political controversies were debated in Czech instead of Latin from Hus through much of the Catholic Counter-Reformation . By replacing Latin and constricting the use of German and Magyar , Czech with its similarity and relative comprehensibility for Slovaks fostered the development of Slovak within its disadvantaged position in Hungary. But, on the other hand , it became a crutch that slowed Slovak development because it somewhat filled the need for a vernacular and delayed or obscured the natural stimulus toward codification of spoken Slovak that finally occurred with Bernolak and Stur. Our papers illustrate this situation. Two concern the standard Czech-language Protestant hymnals that became partial sources for the Czech Catholic hymnals in Bohemia and Moravia that Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux writes of and also sources for the Czech-language hymnal written and published in Slovakia thatjaroslav Vajda writes of; the Czech form of the name Tfanovsky, used on his h ym nal and continu ed by historians of his place in Czech literature, was domesticated to the Slovak form Trano vsk y by the Lutheran tradition and is so used by historians of his place in Slovak literature. A century later another Pole (like Tranovsky) , Hugolfn Gavlovic, now wrote not in Czech but in an uncodified Western Slovak with Czech elem ents. Between Tranovsky and Gavlovic, the three m embers of the Sinapius-Horcicka family , all Slovak born , wrote in Latin , German, Slovakized Czech, or Slovak with Czech elements. Thus , the complexity of the language situation in the Slovak R enaissance and Baroque periods has to be understood before taking up the esthet ic value of a work, and in some cases a transitional work must be appreciated without a �SLOVAKIA 9 final decision on whether it is in Czech with Slovak features or Slovak with Czech features. On the later literature, two papers are comparative with Russian and one with English literature, and the two papers on J. C. Hronsky testify to our belief that he was a major European writer who has not yet received the attention due him outside Slovak literary criticism. The final two papers concern contemporary fiction . Not all the papers give purely esthetic studies, as we wished, because many Slovak literary subjects still require basic historical and biographical investigation . We are grateful to the regular editors of Slovakia for this opportunity to make a beginning. Norma L . Rudinsky � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 1982-83 Publi shed By THE SLOVAK LEAGUE OF AMERICA SLOVAKIA VOLUME XXX NUMBERS 55-56 1982-83 A schola rl y a nnual devoted to the hi story , li terature and culture of Slovaks the world over Guesc Editor NORMAL. R U DINSKY Oregon State U ni ve rsit y Editor M . MARK STOLARIK The Balch Institute for Ethni c Studies Edicorial Boa rd DA YID P DANIEL Concordia Theological Seminary MICHAEL NOVAK American Ent erprise Institute OWEN V . JOHNSON Ind iana University STAN LEY Z . PECH Unive rsity of British Columbia THOMAS D . MARZIK Saint J oseph 's U ni vers ity NORMA L. R U DINSKY Oregon State University Slovak League Advisory Board EDWARDJ. BEHUNC IK DRAGA DIVI NS KA JOHN A . H OLY DANIEL F. TANZONE JOS EPH C . KRAJ SA Publisher The Slovak League of America cl o J ohn A. H oly, Secretary-Treasurer 870 Rifl e Camp Road W est Paterson , NJ. 07424 Inquiries regarding subscriptions shou ld be add ressed to J ohn H oly M a nu sc ri pts for possible publi cati on a nd books for review should be sent to M . M ark Stolarik , Editor , Slovakia, 700 Penfield Ave. , H ave rtow n , Pa . 19083. SLOVAKIA 5 Table of Contents Guest Editor 's Note Norma L. Rudinsk y 7 Introduction - Slova k Literature: Wha t , Where from , and Whither? F. W . Galan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Ku cekova .... .. ..... ... . . .... ..... .. . .... . . 12 Counter-Reformation and Early Czech Catholic Kan cionaly in the Kin gdom of Bohemia ( 1588-1683) M arie-Elizabeth Ducreux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Influence of Juraj Tra novsky's Cithara San ctorum in Slovakia J aros/av ]. V ajda ..... .... .. .. . . . ..... . . . .... .. ....... 51 Daniel Sinapius-Horc icka 's H ortulus Animae Piae Gerald]. Sabo .............. .... .... . ... . ........ . ... 61 Some Observations o n D evotio nal Literature and Culture : R esponse David P. D aniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Hu golfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala a nd Skala Krest'an ska G erald ]. Sabo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Vaj ans ky a nd Turgenev William E. H arkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J .R.R . Tolkien 's " Eucatastrophe" in the Reali st ic Stories of M a rtin Kukucfn Norma L . Rudinsk y ............ ... . . ..... . ..... . ...... 100 Kukucfn's Vill age Stories and Shukshin 's " Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald ]. Sabo ............... . . . . . .. . .. .. . . .... . ..... 112 J ozef Cfge r-Hronsky: C hronology a nd Part ial Bibliograph y Norm a L . Rudinsky .. ..... . ...... .. ................ . .. 128 6 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A M aj or Slovak Novelist Peter Petro . .. .. .. . . .... .. . .... ... . . ... . . .. . . .. . ..... 142 Modern Slovak Fiction : The Sixties , a Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro .. . . ... .. .. . .... . . . . ... . .. ... . . . .. . .. .... . 153 The Lyrical Prose of V incent Sikula Peter Petro . ... .. . . ..... . .. ... ... .. . . ... . .. ... . .. .. . . 165 Contributors ... . . . . . .. . .... . .... . . .. . ... . . . ..... . ..... . . . 175 Guidelines for Manuscripts . . . .. .. . .. . .... . . .... .... . .. . . . . . 176 SLOVAKIA 7 GUEST EDITOR'S NOTE This issue of Slovakia is devoted to English studies of Slovak literature. In all of the Slavic cultures, literature has often played an extraliterary role, frequently with political or even economic force. In Slovak culture, especially, literary creation and criticism have more often been seen as a defensive and partisan political activity than as an esthetic activity. In the present studies, however, we wanted to consider Slovak literature esthetically as literary art. This new approach is now possible because the tendentious political definitions that formerly plagued Slovak studies have been laid to rest with the abandonment of the theory of a single ''Czechoslovak language'' and the concept of Slovak literature as a regional derivative of Czech literature. Therefore, the consequent national defensiveness can also be laid to rest. Slovak culture can now be considered on its own merits. These papers were presented under the sponsorship of the Slovak Studies Association at the four past annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies: on November 5-8, 1980 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; on September 20-23, 1981 in Asilomar, California ; on October 14-17, 1982 in Washington , D. C . ; and on October 22-25, 1983 in Kansas City, Missouri . Given here in the chronological order of their subject matter , not of their presentation, these papers show an elementary outline of much of Slovak literature. In keeping with the current position of Slovak literary historians in Bratislava, we are taking "literature" not only as an ethnic or language category, i .e. literature in the Slovak language , but also as a geographic category, i.e. literature produced within the borders of present-day Slovakia and including works written in Latin, German, Magyar, or Czech by Slovaks or other residents of Slovakia if that literature resulted from and/or influenced literary trends in Slovakia. This is the standard p ractice of literary historians with Latin literature written when Latin was the universal language and the vernacular languages were only beginning, and also with bilingual countries such as Canada or Belgium . There is little difficulty with the German and Magyar languages, but there h as been a major problem with the Czech lan guage for several historical reasons that must be summarized here because they 8 SLOVAKIA directly affect five of our papers on the early written (not folk) literature , and indirectly they have affected all study of Slovak literature. Slovak and Czech developed separately as parallel West Slavic languages, but not on the same schedule: Czech was formed very early as a literary language (because of the political/cultural center of Prague, Holy Roman Emperor Karel IV, a major medieval university , Jan Hus ' s vernacular translations, etc .) , and Slovak was formed as a literary language very late (because of the lack of a political/cultural center , the long adherence to Latin in Hungary , etc.). Furthermore, the Czech language became a substitute for Slovak from the 15th century on, first when clerks of many nationalities educated at Prague University used Czech as an administrative language in Austria and Hungary, then second when many religious and accompanying political controversies were debated in Czech instead of Latin from Hus through much of the Catholic Counter-Reformation . By replacing Latin and constricting the use of German and Magyar , Czech with its similarity and relative comprehensibility for Slovaks fostered the development of Slovak within its disadvantaged position in Hungary. But, on the other hand , it became a crutch that slowed Slovak development because it somewhat filled the need for a vernacular and delayed or obscured the natural stimulus toward codification of spoken Slovak that finally occurred with Bernolak and Stur. Our papers illustrate this situation. Two concern the standard Czech-language Protestant hymnals that became partial sources for the Czech Catholic hymnals in Bohemia and Moravia that Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux writes of and also sources for the Czech-language hymnal written and published in Slovakia thatjaroslav Vajda writes of; the Czech form of the name Tfanovsky, used on his h ym nal and continu ed by historians of his place in Czech literature, was domesticated to the Slovak form Trano vsk y by the Lutheran tradition and is so used by historians of his place in Slovak literature. A century later another Pole (like Tranovsky) , Hugolfn Gavlovic, now wrote not in Czech but in an uncodified Western Slovak with Czech elem ents. Between Tranovsky and Gavlovic, the three m embers of the Sinapius-Horcicka family , all Slovak born , wrote in Latin , German, Slovakized Czech, or Slovak with Czech elements. Thus , the complexity of the language situation in the Slovak R enaissance and Baroque periods has to be understood before taking up the esthet ic value of a work, and in some cases a transitional work must be appreciated without a SLOVAKIA 9 final decision on whether it is in Czech with Slovak features or Slovak with Czech features. On the later literature, two papers are comparative with Russian and one with English literature, and the two papers on J. C. Hronsky testify to our belief that he was a major European writer who has not yet received the attention due him outside Slovak literary criticism. The final two papers concern contemporary fiction . Not all the papers give purely esthetic studies, as we wished, because many Slovak literary subjects still require basic historical and biographical investigation . We are grateful to the regular editors of Slovakia for this opportunity to make a beginning. Norma L . Rudinsky  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Front Matter, Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56) Description An account of the resource includes Guest Editor's Note (Norma L. Rudinsky) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rudinsky, Norma Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/aca28d01eb176a6710664a7553ed389f.pdf 1249ab6b1575119e79e968ef5117fb0a PDF Text Text 80 SLOVAKIA Hugolfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska Gerald J . Sabo For most Slavists, the eighteenth century in Slovak history and culture remains pretty much unknown territory. Even among specialists in Slovak studies, that era m ay bring to mind simply Anton Bernol ak and possibly J a n Baltaza r M agin . Bernolak should certa inly stand out as the first cod ifer of the Slovak language , a nd Magin deserves more than a few brief sentences for hi s de fense of Slovak ethnic a nd cultural rights . Y et m any other writers from the e ighteenth ce ntury deserve not onl y mention but substantial comm entary , because their writings in the Slovak vernacular before Bernolak's codificat ion exem plified and promoted Slovak consciousness. Amon g these a uthors a prominent place is occupied by the Franciscan priest Hugolfn Gavlovic. Gavlovic was born in 17 12 in Czarny Dunaj ec, Poland, yet he spent virtually his entire life in Slovak-speaking areas. 2 H e di ed in 1787, th e year Bernolak publicly began his codification effort s. G avlovic considered himself ethnically Polish. Still , as far as can be ascertained, the only Slavic la n gu age in which h e wrote was the contemporary Slovak vernacul ar. In a number of hi s writings, he even explicity expres~ed his awareness of writing in Slovak. 3 Gavlovic's co n scious Slovak writing but Polish e thnicity is more th an some curiously interest ing point. I t is especially strikin g again st the b ackground of in tense nationalistic fr iction at that time . This nationalisti c frict ion was between Slovaks a nd various ethnic gro u ps, but in particula r th e Hun garians. The effects of th is fri ct ion reached even into Franciscan foundations and affected th e governan ce of Franciscan eccles iastical provin ces. 4 Gavlovic began writing in 1745 after he had finished his Franciscan course of studies and h ad become a priest. From 1745 until h is death in 1 787 , he composed nearly twenty distin ct pieces of Slovak writin g in prose o r poetry . Among his poetic writings, the most prominent are Valask a Skala (Th e Shepherd ' s School) and Skala Krest'anska (A C h ris1 �SLOVAKIA 81 tian School). Though Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska are di stinct pieces of writing, they should be treated together for a number of reasons. Both are written for the same audience - Franciscan T e rti aries,6 that is , lay persons who pattern their lives according to prescript s of Franciscan spirituality and traditions . Also , in both compositions is found a poetic form peculiar only to them : Gavlovic called this form koncept. 7 A koncept consists of twelve verses or six rhymed couplets ; each verse has fourteen syllables with a caesura-like pause after the eighth sylla bl e. Usual ly , some rhymed couplets of varying length are related to a koncept . At times, the various pictorial illustrations in both Gavlovic "schools" are connected with kon cepty as well as other verse units . 8 Thus , in Valaska Skala but especially in Skala Krest'anska , the format of the koncept a nd other verse units could be said to resem ble emblematic poetry: a verse-motto, a versified elaboration of the motto, and the related illustration. 9 Besides similarities in a udience and poetic units, the two "schools " are explicitly related to each oth er by Gavlovic him self. According to Gavlovic, Val ask a Skala was written to foster the reader ' s " moral ch aracter, " Skol a Krest'ansk a his "holiness." 10 Gavlovic has also described Valaska Skala as "cheese," someth in g that would n ourish th e reader. In its author 's view, Skala Krest'an sk a represents a " pleasant sce nt '' from a b ouqu et of fl owers. 11 Clearly , Gavlovic expressed a contrast between the physical a nd external against the non-physical a nd internal. Also , the epigraphs fo r the two "schools" show their contrasting emphases and areas of con centration . For Valask a Skala, it is the H oratian utile-dulci - the practically beneficial made palatably pleasant ; this epigraph aptly expresses the mundane yet religiously instructive character of Val ask a Sk ala . 11 T he epigraph for Skala Krest'anska is the last verse from th e seventh chapte r of the Biblical book Sirach: " R emember the last thin gs, a nd you will never sin ." 13 From a reading of the two ''schools,'' it is evide n t that for Gavlovic, they represented the two states in Christia n spiri tualit y: th e act ive an d contemplative ways of livin g. In the active life, as in Val ask a Skol a, the goal of a Christian is the practice of good morals and virtues a nd all this entail s. In the co n templative life , as in Skala Krest'anska , the aim is the conte mpl ation of God , sp iritu al matters , espec iall y of th e '' four last things,'' d eath, judgment, hell , and heaven. 14 I n effect, then, through th ese writings Gavlovic offered the �82 SLOVAKIA reader a sort of program for good Christian living and thinking . In appreciatin g these two "schools," the Christian reader could then set about reali zing the active a nd contemplative ways of living in his earthly existe n ce. Gavlovic completed Valaska Skala in March , 1755, and Skala Krest'an ska in August, 17 58. 15 At what dates he began to write each "sch ool " can not at present be d etermin ed. In the letter of the ecclesiastical cen sor for Skala Krest'an sk a, Gavlovic is n amed as the a uthor. 16 This identification has in turn contributed to verifying Gavlovic 's autho rship of Valaska Skala. Val ask a Skala and Skala Krest'anska are extensive pieces of poetry. Valaska Skala comprises nearly e ighteen th ousand verses, virtually all of which are fourteen syll ables in length ; there are also some twentyfour hundred verses of varyin g length for the couplet- mottoes above the kan cepty as well as numerous related mottoes beside the k ancep ty. In Valaska Skala, there are twenty-seven illu strations, but only nine in Skala Krest'an ska. 17 The mass of verses and illustrations in each ''school'' is a rranged accord in g to schemes wh ere symmetry and numerical sym bolism play d efinite roles. 18 Valask a Skala has three major divisions: first, an introductory portion with twelve parts of varying length ; second, a main body with twentytwo subdivisions known as naty (nata in the sin gul ar); a nd third, a co ncluding portion with two parts of unequal length . The introductory and concludin g portions - virtually equal in length - fram e the main body . In the m a in body, the predominant textual unit is the kancept ; in each of the twenty-two subdivions or naty , there are fifty-nin e kancepty. The major motif of Valaska Skala is J esus the Good Shepherd as portrayed in St. J ohn 's Gospel. 19 In the main body , Gavlovic presented a series of stories on Biblical shepherds. Th ese stories are part of the introdu cto ry narrative for each of the first twenty-one naty . Abel is the first shepherd prese nted, and the shepherds of Be thlehem are the subjects that introdu ce th e twenty-first nata. Th e twenty-second nata has no introdu ctory n arrat ive but begins with a kancept about the resurrected Christ; the risen J esus is comm issionin g Peter to feed his sheep, the Christian Church . otably, then, the lin e of Biblical shephe rds in the twenty-two naty forms a chronologically linear presentation of Biblical history - from the era of Adam through that of the resurrected Christ, the Second Adam. T he two concluding sections of Valask a Skala are �SLOVAKIA 83 on death and the Last judgment; they aptly complete the Christian timespectrum presented in the preceding main body. The most prominent instance of numerical symbolism in Valaska Skala involves the first twenty-one naty of the main body. Gavlovic was very explicit that Valaska Skala comprised only twenty-one naty. 10 Yet he included a twenty-second nata, and the two concluding sections on death and the Last Judgment. The explanation for this is based on the symbolic number of 1260 from the Biblical book Apocalypse. Symbolically, the number 1260 represents a time period when evil and extreme suffering are the lot of God's people ; this period is to be followed by a new era under the leadership of Christ. 21 In Valaska Skala, 1260 is the number of textual units in the first twenty-one naty . The last kancept of nata twenty-one clearly expresses a definite finality: Buch ge Alpha y Omega wsseckeho stworeni, A bez neho w clowekovi ni c d obre ho neni* On ge sprawedliweg laski wzdy horicy plamen , Nech ho dussa ma milu ge Az na weki Amen . (XXI , lix , 1-2 , 11-12) God is the Alpha and Omega of all creati on , And without him there is nothing of goodness in a person• He is always the burning flam e of just a ffec tion , M ay my soul love him Until forever Amen. Even the pagination of the first twenty-one naty contributes to understanding their extent according to the symbolic number 1260. 11 These naty are that period of suffering and patient waiting before the reign of Christ. Aptly, then, the twenty-second nata begins with the resurrected Christ and his future vicar Peter. This new era is traditionally known as the "last times," that era from Christ 's resurrection until his Second Coming at the end of the world and of time. ll The next crucial moments in a Christian 's existence during the "last times" are his death and the Last Judgment. These two moments form the them es for the concluding sections of Valaska Skala . In effect, then , Gavlovic also used a specific number of textual units to present symbolically his Christian view of time and history. In the main body of Valaska Skala, Gavlovic presented much more than Biblical material. In the introductory narratives for the naty, Gavlovic occasionally included comments on valasi, i.e. the Slovak mountain shepherds who represent a distinctive group in Slovak history and culture. 24 The valasi in Valaska Skala are contemporary figures who �84 SLOVAKIA illustrate actions that foster or d etract from proper Christian conduct. In the nearly thirteen hundred koncepty , there is a range of topics all to show what helps make a good Christian citizen of this world and the next. Whatever has to do with the total human b eing and Christian is treated - social deportment , catechetical matters, virtues, vices , and points of health . Nothing seems too trivial for discussion. Examples of the more religious kon cept as well as of the more mundane type will illustrate this, as the following two show : 25 Powinn os t P as tyru • Kryst u s poru ca swe owce Petrow i k pase ni , By wssech podl e sweg moznos ti priwad zal k Spaseni . K azdy wrchni na podda nych musy sta rost miti , Aby ned al od Spase ni fa dn emu bluditi. Otec di tkam , Pan podd a nym , gazd a sweg celedi* Z poru ceni Krystoweho nech uz itek hl edi . An o y ty twoge g Du sse pastyrem bi t musyss, Ga k gu stratiss gakokoli w , hrozny Sud okus iss . Co mu ze byt ku Spaseni ginym , nezanedbag, Al e negprw n a twu Duss u neglepssi pozo r dag . G ak twu Du ssu , a y gin ych priwedess k Spa seni , Budess Srdcy Krys towemu giste k potesse ni. (XXII, i) R esponsibility of the Shepherd Chri st entrusts his sheep to Peter for past ure, So th at he would bring them all to Salvation . Each superi or must have conce rn for th ose subj ec t to him , So tha t he would not permit any of th em to stray . A fa ther fo r his children , a master for his se rfs, a householder for his se rvants* Let him see k benefi t because of the cha rge of C hrist. Yes a nd you must be the shepherd of your Soul , If you so mehow lose it , you will taste a terribl e Jud gm ent. Don ' t neglect wh at can be to others' Salvat ion , But first give the bes t attenti on to yo ur Soul. If you bring your soul and oth ers to Salvati on , You will surely be a consola ti on to C hrist 's H ea rt . Pan owi chud obn y N ech neni • podobn y Ml ce t pred Pa nem Slu ssy gak a men T ak obcu ge bohac z chud ym , gako wlk z baranem , Gestli mu zess , nem eg nikd y spolec nost z pa nem . G ak te vola k sobe , nechot, • kd yz budess negiti, Gak se odd aliss od neho , budess pokog m iti . Kd yz b ud ess s nim , tehdy nemlu w wsselico slobodne , Newe r mn ohim reca m geho, snat m lu wi podwodn e. Bude te mn ohimi slowmi p robowa t libezne , �SLOVAKIA 85 Dokud negake tagemstw i od teba newez ne . Bude se te usmiwagic wsselico spytowa t , A twe recy w swogeg hl awe pilne pa matowa t . Gak od teba zw i to co chce , hn et twa r swu promeni , Zabyge te z twym gaz ikem krem twe ho domnen i. (XV II , xxv) May a poor ma n not be like to a lord/ master It is as fit as an Amen to be silent before a lord/ master A ri ch man associates with a poor ma n just as a wolf wit h a shee p, If you ca n , don't ever have a ny dealin gs wi th a lord/ mas ter . When he calls you to him , don ' t go , • when you wi ll n ot go, When you distance yourself from him , you 'II have peace. W hen you wi ll be with him , th en don ' t speak all kind s of thi ngs freely, Don ' t believe hi s man y speec hes/wo rds , pe rh a ps he spea ks decept ively. H e wi ll tes t/ probe you kindly with many words, Unt il he h as taken some secrets from you. H e will smilingly ask you a ll so rt s of thin gs, And wi ll recall laboriousl y/we ll your speeches in his head. As soo n as/ when he learns from you wha.t he wants, at once his face will chan ge, H e will kill you with your tongue beyond anything you can imagine. Compared to Valaska Skala , Skala Krest'anska h as a simpl er compositional arran gement. This is probably because Skala Krest'an sk a conce rns only four m atte rs: death, judgment, hell , and heave n - the traditional "four las t things ." Yet , as in Valaska Skala, the kan cepty of Skala Krest'anska are crucial to a ppreciating the symmetry a nd numerical symbolism in this composition. Skala Krest'an ska has two maj o r divisions: an introductory po rti on of four parts that vary in le n gth , a nd a main body of four equ al subdivisions th at are simila r in format. Each of the fo ur subdiv isions in the main body h as o ne of the "four last things " as its guiding theme. In Valaska Skala , J esus the Good Shepherd had his counterpart in the good contemporary valach or shepherd. In Skala Krest'anska, the reader is also presented with the hum a n counterp a rt of Christ - St. Franc is of Assisi with stigmata. The stigmata are '' marks resem blin g the wounds on the cru cified body of C hrist [o n the hand s, the fee t , a nd the right side o f C hrist's chest; these marks are ] believed to have bee n supe rnat u rall y impressed upon the bod ies of certain pe rso ns , as St. Francis of Assisi.' ' 26 Among the illustrations and texts about the '' fo ur last things' ' are also illustrations of St. Fra ncis with st igmata as he refl ects on each of the "four last things ." The escha tology presented in text and illustrations is further empha- �86 SLOVAKIA sized b y the numerical sy mbolism used in com posin g the four subdivisions o f the m ain body. Each subdivision has k on cepty on 144 pages. Indeed , in each subdivision , only the pages with koncepty are numbered; the rem a ining pages in each subdivi sion and the pages of the introductory port ion are not numbered. The number 144 is related to the sym bolic number 144 ,000 ; thi s latter number sym bolically represents the number of Christians saved at the end of time as noted in the Biblical boo k Apocalypse . 17 Thus , the apocalyptic number of Christians saved - 144 ,000 - is associated with th e 144 pages of kon cepty for each of the "four last things ." For G avlovic , the readin g of these koncepty was to help number th e reader among those saved . ·After all , that was the primary aspiration of Gavlovic not only for his reader but also for himself. Th e very last kon cept - the end - of Skala Krest'anska clearly conveys this othe r-worldly view offered by G avlovic to his reader : Prigd k nam kralows twi twe" Co nce ptus hie S. Laurentij Ju stin* D ag na m n ebe weeny Boze Nassa mdl ost k nemu nemoze Otce nass, ktery sy w Nebi, Prigd k nam kralows twi twe, Nebo k dobrem u cyn eni Srdce w nas ge mrtwe. Zustawame w ned osta tku , a y w leniwosti, Nemu ze me dostat nebe bez twogeg mil os ti . M i do nebe nepri gde me; zosta neme w bide, Gak kra lows twi twe z tweg wu le k na m bidnym neprigde . Eliasse na ohni wem woze wzals do neb e, Y nas prigmi w tweg milosti , to prosime tebe. Zaden ku Krystu negide, gak ho netahn ess ty, Tahni n as w p rowaskach laski , neb sy we wssem Swaty. Abi sme spaseni byli , prigd twe kralowstwi k n am, A ty Boze az na we ki panu g n ad nami sam . (0 Nebi , 288) Your kingdom co me to us This kon ceptlco nce pt (from] St. Law rence Ju stinia n" Give us heave n ete rnal God Our wea kn ess cannot reach/approach it Our Fa ther , who a re in H eave n , Your kin gd om com e to us, For our H eart is dead to good d eeds. W e rema in want ing , a nd in laz iness, W e cannot att ain heave n without yo ur grace. W e will not reach heave n ; we will re main in misery, If you r kin gdom does not com e to wretched u s by your will. Elias was ra ised to heave n on a fi ery ve hicl e/cha ri ot, R eceive also us in your grace, thi s we implore you . No one co mes to C hri st , if you do not draw him yourself, Draw us in the bonds of love/affection , for you are H oly in everythin g. �SLOVAKIA 87 T hat we mi ght be saved, yo ur kin gdom co m e to us , And you God yourself rul e ove r u s fo reve r . A s two pieces of Slovak writing, V alaska Skol a and Skol a Krest'anska d o di splay som e litera ry ima gina tion in their compositional a rra n gem ent and co nten t. Y et the ir purposes wer e n o t belles lettres ente rta inment bu t the fosterin g of the C h r istia n read er 's m oral ch a racter a nd holiness. Their m or ali stic a nd religiou s ch a racters sh ould n o t , a nd in truth , do no t d e trac t fro m their place in Slovak histo ry a nd culture. T h ey remain p rominen t a nd substantive exampl es of con sciously Slovak writing lo n g before Slovaks were al lowed to exe rcise the ir righ ts as a di st inct Slavic peopl e. NOTES ' An example of thi s lim ited view of Slovak writing is the first sentence of Pete r Brock 's otherwise good study The Slovak Nat ional Awakening (T oron to: Uni ve rsity of Toronto Press, I 976), p . 3 : " A Slovak ve rn acul a r was fir st used for literary purposes in the 1780s when it replaced C zec h a m ong the Slovak Cat hol ic in tell ige nts ia.'' ' For a more deta iled biography of Gavlovic and a d iscuss ion of his writin gs, see Gerald J. Sabo, "Slovak Did actic Poetry: Gav lovic 's Valask a Skala. Volum e I: Introdu ctory Study. Volume II : Edition of V alask a Skala ," Di ss. Yale 1978, l , 1-8. This is the only English source fo r thi s information. Signi fi cant Slovak sources on Gavlovic and hi s w ritin gs a re: Celes tin Le pacek , " Zivot a dic lo P . H ugolfna G avlovica, " V yrocne zpravy sukromneho gymnazia rad u sv . Franc isk a v M ala ck ach , 5- 10 ( 1932 -3 7); Lepace k, " Zlomky z d'alsfch Gavlovifovych ruko pisov ," Literarno-historick y sbornik M atice slovenskej , 2-3 , Nos. 1-2 ( 1945-46), 79-84 ; J ozef' Min ari k , " Hu golfn Gav lovic: Va lask a skola, mravuv stodola (l itera rn o-esteti cky rozbo r 16 vyb ranyc h bas nf)," Tri lirerarn o-esrerick e rozbory zo starsej slovenskej Jic era tury (Bratis lava: Slovenske pedagogic ke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1973) , pp. 61-98; G izela Slavkovsk a, "Gavlov icova Valaska Skala." eq ui valen t of a docto ra l dissert a ti on ( Bra tislava: U niv e rzita Komens keho , prob. 1972); Slavkovs ka , " Gavlov ifova Va laska Skala," S lovcnska lic era ru ra, 2 1, o. 5 ( 1974), 459-480. ' In Valaska Skala , in eight inst ances (fi ve times " na slowenski gazik . " two times " na slowenski , '· a nd once '' w slowensk em gazik u "), Gav lov ic expressed th e phrase '' in the Slovak lang uage" when he tra nslat ed a H e brew Bibli cal name in1 0 its Slovak meaning : nota I. introductory na rrati ve, line 33: V. int rodu ctory narrative, 9: VIII. in trodu ctory narrativ e. 3; X. introductory na rrative. 49; XI. in troduuory na rrativ e, 7; X III , int roductory na rrati ve. 1: X IV , introdu cto ry narrative. 6; a nd X IX, in troclu c1ory narrat ivc , 7. Linguist s agree tha t Gavlovi c wrote in Slova k , e.g. l.'..ubomfr 6urovic, "Slovak," The Slavic Lircrar_v Languages: Fonnacion and Dnwlopmenr. Alex a nder Sc hen ker and Edwa rd Stankiewicz , eds . ( New H aven: Yale Concilium o n Intern a ti onal and Arca Studies, 1980), p. 214. Of this la nguage in genera l, Eugen Paul inv wrote: �88 SLOVAKIA The Slova ki zing process went so far that by th e end of th e fir st half of the 18th ce ntury, we alread y have among Slovak Catholics a sufficiently firmly normali zed national written language whi ch on account of esse nti al deviation s from Czech ca nnot be called on ly Slovakized Czech. N or mu st it be disting uish ed from Czech only on th e lin guistic side. Import antly, that is, n ot even its users and writers con sidered it as Czech. Th ey considered it, h ere more, ch ere less explicic y, as ch e dom escic Slovak language. The term " J esuit Slovak " was at one time coined for this language. This d es ignation would perhaps m eta pho ri call y do just ice to th e fa ct that thi s language was used in Catholic writin g. H oweve r , it is necessa ry, of course, to reali ze th at thi s la nguage did no t origin a te in Slovak Catholic writing , but that Catholics took it over as esse ntiall y set, and that it was u sed as cultural W es t-Sl ovak eve n in oth er functions. Further one must reali ze that in Catholic writing, not onl y J esuits used this language, even if th ese la tt er were th e most act ive in the rc-Ca tholi cization of Slovaki a. (Dejin y spisovnej slovenciny, I [ 1966 ; rpt. Brati slava : Slove nske pedagogicke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1971], p. 78. Ita li cs a nd tra nsla ti on a re min e .) ' See Sabo, pp . 50-56 , for nati onalistic friction in gene ral, and pp. 58-62 for nati onalisti c fri ct io n in Franciscan founda ti ons. Also , Ysevlad J oze f Gajdos, 0 . F . M. , Franciskani v slovens½ej lit eracure (C levela nd : First Catholic Slova k Union, 1979), pp . 23-26. In this work, Gajdos also has a sho rt biograph y of Gavlovi c, a brief co mm ent a ry o n so m e of his writings, a li st of m ost of hi s works , and a sm all bibli ogra phy on G av lovic. Thi s book co nt a ins a wealth of m a terial on Francisca n trai nin g and activiti es in Slovak areas. 5 Both m a nu script s, actually a ut og raphs b y Gavlov ic him self, a re prese rved in th e Lite rarny archiv M a ti ce slovenskej (LAMS) in Martin unde r th e signa ture B89 for V alask a Skala and MJ3 3 1 for Skala Krest'a nska. V alask a S k ala ha had three editi o n s. In th e first editi o n do ne in two volum es in 1830-3 1, th e auto gra ph was d evasta tin gly altered allegedl y by Mi cha l R eset ka acco rdin g to th e lin gui st ic no rm s of Bernolak-S lova k , bern olaccin a . In th e seco nd edi ti o n of 197 1, Rudolf Kraj covic, th e ed itor , re prod uced the tex t in questionab le fo rm at a nd form , but most unfortunately deleted some forty-seven percent of th e aut ogra ph tex t. The third edition is a reprintin g o f th e Kraj cov ic second ed itio n , but now with som e fift y- li ve perce nt of th e autograph text deleted. Non e of the pictori al illu stra tion s of Valaska Skala was reprodu ced in a ny o f th e three ed iti ons. As rega rd s Skala Kresc'a nsk a, a few selections - some two perce nt of th e a ut ogra ph text - ca n be found in Gizela Slavkovska's edited workja miluji, nesmfm provfdaci ... : Ancol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: T a tra n , 1977) , pp . 275-30 1. 6 Th is is made clea r in Valaska Skala in th e dedication immed ia tely after th e titl epage a nd first illustra ti o n as we ll as in the int rodu cto ry part " D arowa ni Ku uiicku cwemu ," line 57; and in Skala Kresc'a n ska, o n th e titl e page a nd in th e introducto ry part " Darowani Trecimu R adu Seraflin skemu ," pages 13-1 6 of th e aut ogra ph (wi th titl e-page as page one). Fo r possible reasons for Gavlovic dedi ca tin g these two works to Tertiaries, see Sabo , pp . 66-7 1. ' For details on Gav lovic ' s kon cepc form, see, Sabo, pp . 86-94. A koncepc is also found �SLOVAKIA ' 9 ' 0 " " 13 14 15 16 11 " 19 ' 0 89 in Gavlovi i''s "last will a nd testament, " and an inco mplete one (one sentence short) among fragm entary autograph s of Gavlovic. In my thesis , I discuss the a rtist of the illustrations for Valaska Skala on pages 79-82. Subsequ entl y, Slavkovska studied th e same m a tt er and published her co mments in " ' Tajomstva ' prveho vydania Valaskej Skoly ," Slovenska literatura , 25, No. 6 ( 1978) , 663-669 . John L. Lievsay , "Embl em ," Princeton Encyclopedia of Poet1y and Poetics, enlarged edition , Alex Preminger et al. ed. (Princeton: Princeton Uni ve rsity Press, 1974). Bes id es variou s pl aces in V alaska Skala , wh e re Gavlovic speaks of Valaska Skala in these terms, he co mpa res the two "school s" in Skala Krest'anska on page fourtee n with titl e-page as page one in " D aro wani Tretimu Radu S eraffinskemu ," lin es 45 -46. Valaska Skala, "Darowani Ku uiitku twemu ," line 44 ; Skala Krest'ansk a, " Darowani Tretimu Radu S eraffin sk emu ," lines 33-34. On the title-page of Valaska Skala , Gavlovic cited :Omne tulit pun ctum , qui miscuit utile dulci (H e ha s won eve ry vote who has bl end ed profit a nd pleas ure . .. ), verse 343, H. Ru shton Fairclough , trans., Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (London and Cambridge, Mass. : William H eine m a n , Ltd. , 1970), pp. 478-479. For other pl aces wh ere G av lovic ex pressed th e se nse of this Horati a n ve rse, see Sabo , p. 68 , note 101. On the page immediat ely preceding th e titl e-page, it is cited in La tin a nd in a Slovak translation. In th e Vulgate ve rsion th a t I u sed , Alberto Colun ga a nd La urentio Turrado, ed ., 4th ed. , se ri es Bibliateca d e autores Christianos , Madrid , 1975, the last verse is forty , but in English ve rsions of this chapter, th e verse is thirt y-six. Karl Rahn e r , " Last Things , " Sa cram entum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Th eology (New York: H e rd e r a nd H e rd er , 1969) , 274-2 76. Th ese da tes a re found on the d edi cation page of Valaska Skala right after th e titlepage a nd fir st illu stration , and for Skala Krest'a nska on th e prese nt titl e- page. Thi s letter is found at th e ve ry beginning of the bound autograph of Skala Krest'anska. Fo r a de tai led stud y ofGavlovic's a uthorship of th ese writings, see Sabo, pp. 11-15. From my st ud y of the sy mm etri cal structure of Skala Krest'anska , it is evident that th e re were probab ly at least nin e illustration s, four of which are mi ssing, and th a t some of the text which introduces th e k on cept y on d ea th and those on judgment is also mi ss in g. Bes id es th e numerical sy mboli sm ex pl a in ed in the subsequent text of m y article , furth e r num eri cal sy mboli sm in V a/ask a Skala is discussed in Sabo, pp. 124-28. The Gospel a nd th e Bibli cal book Apocalypse a ttribut ed to St. John th e Eva n geli st had a signifi can t influ e nce on th e format a nd mat e rial co nt ent of V a/aska Skala as we ll as on those of ot he r writings by Ga vlo vic: Sabo , pp. 114- 2 1. In " D arowan i Ku uzi tku twemu, " lin es 37-38 , Gavlovii' spec ifi ed twe nt y- one noty, ye t he added a twenty-second which he called " Pridawek or Additi on. " It is m y strong belief that Gavlov ic's spec ifi c in sistence o n twe nt y-o ne noty and hi s present at ion of th e m with Biblical shepherds introdu cin g eac h infl uenced J a n Holl y's stru cturin g of hi s Selanky or Pasto rals where th ere a re twent y-o ne pastoral so ng subdivi sion s; lik e Gav lov ic, Holl y begins hi s twe nt y-first (a nd las t) pastoral with referen ce to th e �90 " " " " " ' 0 " " SLOVAKIA Bet hl ehem shepherds . In a let ter of May 6, 183 1, Holly spoke of Gavlovic and his Valaska Skala: " Lette r #32 to M a rtin Hamuljak ," Jozef Ambrus , ed ., Korespondencia jan Holleho (M a rtin : M a tica slovenska , 1967), p . 74. The Selanky began to be published in 1835 some four years after the publicati on of R ese tka's ed ition of Valaska Skala: Encyklopedia Slovenska, II (1978) , sub verbo " Holl y, Jan. " An ed ition of the Selanky with a modern verse rendition was published by Tatran in J 970 as volume 22 of its se ri es Citanie studuju cej mladeze . Sabo , p . 125, note 13 1, a nd p . 126. Also, J ean-Loui s D ' Aragon, S.J ., " The Apocalypse ,'' The J erome Biblical Com m entary (Englewood Cliffs, N .J .: PrenticeH all , In c., 1968), p. 480. Sabo, p. 126 , not e 133: " In each n ota , the introducto ry section a nd first kon cept ac tu ally cover th ese three autograph pages, yet Gavlovic pagin ated th em on the third page as a sin gle Arabic-numbered page . Thus, acco rdin g to thi s peculi a r pagination , each nota has thirty pages. And this m eans th at the twenty-on e noty spec ifi ed by Gavlovic have six hundred and thirty pages or half of the 1260 , the number of textu al units that a ppear o n th ese 630 pages." As regards th e co ncept o f the " last times ," see Karl Lowith , " The Biblical View of Hi sto~y, " Meaning in History (C hi cago and London : Un iversity of Ch icago Press, 1949 , Phoenix paperback, 1957), p . 188 . As rega rds ,,alasi, for an English ource see Sa b o, pp . 37-38; and for Slovak sources see J a n Podolak, " The P asto ral Cu ltu re of th e Ca rpathian as a Subject of an Ethnological Study," Ethnologica slavica , 1 ( 1969), especial ly 70-77, a nd Encyklopedia Sloven ska , V I ( 1982), sub vcrbo " Valasi," " Valasska l'udova piesen," and '' Valasske pravo." Old so urces a bout valasi , their culture, a nd their wa y of li vin g a re: And rej K i!v ulj ak , " Val as i na Slove n sku: Ora vs ky pod za mok ," Sbornik n a pocest' jozefa Skulte1yh o (Turciansky Svii ty M a rtin : M at ica slovenska , 1933), pp . 336 -374; Karel K ad lec, Valasi a valassk e pravo v zem ich slovansk ych a uh erskych (Pra ha: Ces ka akadcmia cisare Frantiska J osefa, 19 16) ; V aclav C halo upec ky, Valasi na S lovensku (Praha: Slovansky u stav , 1947); a ndjosef Macurek, Valasi v za padnfch K a1pa1ech v 15. - 18 scole1f (Ost rava: K rajske naklad a telstvf, 1959). Th e ca pital R oman numera l is th e no/a number; th e sm a ll Roman num eral is th e k on cep1 numb er in thar 1101 a. Beca use of space limit ;itions , th e side- m otto here has bee n placed a bove the k oncep1. In th e text of Valask a Skala . Gav lov ic also in corporated fo lk ex press ions such as prove rbs and sayings that ca n be fo un d in ex tant compil a ti ons o f suc h ex pre. siuns as we ll ·as ones or his own ('rca ti u n ; sec Sa bo , pp . 168- 171, and Vojtcch Sarluska, " Piit's to prfslovf, " Li1er,im ya rchf, - 1975 . 12 (Mart in: M a ti ca sloven ska, 1976), 135- 167. Webs 1er·.- New C ollcgiait· Diction ary , 1961, su/.J v(·rbo ' ·Sri gma. " Sabo, p. 127, note 134; J ea n-Loui s D ' Aragon , " Th e Apondy p;e," p. 47 8 . In Skala K res1'anska , a couplet-m o tto or vary in g leng rh rs found aboH: a koncepl with o ne a nd nea rl y a lwa ys two re lated mot toes on the side . Beca use o f spate limitation s, I hav e placed in o rd er th e first a nd sclond side- m ottoe for th e koncep1 above the couplet-mono found at th e head of the koncepl . �SLOVAKIA 91 ,. Th e New Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( l 967), sub verbo " Lawrence Justini an , St ." My study of Gavlovic was greatl y facilitied b y Docent J ozef Minarik of th e Filozofi cka faku lta Univerzity Kom enskeho a nd Gi zela Slavkovska of the Litera rn ovedny Ustav Slove nskej Akadem ie Vied , both of Bra tisla va, while I was on th e exchange program of th e Intern ati onal R esea rch and Exchanges Board and on a Fulbright-H ays grant in 1975 -76. This pape r is based on a docto ral disse rt ation, " Slovak Didact ic Poetry: G avlovic's Va/aska S kala " at Ya le Univers ity, 1978. Prese nted in Pa nel 128 , "Slovak Litera ture as a Mirror of the Na tional Awakenin g," a t th e AAASS convention in Philadelphi a on 8 November 1980. � 80 SLOVAKIA Hugolfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska Gerald J . Sabo For most Slavists, the eighteenth century in Slovak history and culture remains pretty much unknown territory. Even among specialists in Slovak studies, that era m ay bring to mind simply Anton Bernol ak and possibly J a n Baltaza r M agin . Bernolak should certa inly stand out as the first cod ifer of the Slovak language , a nd Magin deserves more than a few brief sentences for hi s de fense of Slovak ethnic a nd cultural rights . Y et m any other writers from the e ighteenth ce ntury deserve not onl y mention but substantial comm entary , because their writings in the Slovak vernacular before Bernolak's codificat ion exem plified and promoted Slovak consciousness. Amon g these a uthors a prominent place is occupied by the Franciscan priest Hugolfn Gavlovic. Gavlovic was born in 17 12 in Czarny Dunaj ec, Poland, yet he spent virtually his entire life in Slovak-speaking areas. 2 H e di ed in 1787, th e year Bernolak publicly began his codification effort s. G avlovic considered himself ethnically Polish. Still , as far as can be ascertained, the only Slavic la n gu age in which h e wrote was the contemporary Slovak vernacul ar. In a number of hi s writings, he even explicity expres~ed his awareness of writing in Slovak. 3 Gavlovic's co n scious Slovak writing but Polish e thnicity is more th an some curiously interest ing point. I t is especially strikin g again st the b ackground of in tense nationalistic fr iction at that time . This nationalisti c frict ion was between Slovaks a nd various ethnic gro u ps, but in particula r th e Hun garians. The effects of th is fri ct ion reached even into Franciscan foundations and affected th e governan ce of Franciscan eccles iastical provin ces. 4 Gavlovic began writing in 1745 after he had finished his Franciscan course of studies and h ad become a priest. From 1745 until h is death in 1 787 , he composed nearly twenty distin ct pieces of Slovak writin g in prose o r poetry . Among his poetic writings, the most prominent are Valask a Skala (Th e Shepherd ' s School) and Skala Krest'anska (A C h ris1 �SLOVAKIA 81 tian School). Though Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska are di stinct pieces of writing, they should be treated together for a number of reasons. Both are written for the same audience - Franciscan T e rti aries,6 that is , lay persons who pattern their lives according to prescript s of Franciscan spirituality and traditions . Also , in both compositions is found a poetic form peculiar only to them : Gavlovic called this form koncept. 7 A koncept consists of twelve verses or six rhymed couplets ; each verse has fourteen syllables with a caesura-like pause after the eighth sylla bl e. Usual ly , some rhymed couplets of varying length are related to a koncept . At times, the various pictorial illustrations in both Gavlovic "schools" are connected with kon cepty as well as other verse units . 8 Thus , in Valaska Skala but especially in Skala Krest'anska , the format of the koncept a nd other verse units could be said to resem ble emblematic poetry: a verse-motto, a versified elaboration of the motto, and the related illustration. 9 Besides similarities in a udience and poetic units, the two "schools " are explicitly related to each oth er by Gavlovic him self. According to Gavlovic, Val ask a Skala was written to foster the reader ' s " moral ch aracter, " Skol a Krest'ansk a his "holiness." 10 Gavlovic has also described Valaska Skala as "cheese," someth in g that would n ourish th e reader. In its author 's view, Skala Krest'an sk a represents a " pleasant sce nt '' from a b ouqu et of fl owers. 11 Clearly , Gavlovic expressed a contrast between the physical a nd external against the non-physical a nd internal. Also , the epigraphs fo r the two "schools" show their contrasting emphases and areas of con centration . For Valask a Skala, it is the H oratian utile-dulci - the practically beneficial made palatably pleasant ; this epigraph aptly expresses the mundane yet religiously instructive character of Val ask a Sk ala . 11 T he epigraph for Skala Krest'anska is the last verse from th e seventh chapte r of the Biblical book Sirach: " R emember the last thin gs, a nd you will never sin ." 13 From a reading of the two ''schools,'' it is evide n t that for Gavlovic, they represented the two states in Christia n spiri tualit y: th e act ive an d contemplative ways of livin g. In the active life, as in Val ask a Skol a, the goal of a Christian is the practice of good morals and virtues a nd all this entail s. In the co n templative life , as in Skala Krest'anska , the aim is the conte mpl ation of God , sp iritu al matters , espec iall y of th e '' four last things,'' d eath, judgment, hell , and heaven. 14 I n effect, then, through th ese writings Gavlovic offered the �82 SLOVAKIA reader a sort of program for good Christian living and thinking . In appreciatin g these two "schools," the Christian reader could then set about reali zing the active a nd contemplative ways of living in his earthly existe n ce. Gavlovic completed Valaska Skala in March , 1755, and Skala Krest'an ska in August, 17 58. 15 At what dates he began to write each "sch ool " can not at present be d etermin ed. In the letter of the ecclesiastical cen sor for Skala Krest'an sk a, Gavlovic is n amed as the a uthor. 16 This identification has in turn contributed to verifying Gavlovic 's autho rship of Valaska Skala. Val ask a Skala and Skala Krest'anska are extensive pieces of poetry. Valaska Skala comprises nearly e ighteen th ousand verses, virtually all of which are fourteen syll ables in length ; there are also some twentyfour hundred verses of varyin g length for the couplet- mottoes above the kan cepty as well as numerous related mottoes beside the k ancep ty. In Valaska Skala, there are twenty-seven illu strations, but only nine in Skala Krest'an ska. 17 The mass of verses and illustrations in each ''school'' is a rranged accord in g to schemes wh ere symmetry and numerical sym bolism play d efinite roles. 18 Valask a Skala has three major divisions: first, an introductory portion with twelve parts of varying length ; second, a main body with twentytwo subdivisions known as naty (nata in the sin gul ar); a nd third, a co ncluding portion with two parts of unequal length . The introductory and concludin g portions - virtually equal in length - fram e the main body . In the m a in body, the predominant textual unit is the kancept ; in each of the twenty-two subdivions or naty , there are fifty-nin e kancepty. The major motif of Valaska Skala is J esus the Good Shepherd as portrayed in St. J ohn 's Gospel. 19 In the main body , Gavlovic presented a series of stories on Biblical shepherds. Th ese stories are part of the introdu cto ry narrative for each of the first twenty-one naty . Abel is the first shepherd prese nted, and the shepherds of Be thlehem are the subjects that introdu ce th e twenty-first nata. Th e twenty-second nata has no introdu ctory n arrat ive but begins with a kancept about the resurrected Christ; the risen J esus is comm issionin g Peter to feed his sheep, the Christian Church . otably, then, the lin e of Biblical shephe rds in the twenty-two naty forms a chronologically linear presentation of Biblical history - from the era of Adam through that of the resurrected Christ, the Second Adam. T he two concluding sections of Valask a Skala are �SLOVAKIA 83 on death and the Last judgment; they aptly complete the Christian timespectrum presented in the preceding main body. The most prominent instance of numerical symbolism in Valaska Skala involves the first twenty-one naty of the main body. Gavlovic was very explicit that Valaska Skala comprised only twenty-one naty. 10 Yet he included a twenty-second nata, and the two concluding sections on death and the Last Judgment. The explanation for this is based on the symbolic number of 1260 from the Biblical book Apocalypse. Symbolically, the number 1260 represents a time period when evil and extreme suffering are the lot of God's people ; this period is to be followed by a new era under the leadership of Christ. 21 In Valaska Skala, 1260 is the number of textual units in the first twenty-one naty . The last kancept of nata twenty-one clearly expresses a definite finality: Buch ge Alpha y Omega wsseckeho stworeni, A bez neho w clowekovi ni c d obre ho neni* On ge sprawedliweg laski wzdy horicy plamen , Nech ho dussa ma milu ge Az na weki Amen . (XXI , lix , 1-2 , 11-12) God is the Alpha and Omega of all creati on , And without him there is nothing of goodness in a person• He is always the burning flam e of just a ffec tion , M ay my soul love him Until forever Amen. Even the pagination of the first twenty-one naty contributes to understanding their extent according to the symbolic number 1260. 11 These naty are that period of suffering and patient waiting before the reign of Christ. Aptly, then, the twenty-second nata begins with the resurrected Christ and his future vicar Peter. This new era is traditionally known as the "last times," that era from Christ 's resurrection until his Second Coming at the end of the world and of time. ll The next crucial moments in a Christian 's existence during the "last times" are his death and the Last Judgment. These two moments form the them es for the concluding sections of Valaska Skala . In effect, then , Gavlovic also used a specific number of textual units to present symbolically his Christian view of time and history. In the main body of Valaska Skala, Gavlovic presented much more than Biblical material. In the introductory narratives for the naty, Gavlovic occasionally included comments on valasi, i.e. the Slovak mountain shepherds who represent a distinctive group in Slovak history and culture. 24 The valasi in Valaska Skala are contemporary figures who �84 SLOVAKIA illustrate actions that foster or d etract from proper Christian conduct. In the nearly thirteen hundred koncepty , there is a range of topics all to show what helps make a good Christian citizen of this world and the next. Whatever has to do with the total human b eing and Christian is treated - social deportment , catechetical matters, virtues, vices , and points of health . Nothing seems too trivial for discussion. Examples of the more religious kon cept as well as of the more mundane type will illustrate this, as the following two show : 25 Powinn os t P as tyru • Kryst u s poru ca swe owce Petrow i k pase ni , By wssech podl e sweg moznos ti priwad zal k Spaseni . K azdy wrchni na podda nych musy sta rost miti , Aby ned al od Spase ni fa dn emu bluditi. Otec di tkam , Pan podd a nym , gazd a sweg celedi* Z poru ceni Krystoweho nech uz itek hl edi . An o y ty twoge g Du sse pastyrem bi t musyss, Ga k gu stratiss gakokoli w , hrozny Sud okus iss . Co mu ze byt ku Spaseni ginym , nezanedbag, Al e negprw n a twu Duss u neglepssi pozo r dag . G ak twu Du ssu , a y gin ych priwedess k Spa seni , Budess Srdcy Krys towemu giste k potesse ni. (XXII, i) R esponsibility of the Shepherd Chri st entrusts his sheep to Peter for past ure, So th at he would bring them all to Salvation . Each superi or must have conce rn for th ose subj ec t to him , So tha t he would not permit any of th em to stray . A fa ther fo r his children , a master for his se rfs, a householder for his se rvants* Let him see k benefi t because of the cha rge of C hrist. Yes a nd you must be the shepherd of your Soul , If you so mehow lose it , you will taste a terribl e Jud gm ent. Don ' t neglect wh at can be to others' Salvat ion , But first give the bes t attenti on to yo ur Soul. If you bring your soul and oth ers to Salvati on , You will surely be a consola ti on to C hrist 's H ea rt . Pan owi chud obn y N ech neni • podobn y Ml ce t pred Pa nem Slu ssy gak a men T ak obcu ge bohac z chud ym , gako wlk z baranem , Gestli mu zess , nem eg nikd y spolec nost z pa nem . G ak te vola k sobe , nechot, • kd yz budess negiti, Gak se odd aliss od neho , budess pokog m iti . Kd yz b ud ess s nim , tehdy nemlu w wsselico slobodne , Newe r mn ohim reca m geho, snat m lu wi podwodn e. Bude te mn ohimi slowmi p robowa t libezne , �SLOVAKIA 85 Dokud negake tagemstw i od teba newez ne . Bude se te usmiwagic wsselico spytowa t , A twe recy w swogeg hl awe pilne pa matowa t . Gak od teba zw i to co chce , hn et twa r swu promeni , Zabyge te z twym gaz ikem krem twe ho domnen i. (XV II , xxv) May a poor ma n not be like to a lord/ master It is as fit as an Amen to be silent before a lord/ master A ri ch man associates with a poor ma n just as a wolf wit h a shee p, If you ca n , don't ever have a ny dealin gs wi th a lord/ mas ter . When he calls you to him , don ' t go , • when you wi ll n ot go, When you distance yourself from him , you 'II have peace. W hen you wi ll be with him , th en don ' t speak all kind s of thi ngs freely, Don ' t believe hi s man y speec hes/wo rds , pe rh a ps he spea ks decept ively. H e wi ll tes t/ probe you kindly with many words, Unt il he h as taken some secrets from you. H e will smilingly ask you a ll so rt s of thin gs, And wi ll recall laboriousl y/we ll your speeches in his head. As soo n as/ when he learns from you wha.t he wants, at once his face will chan ge, H e will kill you with your tongue beyond anything you can imagine. Compared to Valaska Skala , Skala Krest'anska h as a simpl er compositional arran gement. This is probably because Skala Krest'an sk a conce rns only four m atte rs: death, judgment, hell , and heave n - the traditional "four las t things ." Yet , as in Valaska Skala, the kan cepty of Skala Krest'anska are crucial to a ppreciating the symmetry a nd numerical symbolism in this composition. Skala Krest'an ska has two maj o r divisions: an introductory po rti on of four parts that vary in le n gth , a nd a main body of four equ al subdivisions th at are simila r in format. Each of the fo ur subdiv isions in the main body h as o ne of the "four last things " as its guiding theme. In Valaska Skala , J esus the Good Shepherd had his counterpart in the good contemporary valach or shepherd. In Skala Krest'anska, the reader is also presented with the hum a n counterp a rt of Christ - St. Franc is of Assisi with stigmata. The stigmata are '' marks resem blin g the wounds on the cru cified body of C hrist [o n the hand s, the fee t , a nd the right side o f C hrist's chest; these marks are ] believed to have bee n supe rnat u rall y impressed upon the bod ies of certain pe rso ns , as St. Francis of Assisi.' ' 26 Among the illustrations and texts about the '' fo ur last things' ' are also illustrations of St. Fra ncis with st igmata as he refl ects on each of the "four last things ." The escha tology presented in text and illustrations is further empha- �86 SLOVAKIA sized b y the numerical sy mbolism used in com posin g the four subdivisions o f the m ain body. Each subdivision has k on cepty on 144 pages. Indeed , in each subdivision , only the pages with koncepty are numbered; the rem a ining pages in each subdivi sion and the pages of the introductory port ion are not numbered. The number 144 is related to the sym bolic number 144 ,000 ; thi s latter number sym bolically represents the number of Christians saved at the end of time as noted in the Biblical boo k Apocalypse . 17 Thus , the apocalyptic number of Christians saved - 144 ,000 - is associated with th e 144 pages of kon cepty for each of the "four last things ." For G avlovic , the readin g of these koncepty was to help number th e reader among those saved . ·After all , that was the primary aspiration of Gavlovic not only for his reader but also for himself. Th e very last kon cept - the end - of Skala Krest'anska clearly conveys this othe r-worldly view offered by G avlovic to his reader : Prigd k nam kralows twi twe" Co nce ptus hie S. Laurentij Ju stin* D ag na m n ebe weeny Boze Nassa mdl ost k nemu nemoze Otce nass, ktery sy w Nebi, Prigd k nam kralows twi twe, Nebo k dobrem u cyn eni Srdce w nas ge mrtwe. Zustawame w ned osta tku , a y w leniwosti, Nemu ze me dostat nebe bez twogeg mil os ti . M i do nebe nepri gde me; zosta neme w bide, Gak kra lows twi twe z tweg wu le k na m bidnym neprigde . Eliasse na ohni wem woze wzals do neb e, Y nas prigmi w tweg milosti , to prosime tebe. Zaden ku Krystu negide, gak ho netahn ess ty, Tahni n as w p rowaskach laski , neb sy we wssem Swaty. Abi sme spaseni byli , prigd twe kralowstwi k n am, A ty Boze az na we ki panu g n ad nami sam . (0 Nebi , 288) Your kingdom co me to us This kon ceptlco nce pt (from] St. Law rence Ju stinia n" Give us heave n ete rnal God Our wea kn ess cannot reach/approach it Our Fa ther , who a re in H eave n , Your kin gd om com e to us, For our H eart is dead to good d eeds. W e rema in want ing , a nd in laz iness, W e cannot att ain heave n without yo ur grace. W e will not reach heave n ; we will re main in misery, If you r kin gdom does not com e to wretched u s by your will. Elias was ra ised to heave n on a fi ery ve hicl e/cha ri ot, R eceive also us in your grace, thi s we implore you . No one co mes to C hri st , if you do not draw him yourself, Draw us in the bonds of love/affection , for you are H oly in everythin g. �SLOVAKIA 87 T hat we mi ght be saved, yo ur kin gdom co m e to us , And you God yourself rul e ove r u s fo reve r . A s two pieces of Slovak writing, V alaska Skol a and Skol a Krest'anska d o di splay som e litera ry ima gina tion in their compositional a rra n gem ent and co nten t. Y et the ir purposes wer e n o t belles lettres ente rta inment bu t the fosterin g of the C h r istia n read er 's m oral ch a racter a nd holiness. Their m or ali stic a nd religiou s ch a racters sh ould n o t , a nd in truth , do no t d e trac t fro m their place in Slovak histo ry a nd culture. T h ey remain p rominen t a nd substantive exampl es of con sciously Slovak writing lo n g before Slovaks were al lowed to exe rcise the ir righ ts as a di st inct Slavic peopl e. NOTES ' An example of thi s lim ited view of Slovak writing is the first sentence of Pete r Brock 's otherwise good study The Slovak Nat ional Awakening (T oron to: Uni ve rsity of Toronto Press, I 976), p . 3 : " A Slovak ve rn acul a r was fir st used for literary purposes in the 1780s when it replaced C zec h a m ong the Slovak Cat hol ic in tell ige nts ia.'' ' For a more deta iled biography of Gavlovic and a d iscuss ion of his writin gs, see Gerald J. Sabo, "Slovak Did actic Poetry: Gav lovic 's Valask a Skala. Volum e I: Introdu ctory Study. Volume II : Edition of V alask a Skala ," Di ss. Yale 1978, l , 1-8. This is the only English source fo r thi s information. Signi fi cant Slovak sources on Gavlovic and hi s w ritin gs a re: Celes tin Le pacek , " Zivot a dic lo P . H ugolfna G avlovica, " V yrocne zpravy sukromneho gymnazia rad u sv . Franc isk a v M ala ck ach , 5- 10 ( 1932 -3 7); Lepace k, " Zlomky z d'alsfch Gavlovifovych ruko pisov ," Literarno-historick y sbornik M atice slovenskej , 2-3 , Nos. 1-2 ( 1945-46), 79-84 ; J ozef' Min ari k , " Hu golfn Gav lovic: Va lask a skola, mravuv stodola (l itera rn o-esteti cky rozbo r 16 vyb ranyc h bas nf)," Tri lirerarn o-esrerick e rozbory zo starsej slovenskej Jic era tury (Bratis lava: Slovenske pedagogic ke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1973) , pp. 61-98; G izela Slavkovsk a, "Gavlov icova Valaska Skala." eq ui valen t of a docto ra l dissert a ti on ( Bra tislava: U niv e rzita Komens keho , prob. 1972); Slavkovs ka , " Gavlov ifova Va laska Skala," S lovcnska lic era ru ra, 2 1, o. 5 ( 1974), 459-480. ' In Valaska Skala , in eight inst ances (fi ve times " na slowenski gazik . " two times " na slowenski , '· a nd once '' w slowensk em gazik u "), Gav lov ic expressed th e phrase '' in the Slovak lang uage" when he tra nslat ed a H e brew Bibli cal name in1 0 its Slovak meaning : nota I. introductory na rrati ve, line 33: V. int rodu ctory narrative, 9: VIII. in trodu ctory narrativ e. 3; X. introductory na rrative. 49; XI. in troduuory na rrativ e, 7; X III , int roductory na rrati ve. 1: X IV , introdu cto ry narrative. 6; a nd X IX, in troclu c1ory narrat ivc , 7. Linguist s agree tha t Gavlovi c wrote in Slova k , e.g. l.'..ubomfr 6urovic, "Slovak," The Slavic Lircrar_v Languages: Fonnacion and Dnwlopmenr. Alex a nder Sc hen ker and Edwa rd Stankiewicz , eds . ( New H aven: Yale Concilium o n Intern a ti onal and Arca Studies, 1980), p. 214. Of this la nguage in genera l, Eugen Paul inv wrote: �88 SLOVAKIA The Slova ki zing process went so far that by th e end of th e fir st half of the 18th ce ntury, we alread y have among Slovak Catholics a sufficiently firmly normali zed national written language whi ch on account of esse nti al deviation s from Czech ca nnot be called on ly Slovakized Czech. N or mu st it be disting uish ed from Czech only on th e lin guistic side. Import antly, that is, n ot even its users and writers con sidered it as Czech. Th ey considered it, h ere more, ch ere less explicic y, as ch e dom escic Slovak language. The term " J esuit Slovak " was at one time coined for this language. This d es ignation would perhaps m eta pho ri call y do just ice to th e fa ct that thi s language was used in Catholic writin g. H oweve r , it is necessa ry, of course, to reali ze th at thi s la nguage did no t origin a te in Slovak Catholic writing , but that Catholics took it over as esse ntiall y set, and that it was u sed as cultural W es t-Sl ovak eve n in oth er functions. Further one must reali ze that in Catholic writing, not onl y J esuits used this language, even if th ese la tt er were th e most act ive in the rc-Ca tholi cization of Slovaki a. (Dejin y spisovnej slovenciny, I [ 1966 ; rpt. Brati slava : Slove nske pedagogicke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1971], p. 78. Ita li cs a nd tra nsla ti on a re min e .) ' See Sabo, pp . 50-56 , for nati onalistic friction in gene ral, and pp. 58-62 for nati onalisti c fri ct io n in Franciscan founda ti ons. Also , Ysevlad J oze f Gajdos, 0 . F . M. , Franciskani v slovens½ej lit eracure (C levela nd : First Catholic Slova k Union, 1979), pp . 23-26. In this work, Gajdos also has a sho rt biograph y of Gavlovi c, a brief co mm ent a ry o n so m e of his writings, a li st of m ost of hi s works , and a sm all bibli ogra phy on G av lovic. Thi s book co nt a ins a wealth of m a terial on Francisca n trai nin g and activiti es in Slovak areas. 5 Both m a nu script s, actually a ut og raphs b y Gavlov ic him self, a re prese rved in th e Lite rarny archiv M a ti ce slovenskej (LAMS) in Martin unde r th e signa ture B89 for V alask a Skala and MJ3 3 1 for Skala Krest'a nska. V alask a S k ala ha had three editi o n s. In th e first editi o n do ne in two volum es in 1830-3 1, th e auto gra ph was d evasta tin gly altered allegedl y by Mi cha l R eset ka acco rdin g to th e lin gui st ic no rm s of Bernolak-S lova k , bern olaccin a . In th e seco nd edi ti o n of 197 1, Rudolf Kraj covic, th e ed itor , re prod uced the tex t in questionab le fo rm at a nd form , but most unfortunately deleted some forty-seven percent of th e aut ogra ph tex t. The third edition is a reprintin g o f th e Kraj cov ic second ed itio n , but now with som e fift y- li ve perce nt of th e autograph text deleted. Non e of the pictori al illu stra tion s of Valaska Skala was reprodu ced in a ny o f th e three ed iti ons. As rega rd s Skala Kresc'a nsk a, a few selections - some two perce nt of th e a ut ogra ph text - ca n be found in Gizela Slavkovska's edited workja miluji, nesmfm provfdaci ... : Ancol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: T a tra n , 1977) , pp . 275-30 1. 6 Th is is made clea r in Valaska Skala in th e dedication immed ia tely after th e titl epage a nd first illustra ti o n as we ll as in the int rodu cto ry part " D arowa ni Ku uiicku cwemu ," line 57; and in Skala Kresc'a n ska, o n th e titl e page a nd in th e introducto ry part " Darowani Trecimu R adu Seraflin skemu ," pages 13-1 6 of th e aut ogra ph (wi th titl e-page as page one). Fo r possible reasons for Gavlovic dedi ca tin g these two works to Tertiaries, see Sabo , pp . 66-7 1. ' For details on Gav lovic ' s kon cepc form, see, Sabo, pp . 86-94. A koncepc is also found �SLOVAKIA ' 9 ' 0 " " 13 14 15 16 11 " 19 ' 0 89 in Gavlovi i''s "last will a nd testament, " and an inco mplete one (one sentence short) among fragm entary autograph s of Gavlovic. In my thesis , I discuss the a rtist of the illustrations for Valaska Skala on pages 79-82. Subsequ entl y, Slavkovska studied th e same m a tt er and published her co mments in " ' Tajomstva ' prveho vydania Valaskej Skoly ," Slovenska literatura , 25, No. 6 ( 1978) , 663-669 . John L. Lievsay , "Embl em ," Princeton Encyclopedia of Poet1y and Poetics, enlarged edition , Alex Preminger et al. ed. (Princeton: Princeton Uni ve rsity Press, 1974). Bes id es variou s pl aces in V alaska Skala , wh e re Gavlovic speaks of Valaska Skala in these terms, he co mpa res the two "school s" in Skala Krest'anska on page fourtee n with titl e-page as page one in " D aro wani Tretimu Radu S eraffinskemu ," lin es 45 -46. Valaska Skala, "Darowani Ku uiitku twemu ," line 44 ; Skala Krest'ansk a, " Darowani Tretimu Radu S eraffin sk emu ," lines 33-34. On the title-page of Valaska Skala , Gavlovic cited :Omne tulit pun ctum , qui miscuit utile dulci (H e ha s won eve ry vote who has bl end ed profit a nd pleas ure . .. ), verse 343, H. Ru shton Fairclough , trans., Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (London and Cambridge, Mass. : William H eine m a n , Ltd. , 1970), pp. 478-479. For other pl aces wh ere G av lovic ex pressed th e se nse of this Horati a n ve rse, see Sabo , p. 68 , note 101. On the page immediat ely preceding th e titl e-page, it is cited in La tin a nd in a Slovak translation. In th e Vulgate ve rsion th a t I u sed , Alberto Colun ga a nd La urentio Turrado, ed ., 4th ed. , se ri es Bibliateca d e autores Christianos , Madrid , 1975, the last verse is forty , but in English ve rsions of this chapter, th e verse is thirt y-six. Karl Rahn e r , " Last Things , " Sa cram entum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Th eology (New York: H e rd e r a nd H e rd er , 1969) , 274-2 76. Th ese da tes a re found on the d edi cation page of Valaska Skala right after th e titlepage a nd fir st illu stration , and for Skala Krest'a nska on th e prese nt titl e- page. Thi s letter is found at th e ve ry beginning of the bound autograph of Skala Krest'anska. Fo r a de tai led stud y ofGavlovic's a uthorship of th ese writings, see Sabo, pp. 11-15. From my st ud y of the sy mm etri cal structure of Skala Krest'anska , it is evident that th e re were probab ly at least nin e illustration s, four of which are mi ssing, and th a t some of the text which introduces th e k on cept y on d ea th and those on judgment is also mi ss in g. Bes id es th e numerical sy mboli sm ex pl a in ed in the subsequent text of m y article , furth e r num eri cal sy mboli sm in V a/ask a Skala is discussed in Sabo, pp. 124-28. The Gospel a nd th e Bibli cal book Apocalypse a ttribut ed to St. John th e Eva n geli st had a signifi can t influ e nce on th e format a nd mat e rial co nt ent of V a/aska Skala as we ll as on those of ot he r writings by Ga vlo vic: Sabo , pp. 114- 2 1. In " D arowan i Ku uzi tku twemu, " lin es 37-38 , Gavlovii' spec ifi ed twe nt y- one noty, ye t he added a twenty-second which he called " Pridawek or Additi on. " It is m y strong belief that Gavlov ic's spec ifi c in sistence o n twe nt y-o ne noty and hi s present at ion of th e m with Biblical shepherds introdu cin g eac h infl uenced J a n Holl y's stru cturin g of hi s Selanky or Pasto rals where th ere a re twent y-o ne pastoral so ng subdivi sion s; lik e Gav lov ic, Holl y begins hi s twe nt y-first (a nd las t) pastoral with referen ce to th e �90 " " " " " ' 0 " " SLOVAKIA Bet hl ehem shepherds . In a let ter of May 6, 183 1, Holly spoke of Gavlovic and his Valaska Skala: " Lette r #32 to M a rtin Hamuljak ," Jozef Ambrus , ed ., Korespondencia jan Holleho (M a rtin : M a tica slovenska , 1967), p . 74. The Selanky began to be published in 1835 some four years after the publicati on of R ese tka's ed ition of Valaska Skala: Encyklopedia Slovenska, II (1978) , sub verbo " Holl y, Jan. " An ed ition of the Selanky with a modern verse rendition was published by Tatran in J 970 as volume 22 of its se ri es Citanie studuju cej mladeze . Sabo , p . 125, note 13 1, a nd p . 126. Also, J ean-Loui s D ' Aragon, S.J ., " The Apocalypse ,'' The J erome Biblical Com m entary (Englewood Cliffs, N .J .: PrenticeH all , In c., 1968), p. 480. Sabo, p. 126 , not e 133: " In each n ota , the introducto ry section a nd first kon cept ac tu ally cover th ese three autograph pages, yet Gavlovic pagin ated th em on the third page as a sin gle Arabic-numbered page . Thus, acco rdin g to thi s peculi a r pagination , each nota has thirty pages. And this m eans th at the twenty-on e noty spec ifi ed by Gavlovic have six hundred and thirty pages or half of the 1260 , the number of textu al units that a ppear o n th ese 630 pages." As regards th e co ncept o f the " last times ," see Karl Lowith , " The Biblical View of Hi sto~y, " Meaning in History (C hi cago and London : Un iversity of Ch icago Press, 1949 , Phoenix paperback, 1957), p . 188 . As rega rds ,,alasi, for an English ource see Sa b o, pp . 37-38; and for Slovak sources see J a n Podolak, " The P asto ral Cu ltu re of th e Ca rpathian as a Subject of an Ethnological Study," Ethnologica slavica , 1 ( 1969), especial ly 70-77, a nd Encyklopedia Sloven ska , V I ( 1982), sub vcrbo " Valasi," " Valasska l'udova piesen," and '' Valasske pravo." Old so urces a bout valasi , their culture, a nd their wa y of li vin g a re: And rej K i!v ulj ak , " Val as i na Slove n sku: Ora vs ky pod za mok ," Sbornik n a pocest' jozefa Skulte1yh o (Turciansky Svii ty M a rtin : M at ica slovenska , 1933), pp . 336 -374; Karel K ad lec, Valasi a valassk e pravo v zem ich slovansk ych a uh erskych (Pra ha: Ces ka akadcmia cisare Frantiska J osefa, 19 16) ; V aclav C halo upec ky, Valasi na S lovensku (Praha: Slovansky u stav , 1947); a ndjosef Macurek, Valasi v za padnfch K a1pa1ech v 15. - 18 scole1f (Ost rava: K rajske naklad a telstvf, 1959). Th e ca pital R oman numera l is th e no/a number; th e sm a ll Roman num eral is th e k on cep1 numb er in thar 1101 a. Beca use of space limit ;itions , th e side- m otto here has bee n placed a bove the k oncep1. In th e text of Valask a Skala . Gav lov ic also in corporated fo lk ex press ions such as prove rbs and sayings that ca n be fo un d in ex tant compil a ti ons o f suc h ex pre. siuns as we ll ·as ones or his own ('rca ti u n ; sec Sa bo , pp . 168- 171, and Vojtcch Sarluska, " Piit's to prfslovf, " Li1er,im ya rchf, - 1975 . 12 (Mart in: M a ti ca sloven ska, 1976), 135- 167. Webs 1er·.- New C ollcgiait· Diction ary , 1961, su/.J v(·rbo ' ·Sri gma. " Sabo, p. 127, note 134; J ea n-Loui s D ' Aragon , " Th e Apondy p;e," p. 47 8 . In Skala K res1'anska , a couplet-m o tto or vary in g leng rh rs found aboH: a koncepl with o ne a nd nea rl y a lwa ys two re lated mot toes on the side . Beca use o f spate limitation s, I hav e placed in o rd er th e first a nd sclond side- m ottoe for th e koncep1 above the couplet-mono found at th e head of the koncepl . �SLOVAKIA 91 ,. Th e New Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( l 967), sub verbo " Lawrence Justini an , St ." My study of Gavlovic was greatl y facilitied b y Docent J ozef Minarik of th e Filozofi cka faku lta Univerzity Kom enskeho a nd Gi zela Slavkovska of the Litera rn ovedny Ustav Slove nskej Akadem ie Vied , both of Bra tisla va, while I was on th e exchange program of th e Intern ati onal R esea rch and Exchanges Board and on a Fulbright-H ays grant in 1975 -76. This pape r is based on a docto ral disse rt ation, " Slovak Didact ic Poetry: G avlovic's Va/aska S kala " at Ya le Univers ity, 1978. Prese nted in Pa nel 128 , "Slovak Litera ture as a Mirror of the Na tional Awakenin g," a t th e AAASS convention in Philadelphi a on 8 November 1980. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 80 SLOVAKIA Hugolfn Gavlovic's Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska Gerald J . Sabo For most Slavists, the eighteenth century in Slovak history and culture remains pretty much unknown territory. Even among specialists in Slovak studies, that era m ay bring to mind simply Anton Bernol ak and possibly J a n Baltaza r M agin . Bernolak should certa inly stand out as the first cod ifer of the Slovak language , a nd Magin deserves more than a few brief sentences for hi s de fense of Slovak ethnic a nd cultural rights . Y et m any other writers from the e ighteenth ce ntury deserve not onl y mention but substantial comm entary , because their writings in the Slovak vernacular before Bernolak's codificat ion exem plified and promoted Slovak consciousness. Amon g these a uthors a prominent place is occupied by the Franciscan priest Hugolfn Gavlovic. Gavlovic was born in 17 12 in Czarny Dunaj ec, Poland, yet he spent virtually his entire life in Slovak-speaking areas. 2 H e di ed in 1787, th e year Bernolak publicly began his codification effort s. G avlovic considered himself ethnically Polish. Still , as far as can be ascertained, the only Slavic la n gu age in which h e wrote was the contemporary Slovak vernacul ar. In a number of hi s writings, he even explicity expres~ed his awareness of writing in Slovak. 3 Gavlovic's co n scious Slovak writing but Polish e thnicity is more th an some curiously interest ing point. I t is especially strikin g again st the b ackground of in tense nationalistic fr iction at that time . This nationalisti c frict ion was between Slovaks a nd various ethnic gro u ps, but in particula r th e Hun garians. The effects of th is fri ct ion reached even into Franciscan foundations and affected th e governan ce of Franciscan eccles iastical provin ces. 4 Gavlovic began writing in 1745 after he had finished his Franciscan course of studies and h ad become a priest. From 1745 until h is death in 1 787 , he composed nearly twenty distin ct pieces of Slovak writin g in prose o r poetry . Among his poetic writings, the most prominent are Valask a Skala (Th e Shepherd ' s School) and Skala Krest'anska (A C h ris1 SLOVAKIA 81 tian School). Though Valaska Skala and Skala Krest'anska are di stinct pieces of writing, they should be treated together for a number of reasons. Both are written for the same audience - Franciscan T e rti aries,6 that is , lay persons who pattern their lives according to prescript s of Franciscan spirituality and traditions . Also , in both compositions is found a poetic form peculiar only to them : Gavlovic called this form koncept. 7 A koncept consists of twelve verses or six rhymed couplets ; each verse has fourteen syllables with a caesura-like pause after the eighth sylla bl e. Usual ly , some rhymed couplets of varying length are related to a koncept . At times, the various pictorial illustrations in both Gavlovic "schools" are connected with kon cepty as well as other verse units . 8 Thus , in Valaska Skala but especially in Skala Krest'anska , the format of the koncept a nd other verse units could be said to resem ble emblematic poetry: a verse-motto, a versified elaboration of the motto, and the related illustration. 9 Besides similarities in a udience and poetic units, the two "schools " are explicitly related to each oth er by Gavlovic him self. According to Gavlovic, Val ask a Skala was written to foster the reader ' s " moral ch aracter, " Skol a Krest'ansk a his "holiness." 10 Gavlovic has also described Valaska Skala as "cheese," someth in g that would n ourish th e reader. In its author 's view, Skala Krest'an sk a represents a " pleasant sce nt '' from a b ouqu et of fl owers. 11 Clearly , Gavlovic expressed a contrast between the physical a nd external against the non-physical a nd internal. Also , the epigraphs fo r the two "schools" show their contrasting emphases and areas of con centration . For Valask a Skala, it is the H oratian utile-dulci - the practically beneficial made palatably pleasant ; this epigraph aptly expresses the mundane yet religiously instructive character of Val ask a Sk ala . 11 T he epigraph for Skala Krest'anska is the last verse from th e seventh chapte r of the Biblical book Sirach: " R emember the last thin gs, a nd you will never sin ." 13 From a reading of the two ''schools,'' it is evide n t that for Gavlovic, they represented the two states in Christia n spiri tualit y: th e act ive an d contemplative ways of livin g. In the active life, as in Val ask a Skol a, the goal of a Christian is the practice of good morals and virtues a nd all this entail s. In the co n templative life , as in Skala Krest'anska , the aim is the conte mpl ation of God , sp iritu al matters , espec iall y of th e '' four last things,'' d eath, judgment, hell , and heaven. 14 I n effect, then, through th ese writings Gavlovic offered the 82 SLOVAKIA reader a sort of program for good Christian living and thinking . In appreciatin g these two "schools," the Christian reader could then set about reali zing the active a nd contemplative ways of living in his earthly existe n ce. Gavlovic completed Valaska Skala in March , 1755, and Skala Krest'an ska in August, 17 58. 15 At what dates he began to write each "sch ool " can not at present be d etermin ed. In the letter of the ecclesiastical cen sor for Skala Krest'an sk a, Gavlovic is n amed as the a uthor. 16 This identification has in turn contributed to verifying Gavlovic 's autho rship of Valaska Skala. Val ask a Skala and Skala Krest'anska are extensive pieces of poetry. Valaska Skala comprises nearly e ighteen th ousand verses, virtually all of which are fourteen syll ables in length ; there are also some twentyfour hundred verses of varyin g length for the couplet- mottoes above the kan cepty as well as numerous related mottoes beside the k ancep ty. In Valaska Skala, there are twenty-seven illu strations, but only nine in Skala Krest'an ska. 17 The mass of verses and illustrations in each ''school'' is a rranged accord in g to schemes wh ere symmetry and numerical sym bolism play d efinite roles. 18 Valask a Skala has three major divisions: first, an introductory portion with twelve parts of varying length ; second, a main body with twentytwo subdivisions known as naty (nata in the sin gul ar); a nd third, a co ncluding portion with two parts of unequal length . The introductory and concludin g portions - virtually equal in length - fram e the main body . In the m a in body, the predominant textual unit is the kancept ; in each of the twenty-two subdivions or naty , there are fifty-nin e kancepty. The major motif of Valaska Skala is J esus the Good Shepherd as portrayed in St. J ohn 's Gospel. 19 In the main body , Gavlovic presented a series of stories on Biblical shepherds. Th ese stories are part of the introdu cto ry narrative for each of the first twenty-one naty . Abel is the first shepherd prese nted, and the shepherds of Be thlehem are the subjects that introdu ce th e twenty-first nata. Th e twenty-second nata has no introdu ctory n arrat ive but begins with a kancept about the resurrected Christ; the risen J esus is comm issionin g Peter to feed his sheep, the Christian Church . otably, then, the lin e of Biblical shephe rds in the twenty-two naty forms a chronologically linear presentation of Biblical history - from the era of Adam through that of the resurrected Christ, the Second Adam. T he two concluding sections of Valask a Skala are SLOVAKIA 83 on death and the Last judgment; they aptly complete the Christian timespectrum presented in the preceding main body. The most prominent instance of numerical symbolism in Valaska Skala involves the first twenty-one naty of the main body. Gavlovic was very explicit that Valaska Skala comprised only twenty-one naty. 10 Yet he included a twenty-second nata, and the two concluding sections on death and the Last Judgment. The explanation for this is based on the symbolic number of 1260 from the Biblical book Apocalypse. Symbolically, the number 1260 represents a time period when evil and extreme suffering are the lot of God's people ; this period is to be followed by a new era under the leadership of Christ. 21 In Valaska Skala, 1260 is the number of textual units in the first twenty-one naty . The last kancept of nata twenty-one clearly expresses a definite finality: Buch ge Alpha y Omega wsseckeho stworeni, A bez neho w clowekovi ni c d obre ho neni* On ge sprawedliweg laski wzdy horicy plamen , Nech ho dussa ma milu ge Az na weki Amen . (XXI , lix , 1-2 , 11-12) God is the Alpha and Omega of all creati on , And without him there is nothing of goodness in a person• He is always the burning flam e of just a ffec tion , M ay my soul love him Until forever Amen. Even the pagination of the first twenty-one naty contributes to understanding their extent according to the symbolic number 1260. 11 These naty are that period of suffering and patient waiting before the reign of Christ. Aptly, then, the twenty-second nata begins with the resurrected Christ and his future vicar Peter. This new era is traditionally known as the "last times," that era from Christ 's resurrection until his Second Coming at the end of the world and of time. ll The next crucial moments in a Christian 's existence during the "last times" are his death and the Last Judgment. These two moments form the them es for the concluding sections of Valaska Skala . In effect, then , Gavlovic also used a specific number of textual units to present symbolically his Christian view of time and history. In the main body of Valaska Skala, Gavlovic presented much more than Biblical material. In the introductory narratives for the naty, Gavlovic occasionally included comments on valasi, i.e. the Slovak mountain shepherds who represent a distinctive group in Slovak history and culture. 24 The valasi in Valaska Skala are contemporary figures who 84 SLOVAKIA illustrate actions that foster or d etract from proper Christian conduct. In the nearly thirteen hundred koncepty , there is a range of topics all to show what helps make a good Christian citizen of this world and the next. Whatever has to do with the total human b eing and Christian is treated - social deportment , catechetical matters, virtues, vices , and points of health . Nothing seems too trivial for discussion. Examples of the more religious kon cept as well as of the more mundane type will illustrate this, as the following two show : 25 Powinn os t P as tyru • Kryst u s poru ca swe owce Petrow i k pase ni , By wssech podl e sweg moznos ti priwad zal k Spaseni . K azdy wrchni na podda nych musy sta rost miti , Aby ned al od Spase ni fa dn emu bluditi. Otec di tkam , Pan podd a nym , gazd a sweg celedi* Z poru ceni Krystoweho nech uz itek hl edi . An o y ty twoge g Du sse pastyrem bi t musyss, Ga k gu stratiss gakokoli w , hrozny Sud okus iss . Co mu ze byt ku Spaseni ginym , nezanedbag, Al e negprw n a twu Duss u neglepssi pozo r dag . G ak twu Du ssu , a y gin ych priwedess k Spa seni , Budess Srdcy Krys towemu giste k potesse ni. (XXII, i) R esponsibility of the Shepherd Chri st entrusts his sheep to Peter for past ure, So th at he would bring them all to Salvation . Each superi or must have conce rn for th ose subj ec t to him , So tha t he would not permit any of th em to stray . A fa ther fo r his children , a master for his se rfs, a householder for his se rvants* Let him see k benefi t because of the cha rge of C hrist. Yes a nd you must be the shepherd of your Soul , If you so mehow lose it , you will taste a terribl e Jud gm ent. Don ' t neglect wh at can be to others' Salvat ion , But first give the bes t attenti on to yo ur Soul. If you bring your soul and oth ers to Salvati on , You will surely be a consola ti on to C hrist 's H ea rt . Pan owi chud obn y N ech neni • podobn y Ml ce t pred Pa nem Slu ssy gak a men T ak obcu ge bohac z chud ym , gako wlk z baranem , Gestli mu zess , nem eg nikd y spolec nost z pa nem . G ak te vola k sobe , nechot, • kd yz budess negiti, Gak se odd aliss od neho , budess pokog m iti . Kd yz b ud ess s nim , tehdy nemlu w wsselico slobodne , Newe r mn ohim reca m geho, snat m lu wi podwodn e. Bude te mn ohimi slowmi p robowa t libezne , SLOVAKIA 85 Dokud negake tagemstw i od teba newez ne . Bude se te usmiwagic wsselico spytowa t , A twe recy w swogeg hl awe pilne pa matowa t . Gak od teba zw i to co chce , hn et twa r swu promeni , Zabyge te z twym gaz ikem krem twe ho domnen i. (XV II , xxv) May a poor ma n not be like to a lord/ master It is as fit as an Amen to be silent before a lord/ master A ri ch man associates with a poor ma n just as a wolf wit h a shee p, If you ca n , don't ever have a ny dealin gs wi th a lord/ mas ter . When he calls you to him , don ' t go , • when you wi ll n ot go, When you distance yourself from him , you 'II have peace. W hen you wi ll be with him , th en don ' t speak all kind s of thi ngs freely, Don ' t believe hi s man y speec hes/wo rds , pe rh a ps he spea ks decept ively. H e wi ll tes t/ probe you kindly with many words, Unt il he h as taken some secrets from you. H e will smilingly ask you a ll so rt s of thin gs, And wi ll recall laboriousl y/we ll your speeches in his head. As soo n as/ when he learns from you wha.t he wants, at once his face will chan ge, H e will kill you with your tongue beyond anything you can imagine. Compared to Valaska Skala , Skala Krest'anska h as a simpl er compositional arran gement. This is probably because Skala Krest'an sk a conce rns only four m atte rs: death, judgment, hell , and heave n - the traditional "four las t things ." Yet , as in Valaska Skala, the kan cepty of Skala Krest'anska are crucial to a ppreciating the symmetry a nd numerical symbolism in this composition. Skala Krest'an ska has two maj o r divisions: an introductory po rti on of four parts that vary in le n gth , a nd a main body of four equ al subdivisions th at are simila r in format. Each of the fo ur subdiv isions in the main body h as o ne of the "four last things " as its guiding theme. In Valaska Skala , J esus the Good Shepherd had his counterpart in the good contemporary valach or shepherd. In Skala Krest'anska, the reader is also presented with the hum a n counterp a rt of Christ - St. Franc is of Assisi with stigmata. The stigmata are '' marks resem blin g the wounds on the cru cified body of C hrist [o n the hand s, the fee t , a nd the right side o f C hrist's chest; these marks are ] believed to have bee n supe rnat u rall y impressed upon the bod ies of certain pe rso ns , as St. Francis of Assisi.' ' 26 Among the illustrations and texts about the '' fo ur last things' ' are also illustrations of St. Fra ncis with st igmata as he refl ects on each of the "four last things ." The escha tology presented in text and illustrations is further empha- 86 SLOVAKIA sized b y the numerical sy mbolism used in com posin g the four subdivisions o f the m ain body. Each subdivision has k on cepty on 144 pages. Indeed , in each subdivision , only the pages with koncepty are numbered; the rem a ining pages in each subdivi sion and the pages of the introductory port ion are not numbered. The number 144 is related to the sym bolic number 144 ,000 ; thi s latter number sym bolically represents the number of Christians saved at the end of time as noted in the Biblical boo k Apocalypse . 17 Thus , the apocalyptic number of Christians saved - 144 ,000 - is associated with th e 144 pages of kon cepty for each of the "four last things ." For G avlovic , the readin g of these koncepty was to help number th e reader among those saved . ·After all , that was the primary aspiration of Gavlovic not only for his reader but also for himself. Th e very last kon cept - the end - of Skala Krest'anska clearly conveys this othe r-worldly view offered by G avlovic to his reader : Prigd k nam kralows twi twe" Co nce ptus hie S. Laurentij Ju stin* D ag na m n ebe weeny Boze Nassa mdl ost k nemu nemoze Otce nass, ktery sy w Nebi, Prigd k nam kralows twi twe, Nebo k dobrem u cyn eni Srdce w nas ge mrtwe. Zustawame w ned osta tku , a y w leniwosti, Nemu ze me dostat nebe bez twogeg mil os ti . M i do nebe nepri gde me; zosta neme w bide, Gak kra lows twi twe z tweg wu le k na m bidnym neprigde . Eliasse na ohni wem woze wzals do neb e, Y nas prigmi w tweg milosti , to prosime tebe. Zaden ku Krystu negide, gak ho netahn ess ty, Tahni n as w p rowaskach laski , neb sy we wssem Swaty. Abi sme spaseni byli , prigd twe kralowstwi k n am, A ty Boze az na we ki panu g n ad nami sam . (0 Nebi , 288) Your kingdom co me to us This kon ceptlco nce pt (from] St. Law rence Ju stinia n" Give us heave n ete rnal God Our wea kn ess cannot reach/approach it Our Fa ther , who a re in H eave n , Your kin gd om com e to us, For our H eart is dead to good d eeds. W e rema in want ing , a nd in laz iness, W e cannot att ain heave n without yo ur grace. W e will not reach heave n ; we will re main in misery, If you r kin gdom does not com e to wretched u s by your will. Elias was ra ised to heave n on a fi ery ve hicl e/cha ri ot, R eceive also us in your grace, thi s we implore you . No one co mes to C hri st , if you do not draw him yourself, Draw us in the bonds of love/affection , for you are H oly in everythin g. SLOVAKIA 87 T hat we mi ght be saved, yo ur kin gdom co m e to us , And you God yourself rul e ove r u s fo reve r . A s two pieces of Slovak writing, V alaska Skol a and Skol a Krest'anska d o di splay som e litera ry ima gina tion in their compositional a rra n gem ent and co nten t. Y et the ir purposes wer e n o t belles lettres ente rta inment bu t the fosterin g of the C h r istia n read er 's m oral ch a racter a nd holiness. Their m or ali stic a nd religiou s ch a racters sh ould n o t , a nd in truth , do no t d e trac t fro m their place in Slovak histo ry a nd culture. T h ey remain p rominen t a nd substantive exampl es of con sciously Slovak writing lo n g before Slovaks were al lowed to exe rcise the ir righ ts as a di st inct Slavic peopl e. NOTES ' An example of thi s lim ited view of Slovak writing is the first sentence of Pete r Brock 's otherwise good study The Slovak Nat ional Awakening (T oron to: Uni ve rsity of Toronto Press, I 976), p . 3 : " A Slovak ve rn acul a r was fir st used for literary purposes in the 1780s when it replaced C zec h a m ong the Slovak Cat hol ic in tell ige nts ia.'' ' For a more deta iled biography of Gavlovic and a d iscuss ion of his writin gs, see Gerald J. Sabo, "Slovak Did actic Poetry: Gav lovic 's Valask a Skala. Volum e I: Introdu ctory Study. Volume II : Edition of V alask a Skala ," Di ss. Yale 1978, l , 1-8. This is the only English source fo r thi s information. Signi fi cant Slovak sources on Gavlovic and hi s w ritin gs a re: Celes tin Le pacek , " Zivot a dic lo P . H ugolfna G avlovica, " V yrocne zpravy sukromneho gymnazia rad u sv . Franc isk a v M ala ck ach , 5- 10 ( 1932 -3 7); Lepace k, " Zlomky z d'alsfch Gavlovifovych ruko pisov ," Literarno-historick y sbornik M atice slovenskej , 2-3 , Nos. 1-2 ( 1945-46), 79-84 ; J ozef' Min ari k , " Hu golfn Gav lovic: Va lask a skola, mravuv stodola (l itera rn o-esteti cky rozbo r 16 vyb ranyc h bas nf)," Tri lirerarn o-esrerick e rozbory zo starsej slovenskej Jic era tury (Bratis lava: Slovenske pedagogic ke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1973) , pp. 61-98; G izela Slavkovsk a, "Gavlov icova Valaska Skala." eq ui valen t of a docto ra l dissert a ti on ( Bra tislava: U niv e rzita Komens keho , prob. 1972); Slavkovs ka , " Gavlov ifova Va laska Skala," S lovcnska lic era ru ra, 2 1, o. 5 ( 1974), 459-480. ' In Valaska Skala , in eight inst ances (fi ve times " na slowenski gazik . " two times " na slowenski , '· a nd once '' w slowensk em gazik u "), Gav lov ic expressed th e phrase '' in the Slovak lang uage" when he tra nslat ed a H e brew Bibli cal name in1 0 its Slovak meaning : nota I. introductory na rrati ve, line 33: V. int rodu ctory narrative, 9: VIII. in trodu ctory narrativ e. 3; X. introductory na rrative. 49; XI. in troduuory na rrativ e, 7; X III , int roductory na rrati ve. 1: X IV , introdu cto ry narrative. 6; a nd X IX, in troclu c1ory narrat ivc , 7. Linguist s agree tha t Gavlovi c wrote in Slova k , e.g. l.'..ubomfr 6urovic, "Slovak," The Slavic Lircrar_v Languages: Fonnacion and Dnwlopmenr. Alex a nder Sc hen ker and Edwa rd Stankiewicz , eds . ( New H aven: Yale Concilium o n Intern a ti onal and Arca Studies, 1980), p. 214. Of this la nguage in genera l, Eugen Paul inv wrote: 88 SLOVAKIA The Slova ki zing process went so far that by th e end of th e fir st half of the 18th ce ntury, we alread y have among Slovak Catholics a sufficiently firmly normali zed national written language whi ch on account of esse nti al deviation s from Czech ca nnot be called on ly Slovakized Czech. N or mu st it be disting uish ed from Czech only on th e lin guistic side. Import antly, that is, n ot even its users and writers con sidered it as Czech. Th ey considered it, h ere more, ch ere less explicic y, as ch e dom escic Slovak language. The term " J esuit Slovak " was at one time coined for this language. This d es ignation would perhaps m eta pho ri call y do just ice to th e fa ct that thi s language was used in Catholic writin g. H oweve r , it is necessa ry, of course, to reali ze th at thi s la nguage did no t origin a te in Slovak Catholic writing , but that Catholics took it over as esse ntiall y set, and that it was u sed as cultural W es t-Sl ovak eve n in oth er functions. Further one must reali ze that in Catholic writing, not onl y J esuits used this language, even if th ese la tt er were th e most act ive in the rc-Ca tholi cization of Slovaki a. (Dejin y spisovnej slovenciny, I [ 1966 ; rpt. Brati slava : Slove nske pedagogicke nakl ada tel'stvo, 1971], p. 78. Ita li cs a nd tra nsla ti on a re min e .) ' See Sabo, pp . 50-56 , for nati onalistic friction in gene ral, and pp. 58-62 for nati onalisti c fri ct io n in Franciscan founda ti ons. Also , Ysevlad J oze f Gajdos, 0 . F . M. , Franciskani v slovens½ej lit eracure (C levela nd : First Catholic Slova k Union, 1979), pp . 23-26. In this work, Gajdos also has a sho rt biograph y of Gavlovi c, a brief co mm ent a ry o n so m e of his writings, a li st of m ost of hi s works , and a sm all bibli ogra phy on G av lovic. Thi s book co nt a ins a wealth of m a terial on Francisca n trai nin g and activiti es in Slovak areas. 5 Both m a nu script s, actually a ut og raphs b y Gavlov ic him self, a re prese rved in th e Lite rarny archiv M a ti ce slovenskej (LAMS) in Martin unde r th e signa ture B89 for V alask a Skala and MJ3 3 1 for Skala Krest'a nska. V alask a S k ala ha had three editi o n s. In th e first editi o n do ne in two volum es in 1830-3 1, th e auto gra ph was d evasta tin gly altered allegedl y by Mi cha l R eset ka acco rdin g to th e lin gui st ic no rm s of Bernolak-S lova k , bern olaccin a . In th e seco nd edi ti o n of 197 1, Rudolf Kraj covic, th e ed itor , re prod uced the tex t in questionab le fo rm at a nd form , but most unfortunately deleted some forty-seven percent of th e aut ogra ph tex t. The third edition is a reprintin g o f th e Kraj cov ic second ed itio n , but now with som e fift y- li ve perce nt of th e autograph text deleted. Non e of the pictori al illu stra tion s of Valaska Skala was reprodu ced in a ny o f th e three ed iti ons. As rega rd s Skala Kresc'a nsk a, a few selections - some two perce nt of th e a ut ogra ph text - ca n be found in Gizela Slavkovska's edited workja miluji, nesmfm provfdaci ... : Ancol6gia zo slovenskej barokovej poezie (Bratislava: T a tra n , 1977) , pp . 275-30 1. 6 Th is is made clea r in Valaska Skala in th e dedication immed ia tely after th e titl epage a nd first illustra ti o n as we ll as in the int rodu cto ry part " D arowa ni Ku uiicku cwemu ," line 57; and in Skala Kresc'a n ska, o n th e titl e page a nd in th e introducto ry part " Darowani Trecimu R adu Seraflin skemu ," pages 13-1 6 of th e aut ogra ph (wi th titl e-page as page one). Fo r possible reasons for Gavlovic dedi ca tin g these two works to Tertiaries, see Sabo , pp . 66-7 1. ' For details on Gav lovic ' s kon cepc form, see, Sabo, pp . 86-94. A koncepc is also found SLOVAKIA ' 9 ' 0 " " 13 14 15 16 11 " 19 ' 0 89 in Gavlovi i''s "last will a nd testament, " and an inco mplete one (one sentence short) among fragm entary autograph s of Gavlovic. In my thesis , I discuss the a rtist of the illustrations for Valaska Skala on pages 79-82. Subsequ entl y, Slavkovska studied th e same m a tt er and published her co mments in " ' Tajomstva ' prveho vydania Valaskej Skoly ," Slovenska literatura , 25, No. 6 ( 1978) , 663-669 . John L. Lievsay , "Embl em ," Princeton Encyclopedia of Poet1y and Poetics, enlarged edition , Alex Preminger et al. ed. (Princeton: Princeton Uni ve rsity Press, 1974). Bes id es variou s pl aces in V alaska Skala , wh e re Gavlovic speaks of Valaska Skala in these terms, he co mpa res the two "school s" in Skala Krest'anska on page fourtee n with titl e-page as page one in " D aro wani Tretimu Radu S eraffinskemu ," lin es 45 -46. Valaska Skala, "Darowani Ku uiitku twemu ," line 44 ; Skala Krest'ansk a, " Darowani Tretimu Radu S eraffin sk emu ," lines 33-34. On the title-page of Valaska Skala , Gavlovic cited :Omne tulit pun ctum , qui miscuit utile dulci (H e ha s won eve ry vote who has bl end ed profit a nd pleas ure . .. ), verse 343, H. Ru shton Fairclough , trans., Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (London and Cambridge, Mass. : William H eine m a n , Ltd. , 1970), pp. 478-479. For other pl aces wh ere G av lovic ex pressed th e se nse of this Horati a n ve rse, see Sabo , p. 68 , note 101. On the page immediat ely preceding th e titl e-page, it is cited in La tin a nd in a Slovak translation. In th e Vulgate ve rsion th a t I u sed , Alberto Colun ga a nd La urentio Turrado, ed ., 4th ed. , se ri es Bibliateca d e autores Christianos , Madrid , 1975, the last verse is forty , but in English ve rsions of this chapter, th e verse is thirt y-six. Karl Rahn e r , " Last Things , " Sa cram entum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Th eology (New York: H e rd e r a nd H e rd er , 1969) , 274-2 76. Th ese da tes a re found on the d edi cation page of Valaska Skala right after th e titlepage a nd fir st illu stration , and for Skala Krest'a nska on th e prese nt titl e- page. Thi s letter is found at th e ve ry beginning of the bound autograph of Skala Krest'anska. Fo r a de tai led stud y ofGavlovic's a uthorship of th ese writings, see Sabo, pp. 11-15. From my st ud y of the sy mm etri cal structure of Skala Krest'anska , it is evident that th e re were probab ly at least nin e illustration s, four of which are mi ssing, and th a t some of the text which introduces th e k on cept y on d ea th and those on judgment is also mi ss in g. Bes id es th e numerical sy mboli sm ex pl a in ed in the subsequent text of m y article , furth e r num eri cal sy mboli sm in V a/ask a Skala is discussed in Sabo, pp. 124-28. The Gospel a nd th e Bibli cal book Apocalypse a ttribut ed to St. John th e Eva n geli st had a signifi can t influ e nce on th e format a nd mat e rial co nt ent of V a/aska Skala as we ll as on those of ot he r writings by Ga vlo vic: Sabo , pp. 114- 2 1. In " D arowan i Ku uzi tku twemu, " lin es 37-38 , Gavlovii' spec ifi ed twe nt y- one noty, ye t he added a twenty-second which he called " Pridawek or Additi on. " It is m y strong belief that Gavlov ic's spec ifi c in sistence o n twe nt y-o ne noty and hi s present at ion of th e m with Biblical shepherds introdu cin g eac h infl uenced J a n Holl y's stru cturin g of hi s Selanky or Pasto rals where th ere a re twent y-o ne pastoral so ng subdivi sion s; lik e Gav lov ic, Holl y begins hi s twe nt y-first (a nd las t) pastoral with referen ce to th e 90 " " " " " ' 0 " " SLOVAKIA Bet hl ehem shepherds . In a let ter of May 6, 183 1, Holly spoke of Gavlovic and his Valaska Skala: " Lette r #32 to M a rtin Hamuljak ," Jozef Ambrus , ed ., Korespondencia jan Holleho (M a rtin : M a tica slovenska , 1967), p . 74. The Selanky began to be published in 1835 some four years after the publicati on of R ese tka's ed ition of Valaska Skala: Encyklopedia Slovenska, II (1978) , sub verbo " Holl y, Jan. " An ed ition of the Selanky with a modern verse rendition was published by Tatran in J 970 as volume 22 of its se ri es Citanie studuju cej mladeze . Sabo , p . 125, note 13 1, a nd p . 126. Also, J ean-Loui s D ' Aragon, S.J ., " The Apocalypse ,'' The J erome Biblical Com m entary (Englewood Cliffs, N .J .: PrenticeH all , In c., 1968), p. 480. Sabo, p. 126 , not e 133: " In each n ota , the introducto ry section a nd first kon cept ac tu ally cover th ese three autograph pages, yet Gavlovic pagin ated th em on the third page as a sin gle Arabic-numbered page . Thus, acco rdin g to thi s peculi a r pagination , each nota has thirty pages. And this m eans th at the twenty-on e noty spec ifi ed by Gavlovic have six hundred and thirty pages or half of the 1260 , the number of textu al units that a ppear o n th ese 630 pages." As regards th e co ncept o f the " last times ," see Karl Lowith , " The Biblical View of Hi sto~y, " Meaning in History (C hi cago and London : Un iversity of Ch icago Press, 1949 , Phoenix paperback, 1957), p . 188 . As rega rds ,,alasi, for an English ource see Sa b o, pp . 37-38; and for Slovak sources see J a n Podolak, " The P asto ral Cu ltu re of th e Ca rpathian as a Subject of an Ethnological Study," Ethnologica slavica , 1 ( 1969), especial ly 70-77, a nd Encyklopedia Sloven ska , V I ( 1982), sub vcrbo " Valasi," " Valasska l'udova piesen," and '' Valasske pravo." Old so urces a bout valasi , their culture, a nd their wa y of li vin g a re: And rej K i!v ulj ak , " Val as i na Slove n sku: Ora vs ky pod za mok ," Sbornik n a pocest' jozefa Skulte1yh o (Turciansky Svii ty M a rtin : M at ica slovenska , 1933), pp . 336 -374; Karel K ad lec, Valasi a valassk e pravo v zem ich slovansk ych a uh erskych (Pra ha: Ces ka akadcmia cisare Frantiska J osefa, 19 16) ; V aclav C halo upec ky, Valasi na S lovensku (Praha: Slovansky u stav , 1947); a ndjosef Macurek, Valasi v za padnfch K a1pa1ech v 15. - 18 scole1f (Ost rava: K rajske naklad a telstvf, 1959). Th e ca pital R oman numera l is th e no/a number; th e sm a ll Roman num eral is th e k on cep1 numb er in thar 1101 a. Beca use of space limit ;itions , th e side- m otto here has bee n placed a bove the k oncep1. In th e text of Valask a Skala . Gav lov ic also in corporated fo lk ex press ions such as prove rbs and sayings that ca n be fo un d in ex tant compil a ti ons o f suc h ex pre. siuns as we ll ·as ones or his own ('rca ti u n ; sec Sa bo , pp . 168- 171, and Vojtcch Sarluska, " Piit's to prfslovf, " Li1er,im ya rchf, - 1975 . 12 (Mart in: M a ti ca sloven ska, 1976), 135- 167. Webs 1er·.- New C ollcgiait· Diction ary , 1961, su/.J v(·rbo ' ·Sri gma. " Sabo, p. 127, note 134; J ea n-Loui s D ' Aragon , " Th e Apondy p;e," p. 47 8 . In Skala K res1'anska , a couplet-m o tto or vary in g leng rh rs found aboH: a koncepl with o ne a nd nea rl y a lwa ys two re lated mot toes on the side . Beca use o f spate limitation s, I hav e placed in o rd er th e first a nd sclond side- m ottoe for th e koncep1 above the couplet-mono found at th e head of the koncepl . SLOVAKIA 91 ,. Th e New Ca th olic Encyclopedia ( l 967), sub verbo " Lawrence Justini an , St ." My study of Gavlovic was greatl y facilitied b y Docent J ozef Minarik of th e Filozofi cka faku lta Univerzity Kom enskeho a nd Gi zela Slavkovska of the Litera rn ovedny Ustav Slove nskej Akadem ie Vied , both of Bra tisla va, while I was on th e exchange program of th e Intern ati onal R esea rch and Exchanges Board and on a Fulbright-H ays grant in 1975 -76. This pape r is based on a docto ral disse rt ation, " Slovak Didact ic Poetry: G avlovic's Va/aska S kala " at Ya le Univers ity, 1978. Prese nted in Pa nel 128 , "Slovak Litera ture as a Mirror of the Na tional Awakenin g," a t th e AAASS convention in Philadelphi a on 8 November 1980.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hugolín Gavlovič's Valaská Škola and Škola Kresťanská Description An account of the resource Gerald J. Sabo Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 80-91 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sabo, Gerald J., 1945–2020 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF+dates https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/c7aebf31e593b016ebcfff30a963df96.pdf 7c8e9ae006c5b22b862fe39c50c61eb8 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA Introduction Slovak Literature: What, Where From, and Whither? F . W. Galan If the nineteenth century was the age of grand (that is, imperial) unification, the twentieth century, by contrast, appears as the age of unceasing fragmentation. Nowadays everyone wants to be a master and very much a mistress too - of his or her house . The same situation prevails in literature . The idea of one supranational Weltliteratur is now a badly tarnished remnant of a bygone era. Comparative literature flounders as well. The only approach to literary study that is still effective to a degree is along national lines. The literature of Slovakia, though inspired by the rising tide of nationalism that swept Europe after the revolution of 1848, has not yet found its rightful place in world literature, its proper voice in the concert of nations. Seen in an international (particularly American) perspective, Slovak literature does not exist at all - not, I would submit, because of the poor quality of writing, but because of its minority status. Incontrovertibly, Slovak literature is a literature of a minority, indeed, of a minority of a minority. Even within the field of Slavic studies, literatures other than Russian suffer considerable neglect. Czech literatu re, mainly thanks to recent recognition of exiled writers, however, is beginning to gain ground . Unfortunately, contemporary Slovak literature has not produced any controversial political and literary figures, although it could boast a whole pleiade of distinguished writers, especially in so-called lyrical prose , between the two wars. Thus , even though the prospects of Slovak literature are problematic in the present-day social �SLOVAKIA 11 and literary context, it amply merits our attention on literary rather than merely "ethnic" grounds . The following studies should be assessed in these terms . Abstract of commentary presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature ," a t th e AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 21 September 1981. � SLOVAKIA Introduction Slovak Literature: What, Where From, and Whither? F . W. Galan If the nineteenth century was the age of grand (that is, imperial) unification, the twentieth century, by contrast, appears as the age of unceasing fragmentation. Nowadays everyone wants to be a master and very much a mistress too - of his or her house . The same situation prevails in literature . The idea of one supranational Weltliteratur is now a badly tarnished remnant of a bygone era. Comparative literature flounders as well. The only approach to literary study that is still effective to a degree is along national lines. The literature of Slovakia, though inspired by the rising tide of nationalism that swept Europe after the revolution of 1848, has not yet found its rightful place in world literature, its proper voice in the concert of nations. Seen in an international (particularly American) perspective, Slovak literature does not exist at all - not, I would submit, because of the poor quality of writing, but because of its minority status. Incontrovertibly, Slovak literature is a literature of a minority, indeed, of a minority of a minority. Even within the field of Slavic studies, literatures other than Russian suffer considerable neglect. Czech literatu re, mainly thanks to recent recognition of exiled writers, however, is beginning to gain ground . Unfortunately, contemporary Slovak literature has not produced any controversial political and literary figures, although it could boast a whole pleiade of distinguished writers, especially in so-called lyrical prose , between the two wars. Thus , even though the prospects of Slovak literature are problematic in the present-day social �SLOVAKIA 11 and literary context, it amply merits our attention on literary rather than merely "ethnic" grounds . The following studies should be assessed in these terms . Abstract of commentary presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature ," a t th e AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 21 September 1981. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA Introduction Slovak Literature: What, Where From, and Whither? F . W. Galan If the nineteenth century was the age of grand (that is, imperial) unification, the twentieth century, by contrast, appears as the age of unceasing fragmentation. Nowadays everyone wants to be a master and very much a mistress too - of his or her house . The same situation prevails in literature . The idea of one supranational Weltliteratur is now a badly tarnished remnant of a bygone era. Comparative literature flounders as well. The only approach to literary study that is still effective to a degree is along national lines. The literature of Slovakia, though inspired by the rising tide of nationalism that swept Europe after the revolution of 1848, has not yet found its rightful place in world literature, its proper voice in the concert of nations. Seen in an international (particularly American) perspective, Slovak literature does not exist at all - not, I would submit, because of the poor quality of writing, but because of its minority status. Incontrovertibly, Slovak literature is a literature of a minority, indeed, of a minority of a minority. Even within the field of Slavic studies, literatures other than Russian suffer considerable neglect. Czech literatu re, mainly thanks to recent recognition of exiled writers, however, is beginning to gain ground . Unfortunately, contemporary Slovak literature has not produced any controversial political and literary figures, although it could boast a whole pleiade of distinguished writers, especially in so-called lyrical prose , between the two wars. Thus , even though the prospects of Slovak literature are problematic in the present-day social SLOVAKIA 11 and literary context, it amply merits our attention on literary rather than merely "ethnic" grounds . The following studies should be assessed in these terms . Abstract of commentary presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature ," a t th e AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 21 September 1981.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Introduction - Slovak Literature: What, Where from, and Whither? Description An account of the resource F. W . Galan Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 10-11 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Galan, F. W. (František William), 1947- Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/1ba38c6ef7721653399bdfc41322ddda.pdf f2ef06811d3b44a0bb2f7fd6d5dce9f6 PDF Text Text 142 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A Major Slovak Novelist Pete r P etro Slovak literature is still a Cinderalla even among the Central European literatures. This is ce rta inly not because of a lack of good authors; but one is naturally drawn towards the larger literatures of the Slavic world , and Slovak translations are rare and good translations rarer still ; finally, some of the more interestin g a u th ors su ch as J .C . Hronsky are often ignored, instead of bein g actively promoted by the literary establishment at home. Ye t , one feels, if it ever happen s that a single author will represent the best in Slovak literature , that author will be J .C. Hronsky. Jozef Cfger Hronsky ( 1896-1960) was an unknown writer for the Slovak generation that grew up after 1945 . His name could not be found in any hi story of modern literature publish ed after the war. Officially , then , he did not exist in Slovakia , becau se he had left his homela nd in 1945. Hronsky eventually settled in Argentina , where he also died . The official prohibition lasted until 1965 , and then he was publish ed again. Yet , even before his departure in 1945 , he was already recognized as a maj or novelist and a worthy follower of the great Slovak writer , M artin Kukucfn , whom he came to overshadow . Curiously e nou gh, the two decad es-long pen an ce worked to Hronsky's advantage. And not because he published that much in exile: two major works Andreas Bur M ajster (Master Andreas Bur, 1948) and Svet na Trasovisku (The World Caught in Quicksand , 1960) , a re fascinating in their own right a nd round out his life's work, m akin g it m ore complete and articulate. Yet even without them his reputation would be safe. The following is an attempt to account for the undisputed p romin ence of Hronsky a nd thu s give a n introdu ct ion to hi s work. Hronsky is usually pl aced with the gen eration of a uthors th at appeared after the Great W a r and therefo re is most often m entioned in discu ss ions of the literature of the interwar pe riod. Howeve r , some of his b est novels appeared during a nd after the Second W orld War , and the reappearan ce of his work after 1965 played a n unpreced ented role �SLOVAKIA 143 in the literary life of the country when it influenced the newest generation at its most productive stage. Thus, he clearly transcends formal periodization as is only fitting for an author of his scope, accomplishment, and importance. Then again, the posthumous stage of Hronsky's literary fortune must have caught by surprise even such an admirer of his work as the author of an excellent monograph, Alexander Matuska. 1 Hronsky also transcends the attempt to limit his significance to one particular genre: that of the village novel. The temptation to so limit him grows quite naturally from the success of his noveljozefMak (1933), where h e demonstrated in a definitive fashion his mastery of the genre, having previously published a great number of short stories 2 and an im portant novel, Chlieb (Bread, 1931), all dealing with the village. Born in the town of Zvolen , Hronsky taught school in several central Slovak villages. But in writing about the village, Hronsky simply shows himself as a traditionalist, satisfied with the development and the continuation of an established genre, playing with it, adding and subtracting, and finally, withjozefMak, "fulfilling" the genre by producing a work in which it culminates. That he should start with village prose is hardly surprising. In Matuska's words, the whole of Slovakia was just a big village and as such a starting point for the development of Slovak realism, whether of the fantastic, idyllic, or local variety. 3 But Hronsky does not stop there, for he is also the author of a profoundly urban novel, Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk, 1940) , one of his best, wherein typically urban concerns appear in the guise of an innovative, formally daring experiment in the novel , an experiment, moreover, that works and which, despite the crit ical attention it inspired, still seems underrated. 4 Finally , there is an attempt to claim Hronsky as an author of the "social novel" - or what others call the " problem novel , " that is , a novel concerned with social issues, as Jan Stevcek, otherwise a sensitive critic of Hronsky, has done. 5 Stevcek claims that Hronsky pointed out "some n ew facets of social reality and created, o n an artistic level , a new type of social novel , the main point of which was not a clearly determin ed issu e, but a hidden secret of social resistance. " 6 But this fancy footwork cannot hide the absence of the kind of social commitment that wou ld warrant the description of Jozef Mak as a " n ew type of social novel. '' On e could say with equal justification that this is a n ew type of reli giou s novel , a nd perhaps one would be closer to the truth, but even that would be insufficient. �144 SLOVAKIA If it is true that Hronsky transcends such partial treatment, how can we get at his core, his essential characteristic? For, to be sure, there is a grain of truth in the partial views mentioned here. The problem is , they are not too helpful in presenting us with the essential Hronsky. For this reason, Alexander Matuska comes much closer to this essential Hronsky, in his evaluation of Hronsky's stories, saying that they impress one as fairy tales from the past; as a neglect of the real problems of the village; as a dream village, not a real one; yet never as a lie , because they simultaneously impress one as something ancient, a joyful message to a younger, less fortunate age; as a universe that has besides its lower truth a higher significance, something akin to a reservation, where the "good man is still alive,'' something - if one can put it that way - like a miraculous ghetto, where basic human values are preserved, where man can exist whole and undivided , not because he let chaos and contradictions in and defeated them, but becau se he did not let them in and rejected them. 7 How far this is from a "social novel"! The ambivalence, or rather the polyvalence of Hronsky makes one hesitate: J. M . Rydlo says that Hronsky is a "truthful expressionist," an experimentalist , and an author who " lyricized " French reali sm, having been influenced, among others, by Jean Giono (1895-1970) and the Swiss Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-194 7), whose work exemplifies " lyricized symbolism. " 8 Without going to outside sources and influences for Hronsky's unique, highly personal, and above all influential vision of the world , one can agree that he writes what is called ' ' lyricized'' or '' lyrical'' prose . With the advantage of hind sight, one notes that the school of lyrical prose has made a major impact on both the Slovak interwar period and the literature of the sixties and seventies. This was mainly due to H ronsky and it found worthy followers in such contemporary writers as Vincent Sikula and others . 9 Perhaps a few words about the phenomenon of lyrical prose might be in place here. Lyrical prose destroys the realistic convention by substituting for the conventionally objective narrative one that originates in a consciousness which is lyrical, poetic, and thus must of necessity clash with the underlying realistic background. Then again, "realistic" �SLOVAKIA 145 action may be submerged or enveloped in a lyrical, poetic, idealistic, even mystical light which itself serves as a background. At times this consciousness may seem childlike in its freshness of impression, reminding us of the well-known device of defamiliarization; yet in Bronsky the change in focus arrived at through defamiliarization is not at all the point of the device as he uses it. In Bronsky, such vision is a part of his belief system, his world view: it is always integral, never extraneous or exotic. The lyrical , poetic figures and symbols exist side by side with the realistic ones, often playing a key role, or "explaining" a character, by suggesting his raison d'etre . Thus, the opening ofJozef Mak is bathed in a green mist which is and is not of this world: From the wispy green fog emerged a white figure that leaves no tracks , has no weight, and can enter any courtyard without opening the gates, because the figure has no body but only hands bleeding from their pierced palms, and wise and good eyes. Its fingers were so m e rciful and light that the sleeping Jan Mak did not feel them upon his head. The son (and now since dawn the brother) heard only the movement of the wind, yet he understood every thing while he slept. The figure enters : " You're here, Jozef Mak? Yes, you are. I 've come too late . I have nothing left to give you. Since yesterday I 've been walking among quiet m en and women, and they've begged from me everything I had - by dawn there was nothing left. I gave away eve rything I had. And here you were born, Jozef Mak, with no one waiting for you except your mother ' s fright. No one welcomed you , no one brought you any presents. Well , I'll give you at least what I still have. I give you my crucified hands - they were left from the ni ght. Take them, but don't expect a mouth to match them, n ot even when you grow up and understand people and they try to persuade you that you should also get a voice somewhere.'' At that J ozef Mak sighed on his pillow. He sighed for joy that someone had given him something, for otherwise he would have had n othing in all his life. (p. 9) Thus starts the life of Jozef Mak, full of suffering that is never voiced , though it never lacks m eaning: a meaning that is ultimately liberating. �146 SLOVAKIA Mak is explained by this introduction , as are his good and evil actions. A poor man is traditionally close to God. A totally destitute one is closer still. Such proximity is M ak's birthright, yet he too goes astray, and only purification through suffering, a leitmotif in Hronsky , offers hope . But the crucified hands remain at the end of the novel: So then, suffer, Jozef Mak . You are just one of millions, a mere statistic, but you will endure everything, because it is not true that the hardest element in the world is stone , and the strongest steel. The truth is that the ordinary Jozef Mak will endure the most of all . (p. 301) It is not difficult to interpret the character as a symbol of the Slovak people, or even the nation . There is evidence in the novel that this unvoiced suffering fascinated the author, as if he were unwilling to part with his character whom he even engaged in imaginary conversations: Well , you can't run away, no matter what, you have to listen since you are h ere. Understand this , everything h as not come to an end yet. Things like this end only in a novel. In a novel something would happen to remove Jozef Mak from the world. But life is not a novel. Life is a cliff, a valley, mountains, tree stumps, an ax, passions, bread , and hoarfrost, and all these things are not just pieces of scenery and stage props which one can move a bout to suit one's fantasy. So you can not disappear just like that, Jozef Mak . (p. 300) And indeed, Mak survives in the ordinary man, in the mass man, if you like, for his inarticulateness grants him anonymity, as well as the distinction of being a symbol for the downtrodden anywhere anytime . Thus the essentially and even clinically authentic Slovak villager, as no one else could draw him , becomes also Hronsky's most universal creation . At this point , it has to be said that Hronsky does not idealize the village, nor is it a case of artifi cially preserving folklore . He is able, after all, to see the village without illusions , and often in painfully sh arp relief with its attendant cruelty and even savagery that are the obverse of the traditional lyricism found in the evocat ion of village li fe in prose . Stevcek goes even farther, saying that Hronsky "de-folklorizes old motifs and the old literary tradition, " and is "faithful to his dual optics, which he made his own, elevating it to his creative prin ciple.'' 10 lnjozef Mak �SLOVAKIA 147 the principle of " dual optics" is communicated throu gh the d evice of a "monologue inwardly made into a dialogue," 11 but this shou ld not b e confusing or surprising, b ecause the a uthor has to co mmunicate by such means what would h ave otherwise bee n communicated through a more articulate character. In addition, Hron sky is characte ristically indirect. The most importa nt , vital events takes place in the lives of his characters without anyone uttering a singl e word , as if Hronsky disbelieved in the power of the word. His characte rs are rarely swayed by example, m o re often b y passion , but a lastin g mark o n their behavior is exacted only b y the force of seemin gly m e rciless suffe ring. It is for this reason that Pisar Grae occupies much a distinctive place in th~ entire work of Hronsky. For here Hron sky reve rses himself, as he presents to u s a garrulous character, described by another as an "angry dog . Just like an a ngry dog! You will eve n b a rk at the pe rson who o ffers you a slice of bread; you h ave no God, a nd better people than you were h a n ged , but you ' ll just go on barking a nd barking until someone gives you a good kick " (p . 7) . What is more, this loquacious ch aracter indulges in conversations with the reade r and with a d ead m a n , the late second hu sband of his (Grac's) wife-to-be. Grae writes to the dead man , reminisces a bout the Great War, philosophizes, but lets us know only indirec tly a bout what is really most important to him , namely hi s love for Jana: a ha unting and luminous figure at the center of the novel. This indirect approach is submerged, as it were, in the noise of th e incessant monologue inte rrupted by non -chronologically arranged scen es which n eve rtheless follow a n internal o rder, leading u s, however circuito u sly, to a resolution which we co me to half expect anyway . One particul a rly admires the way in which J ana, the beau tiful , even tragic widow a nd narrator's wife-to-be, is revealed to u s, stage b y stage. W e find her fl ee tingly a ppearing a nd di sappearing in mirrors co nvenie ntly supplied b y the n arrator in the guise of o the r ch aracters a nd the ir rem ini scences, their stories, where Jan a appears as if by ch a n ce. But all this ·is beau tifull y, cooll y controll ed , for the seemin gly cyn ical n arrator has within him a ce nte r that hi s mundane and unprepossessing ex terior formed b y the monolo gue replete with aphorisms and quotidian wisdom , hides without co mpletely co ncealing it from our view. At first we only gu ess that it ex ists, later we kn ow. The distan ce between these stages is bridged by events osten sibl y unrelated to th e " main" hidden content, eve nts su ch as the dyin g a nd d eath of little Miklu sko. �148 SLOVAKIA This genuin ely tragic death is opposed to the death of Jan a's second hu sband , Greskovie, which Hronsky chooses to treat with a degree of co m edy , if not grotesqueness, as if to highlight the profoundly tragic death of Miklusko . Hron sky's cool , understated narrative is the proper vehicle: we cannot consider it maudlin , nor sentimental , for it is presented to u s by a n arrator that excludes such possibilities and for that very reason enables the reader to feel with great empathy the tragedy of the event. The boy 's d eath leads to the recon ciliation of old lovers - Jan a and Grae; Grae d escribes the eve nt to J ana's late hu sband : We m et , Mr. Greskovie, but not the way J ana and I imagined it , nor the way you im agined it! It happened very simply. When Mik.lusko was dying, J ana offered to let m e stay in a room upstairs during those nights that his mother wanted to spend taking leave of her son. She led m e into her room herself. She loved the boy , so her eyes were full of sadness . W e just stood next to each other and did not talk much . P erhaps we said almost nothing. Jana maybe did m ention somethin g or other, saying that the war has died, but I am not quite sure she actually said that . She bent down her head a bit , and I felt as if she had touched my shoulder, so I stretched out my arm across her back and unsurely and timidly drew her to myself. She hardly moved , and m erely rested her head on m y shoulder. And so quietly , ever so quietly she started to cry, so that I could hardly hear her .. . . D o you unders tand m e, Mr. Greskovi e? (p. 221) Mr. Greskovie understands and d oes not answer Grae the clerk, letting the reader know that a painful , but somehow inevitable chapter ofGrac's life is over, producing a different Grae, minus his cynicism, which , at any rate, the read er suspects is only a m ask covering a suffering heart , in love and waiting for the beloved . Suddenly the waiting is over, and it is as if an enchantment were lifted. The war, the Great War that plays such a large role in the n arrator's fl ash backs, dies with the boy, which is not as ill ogical as it seem s. For the boy is an offsprin g of a father who dies in the war , leaving hi s little son "trapped" in the world, an example of an unresolved , unfinished business awaiting resolution. Hronsky's universe has its rules and one of them is a fateful and perhap s �SLOVAKIA 149 strange symmetry , occasionally overly tragic, as with Miklusko. His d eath is required by Hronsky' s sense of tragic symme try . But lest it be thought that Pisar is just a brilliant experiment with a dash of black humor , the grotesque, and a ha ppy e nding, one has to point out another level of the novel in which Hronsky takes stock of the entire interwar generation. H e th rows also a fasci n ating light on the then young Slovak Republic ( 1939- 1945), express ing with prophetic exactitude his misgivings about the Slovak nat io n al ch aracter. In such passages, the generally light-hearted, bantering to ne g ives way to sob ering earnestness in a sweeping indictment of hi s ge nerat io n: Grae Watch out! There are a lot of clich es in today's world! I admit that we hardly know what a n idea is a nd what a n em pty cliche. There a re a lot of speech es, everybod y is a n o ra tor, especia lly those who have n o ideas, so they throw around cliches. In twenty year s one cannot tear out a ll the weeds. But that's how it is , and it cannot be otherwise. It is also true that the war has poisoned us . W e ran a bout like horses that were suddenly let loose, running back and forth, no lon ger liste ning on e ithe r the right or the left , not knowi n g what it was we wanted. One d ay we would b e on the road, the next day we would be stomping over a freshly sow n fi eld a nd find ourselves in a morass . Each minute someone would shoo t at u s, then would g ive u s something, then would take something from u s, a nd so, wounded, we moon ed about the world. W e soiled every thing we walked on, poisoned it , made it u gly, but most of all we hurt ourselves. (p.213) One h as to conclude that Grae is a surv ivor, nursing his wounds, regretting hi s sins on the way to a recovery effected when he fin ally putt; aside hi s tedium vitae, hi s acedie. But there a re also apologetics and d ark , proph etic warn ings on this level of the n ovel. First the apologetics: I would like to add that we sho uld b e forgiven a lot. It has to be co nsidered that nobody helped us, that we could rely only o n o urselves. And how m a n y stupid thin gs we have yet to comm it! (p. 215) Next, the prophecy: H ow much idiocy there is! . . . W e are capa ble of sett in g fire to our own b a rn a nd sitting down in it , if we get it in o ur �150 SLOVAKIA heads that it is a wise thing to do. And we can ge t such ideas quickly ! W e think we understand eve rythin g, know eve rythin g, a nd can overcome anythin g. (Ibid.) Such was hi s fate that H ro nsky lived to see hi s d arkest forebodings realized , with the cruel twist that eve n he was un able to picture the consequences and would ha rdl y have beli eved them had he been told about them in ad vance. Thus it is in exil e in Rom e - the spiritu al capital of Slovaks - that H ron sky wrote his next work, the novelette Predavac talizmanov Liberiu s Caius (The T alism a n M erchant : Liberius C aiu s, 1947 ),'i a bout the earl y C hri stians in R om e, focusing on the painful tran sition from paganism to Christianity. H ere, clearly, yet another stage of Hronsky's literary career began . According to K arol Strmen , a friend of Hronsky and one of his sensitive readers, this short work is a breakthrou gh , a key that enables the reader to see in a different li ght not only the foll owin g, but also hi s precedin g work. Consequently , to follow Strmen, we should not see Hronsky's characters such as M ak a nd Grae as typically post-Christian fi gures vagu ely dependent on the Christian ethos, but as pre-Christian , and existentially imprisoned on the borderland of the C hri stian m essage, which they never heard in its completeness, or loudly enou gh . 13 But such advice would seem a radical departure from the general acceptance of Hronsky's unive rse as a quintessentially Christian one . Perha ps it is easier to accept Strmen 's testimonial as a witness to th e intensification of Hronsky's Christian world view in his last works. Also written in R om e, Andreas Bur Majster , an important novel, is a nother hi storical wo rk deal ing with a tragic story of a misunderstood ecce ntric, or mystic, whose proximity to G od makes him suspiciou s in the eyes of his fellow m en who ridicul e, fear, and finall y kill him . Written in the m anner of the ' ' novel of secrets,'' it is a powerful evocati on of the force, beauty, and otherworldly quality of pure co ntempl ation and saintly openn ess. Thou gh saintly, Bur is no saint, at least not until the end , which find s him purified by sufferin g and read y to share the fa te of hi s M as ter . There a re eni gm atic m om ents here, and one se nses the closeness between Bur and the author . The enigm as, left unexplained , und erscore the essen tiall y mysterious cha racter of life when lived on a sp iritu al level. For here we are far above M ak and Grae. In th at se nse, one can speak about a trilogy of Mak-Grae-Bur , as Stevee k does, 14 onl y in a very n arrow way. For if we take Mak and Grae as antipodes, Bur �SLOVAKIA 15 1 will be defin ed n ot in relation to them but , as Stevcek him self admits , in relation to the absolute arch e type, to God . 15 Andreas Bur Majster is for Stevcek the "completion and the crown in g effort of the school of lyrical prose." 16 It would be h ard to find a more complimentary word of pra ise. For it is ge nerally recognized that the most valu able accompli shment of Slovak literature is found in the school or movement known as lyrical prose of which B ron sky is an undisputed master. And here, perhaps, on su ch a high n ote, w ithout actually exhau sting Bronsky' s work, 17 we sh ould stop to ask for a good reason why the world should be interested in this lyrical prose of Bronsky . It could be that the renewed interest in his work stems from a desire, partl y sentimental, to learn a bout the world of the recent p ast , at least in Slovakia, when people, however destitute, still lived in harmon y with their so il in which they were so firmly rooted. Nor were they prey to the moral and sp iritu al uprootedness that we h ave come to know as an integral part of the experie nce of modernity. This is espec ially true of Jozef Mak , who, perhaps qui te subconsciou sly but for th at matter so mu ch m ore emphat ically a nd essentially, resists uprootedness in all its forms. What a unique figure in modern wo rld literature this pained but su ccessful resistance makes him ! What a feast of meaning , of hope, and of spiritu al insight - a nd all that accomplish ed through a character unable to a rticu late his pain. Truly , this is a masterpiece that goes against the gra in in an age of modernity, a n age when uprootedness is extolled and fas hioned into a marketable life style, an age of noisy, aimless, chatter debasin g the logos. Bronsky knew of our true desires, of the mysteries of faith and hope . Th ese he articulated as no other Slovak author before or after him ; furthermore, h e has done so with force and beauty that are by no means destined to be admired only by Slovaks. That is why the world should want to know aboutjozefMak, Pisar Grae, Andreas Bur Majster, and Hronsky 's other work. For that reaso n and for many others that will occur to us as we e nter more deeply into hi s world . NOTES ' Al exa nd er M atus ka , j. C. H ronsk y (Brati slava: Slove n sky Spisovatel', 1970) ; also in Osobnosci (Bratislava: Slove nsky Spisovatel', 1973), Vol. JV of V y brane spisy Alexandra 1"1acusku . R eferences in the text a re to the 1973 editi on . �152 SLOVAKIA ' The most remarkable among th em are collected in Podpolian sk e rozpravky ( 1932), and Tomcikovci ( 1933) . M y references are to the collected works in ten volumes (Turcia nsky Sv . M art in : M a ti ca Slovenska, 1938-44). ' M a tu ska, p. 408. ◄ See " Hronskeho Pisar Grae a slovenska pr6za" (A round-tabl e discussion), Slovenske Pohl'ady, LXXXVI ( 1970), n .3, pp. 30-43. 5 J an Stevcek, " R oma n J ozef Mak ajeho histo ricky obsah , " inJ. C . Hronsky,jozef Mak (Bratislava: Tatran, 1980) , pp . 283-290. ' Ibid ., p. 290. 7 Matuska , p. 413. 8 J . M . R ydlo , " The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of Jozef Giger Hron sky," Slovak Studies, XV ( 1975), p . 119 . 9 For a study of " lyrical prose," see J . Stevcek, Lyrizovana pr6za (Bra tislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), and Oskar Cepan , K on tury naturiam u (Bratislava: Slovensky spisovatel', 1977). 10 J. Stevcek, "Doslov," in]. C. Hronsky, Podpolianske rozpravky (Bratislava: Tatran, 197 1), p . 242. 11 R ydlo, p. 12 1. " J . C. H ronsky , Predavac talizmanov , in Nadej vftazna (Scranton: Obrana Press, 1947) , pp . 7-50; 2nd ed. (Cambrid ge , Ont.: Dobra Knih a, 1972) . A literal English translation was made by J ohn J . K ester, Seller ofTalizm ans: Liberius Caius (Scotch Plai ns, N .J ., pri vately printed , 1978). " K . Strmei\ , " Zapadalo slnko, " in]. C . H ronsky, Predavac talizmanov Liberius Caius , 2nd ed. , ibid. , p. 79. " See J . Stevcek '' Hronskeho romanova legenda, '' in J. C. Hronsky, Andreas Bur M ajster (Bratislava: Tatran, 1970), p . 263. " Ibid. , p. 266. 16 Ibid ., p. 268. 17 J .C. Hronsky , Svet na Trasovisku (Whiting, I N: R ev. Jan]. Lach, Publisher, 1960), was his last novel. Presented in P anel 109, " Changin g Views of Slovak Literature," at the AAASS convent ion in Washington, D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982. � 142 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A Major Slovak Novelist Pete r P etro Slovak literature is still a Cinderalla even among the Central European literatures. This is ce rta inly not because of a lack of good authors; but one is naturally drawn towards the larger literatures of the Slavic world , and Slovak translations are rare and good translations rarer still ; finally, some of the more interestin g a u th ors su ch as J .C . Hronsky are often ignored, instead of bein g actively promoted by the literary establishment at home. Ye t , one feels, if it ever happen s that a single author will represent the best in Slovak literature , that author will be J .C. Hronsky. Jozef Cfger Hronsky ( 1896-1960) was an unknown writer for the Slovak generation that grew up after 1945 . His name could not be found in any hi story of modern literature publish ed after the war. Officially , then , he did not exist in Slovakia , becau se he had left his homela nd in 1945. Hronsky eventually settled in Argentina , where he also died . The official prohibition lasted until 1965 , and then he was publish ed again. Yet , even before his departure in 1945 , he was already recognized as a maj or novelist and a worthy follower of the great Slovak writer , M artin Kukucfn , whom he came to overshadow . Curiously e nou gh, the two decad es-long pen an ce worked to Hronsky's advantage. And not because he published that much in exile: two major works Andreas Bur M ajster (Master Andreas Bur, 1948) and Svet na Trasovisku (The World Caught in Quicksand , 1960) , a re fascinating in their own right a nd round out his life's work, m akin g it m ore complete and articulate. Yet even without them his reputation would be safe. The following is an attempt to account for the undisputed p romin ence of Hronsky a nd thu s give a n introdu ct ion to hi s work. Hronsky is usually pl aced with the gen eration of a uthors th at appeared after the Great W a r and therefo re is most often m entioned in discu ss ions of the literature of the interwar pe riod. Howeve r , some of his b est novels appeared during a nd after the Second W orld War , and the reappearan ce of his work after 1965 played a n unpreced ented role �SLOVAKIA 143 in the literary life of the country when it influenced the newest generation at its most productive stage. Thus, he clearly transcends formal periodization as is only fitting for an author of his scope, accomplishment, and importance. Then again, the posthumous stage of Hronsky's literary fortune must have caught by surprise even such an admirer of his work as the author of an excellent monograph, Alexander Matuska. 1 Hronsky also transcends the attempt to limit his significance to one particular genre: that of the village novel. The temptation to so limit him grows quite naturally from the success of his noveljozefMak (1933), where h e demonstrated in a definitive fashion his mastery of the genre, having previously published a great number of short stories 2 and an im portant novel, Chlieb (Bread, 1931), all dealing with the village. Born in the town of Zvolen , Hronsky taught school in several central Slovak villages. But in writing about the village, Hronsky simply shows himself as a traditionalist, satisfied with the development and the continuation of an established genre, playing with it, adding and subtracting, and finally, withjozefMak, "fulfilling" the genre by producing a work in which it culminates. That he should start with village prose is hardly surprising. In Matuska's words, the whole of Slovakia was just a big village and as such a starting point for the development of Slovak realism, whether of the fantastic, idyllic, or local variety. 3 But Hronsky does not stop there, for he is also the author of a profoundly urban novel, Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk, 1940) , one of his best, wherein typically urban concerns appear in the guise of an innovative, formally daring experiment in the novel , an experiment, moreover, that works and which, despite the crit ical attention it inspired, still seems underrated. 4 Finally , there is an attempt to claim Hronsky as an author of the "social novel" - or what others call the " problem novel , " that is , a novel concerned with social issues, as Jan Stevcek, otherwise a sensitive critic of Hronsky, has done. 5 Stevcek claims that Hronsky pointed out "some n ew facets of social reality and created, o n an artistic level , a new type of social novel , the main point of which was not a clearly determin ed issu e, but a hidden secret of social resistance. " 6 But this fancy footwork cannot hide the absence of the kind of social commitment that wou ld warrant the description of Jozef Mak as a " n ew type of social novel. '' On e could say with equal justification that this is a n ew type of reli giou s novel , a nd perhaps one would be closer to the truth, but even that would be insufficient. �144 SLOVAKIA If it is true that Hronsky transcends such partial treatment, how can we get at his core, his essential characteristic? For, to be sure, there is a grain of truth in the partial views mentioned here. The problem is , they are not too helpful in presenting us with the essential Hronsky. For this reason, Alexander Matuska comes much closer to this essential Hronsky, in his evaluation of Hronsky's stories, saying that they impress one as fairy tales from the past; as a neglect of the real problems of the village; as a dream village, not a real one; yet never as a lie , because they simultaneously impress one as something ancient, a joyful message to a younger, less fortunate age; as a universe that has besides its lower truth a higher significance, something akin to a reservation, where the "good man is still alive,'' something - if one can put it that way - like a miraculous ghetto, where basic human values are preserved, where man can exist whole and undivided , not because he let chaos and contradictions in and defeated them, but becau se he did not let them in and rejected them. 7 How far this is from a "social novel"! The ambivalence, or rather the polyvalence of Hronsky makes one hesitate: J. M . Rydlo says that Hronsky is a "truthful expressionist," an experimentalist , and an author who " lyricized " French reali sm, having been influenced, among others, by Jean Giono (1895-1970) and the Swiss Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-194 7), whose work exemplifies " lyricized symbolism. " 8 Without going to outside sources and influences for Hronsky's unique, highly personal, and above all influential vision of the world , one can agree that he writes what is called ' ' lyricized'' or '' lyrical'' prose . With the advantage of hind sight, one notes that the school of lyrical prose has made a major impact on both the Slovak interwar period and the literature of the sixties and seventies. This was mainly due to H ronsky and it found worthy followers in such contemporary writers as Vincent Sikula and others . 9 Perhaps a few words about the phenomenon of lyrical prose might be in place here. Lyrical prose destroys the realistic convention by substituting for the conventionally objective narrative one that originates in a consciousness which is lyrical, poetic, and thus must of necessity clash with the underlying realistic background. Then again, "realistic" �SLOVAKIA 145 action may be submerged or enveloped in a lyrical, poetic, idealistic, even mystical light which itself serves as a background. At times this consciousness may seem childlike in its freshness of impression, reminding us of the well-known device of defamiliarization; yet in Bronsky the change in focus arrived at through defamiliarization is not at all the point of the device as he uses it. In Bronsky, such vision is a part of his belief system, his world view: it is always integral, never extraneous or exotic. The lyrical , poetic figures and symbols exist side by side with the realistic ones, often playing a key role, or "explaining" a character, by suggesting his raison d'etre . Thus, the opening ofJozef Mak is bathed in a green mist which is and is not of this world: From the wispy green fog emerged a white figure that leaves no tracks , has no weight, and can enter any courtyard without opening the gates, because the figure has no body but only hands bleeding from their pierced palms, and wise and good eyes. Its fingers were so m e rciful and light that the sleeping Jan Mak did not feel them upon his head. The son (and now since dawn the brother) heard only the movement of the wind, yet he understood every thing while he slept. The figure enters : " You're here, Jozef Mak? Yes, you are. I 've come too late . I have nothing left to give you. Since yesterday I 've been walking among quiet m en and women, and they've begged from me everything I had - by dawn there was nothing left. I gave away eve rything I had. And here you were born, Jozef Mak, with no one waiting for you except your mother ' s fright. No one welcomed you , no one brought you any presents. Well , I'll give you at least what I still have. I give you my crucified hands - they were left from the ni ght. Take them, but don't expect a mouth to match them, n ot even when you grow up and understand people and they try to persuade you that you should also get a voice somewhere.'' At that J ozef Mak sighed on his pillow. He sighed for joy that someone had given him something, for otherwise he would have had n othing in all his life. (p. 9) Thus starts the life of Jozef Mak, full of suffering that is never voiced , though it never lacks m eaning: a meaning that is ultimately liberating. �146 SLOVAKIA Mak is explained by this introduction , as are his good and evil actions. A poor man is traditionally close to God. A totally destitute one is closer still. Such proximity is M ak's birthright, yet he too goes astray, and only purification through suffering, a leitmotif in Hronsky , offers hope . But the crucified hands remain at the end of the novel: So then, suffer, Jozef Mak . You are just one of millions, a mere statistic, but you will endure everything, because it is not true that the hardest element in the world is stone , and the strongest steel. The truth is that the ordinary Jozef Mak will endure the most of all . (p. 301) It is not difficult to interpret the character as a symbol of the Slovak people, or even the nation . There is evidence in the novel that this unvoiced suffering fascinated the author, as if he were unwilling to part with his character whom he even engaged in imaginary conversations: Well , you can't run away, no matter what, you have to listen since you are h ere. Understand this , everything h as not come to an end yet. Things like this end only in a novel. In a novel something would happen to remove Jozef Mak from the world. But life is not a novel. Life is a cliff, a valley, mountains, tree stumps, an ax, passions, bread , and hoarfrost, and all these things are not just pieces of scenery and stage props which one can move a bout to suit one's fantasy. So you can not disappear just like that, Jozef Mak . (p. 300) And indeed, Mak survives in the ordinary man, in the mass man, if you like, for his inarticulateness grants him anonymity, as well as the distinction of being a symbol for the downtrodden anywhere anytime . Thus the essentially and even clinically authentic Slovak villager, as no one else could draw him , becomes also Hronsky's most universal creation . At this point , it has to be said that Hronsky does not idealize the village, nor is it a case of artifi cially preserving folklore . He is able, after all, to see the village without illusions , and often in painfully sh arp relief with its attendant cruelty and even savagery that are the obverse of the traditional lyricism found in the evocat ion of village li fe in prose . Stevcek goes even farther, saying that Hronsky "de-folklorizes old motifs and the old literary tradition, " and is "faithful to his dual optics, which he made his own, elevating it to his creative prin ciple.'' 10 lnjozef Mak �SLOVAKIA 147 the principle of " dual optics" is communicated throu gh the d evice of a "monologue inwardly made into a dialogue," 11 but this shou ld not b e confusing or surprising, b ecause the a uthor has to co mmunicate by such means what would h ave otherwise bee n communicated through a more articulate character. In addition, Hron sky is characte ristically indirect. The most importa nt , vital events takes place in the lives of his characters without anyone uttering a singl e word , as if Hronsky disbelieved in the power of the word. His characte rs are rarely swayed by example, m o re often b y passion , but a lastin g mark o n their behavior is exacted only b y the force of seemin gly m e rciless suffe ring. It is for this reason that Pisar Grae occupies much a distinctive place in th~ entire work of Hronsky. For here Hron sky reve rses himself, as he presents to u s a garrulous character, described by another as an "angry dog . Just like an a ngry dog! You will eve n b a rk at the pe rson who o ffers you a slice of bread; you h ave no God, a nd better people than you were h a n ged , but you ' ll just go on barking a nd barking until someone gives you a good kick " (p . 7) . What is more, this loquacious ch aracter indulges in conversations with the reade r and with a d ead m a n , the late second hu sband of his (Grac's) wife-to-be. Grae writes to the dead man , reminisces a bout the Great War, philosophizes, but lets us know only indirec tly a bout what is really most important to him , namely hi s love for Jana: a ha unting and luminous figure at the center of the novel. This indirect approach is submerged, as it were, in the noise of th e incessant monologue inte rrupted by non -chronologically arranged scen es which n eve rtheless follow a n internal o rder, leading u s, however circuito u sly, to a resolution which we co me to half expect anyway . One particul a rly admires the way in which J ana, the beau tiful , even tragic widow a nd narrator's wife-to-be, is revealed to u s, stage b y stage. W e find her fl ee tingly a ppearing a nd di sappearing in mirrors co nvenie ntly supplied b y the n arrator in the guise of o the r ch aracters a nd the ir rem ini scences, their stories, where Jan a appears as if by ch a n ce. But all this ·is beau tifull y, cooll y controll ed , for the seemin gly cyn ical n arrator has within him a ce nte r that hi s mundane and unprepossessing ex terior formed b y the monolo gue replete with aphorisms and quotidian wisdom , hides without co mpletely co ncealing it from our view. At first we only gu ess that it ex ists, later we kn ow. The distan ce between these stages is bridged by events osten sibl y unrelated to th e " main" hidden content, eve nts su ch as the dyin g a nd d eath of little Miklu sko. �148 SLOVAKIA This genuin ely tragic death is opposed to the death of Jan a's second hu sband , Greskovie, which Hronsky chooses to treat with a degree of co m edy , if not grotesqueness, as if to highlight the profoundly tragic death of Miklusko . Hron sky's cool , understated narrative is the proper vehicle: we cannot consider it maudlin , nor sentimental , for it is presented to u s by a n arrator that excludes such possibilities and for that very reason enables the reader to feel with great empathy the tragedy of the event. The boy 's d eath leads to the recon ciliation of old lovers - Jan a and Grae; Grae d escribes the eve nt to J ana's late hu sband : We m et , Mr. Greskovie, but not the way J ana and I imagined it , nor the way you im agined it! It happened very simply. When Mik.lusko was dying, J ana offered to let m e stay in a room upstairs during those nights that his mother wanted to spend taking leave of her son. She led m e into her room herself. She loved the boy , so her eyes were full of sadness . W e just stood next to each other and did not talk much . P erhaps we said almost nothing. Jana maybe did m ention somethin g or other, saying that the war has died, but I am not quite sure she actually said that . She bent down her head a bit , and I felt as if she had touched my shoulder, so I stretched out my arm across her back and unsurely and timidly drew her to myself. She hardly moved , and m erely rested her head on m y shoulder. And so quietly , ever so quietly she started to cry, so that I could hardly hear her .. . . D o you unders tand m e, Mr. Greskovi e? (p. 221) Mr. Greskovie understands and d oes not answer Grae the clerk, letting the reader know that a painful , but somehow inevitable chapter ofGrac's life is over, producing a different Grae, minus his cynicism, which , at any rate, the read er suspects is only a m ask covering a suffering heart , in love and waiting for the beloved . Suddenly the waiting is over, and it is as if an enchantment were lifted. The war, the Great War that plays such a large role in the n arrator's fl ash backs, dies with the boy, which is not as ill ogical as it seem s. For the boy is an offsprin g of a father who dies in the war , leaving hi s little son "trapped" in the world, an example of an unresolved , unfinished business awaiting resolution. Hronsky's universe has its rules and one of them is a fateful and perhap s �SLOVAKIA 149 strange symmetry , occasionally overly tragic, as with Miklusko. His d eath is required by Hronsky' s sense of tragic symme try . But lest it be thought that Pisar is just a brilliant experiment with a dash of black humor , the grotesque, and a ha ppy e nding, one has to point out another level of the novel in which Hronsky takes stock of the entire interwar generation. H e th rows also a fasci n ating light on the then young Slovak Republic ( 1939- 1945), express ing with prophetic exactitude his misgivings about the Slovak nat io n al ch aracter. In such passages, the generally light-hearted, bantering to ne g ives way to sob ering earnestness in a sweeping indictment of hi s ge nerat io n: Grae Watch out! There are a lot of clich es in today's world! I admit that we hardly know what a n idea is a nd what a n em pty cliche. There a re a lot of speech es, everybod y is a n o ra tor, especia lly those who have n o ideas, so they throw around cliches. In twenty year s one cannot tear out a ll the weeds. But that's how it is , and it cannot be otherwise. It is also true that the war has poisoned us . W e ran a bout like horses that were suddenly let loose, running back and forth, no lon ger liste ning on e ithe r the right or the left , not knowi n g what it was we wanted. One d ay we would b e on the road, the next day we would be stomping over a freshly sow n fi eld a nd find ourselves in a morass . Each minute someone would shoo t at u s, then would g ive u s something, then would take something from u s, a nd so, wounded, we moon ed about the world. W e soiled every thing we walked on, poisoned it , made it u gly, but most of all we hurt ourselves. (p.213) One h as to conclude that Grae is a surv ivor, nursing his wounds, regretting hi s sins on the way to a recovery effected when he fin ally putt; aside hi s tedium vitae, hi s acedie. But there a re also apologetics and d ark , proph etic warn ings on this level of the n ovel. First the apologetics: I would like to add that we sho uld b e forgiven a lot. It has to be co nsidered that nobody helped us, that we could rely only o n o urselves. And how m a n y stupid thin gs we have yet to comm it! (p. 215) Next, the prophecy: H ow much idiocy there is! . . . W e are capa ble of sett in g fire to our own b a rn a nd sitting down in it , if we get it in o ur �150 SLOVAKIA heads that it is a wise thing to do. And we can ge t such ideas quickly ! W e think we understand eve rythin g, know eve rythin g, a nd can overcome anythin g. (Ibid.) Such was hi s fate that H ro nsky lived to see hi s d arkest forebodings realized , with the cruel twist that eve n he was un able to picture the consequences and would ha rdl y have beli eved them had he been told about them in ad vance. Thus it is in exil e in Rom e - the spiritu al capital of Slovaks - that H ron sky wrote his next work, the novelette Predavac talizmanov Liberiu s Caius (The T alism a n M erchant : Liberius C aiu s, 1947 ),'i a bout the earl y C hri stians in R om e, focusing on the painful tran sition from paganism to Christianity. H ere, clearly, yet another stage of Hronsky's literary career began . According to K arol Strmen , a friend of Hronsky and one of his sensitive readers, this short work is a breakthrou gh , a key that enables the reader to see in a different li ght not only the foll owin g, but also hi s precedin g work. Consequently , to follow Strmen, we should not see Hronsky's characters such as M ak a nd Grae as typically post-Christian fi gures vagu ely dependent on the Christian ethos, but as pre-Christian , and existentially imprisoned on the borderland of the C hri stian m essage, which they never heard in its completeness, or loudly enou gh . 13 But such advice would seem a radical departure from the general acceptance of Hronsky's unive rse as a quintessentially Christian one . Perha ps it is easier to accept Strmen 's testimonial as a witness to th e intensification of Hronsky's Christian world view in his last works. Also written in R om e, Andreas Bur Majster , an important novel, is a nother hi storical wo rk deal ing with a tragic story of a misunderstood ecce ntric, or mystic, whose proximity to G od makes him suspiciou s in the eyes of his fellow m en who ridicul e, fear, and finall y kill him . Written in the m anner of the ' ' novel of secrets,'' it is a powerful evocati on of the force, beauty, and otherworldly quality of pure co ntempl ation and saintly openn ess. Thou gh saintly, Bur is no saint, at least not until the end , which find s him purified by sufferin g and read y to share the fa te of hi s M as ter . There a re eni gm atic m om ents here, and one se nses the closeness between Bur and the author . The enigm as, left unexplained , und erscore the essen tiall y mysterious cha racter of life when lived on a sp iritu al level. For here we are far above M ak and Grae. In th at se nse, one can speak about a trilogy of Mak-Grae-Bur , as Stevee k does, 14 onl y in a very n arrow way. For if we take Mak and Grae as antipodes, Bur �SLOVAKIA 15 1 will be defin ed n ot in relation to them but , as Stevcek him self admits , in relation to the absolute arch e type, to God . 15 Andreas Bur Majster is for Stevcek the "completion and the crown in g effort of the school of lyrical prose." 16 It would be h ard to find a more complimentary word of pra ise. For it is ge nerally recognized that the most valu able accompli shment of Slovak literature is found in the school or movement known as lyrical prose of which B ron sky is an undisputed master. And here, perhaps, on su ch a high n ote, w ithout actually exhau sting Bronsky' s work, 17 we sh ould stop to ask for a good reason why the world should be interested in this lyrical prose of Bronsky . It could be that the renewed interest in his work stems from a desire, partl y sentimental, to learn a bout the world of the recent p ast , at least in Slovakia, when people, however destitute, still lived in harmon y with their so il in which they were so firmly rooted. Nor were they prey to the moral and sp iritu al uprootedness that we h ave come to know as an integral part of the experie nce of modernity. This is espec ially true of Jozef Mak , who, perhaps qui te subconsciou sly but for th at matter so mu ch m ore emphat ically a nd essentially, resists uprootedness in all its forms. What a unique figure in modern wo rld literature this pained but su ccessful resistance makes him ! What a feast of meaning , of hope, and of spiritu al insight - a nd all that accomplish ed through a character unable to a rticu late his pain. Truly , this is a masterpiece that goes against the gra in in an age of modernity, a n age when uprootedness is extolled and fas hioned into a marketable life style, an age of noisy, aimless, chatter debasin g the logos. Bronsky knew of our true desires, of the mysteries of faith and hope . Th ese he articulated as no other Slovak author before or after him ; furthermore, h e has done so with force and beauty that are by no means destined to be admired only by Slovaks. That is why the world should want to know aboutjozefMak, Pisar Grae, Andreas Bur Majster, and Hronsky 's other work. For that reaso n and for many others that will occur to us as we e nter more deeply into hi s world . NOTES ' Al exa nd er M atus ka , j. C. H ronsk y (Brati slava: Slove n sky Spisovatel', 1970) ; also in Osobnosci (Bratislava: Slove nsky Spisovatel', 1973), Vol. JV of V y brane spisy Alexandra 1"1acusku . R eferences in the text a re to the 1973 editi on . �152 SLOVAKIA ' The most remarkable among th em are collected in Podpolian sk e rozpravky ( 1932), and Tomcikovci ( 1933) . M y references are to the collected works in ten volumes (Turcia nsky Sv . M art in : M a ti ca Slovenska, 1938-44). ' M a tu ska, p. 408. ◄ See " Hronskeho Pisar Grae a slovenska pr6za" (A round-tabl e discussion), Slovenske Pohl'ady, LXXXVI ( 1970), n .3, pp. 30-43. 5 J an Stevcek, " R oma n J ozef Mak ajeho histo ricky obsah , " inJ. C . Hronsky,jozef Mak (Bratislava: Tatran, 1980) , pp . 283-290. ' Ibid ., p. 290. 7 Matuska , p. 413. 8 J . M . R ydlo , " The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of Jozef Giger Hron sky," Slovak Studies, XV ( 1975), p . 119 . 9 For a study of " lyrical prose," see J . Stevcek, Lyrizovana pr6za (Bra tislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), and Oskar Cepan , K on tury naturiam u (Bratislava: Slovensky spisovatel', 1977). 10 J. Stevcek, "Doslov," in]. C. Hronsky, Podpolianske rozpravky (Bratislava: Tatran, 197 1), p . 242. 11 R ydlo, p. 12 1. " J . C. H ronsky , Predavac talizmanov , in Nadej vftazna (Scranton: Obrana Press, 1947) , pp . 7-50; 2nd ed. (Cambrid ge , Ont.: Dobra Knih a, 1972) . A literal English translation was made by J ohn J . K ester, Seller ofTalizm ans: Liberius Caius (Scotch Plai ns, N .J ., pri vately printed , 1978). " K . Strmei\ , " Zapadalo slnko, " in]. C . H ronsky, Predavac talizmanov Liberius Caius , 2nd ed. , ibid. , p. 79. " See J . Stevcek '' Hronskeho romanova legenda, '' in J. C. Hronsky, Andreas Bur M ajster (Bratislava: Tatran, 1970), p . 263. " Ibid. , p. 266. 16 Ibid ., p. 268. 17 J .C. Hronsky , Svet na Trasovisku (Whiting, I N: R ev. Jan]. Lach, Publisher, 1960), was his last novel. Presented in P anel 109, " Changin g Views of Slovak Literature," at the AAASS convent ion in Washington, D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 142 SLOVAKIA Jozef Cfger-Hronsky: A Major Slovak Novelist Pete r P etro Slovak literature is still a Cinderalla even among the Central European literatures. This is ce rta inly not because of a lack of good authors; but one is naturally drawn towards the larger literatures of the Slavic world , and Slovak translations are rare and good translations rarer still ; finally, some of the more interestin g a u th ors su ch as J .C . Hronsky are often ignored, instead of bein g actively promoted by the literary establishment at home. Ye t , one feels, if it ever happen s that a single author will represent the best in Slovak literature , that author will be J .C. Hronsky. Jozef Cfger Hronsky ( 1896-1960) was an unknown writer for the Slovak generation that grew up after 1945 . His name could not be found in any hi story of modern literature publish ed after the war. Officially , then , he did not exist in Slovakia , becau se he had left his homela nd in 1945. Hronsky eventually settled in Argentina , where he also died . The official prohibition lasted until 1965 , and then he was publish ed again. Yet , even before his departure in 1945 , he was already recognized as a maj or novelist and a worthy follower of the great Slovak writer , M artin Kukucfn , whom he came to overshadow . Curiously e nou gh, the two decad es-long pen an ce worked to Hronsky's advantage. And not because he published that much in exile: two major works Andreas Bur M ajster (Master Andreas Bur, 1948) and Svet na Trasovisku (The World Caught in Quicksand , 1960) , a re fascinating in their own right a nd round out his life's work, m akin g it m ore complete and articulate. Yet even without them his reputation would be safe. The following is an attempt to account for the undisputed p romin ence of Hronsky a nd thu s give a n introdu ct ion to hi s work. Hronsky is usually pl aced with the gen eration of a uthors th at appeared after the Great W a r and therefo re is most often m entioned in discu ss ions of the literature of the interwar pe riod. Howeve r , some of his b est novels appeared during a nd after the Second W orld War , and the reappearan ce of his work after 1965 played a n unpreced ented role SLOVAKIA 143 in the literary life of the country when it influenced the newest generation at its most productive stage. Thus, he clearly transcends formal periodization as is only fitting for an author of his scope, accomplishment, and importance. Then again, the posthumous stage of Hronsky's literary fortune must have caught by surprise even such an admirer of his work as the author of an excellent monograph, Alexander Matuska. 1 Hronsky also transcends the attempt to limit his significance to one particular genre: that of the village novel. The temptation to so limit him grows quite naturally from the success of his noveljozefMak (1933), where h e demonstrated in a definitive fashion his mastery of the genre, having previously published a great number of short stories 2 and an im portant novel, Chlieb (Bread, 1931), all dealing with the village. Born in the town of Zvolen , Hronsky taught school in several central Slovak villages. But in writing about the village, Hronsky simply shows himself as a traditionalist, satisfied with the development and the continuation of an established genre, playing with it, adding and subtracting, and finally, withjozefMak, "fulfilling" the genre by producing a work in which it culminates. That he should start with village prose is hardly surprising. In Matuska's words, the whole of Slovakia was just a big village and as such a starting point for the development of Slovak realism, whether of the fantastic, idyllic, or local variety. 3 But Hronsky does not stop there, for he is also the author of a profoundly urban novel, Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk, 1940) , one of his best, wherein typically urban concerns appear in the guise of an innovative, formally daring experiment in the novel , an experiment, moreover, that works and which, despite the crit ical attention it inspired, still seems underrated. 4 Finally , there is an attempt to claim Hronsky as an author of the "social novel" - or what others call the " problem novel , " that is , a novel concerned with social issues, as Jan Stevcek, otherwise a sensitive critic of Hronsky, has done. 5 Stevcek claims that Hronsky pointed out "some n ew facets of social reality and created, o n an artistic level , a new type of social novel , the main point of which was not a clearly determin ed issu e, but a hidden secret of social resistance. " 6 But this fancy footwork cannot hide the absence of the kind of social commitment that wou ld warrant the description of Jozef Mak as a " n ew type of social novel. '' On e could say with equal justification that this is a n ew type of reli giou s novel , a nd perhaps one would be closer to the truth, but even that would be insufficient. 144 SLOVAKIA If it is true that Hronsky transcends such partial treatment, how can we get at his core, his essential characteristic? For, to be sure, there is a grain of truth in the partial views mentioned here. The problem is , they are not too helpful in presenting us with the essential Hronsky. For this reason, Alexander Matuska comes much closer to this essential Hronsky, in his evaluation of Hronsky's stories, saying that they impress one as fairy tales from the past; as a neglect of the real problems of the village; as a dream village, not a real one; yet never as a lie , because they simultaneously impress one as something ancient, a joyful message to a younger, less fortunate age; as a universe that has besides its lower truth a higher significance, something akin to a reservation, where the "good man is still alive,'' something - if one can put it that way - like a miraculous ghetto, where basic human values are preserved, where man can exist whole and undivided , not because he let chaos and contradictions in and defeated them, but becau se he did not let them in and rejected them. 7 How far this is from a "social novel"! The ambivalence, or rather the polyvalence of Hronsky makes one hesitate: J. M . Rydlo says that Hronsky is a "truthful expressionist," an experimentalist , and an author who " lyricized " French reali sm, having been influenced, among others, by Jean Giono (1895-1970) and the Swiss Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-194 7), whose work exemplifies " lyricized symbolism. " 8 Without going to outside sources and influences for Hronsky's unique, highly personal, and above all influential vision of the world , one can agree that he writes what is called ' ' lyricized'' or '' lyrical'' prose . With the advantage of hind sight, one notes that the school of lyrical prose has made a major impact on both the Slovak interwar period and the literature of the sixties and seventies. This was mainly due to H ronsky and it found worthy followers in such contemporary writers as Vincent Sikula and others . 9 Perhaps a few words about the phenomenon of lyrical prose might be in place here. Lyrical prose destroys the realistic convention by substituting for the conventionally objective narrative one that originates in a consciousness which is lyrical, poetic, and thus must of necessity clash with the underlying realistic background. Then again, "realistic" SLOVAKIA 145 action may be submerged or enveloped in a lyrical, poetic, idealistic, even mystical light which itself serves as a background. At times this consciousness may seem childlike in its freshness of impression, reminding us of the well-known device of defamiliarization; yet in Bronsky the change in focus arrived at through defamiliarization is not at all the point of the device as he uses it. In Bronsky, such vision is a part of his belief system, his world view: it is always integral, never extraneous or exotic. The lyrical , poetic figures and symbols exist side by side with the realistic ones, often playing a key role, or "explaining" a character, by suggesting his raison d'etre . Thus, the opening ofJozef Mak is bathed in a green mist which is and is not of this world: From the wispy green fog emerged a white figure that leaves no tracks , has no weight, and can enter any courtyard without opening the gates, because the figure has no body but only hands bleeding from their pierced palms, and wise and good eyes. Its fingers were so m e rciful and light that the sleeping Jan Mak did not feel them upon his head. The son (and now since dawn the brother) heard only the movement of the wind, yet he understood every thing while he slept. The figure enters : " You're here, Jozef Mak? Yes, you are. I 've come too late . I have nothing left to give you. Since yesterday I 've been walking among quiet m en and women, and they've begged from me everything I had - by dawn there was nothing left. I gave away eve rything I had. And here you were born, Jozef Mak, with no one waiting for you except your mother ' s fright. No one welcomed you , no one brought you any presents. Well , I'll give you at least what I still have. I give you my crucified hands - they were left from the ni ght. Take them, but don't expect a mouth to match them, n ot even when you grow up and understand people and they try to persuade you that you should also get a voice somewhere.'' At that J ozef Mak sighed on his pillow. He sighed for joy that someone had given him something, for otherwise he would have had n othing in all his life. (p. 9) Thus starts the life of Jozef Mak, full of suffering that is never voiced , though it never lacks m eaning: a meaning that is ultimately liberating. 146 SLOVAKIA Mak is explained by this introduction , as are his good and evil actions. A poor man is traditionally close to God. A totally destitute one is closer still. Such proximity is M ak's birthright, yet he too goes astray, and only purification through suffering, a leitmotif in Hronsky , offers hope . But the crucified hands remain at the end of the novel: So then, suffer, Jozef Mak . You are just one of millions, a mere statistic, but you will endure everything, because it is not true that the hardest element in the world is stone , and the strongest steel. The truth is that the ordinary Jozef Mak will endure the most of all . (p. 301) It is not difficult to interpret the character as a symbol of the Slovak people, or even the nation . There is evidence in the novel that this unvoiced suffering fascinated the author, as if he were unwilling to part with his character whom he even engaged in imaginary conversations: Well , you can't run away, no matter what, you have to listen since you are h ere. Understand this , everything h as not come to an end yet. Things like this end only in a novel. In a novel something would happen to remove Jozef Mak from the world. But life is not a novel. Life is a cliff, a valley, mountains, tree stumps, an ax, passions, bread , and hoarfrost, and all these things are not just pieces of scenery and stage props which one can move a bout to suit one's fantasy. So you can not disappear just like that, Jozef Mak . (p. 300) And indeed, Mak survives in the ordinary man, in the mass man, if you like, for his inarticulateness grants him anonymity, as well as the distinction of being a symbol for the downtrodden anywhere anytime . Thus the essentially and even clinically authentic Slovak villager, as no one else could draw him , becomes also Hronsky's most universal creation . At this point , it has to be said that Hronsky does not idealize the village, nor is it a case of artifi cially preserving folklore . He is able, after all, to see the village without illusions , and often in painfully sh arp relief with its attendant cruelty and even savagery that are the obverse of the traditional lyricism found in the evocat ion of village li fe in prose . Stevcek goes even farther, saying that Hronsky "de-folklorizes old motifs and the old literary tradition, " and is "faithful to his dual optics, which he made his own, elevating it to his creative prin ciple.'' 10 lnjozef Mak SLOVAKIA 147 the principle of " dual optics" is communicated throu gh the d evice of a "monologue inwardly made into a dialogue," 11 but this shou ld not b e confusing or surprising, b ecause the a uthor has to co mmunicate by such means what would h ave otherwise bee n communicated through a more articulate character. In addition, Hron sky is characte ristically indirect. The most importa nt , vital events takes place in the lives of his characters without anyone uttering a singl e word , as if Hronsky disbelieved in the power of the word. His characte rs are rarely swayed by example, m o re often b y passion , but a lastin g mark o n their behavior is exacted only b y the force of seemin gly m e rciless suffe ring. It is for this reason that Pisar Grae occupies much a distinctive place in th~ entire work of Hronsky. For here Hron sky reve rses himself, as he presents to u s a garrulous character, described by another as an "angry dog . Just like an a ngry dog! You will eve n b a rk at the pe rson who o ffers you a slice of bread; you h ave no God, a nd better people than you were h a n ged , but you ' ll just go on barking a nd barking until someone gives you a good kick " (p . 7) . What is more, this loquacious ch aracter indulges in conversations with the reade r and with a d ead m a n , the late second hu sband of his (Grac's) wife-to-be. Grae writes to the dead man , reminisces a bout the Great War, philosophizes, but lets us know only indirec tly a bout what is really most important to him , namely hi s love for Jana: a ha unting and luminous figure at the center of the novel. This indirect approach is submerged, as it were, in the noise of th e incessant monologue inte rrupted by non -chronologically arranged scen es which n eve rtheless follow a n internal o rder, leading u s, however circuito u sly, to a resolution which we co me to half expect anyway . One particul a rly admires the way in which J ana, the beau tiful , even tragic widow a nd narrator's wife-to-be, is revealed to u s, stage b y stage. W e find her fl ee tingly a ppearing a nd di sappearing in mirrors co nvenie ntly supplied b y the n arrator in the guise of o the r ch aracters a nd the ir rem ini scences, their stories, where Jan a appears as if by ch a n ce. But all this ·is beau tifull y, cooll y controll ed , for the seemin gly cyn ical n arrator has within him a ce nte r that hi s mundane and unprepossessing ex terior formed b y the monolo gue replete with aphorisms and quotidian wisdom , hides without co mpletely co ncealing it from our view. At first we only gu ess that it ex ists, later we kn ow. The distan ce between these stages is bridged by events osten sibl y unrelated to th e " main" hidden content, eve nts su ch as the dyin g a nd d eath of little Miklu sko. 148 SLOVAKIA This genuin ely tragic death is opposed to the death of Jan a's second hu sband , Greskovie, which Hronsky chooses to treat with a degree of co m edy , if not grotesqueness, as if to highlight the profoundly tragic death of Miklusko . Hron sky's cool , understated narrative is the proper vehicle: we cannot consider it maudlin , nor sentimental , for it is presented to u s by a n arrator that excludes such possibilities and for that very reason enables the reader to feel with great empathy the tragedy of the event. The boy 's d eath leads to the recon ciliation of old lovers - Jan a and Grae; Grae d escribes the eve nt to J ana's late hu sband : We m et , Mr. Greskovie, but not the way J ana and I imagined it , nor the way you im agined it! It happened very simply. When Mik.lusko was dying, J ana offered to let m e stay in a room upstairs during those nights that his mother wanted to spend taking leave of her son. She led m e into her room herself. She loved the boy , so her eyes were full of sadness . W e just stood next to each other and did not talk much . P erhaps we said almost nothing. Jana maybe did m ention somethin g or other, saying that the war has died, but I am not quite sure she actually said that . She bent down her head a bit , and I felt as if she had touched my shoulder, so I stretched out my arm across her back and unsurely and timidly drew her to myself. She hardly moved , and m erely rested her head on m y shoulder. And so quietly , ever so quietly she started to cry, so that I could hardly hear her .. . . D o you unders tand m e, Mr. Greskovi e? (p. 221) Mr. Greskovie understands and d oes not answer Grae the clerk, letting the reader know that a painful , but somehow inevitable chapter ofGrac's life is over, producing a different Grae, minus his cynicism, which , at any rate, the read er suspects is only a m ask covering a suffering heart , in love and waiting for the beloved . Suddenly the waiting is over, and it is as if an enchantment were lifted. The war, the Great War that plays such a large role in the n arrator's fl ash backs, dies with the boy, which is not as ill ogical as it seem s. For the boy is an offsprin g of a father who dies in the war , leaving hi s little son "trapped" in the world, an example of an unresolved , unfinished business awaiting resolution. Hronsky's universe has its rules and one of them is a fateful and perhap s SLOVAKIA 149 strange symmetry , occasionally overly tragic, as with Miklusko. His d eath is required by Hronsky' s sense of tragic symme try . But lest it be thought that Pisar is just a brilliant experiment with a dash of black humor , the grotesque, and a ha ppy e nding, one has to point out another level of the novel in which Hronsky takes stock of the entire interwar generation. H e th rows also a fasci n ating light on the then young Slovak Republic ( 1939- 1945), express ing with prophetic exactitude his misgivings about the Slovak nat io n al ch aracter. In such passages, the generally light-hearted, bantering to ne g ives way to sob ering earnestness in a sweeping indictment of hi s ge nerat io n: Grae Watch out! There are a lot of clich es in today's world! I admit that we hardly know what a n idea is a nd what a n em pty cliche. There a re a lot of speech es, everybod y is a n o ra tor, especia lly those who have n o ideas, so they throw around cliches. In twenty year s one cannot tear out a ll the weeds. But that's how it is , and it cannot be otherwise. It is also true that the war has poisoned us . W e ran a bout like horses that were suddenly let loose, running back and forth, no lon ger liste ning on e ithe r the right or the left , not knowi n g what it was we wanted. One d ay we would b e on the road, the next day we would be stomping over a freshly sow n fi eld a nd find ourselves in a morass . Each minute someone would shoo t at u s, then would g ive u s something, then would take something from u s, a nd so, wounded, we moon ed about the world. W e soiled every thing we walked on, poisoned it , made it u gly, but most of all we hurt ourselves. (p.213) One h as to conclude that Grae is a surv ivor, nursing his wounds, regretting hi s sins on the way to a recovery effected when he fin ally putt; aside hi s tedium vitae, hi s acedie. But there a re also apologetics and d ark , proph etic warn ings on this level of the n ovel. First the apologetics: I would like to add that we sho uld b e forgiven a lot. It has to be co nsidered that nobody helped us, that we could rely only o n o urselves. And how m a n y stupid thin gs we have yet to comm it! (p. 215) Next, the prophecy: H ow much idiocy there is! . . . W e are capa ble of sett in g fire to our own b a rn a nd sitting down in it , if we get it in o ur 150 SLOVAKIA heads that it is a wise thing to do. And we can ge t such ideas quickly ! W e think we understand eve rythin g, know eve rythin g, a nd can overcome anythin g. (Ibid.) Such was hi s fate that H ro nsky lived to see hi s d arkest forebodings realized , with the cruel twist that eve n he was un able to picture the consequences and would ha rdl y have beli eved them had he been told about them in ad vance. Thus it is in exil e in Rom e - the spiritu al capital of Slovaks - that H ron sky wrote his next work, the novelette Predavac talizmanov Liberiu s Caius (The T alism a n M erchant : Liberius C aiu s, 1947 ),'i a bout the earl y C hri stians in R om e, focusing on the painful tran sition from paganism to Christianity. H ere, clearly, yet another stage of Hronsky's literary career began . According to K arol Strmen , a friend of Hronsky and one of his sensitive readers, this short work is a breakthrou gh , a key that enables the reader to see in a different li ght not only the foll owin g, but also hi s precedin g work. Consequently , to follow Strmen, we should not see Hronsky's characters such as M ak a nd Grae as typically post-Christian fi gures vagu ely dependent on the Christian ethos, but as pre-Christian , and existentially imprisoned on the borderland of the C hri stian m essage, which they never heard in its completeness, or loudly enou gh . 13 But such advice would seem a radical departure from the general acceptance of Hronsky's unive rse as a quintessentially Christian one . Perha ps it is easier to accept Strmen 's testimonial as a witness to th e intensification of Hronsky's Christian world view in his last works. Also written in R om e, Andreas Bur Majster , an important novel, is a nother hi storical wo rk deal ing with a tragic story of a misunderstood ecce ntric, or mystic, whose proximity to G od makes him suspiciou s in the eyes of his fellow m en who ridicul e, fear, and finall y kill him . Written in the m anner of the ' ' novel of secrets,'' it is a powerful evocati on of the force, beauty, and otherworldly quality of pure co ntempl ation and saintly openn ess. Thou gh saintly, Bur is no saint, at least not until the end , which find s him purified by sufferin g and read y to share the fa te of hi s M as ter . There a re eni gm atic m om ents here, and one se nses the closeness between Bur and the author . The enigm as, left unexplained , und erscore the essen tiall y mysterious cha racter of life when lived on a sp iritu al level. For here we are far above M ak and Grae. In th at se nse, one can speak about a trilogy of Mak-Grae-Bur , as Stevee k does, 14 onl y in a very n arrow way. For if we take Mak and Grae as antipodes, Bur SLOVAKIA 15 1 will be defin ed n ot in relation to them but , as Stevcek him self admits , in relation to the absolute arch e type, to God . 15 Andreas Bur Majster is for Stevcek the "completion and the crown in g effort of the school of lyrical prose." 16 It would be h ard to find a more complimentary word of pra ise. For it is ge nerally recognized that the most valu able accompli shment of Slovak literature is found in the school or movement known as lyrical prose of which B ron sky is an undisputed master. And here, perhaps, on su ch a high n ote, w ithout actually exhau sting Bronsky' s work, 17 we sh ould stop to ask for a good reason why the world should be interested in this lyrical prose of Bronsky . It could be that the renewed interest in his work stems from a desire, partl y sentimental, to learn a bout the world of the recent p ast , at least in Slovakia, when people, however destitute, still lived in harmon y with their so il in which they were so firmly rooted. Nor were they prey to the moral and sp iritu al uprootedness that we h ave come to know as an integral part of the experie nce of modernity. This is espec ially true of Jozef Mak , who, perhaps qui te subconsciou sly but for th at matter so mu ch m ore emphat ically a nd essentially, resists uprootedness in all its forms. What a unique figure in modern wo rld literature this pained but su ccessful resistance makes him ! What a feast of meaning , of hope, and of spiritu al insight - a nd all that accomplish ed through a character unable to a rticu late his pain. Truly , this is a masterpiece that goes against the gra in in an age of modernity, a n age when uprootedness is extolled and fas hioned into a marketable life style, an age of noisy, aimless, chatter debasin g the logos. Bronsky knew of our true desires, of the mysteries of faith and hope . Th ese he articulated as no other Slovak author before or after him ; furthermore, h e has done so with force and beauty that are by no means destined to be admired only by Slovaks. That is why the world should want to know aboutjozefMak, Pisar Grae, Andreas Bur Majster, and Hronsky 's other work. For that reaso n and for many others that will occur to us as we e nter more deeply into hi s world . NOTES ' Al exa nd er M atus ka , j. C. H ronsk y (Brati slava: Slove n sky Spisovatel', 1970) ; also in Osobnosci (Bratislava: Slove nsky Spisovatel', 1973), Vol. JV of V y brane spisy Alexandra 1"1acusku . R eferences in the text a re to the 1973 editi on . 152 SLOVAKIA ' The most remarkable among th em are collected in Podpolian sk e rozpravky ( 1932), and Tomcikovci ( 1933) . M y references are to the collected works in ten volumes (Turcia nsky Sv . M art in : M a ti ca Slovenska, 1938-44). ' M a tu ska, p. 408. ◄ See " Hronskeho Pisar Grae a slovenska pr6za" (A round-tabl e discussion), Slovenske Pohl'ady, LXXXVI ( 1970), n .3, pp. 30-43. 5 J an Stevcek, " R oma n J ozef Mak ajeho histo ricky obsah , " inJ. C . Hronsky,jozef Mak (Bratislava: Tatran, 1980) , pp . 283-290. ' Ibid ., p. 290. 7 Matuska , p. 413. 8 J . M . R ydlo , " The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of Jozef Giger Hron sky," Slovak Studies, XV ( 1975), p . 119 . 9 For a study of " lyrical prose," see J . Stevcek, Lyrizovana pr6za (Bra tislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), and Oskar Cepan , K on tury naturiam u (Bratislava: Slovensky spisovatel', 1977). 10 J. Stevcek, "Doslov," in]. C. Hronsky, Podpolianske rozpravky (Bratislava: Tatran, 197 1), p . 242. 11 R ydlo, p. 12 1. " J . C. H ronsky , Predavac talizmanov , in Nadej vftazna (Scranton: Obrana Press, 1947) , pp . 7-50; 2nd ed. (Cambrid ge , Ont.: Dobra Knih a, 1972) . A literal English translation was made by J ohn J . K ester, Seller ofTalizm ans: Liberius Caius (Scotch Plai ns, N .J ., pri vately printed , 1978). " K . Strmei\ , " Zapadalo slnko, " in]. C . H ronsky, Predavac talizmanov Liberius Caius , 2nd ed. , ibid. , p. 79. " See J . Stevcek '' Hronskeho romanova legenda, '' in J. C. Hronsky, Andreas Bur M ajster (Bratislava: Tatran, 1970), p . 263. " Ibid. , p. 266. 16 Ibid ., p. 268. 17 J .C. Hronsky , Svet na Trasovisku (Whiting, I N: R ev. Jan]. Lach, Publisher, 1960), was his last novel. Presented in P anel 109, " Changin g Views of Slovak Literature," at the AAASS convent ion in Washington, D .C. on 17 O ctober 1982.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jozef Cíger-Hronský: A Major Slovak Novelist Description An account of the resource Peter Petro Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 142-152 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petro, Peter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/d5ca604b2842a13c278dcbf43ea4444b.pdf 2f5839c0f8a3d217907d270afe55a836 PDF Text Text 128 SLOVAKIA Jozef Ciger-Hronsky: Chronology and Partial Bibliography Norma L. Rudinsky The fi ctio n ofjozefCiger-Hronsky, besides being exte n sive , shows such a variety of techniques and styles that only a full critical and descriptive bibliography could indi cate its range of experime ntal forms. The following chronology merely indicates that variety and is not complete, because Hronsky's works have not been collected and many shorter pieces are scattered in magazines in Slovakia and in other publications in North and South America ; his literary remains have not been published. Some previously unreported information is given of Hronsky's service as an infantryman in the Hungarian army on the Italian front in World War I ; this experience is mentioned in one of the biblio graphies ( 1) and is referred to by Hron sky in his tribute to a fellow soldier, the sculptor Ferdin a nd Motoska ( 13). The re is also previously unpublish ed information on his experiences in 1944. Not included here are brief or general refere nces to Hronsky in histories and encyclopedias, e.g . in English, J. M . Kirschbaum , Slovak Language and Literature (Winnipeg, 1975) and The Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington, 1967). In fact, there are almost no noti ces of Hronsky' s fiction in the standard English treatments of Slavic or eve n Czechoslovak literature despite his establi shed place in Slovak literary criticism . Hronsky's nam e is so tied to the activity of the Matica slovenska that the Chronology gives more than might be expected of his administrative activity as director (spravca). The concept of a matica, which is specifically Slavic and central/eastern European , needs explanation for the Anglo-Saxon reader to understand the great devotion inspired by this institution among the Slavic nations that had few other cultural institutions in th e Austro-Hungarian empire. A matica was a national library , publishing house, university, scientific in st itute, academy of scholars, and nationalistic missionary society - all in one. Founded in 1863, but abolished by the M agyar government in 1875, and reopened �SLOVAKIA 129 with the origin of Czechoslovakia in 1918 , the Slovak Matica was esse ntiall y the national center also later (May 1932) in the disagreement with Czech linguists ove r the status of Slovak as a separate language , in which Hronsky played a leading role (6,8,11,14) . Hronsky's life abroad a fter World War II was in many ways tragic . After suffering at the h and s of partisans near the end of the war ( 18 , 22) , he went into exile while still a t the height of his creativity. In the remaining fifteen years of his life , he published only two novels and a novella, mostly writte n in the first two years abroad. According to Konstantfn Culen (22), Hronsky expected to move to the United States fro m Italy in 1945-48 , but was prevented from obtaining a visa by the U .S . policy of agreement with the Czechoslovak " R e pa triation Commi ss ion ,'' the full story of which may be co mp a rable to the tragedies revealed by Julius Epstein in Operation Keelh aul (New York : D evinAdair , 1973). The part played by Slovak-Ameri cans or their inactivity o n Hronsky's beh alf, h as also not been told (22). H owever, who can say whether H ro nsky's literary activity would have gai ned o r lost if he had settled a mong Slovak-Americans? He might have been spared the tiring work by which he earned a living in Argentin a; however, physical nearness to the Slovak exil e centers in North America a nd therefore greater involvement in the difficulties, frustration s, a nd frequently fruitless activities in ev itable to ex il e politi cal groups, might not have stimulated him to further literary creation . This qu es tio n can only b e conside red w hen all of Hronsky's unpublished a nd unfini shed writings beco m e avail able; at prese nt , o nly one is known to me ( 17). Hronsky did not live to know of his "rehabilitation " in Bratislava, nor the recognition of his novels as, in the words of J a n Stevcek, '' the emb ryos of almost every developin g tendency of Slovak prose, the most distinctive of which is the line joining the mode rn socia l novel with the la ter, specificall y Slovak ' natu ral' expressionism but also wit h other importa nt develo pme n ts" (35, p . 108 ; tran slation min e) no r th e judge m ent of Alexander Matuska that Hronsky is so far the only Slovak author whose trul y excellent works number not o ne or two but at least fi ve (34 , pp. 574-75). 1896 Born on 23 February as Jozef Cfger in Zvolen , central Slovaki a, of working-class parents, hi s fat he r being a sawyer. �130 1914 1914-18 1917-18 1919 1918-23 1922 1923-33 1923 1924 1925 1927 1928 1929 1930 SLOVAKIA He attended school in Zvolen, Krupina , and Levice. Received a teacher's diploma in Levice. Taught school in Horne Madunice and Senohrad. Was in the 16th Infantry Division of the Hungarian army from 1 October 1917 to 20 November 1918, and participated in the very bloody defeat of the Austro-Hungarian summer offensive at Piava on the Italian front. He stayed in the reserve until 1928, and his fin al rank as an officer was rotny v zaloze, as listed on his discharge papers. Hronsky' s military experience is reflected in several of his works , includingjozef Mak, b,ut especially Pisar Grae. Married Anna Valeria Ruzinakova on 1 M arch . Taught school in Senohrad and Krupina. His only child Juraj was born . Taught school in Kremnica and Martin. Published his first collection of realistic adult stories, U nas (At Our Place), many of which had been published previously in magazines. He took the additional name Hronsky in the Pan-Slav tradition of earlier Slovak writers, from the Hron River that runs through central Slovakia . Published his first children's book, Najmladsf Zavodsky (The Youngest Zavodsky Child) . Published Domov (Going Home), another collection of realistic stories similar to those of Martin Kukucfn, and Kremnicke povesti (Tales of Kremnica) for children, as well as a collection of adapted Serbian tales . Published his first novel Zlty dom v Klokoci (The Yellow House in the Village Klokoc), which was still realistic but refl ected Hronsky' s interest in new psychologically expressive techniques (44, Strmen, p . xlv). During 1927-41 he also helped prepare numerous grade school readers . Published the collection Pod kozubkom (By the Hearth) . He also became an editor of the children's m agazine Slniecko (Little Sun). Published another collection of adult stories , Medove srdce (Gingerbread H eart). Published one of his few novels on artistic and urban life, Proroctvo Doktora Stankovskeho (The Prophecy of Dr. Stankov- �SLOVAKIA 193 1 1932 1933-40 131 sky) and also one of his most popular animal stories for children , Smely zajko (The D a ring R a bbit). Published a variety of books: the sequel Smely zajko v Afrike (The D aring R a bbit in Africa); two collec tions of roma ntic legends a nd historical novellas, T raj a bratia (Three Brothers) and Zakopan y m ec (The Buried Sword) ; and the experimental novel C hlieb (Bread), in which Hronsky introdu ced the vill age as a livin g, indes tructibl e organism with a collective co nsc10u sness. Published an even greater variety: the romantic Podpolianske rozp rav ky (Stories from the Foot of Mount Pol'ana) in the spirit of Andrej Sladkovic; the animal story of Budkacik a Dubkaci k(un tra nslatable title: comic nam es for two pigs); a historical novel fo r young people, Sokoliar Tomas (The Falconer Thom as); the fairy tales Brondove rozpravky (Tales by the Storytell er J ozef Ru znak Bronda); and the educational book for children Zabav ky stryca Kurkovskeho (Gam es with Uncle Kurkovsky). In the so-call ed " May 12 affair, " Hronsky was a leading m ember of the group of 130 Slovak writers who signed a statem ent against the " C zechoslovak " linguistic tendency of the fi rs t P ravidla slovenskeho pravopisu ( 193 1), a gramm ar book and writer's guide which had been prepared p rim aril y by Czech linguists in the M atica and which m ad e Slovak m ore similar to Czech (6, 11 , 14). In 1933 H ro nsky stopped his teaching caree r on April 1 to beco me secreta ry of the M atica slove nska a t the time when its position was very shaky financially and politically after withdrawal of sta te fund s in 193 2 and the d epa rture of m an y Czechs from the M a tica because of the battle over the P ravidla slove nskeho pravopisu . For the next several years H ro nsky's intensive literary creation was acco mpanied by extensive administrative act ivities in the M a tica. Acco rdin g to fri ends ( 19,2 1) H ro nsky wrote m a inly at ni ght , seeming to th rive on lit tle slee p . O ne of hi s first adm inistrative efforts was to enlarge the m embership base of the M atica and to increase book sales fo r greater fin ancial security without a id (and su pervision) from P rague; ano ther a im was to enlarge the schola rly and cu ltural de partments ( 11 ). �132 1933 1934 1935 1935-36 193 7 1938 1939 1940 SLOVAKIA Published a children's book of tales Zlaty dazd' (The Golden Shower); a series of realistic satiric stories Tomefkovci (The Tomefk Clan); and his most important novel Jozef Mak. A major review of this novel was by Andrej Mraz in Slovenske pohl'ady , Vol. 49 , pp. 761-64 . Published a collection of stories about women, Sedem sfdc (Seven Hearts) , and a group of tales , Zlate hodinky (A Gold Watch). Published Strycovo vrtielko (Uncle's Spinning Top) for children, and numerous speeches and reports on Matica activities. Several chapters of a sequel to Jozef Mak were published in Slovenske pohl'ady , titled "Jozef Mak mladsf," in which Mak's inability to express his love is continued with his son; but the sequel was apparently abandoned. Led a delegation from the Matica to visit Slovak-Americans in the United States from November to July . H e also published Tri rozpravky (Three Stories). Published a collection of tales, Zlatovlasa sestra (The Goldenhaired Sister), and articles about Matica activities ( 1). In a major review (Slovenske pohl'ady , 53 , 366- 72) of the second edition of Jozef Mak, the critic Michal Povazan placed Hronsky between Martin Kukuefn and Milo Urban, author of Zivy bie (The Living Scourge, 1927). Published a collection of stories previously printed in magazines , Jarny vietor a ine rozpravky (Spring Wind and Other Tales) as the first volume of his collected works. Published the historical Budatfnski Frgacovci (The Frgae Family of Budatfn Castle); and the novel a krfznych cestach (At the Crossroads), which was serialized in Slovenske pohl'ady. A story was translated into English (51). Published the description of his American trip in Cesta slovenskou Amerikou (A Trip through Slovak America) (7); also the children's book Tri mudre kozliatka (Three Clever Kidlets) and the first "grotesqu e" novel in Slovak , Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk) , in which Hronsky experimentall y developed a multi-level structure to express various depths of the human personality , both rational and irrational, consciou s and unconscious; it is built around an "axis of imagin ary con versa- �SLOVAKIA 133 tions betwee n the main character and a certain dead person " (43, p. 123). 1940-43 Was elected spravca or director of the Matica in 1940 . During this period (which also included increased government support during th e Slovak R epublic) , new research departments for philosophy, geography, and music were added, and other departments were enlarged , e.g. the dictionary group. A new cen tral building was built, and a modern press was purchased and named Neografia. M embership in the M atica rose to 74 ,000 , a nd from a debt-ridden status in 1933 Matica grew to be worth 80 ,000,000 crowns. Several new journals were begun, alo ng with a new edition of the Pravidla (11 ,52). Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published . During this time Jozef M ak was translated into G erman by P . Kutzner and published in Stuttgart with the new title Die a rmen Seeligkeiten desjosefMak (no date give n in the book, probabl y 1942). In 1943 it was translated into Croatian by Jozip Niksic and published by the Matica hrvatska in Zagreb . 1944 Published the lyrical novel Na Bukvovo m d vore (In Bukva' s Courtyard) and a collec tion of satiric allegories, Smakova mucha (The Filthy Fl y) (42). In late August Hronsky was seized, abused, and threatened with death by partisans in Martin during the '' Slovak National Uprising'' despite the fact that he had neve r been politically active. This very unhappy eve nt , whi ch apparentl y occurred at the instigation of other Matica offi cials ( 18 ,22,28), profoundly shocked and demoralized H ronsky, who was ultim a tely freed at the personal intervention of a leader of the Uprising ( 18), said to be the Communist poet Laco ovomesky. D etail s have been published onl y in part. 1945 Organi zed the evacuation of part of the Matica before the advancing front of Soviet and G erman arrriies, and left Slovakia for Austria and Bavaria, then moved to Italy with hi s wife a nd son ( 18, 19). 1946-47 Li ved in R ome and studied painting besides writing . H e publi shed a short novell a about ancient R om a n Christians, Predavac talizmanov: Liberius Caius (The Talisman Mercha nt: Liberiu s Caius), which Strmen says shows Hronsky �134 1948 1949 1950-55 1956 1957 SLOVAKIA "without a mask" and thus makes his previous heroes appear as "pre-Christian heroes, existentially imprisoned on the fringes of the Christian message , which has never been heard completely or distinctly " (9, p . 79 , translation mine). He also wrote his novel about the war, though it was published only in 1960 (12,16 ,2 7). Published the lyrical novel Andreas Bur Majster (Andrew Bur, Master Sawyer) in the U.S ., from the manuscript completed in Rome in 1947 (10). He also emigrated to Argentina , because the Czechoslovak government was attempting to have him extradited. Through the intervention a nd influence of Karol Sidor, he was helped to leave Italy by sympathetic Italian officials; he had been refused a visa to the U.S. by American officials who failed to understand the Slovak situation (22). Settled in the Argentine town of Lujan, near Buenos Aires , where he worked as a draftsman and textile designer, taught painting, painted, designed stained glass windows, etc. (18), but was also somewhat active in Slovak emigre cultural activities. He published an account of his administration of the Matica slovenska ( 11). Lived quietly in Lujan working and sometimes writing, but little of this work is known, except one fragment (17). His son Juraj described their life in Argentine (18). Was elected honorary president of the exile '' Spolok slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov" (12). In honor of his 60th birthday, the journal Most published a reminiscence of Hronsky (19) with a partial bibliography of his works. In the last issue of Most for 1956 Hronsky wrote a short but sympathetic reminiscence of the Slovak playwright Jozef Gregor Tajovsky' s apologetic retraction (shortly before his death) of his previous position on the "Czechoslovak language" in the Matica affair of May 1932 (14). In the same issue, Hronsky published three satiric sketches: Dazdnik (Umbrella), Gombfk (Button) , and Rebrfk (Ladder), the latter signed by "Jozef Mak" (for other such pieces see 2). Became honorary president of the political and cultural organization "Slovak National Council Abroad ," but was not �SLOVAKIA 1958 1959 1959-60 1960 1964 1965 1966 135 active in it. Published Dve slovenske Ameriky (Two Slovak Americas) about the Slovak League of America and the Argentine Slovak Cultural Society ( 15). Organized the " Zahranicna Matica Slovenska" after the Matica in Martin was relieved of its publishing and educational activities and given the status of a national library by the law of 1953. The purpose of this '' Matica Abroad'' was to encourage Slovak cultural publications and other educational activities impossible in Slovakia. H ad a column in the weekly newspaper Slovak v Amerike (Middletown , PA) titled "Lepsie zazfhat' svetielko aka preklinat' tmu" (Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness). Hronsky published his last novel, Svet na Trasovisku (The People of the Village Trasovisko and also a pun meaning The World Caught in Quicksand), as a serial in Slovak v Amerike, then in book form (16). This novel gives a complex picture of the effects of World War II on a Slovak village, especiall y the effects of the Uprising, which Hronsky presents as a tragic betrayal of the Slovak people and the R epublic of 1939-45 . On July 13 Hronsky died suddenly of a stroke in Lujan. Memorial articles were published by the Slovak League in Pamiatkejozefa Cfgra-Hronskeho (20-24) , by Most (25) , and by the Zahranicna Matica (26). Hronsky's,wife died six weeks later. Posthumously, a collection of stories, Poha.r z bruseneho skla (A Cut-Glass Goblet) was published in Buenos Aires; one story, " Dobry syn " (A Good Son), was new, the rest having been printed in Slovak magazines in 1940-41 (36-3 7). The "thaw" in Bratislava brought an announcement in the newspaper Pravda that some of Hronsky's works would be reprinted. The children's book Budka.cik a Dubka.cik was set to music and presented in a Bratislava puppet theater, then republished by the Mlade Leto press. One of the foremost Bratislava critics , Alexander Matuska , published " Profil na skusku" (A n Attempt at a Profile) on Hronsky in a weekly newspaper (29) . �136 SLOVAKIA Jozef Mak was republished with a foreword by another major critic, Jan Stevcek (30). In Buenos Aires the Zahranicna Matica republished in book form Hronsky's serialized novel from 1939, Na krfznych cestach, with an analysis by Stanislav Meciar (38). 1967-69 Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published in Bratislava and Martin with critical appreciations (1-2). During the liberal period of Alexander Dubcek, efforts were made in both Argentina and Slovakia to return Hronsky's body for burial in the National Cemetery in Martin (18), but they were unsuccessful. Jozef Mak was translated into Magyar by Zaly~mi Antal and published in Bratislava in 1968 . 1970 Andreas Bur Majster was republished in Bratislava, the only "exile" work to appear in Slovakia (10). Alexander Matuska's perceptive criticism of this book too and his brief analysis of Svet na Trasovisku in j. C. Hronsky (34) completed the rehabilitation process except for continued (to this day) condemnation or silence about Svet na Trasovisku . 1971 Jan Stevcek's analysis of "lyrizovana pr6za " related Hronsky to its origins (35). Jozef M . Rydlo 's Italian disserta tion on Hronsky at the University of Padua was apparently the first critical study in a western language ( 41 ), with the possible exception of G erman studies following the translation of Jozef Mak and of Podpolianske rozpravky (Stuttgart, 1944). 1972 Jozef Mak was translated into Russian by I. Bogdanova (Moscow, Progress Publishers) and into Czech by Emil Charous with the new title Clovek milion (The Ordinary Person of Whom There are Millions) and a critical evaluation of the novel as an achievement on the European level (Prague, Odeon). In Canada Predavac talizmanov was republished with an introduction by Karol Strmen (9,27). 197 3 Jan Stevcek further developed his analysis of Hronsky' s work as the most importa nt impulse in Slovak lyri cal prose (35). 1975 The first intensive criticism ofHronsky's work in English was published by Rydlo (43). 1976 The second translation into English , excerpts fromJozefMak and from Tomcfkovci, was made by Andrew C incura (44). 1977 Jozef Mak was translated into Polish by Andrzej Sieczkowski �SLOVAKIA 1978 1982 1983 137 (Warsaw, Panstrv . Inst.). In Buenos Aires was published a single piece from Bronsky's litera ry remains about Argentine life ( 1 7). Predavac tali zmanov was translated into English (45). J ozef Mak was translated into English by Andrew Cincura with a critical analysis of Bronsky' s importance by Peter Petro (46) . The Bra ti slava critic Juliu s Noge prepared a n ew study of Bronsky, includin g som e of the unfinished manuscripts in th e archi ves of the Matica sloven ska ( 4 7). A panel on Bronsky at the American Associat ion for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annu al meeting had papers on three novels ( 48-50), wh ich will be printed in the journal Slovakia as the first compreh ensive studies of Bronsky in English . Bibliographies of Hronsky's work: 1. Mat'ovcfk, A., G. R ezna, V . Podmajerska. " Bio-bibliografiaJozefa Cfgra-Bronskeho." Biograficke studie (Martin), II (1971), 101-20 . 2. R ydlo, J . M. J ozef Cfger Bronsky 1896-1 960. Abbozzo bibliografico . Scuola Vaticana di Bibliotecomia , C itta de! Vaticano, 1973 . 3. Lacko, Mich al. Slovak Studies : Bibliographica 1, VII ( 1967), a nd Slovak Studies: Bibliographica 2, XVII (1977). Autobiographical , reminscient, and other writings by Hronsky: 4. Bronsky, J .C. "Zivotopis" [11 May 1922], in " ' Obsfrnejsf 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. zivotopis' J .C . B ronskeho," by J . M . R ydlo, Most (C leveland), XX , No. 1-2 (1973), 44-47. ________ "Autobiografia , 10 Nov. 1930," Slovenske pohl'ady, 86, No. 3 ( 1970), 44. - - - - - - - - and Elen a Mar6thy Soltesova. "Slovenskej verejnosti," Narodnie noviny, 00 May 1932, vol. 63, p. 2. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Cesta slovenskou Am erikou. 2 vols. Turc. Sv. Martin: M at ica slovenska, 1940 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Nove Slovensko." Slovensko, V (1939), 3-5; "Sme na novej ceste." Slovensko, V (1939), 36-38; "Ako treba zit' n a svete." Slovenske pohl'ady , 60 (1944), 670-77. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Pred avac talizmanov Liberius Gaius od Por- �138 10 . 11. 12 . 13 . 14 . 15. 16. 17 . SLOVAKIA ta Collina." In N adej vft'azn a . Scranton: Ob rana Press, 1947, pp . 7-50 (not seen); Predavac talizmanov , 2nd ed . Introduction " Zapadalo slnko" by K arol Strmen. Cambridge (Ontario) : Dobra Kniha, 1972 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Andreas Bur M aj ster. Scranton : Obrana Press , 1948; 2nd ed. Bratislava : T atran , 1970 . _ _ __ _ _ _ '' Rozvoj Matice sloven skej . '' In Sloven ska republika 1939-49 . Ed . Mikul as Sprinc. Obrana Press, Inc. , 1949 , pp . 191 -201. _ _ __ _ _ _ " List redaktorovi ." Most, II , No. 4 (1 955) , 1-3; and "Spolku' slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956), 145-46 . _ _ __ _ __ " Mostoskovi ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956) , 160-61. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ " O Gregorovi Tajovskom. " Most , III , No . 4 ( 1956) , 189-90 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Dve slovenske Ameriky. ' 'Svetl a No. 1.'' Buenos Aires, 1958. 44 pp. (not seen) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Svet na Trasovisku . Knizni ca Litera rneho Almanachu , Vol. 2 , Whiting, Ind.: Rev. Jan . J . Lach , Publisher , 1960 . _ _ __ __ _ " Lucko patra Andrea." In K alenda r slovenskeho kulturneho spolku v Argentfne. Ed . Ladislav Jankovic. Buenos Aires: Sloven sky kulturny spolok, 1977, pp . 182-99. Reminiscences by family and friends: 18 . Cfger, Anton , " Nesplnena tu zba J . C . Hronskeho." M aticne cftanie (Martin) , 23 N ove mber 1968, pp . 1-2 . (This article includes a letter from Hronsky's so n about their life in Argentin a .) 19. Hrusovsky , Frantisek . " J ozef C fger-Hron sky. " M ost , III , o. 1 (1956), 2-1 2. 20. Sprinc, Mikulas. " Nad hrobomJozefa C. Hronskeho. " In Pam iatke J ozefa Cfgra- Hron skeho. Ed . J ozef P au co . V ol. 3 Li te rarn y Alm anach Slovaka v Am erike . Middletown , PA : J edn ota Press, 1960 , pp . 5-6. 21. Bor, J an E. (pseud . E rnest Zatko). " Spisovatel' J ozefC. H ron sky" and " P ochovali sme spi sovatel'a J ozefa Cfgra-H ro nskeho." In P am iatke (ref. 20), pp. 8-20 and 38-44 . 22 . Culen , K on stantfn . " P osled ne posedenie s j ozefom Cfgrom H ron- �SLOV AKIA 23 . 24 . 25 . 26. 27. 28 . 139 skym . " In P amiatke, pp . 21-32. Kirschbaum , ]. M . " Pamiatke J ozefa C . H ronskeho." In Pamiatke, pp . 35 -36. J ankovic, Ladislav . " O statne chvfle J . C. Hronskeho." InPamiatke, p . 37. O ka!', J an . " Spomien ka na J ozefa C fgra- H ron skeho ." M ost , VII , No. 3-4 (1960) , 97 -104. M eciar , Stanislav. " J ozef Cfger-Hronsky (1896-1 960), " (Speech given on 12 Au gust 1960). In Letopis M atice sloven skej v zahranicf. Ed . Sta ni slav M eciar . Buenos Aires : Zahranicn a M a tica Slovenska , 1963, pp . 141- 46 . Oka!' , J an. " K omu dnes patrf satocka?" Most , XIX , No . 1-2 (1972), 20-25 . (This is also a review of Predavac talizmanov , ref. 9) . R ydlo , J ozef. " J .C . H ronsky - vazen ." In Litera rny almanach Slovaka v Amerike. Ed . J ozef P auco . Middletown , 1974 , pp . 13-17 . Critical studies (in Slovakia, in the West, then in preparation): 29 . M a tu ska , Alexander . " Profil na sku sku . " Kulturny zivot (Bratislava), 4 M arch 1966 , pp . 2-3. 30. Stevcek , J an . " D oslov." In Jozef Mak by J ozef Cfger-Hronsky . Bratislava : Tatran , 1966, pp . 233-3 8. 31. Stevcek, J an . " JozefCfger Hronsky." In Slovensky literarny album . Ed. J anJurfcek and Vl adimir P etrfk . Bratislava: Obzor, 1968, pp . 38 1-84 . 32. N inzansky, J ozefR . " J edno a sedem sfdc ." In Sedem sfdc by J ozef C fge r H ron sky . Bra tislava: T a tra n , 1969, pp . 217-33. 33 . " H ro nskeho Pisar Grae a sloven ska pr6za" [symposium] . Slovenske pohl'ady , 86 , No. 3 (1970), 30-43. 34. M atu ska , Alexander , J . C . H ronsky. Bratislava : Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1970 . Rpt. in O sobnosti : V ybrane spisy Alexa ndra M a tu sku. Bra tislava: Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1973 . 35. Stevcek, J an . Nezbadane pr6zy. Bratislava: Slove nsky spisovatel' , 1971 ; Lyrizova na pr6za . Brati slava: T atran , 197 3. 36. M eciar , Stanislav . " D oslov . " In P ohar z bru se neho skla by J . C . H ro nsky. Buenos A ire s: Zahranicna Matica Sloven ska , 1964, pp . 169-74. 37. Kru zli ak, Im rich . R eview of Poha r z bru seneho skla . M ost , XII , No . 1-2 ( 1965) , 89-9 1. �140 SLOVAKIA 38. Meciar, Stanislav. "Doslov ." In Nakrfznychcestach byJ. C. Hronsky. Buenos Aires: Zahranicna Matica Slovenska, 1966, pp. 165-73. 39. Kruzliak, lmrich, "Domov boljeho vesmfrom (Na. 10. vyrocie smrti J.C. Hronskeho, 23.11.1896 - 13.VII.1960)." Most, XVII, No. 1-2 (1970), 1-10. 40. Kruzliak, Imrich. Review ofJ. C. Hronsky, by Alexander Matuska (ref. 34). Most, XVII, No. 3-4 (1970), 179-82. 41. Rydlo, Jozef M . "Svet na Trasovisku" nell'opera letteraria di Jozef Cfger-Hronsky. Con un epistolario inedito . Ph.D . Dissertation , University of Padua, 1971. 431 pp. typescript (not seen) 42. Rydlo, Jozef. "Smakova mucha . " Most, XIX, No . 1-2 (1972), 32 -38. 43 . Rydlo, Jozef M. "The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of JozefCfger Hronsky." Slovak Studies, XV (1975), 117-42. 44 . Cincura, Andrew, trans . An Anthology of Slovak Literature, with "Slovak Literature : A Brief History" by Karol Strmen. Riverside, CA: University Hardcovers, 1976. 45 . Kester, JohnJ . , trans. Seller of Talismans : Liberius Gaius. Scotch Plains , N.J. : privately printed , 1978. 46. Cincura, Andrew, trans . Jozef Mak. Introduction by Peter Petro. Columbus, OH : Slavica Publishers, in press. 47. Noge,Julius. Podoby realizmu v medzivojnovej pr6ze. Bratislava: Veda, 1983 (in preparation). 48. Lackova-Furimska, Maria. "Jozef Mak , " (in preparation). 49. Petro, Peter . "Pisar Grae," (in preparation) . 50. Sabo, Gerald J. " Andreas Bur Majster and Predavac talizmanov," (in preparation). 51. Morison, W.A., trans. " Mother Macik Goes to the Polls," Slavonic Review (London), XVII (1938-39), 21-35. 52. Winkler, Tomas. Matica slovenska v rokoch 1919-1945. Martin: Matica Slovenska, 1971. �SLOVAKIA 141 Much of the published information was verified with unpublished materials in the Literarny archfv of the Matica slovenska in Martin, Czechoslovakia, which I was able to examine while on an International Research and Exchange Board fellowship in 1982 . Presented in part in Panel 11-10 , "20th Century Slovak Literature : Jozef CfgerHronsky," and Panel 10-6, The Matica Slovenska: 120 Years of Survival," at the AAASS convention in Kansas C ity, MO on 24 October 1983 . � 128 SLOVAKIA Jozef Ciger-Hronsky: Chronology and Partial Bibliography Norma L. Rudinsky The fi ctio n ofjozefCiger-Hronsky, besides being exte n sive , shows such a variety of techniques and styles that only a full critical and descriptive bibliography could indi cate its range of experime ntal forms. The following chronology merely indicates that variety and is not complete, because Hronsky's works have not been collected and many shorter pieces are scattered in magazines in Slovakia and in other publications in North and South America ; his literary remains have not been published. Some previously unreported information is given of Hronsky's service as an infantryman in the Hungarian army on the Italian front in World War I ; this experience is mentioned in one of the biblio graphies ( 1) and is referred to by Hron sky in his tribute to a fellow soldier, the sculptor Ferdin a nd Motoska ( 13). The re is also previously unpublish ed information on his experiences in 1944. Not included here are brief or general refere nces to Hronsky in histories and encyclopedias, e.g . in English, J. M . Kirschbaum , Slovak Language and Literature (Winnipeg, 1975) and The Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington, 1967). In fact, there are almost no noti ces of Hronsky' s fiction in the standard English treatments of Slavic or eve n Czechoslovak literature despite his establi shed place in Slovak literary criticism . Hronsky's nam e is so tied to the activity of the Matica slovenska that the Chronology gives more than might be expected of his administrative activity as director (spravca). The concept of a matica, which is specifically Slavic and central/eastern European , needs explanation for the Anglo-Saxon reader to understand the great devotion inspired by this institution among the Slavic nations that had few other cultural institutions in th e Austro-Hungarian empire. A matica was a national library , publishing house, university, scientific in st itute, academy of scholars, and nationalistic missionary society - all in one. Founded in 1863, but abolished by the M agyar government in 1875, and reopened �SLOVAKIA 129 with the origin of Czechoslovakia in 1918 , the Slovak Matica was esse ntiall y the national center also later (May 1932) in the disagreement with Czech linguists ove r the status of Slovak as a separate language , in which Hronsky played a leading role (6,8,11,14) . Hronsky's life abroad a fter World War II was in many ways tragic . After suffering at the h and s of partisans near the end of the war ( 18 , 22) , he went into exile while still a t the height of his creativity. In the remaining fifteen years of his life , he published only two novels and a novella, mostly writte n in the first two years abroad. According to Konstantfn Culen (22), Hronsky expected to move to the United States fro m Italy in 1945-48 , but was prevented from obtaining a visa by the U .S . policy of agreement with the Czechoslovak " R e pa triation Commi ss ion ,'' the full story of which may be co mp a rable to the tragedies revealed by Julius Epstein in Operation Keelh aul (New York : D evinAdair , 1973). The part played by Slovak-Ameri cans or their inactivity o n Hronsky's beh alf, h as also not been told (22). H owever, who can say whether H ro nsky's literary activity would have gai ned o r lost if he had settled a mong Slovak-Americans? He might have been spared the tiring work by which he earned a living in Argentin a; however, physical nearness to the Slovak exil e centers in North America a nd therefore greater involvement in the difficulties, frustration s, a nd frequently fruitless activities in ev itable to ex il e politi cal groups, might not have stimulated him to further literary creation . This qu es tio n can only b e conside red w hen all of Hronsky's unpublished a nd unfini shed writings beco m e avail able; at prese nt , o nly one is known to me ( 17). Hronsky did not live to know of his "rehabilitation " in Bratislava, nor the recognition of his novels as, in the words of J a n Stevcek, '' the emb ryos of almost every developin g tendency of Slovak prose, the most distinctive of which is the line joining the mode rn socia l novel with the la ter, specificall y Slovak ' natu ral' expressionism but also wit h other importa nt develo pme n ts" (35, p . 108 ; tran slation min e) no r th e judge m ent of Alexander Matuska that Hronsky is so far the only Slovak author whose trul y excellent works number not o ne or two but at least fi ve (34 , pp. 574-75). 1896 Born on 23 February as Jozef Cfger in Zvolen , central Slovaki a, of working-class parents, hi s fat he r being a sawyer. �130 1914 1914-18 1917-18 1919 1918-23 1922 1923-33 1923 1924 1925 1927 1928 1929 1930 SLOVAKIA He attended school in Zvolen, Krupina , and Levice. Received a teacher's diploma in Levice. Taught school in Horne Madunice and Senohrad. Was in the 16th Infantry Division of the Hungarian army from 1 October 1917 to 20 November 1918, and participated in the very bloody defeat of the Austro-Hungarian summer offensive at Piava on the Italian front. He stayed in the reserve until 1928, and his fin al rank as an officer was rotny v zaloze, as listed on his discharge papers. Hronsky' s military experience is reflected in several of his works , includingjozef Mak, b,ut especially Pisar Grae. Married Anna Valeria Ruzinakova on 1 M arch . Taught school in Senohrad and Krupina. His only child Juraj was born . Taught school in Kremnica and Martin. Published his first collection of realistic adult stories, U nas (At Our Place), many of which had been published previously in magazines. He took the additional name Hronsky in the Pan-Slav tradition of earlier Slovak writers, from the Hron River that runs through central Slovakia . Published his first children's book, Najmladsf Zavodsky (The Youngest Zavodsky Child) . Published Domov (Going Home), another collection of realistic stories similar to those of Martin Kukucfn, and Kremnicke povesti (Tales of Kremnica) for children, as well as a collection of adapted Serbian tales . Published his first novel Zlty dom v Klokoci (The Yellow House in the Village Klokoc), which was still realistic but refl ected Hronsky' s interest in new psychologically expressive techniques (44, Strmen, p . xlv). During 1927-41 he also helped prepare numerous grade school readers . Published the collection Pod kozubkom (By the Hearth) . He also became an editor of the children's m agazine Slniecko (Little Sun). Published another collection of adult stories , Medove srdce (Gingerbread H eart). Published one of his few novels on artistic and urban life, Proroctvo Doktora Stankovskeho (The Prophecy of Dr. Stankov- �SLOVAKIA 193 1 1932 1933-40 131 sky) and also one of his most popular animal stories for children , Smely zajko (The D a ring R a bbit). Published a variety of books: the sequel Smely zajko v Afrike (The D aring R a bbit in Africa); two collec tions of roma ntic legends a nd historical novellas, T raj a bratia (Three Brothers) and Zakopan y m ec (The Buried Sword) ; and the experimental novel C hlieb (Bread), in which Hronsky introdu ced the vill age as a livin g, indes tructibl e organism with a collective co nsc10u sness. Published an even greater variety: the romantic Podpolianske rozp rav ky (Stories from the Foot of Mount Pol'ana) in the spirit of Andrej Sladkovic; the animal story of Budkacik a Dubkaci k(un tra nslatable title: comic nam es for two pigs); a historical novel fo r young people, Sokoliar Tomas (The Falconer Thom as); the fairy tales Brondove rozpravky (Tales by the Storytell er J ozef Ru znak Bronda); and the educational book for children Zabav ky stryca Kurkovskeho (Gam es with Uncle Kurkovsky). In the so-call ed " May 12 affair, " Hronsky was a leading m ember of the group of 130 Slovak writers who signed a statem ent against the " C zechoslovak " linguistic tendency of the fi rs t P ravidla slovenskeho pravopisu ( 193 1), a gramm ar book and writer's guide which had been prepared p rim aril y by Czech linguists in the M atica and which m ad e Slovak m ore similar to Czech (6, 11 , 14). In 1933 H ro nsky stopped his teaching caree r on April 1 to beco me secreta ry of the M atica slove nska a t the time when its position was very shaky financially and politically after withdrawal of sta te fund s in 193 2 and the d epa rture of m an y Czechs from the M a tica because of the battle over the P ravidla slove nskeho pravopisu . For the next several years H ro nsky's intensive literary creation was acco mpanied by extensive administrative act ivities in the M a tica. Acco rdin g to fri ends ( 19,2 1) H ro nsky wrote m a inly at ni ght , seeming to th rive on lit tle slee p . O ne of hi s first adm inistrative efforts was to enlarge the m embership base of the M atica and to increase book sales fo r greater fin ancial security without a id (and su pervision) from P rague; ano ther a im was to enlarge the schola rly and cu ltural de partments ( 11 ). �132 1933 1934 1935 1935-36 193 7 1938 1939 1940 SLOVAKIA Published a children's book of tales Zlaty dazd' (The Golden Shower); a series of realistic satiric stories Tomefkovci (The Tomefk Clan); and his most important novel Jozef Mak. A major review of this novel was by Andrej Mraz in Slovenske pohl'ady , Vol. 49 , pp. 761-64 . Published a collection of stories about women, Sedem sfdc (Seven Hearts) , and a group of tales , Zlate hodinky (A Gold Watch). Published Strycovo vrtielko (Uncle's Spinning Top) for children, and numerous speeches and reports on Matica activities. Several chapters of a sequel to Jozef Mak were published in Slovenske pohl'ady , titled "Jozef Mak mladsf," in which Mak's inability to express his love is continued with his son; but the sequel was apparently abandoned. Led a delegation from the Matica to visit Slovak-Americans in the United States from November to July . H e also published Tri rozpravky (Three Stories). Published a collection of tales, Zlatovlasa sestra (The Goldenhaired Sister), and articles about Matica activities ( 1). In a major review (Slovenske pohl'ady , 53 , 366- 72) of the second edition of Jozef Mak, the critic Michal Povazan placed Hronsky between Martin Kukuefn and Milo Urban, author of Zivy bie (The Living Scourge, 1927). Published a collection of stories previously printed in magazines , Jarny vietor a ine rozpravky (Spring Wind and Other Tales) as the first volume of his collected works. Published the historical Budatfnski Frgacovci (The Frgae Family of Budatfn Castle); and the novel a krfznych cestach (At the Crossroads), which was serialized in Slovenske pohl'ady. A story was translated into English (51). Published the description of his American trip in Cesta slovenskou Amerikou (A Trip through Slovak America) (7); also the children's book Tri mudre kozliatka (Three Clever Kidlets) and the first "grotesqu e" novel in Slovak , Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk) , in which Hronsky experimentall y developed a multi-level structure to express various depths of the human personality , both rational and irrational, consciou s and unconscious; it is built around an "axis of imagin ary con versa- �SLOVAKIA 133 tions betwee n the main character and a certain dead person " (43, p. 123). 1940-43 Was elected spravca or director of the Matica in 1940 . During this period (which also included increased government support during th e Slovak R epublic) , new research departments for philosophy, geography, and music were added, and other departments were enlarged , e.g. the dictionary group. A new cen tral building was built, and a modern press was purchased and named Neografia. M embership in the M atica rose to 74 ,000 , a nd from a debt-ridden status in 1933 Matica grew to be worth 80 ,000,000 crowns. Several new journals were begun, alo ng with a new edition of the Pravidla (11 ,52). Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published . During this time Jozef M ak was translated into G erman by P . Kutzner and published in Stuttgart with the new title Die a rmen Seeligkeiten desjosefMak (no date give n in the book, probabl y 1942). In 1943 it was translated into Croatian by Jozip Niksic and published by the Matica hrvatska in Zagreb . 1944 Published the lyrical novel Na Bukvovo m d vore (In Bukva' s Courtyard) and a collec tion of satiric allegories, Smakova mucha (The Filthy Fl y) (42). In late August Hronsky was seized, abused, and threatened with death by partisans in Martin during the '' Slovak National Uprising'' despite the fact that he had neve r been politically active. This very unhappy eve nt , whi ch apparentl y occurred at the instigation of other Matica offi cials ( 18 ,22,28), profoundly shocked and demoralized H ronsky, who was ultim a tely freed at the personal intervention of a leader of the Uprising ( 18), said to be the Communist poet Laco ovomesky. D etail s have been published onl y in part. 1945 Organi zed the evacuation of part of the Matica before the advancing front of Soviet and G erman arrriies, and left Slovakia for Austria and Bavaria, then moved to Italy with hi s wife a nd son ( 18, 19). 1946-47 Li ved in R ome and studied painting besides writing . H e publi shed a short novell a about ancient R om a n Christians, Predavac talizmanov: Liberius Caius (The Talisman Mercha nt: Liberiu s Caius), which Strmen says shows Hronsky �134 1948 1949 1950-55 1956 1957 SLOVAKIA "without a mask" and thus makes his previous heroes appear as "pre-Christian heroes, existentially imprisoned on the fringes of the Christian message , which has never been heard completely or distinctly " (9, p . 79 , translation mine). He also wrote his novel about the war, though it was published only in 1960 (12,16 ,2 7). Published the lyrical novel Andreas Bur Majster (Andrew Bur, Master Sawyer) in the U.S ., from the manuscript completed in Rome in 1947 (10). He also emigrated to Argentina , because the Czechoslovak government was attempting to have him extradited. Through the intervention a nd influence of Karol Sidor, he was helped to leave Italy by sympathetic Italian officials; he had been refused a visa to the U.S. by American officials who failed to understand the Slovak situation (22). Settled in the Argentine town of Lujan, near Buenos Aires , where he worked as a draftsman and textile designer, taught painting, painted, designed stained glass windows, etc. (18), but was also somewhat active in Slovak emigre cultural activities. He published an account of his administration of the Matica slovenska ( 11). Lived quietly in Lujan working and sometimes writing, but little of this work is known, except one fragment (17). His son Juraj described their life in Argentine (18). Was elected honorary president of the exile '' Spolok slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov" (12). In honor of his 60th birthday, the journal Most published a reminiscence of Hronsky (19) with a partial bibliography of his works. In the last issue of Most for 1956 Hronsky wrote a short but sympathetic reminiscence of the Slovak playwright Jozef Gregor Tajovsky' s apologetic retraction (shortly before his death) of his previous position on the "Czechoslovak language" in the Matica affair of May 1932 (14). In the same issue, Hronsky published three satiric sketches: Dazdnik (Umbrella), Gombfk (Button) , and Rebrfk (Ladder), the latter signed by "Jozef Mak" (for other such pieces see 2). Became honorary president of the political and cultural organization "Slovak National Council Abroad ," but was not �SLOVAKIA 1958 1959 1959-60 1960 1964 1965 1966 135 active in it. Published Dve slovenske Ameriky (Two Slovak Americas) about the Slovak League of America and the Argentine Slovak Cultural Society ( 15). Organized the " Zahranicna Matica Slovenska" after the Matica in Martin was relieved of its publishing and educational activities and given the status of a national library by the law of 1953. The purpose of this '' Matica Abroad'' was to encourage Slovak cultural publications and other educational activities impossible in Slovakia. H ad a column in the weekly newspaper Slovak v Amerike (Middletown , PA) titled "Lepsie zazfhat' svetielko aka preklinat' tmu" (Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness). Hronsky published his last novel, Svet na Trasovisku (The People of the Village Trasovisko and also a pun meaning The World Caught in Quicksand), as a serial in Slovak v Amerike, then in book form (16). This novel gives a complex picture of the effects of World War II on a Slovak village, especiall y the effects of the Uprising, which Hronsky presents as a tragic betrayal of the Slovak people and the R epublic of 1939-45 . On July 13 Hronsky died suddenly of a stroke in Lujan. Memorial articles were published by the Slovak League in Pamiatkejozefa Cfgra-Hronskeho (20-24) , by Most (25) , and by the Zahranicna Matica (26). Hronsky's,wife died six weeks later. Posthumously, a collection of stories, Poha.r z bruseneho skla (A Cut-Glass Goblet) was published in Buenos Aires; one story, " Dobry syn " (A Good Son), was new, the rest having been printed in Slovak magazines in 1940-41 (36-3 7). The "thaw" in Bratislava brought an announcement in the newspaper Pravda that some of Hronsky's works would be reprinted. The children's book Budka.cik a Dubka.cik was set to music and presented in a Bratislava puppet theater, then republished by the Mlade Leto press. One of the foremost Bratislava critics , Alexander Matuska , published " Profil na skusku" (A n Attempt at a Profile) on Hronsky in a weekly newspaper (29) . �136 SLOVAKIA Jozef Mak was republished with a foreword by another major critic, Jan Stevcek (30). In Buenos Aires the Zahranicna Matica republished in book form Hronsky's serialized novel from 1939, Na krfznych cestach, with an analysis by Stanislav Meciar (38). 1967-69 Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published in Bratislava and Martin with critical appreciations (1-2). During the liberal period of Alexander Dubcek, efforts were made in both Argentina and Slovakia to return Hronsky's body for burial in the National Cemetery in Martin (18), but they were unsuccessful. Jozef Mak was translated into Magyar by Zaly~mi Antal and published in Bratislava in 1968 . 1970 Andreas Bur Majster was republished in Bratislava, the only "exile" work to appear in Slovakia (10). Alexander Matuska's perceptive criticism of this book too and his brief analysis of Svet na Trasovisku in j. C. Hronsky (34) completed the rehabilitation process except for continued (to this day) condemnation or silence about Svet na Trasovisku . 1971 Jan Stevcek's analysis of "lyrizovana pr6za " related Hronsky to its origins (35). Jozef M . Rydlo 's Italian disserta tion on Hronsky at the University of Padua was apparently the first critical study in a western language ( 41 ), with the possible exception of G erman studies following the translation of Jozef Mak and of Podpolianske rozpravky (Stuttgart, 1944). 1972 Jozef Mak was translated into Russian by I. Bogdanova (Moscow, Progress Publishers) and into Czech by Emil Charous with the new title Clovek milion (The Ordinary Person of Whom There are Millions) and a critical evaluation of the novel as an achievement on the European level (Prague, Odeon). In Canada Predavac talizmanov was republished with an introduction by Karol Strmen (9,27). 197 3 Jan Stevcek further developed his analysis of Hronsky' s work as the most importa nt impulse in Slovak lyri cal prose (35). 1975 The first intensive criticism ofHronsky's work in English was published by Rydlo (43). 1976 The second translation into English , excerpts fromJozefMak and from Tomcfkovci, was made by Andrew C incura (44). 1977 Jozef Mak was translated into Polish by Andrzej Sieczkowski �SLOVAKIA 1978 1982 1983 137 (Warsaw, Panstrv . Inst.). In Buenos Aires was published a single piece from Bronsky's litera ry remains about Argentine life ( 1 7). Predavac tali zmanov was translated into English (45). J ozef Mak was translated into English by Andrew Cincura with a critical analysis of Bronsky' s importance by Peter Petro (46) . The Bra ti slava critic Juliu s Noge prepared a n ew study of Bronsky, includin g som e of the unfinished manuscripts in th e archi ves of the Matica sloven ska ( 4 7). A panel on Bronsky at the American Associat ion for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annu al meeting had papers on three novels ( 48-50), wh ich will be printed in the journal Slovakia as the first compreh ensive studies of Bronsky in English . Bibliographies of Hronsky's work: 1. Mat'ovcfk, A., G. R ezna, V . Podmajerska. " Bio-bibliografiaJozefa Cfgra-Bronskeho." Biograficke studie (Martin), II (1971), 101-20 . 2. R ydlo, J . M. J ozef Cfger Bronsky 1896-1 960. Abbozzo bibliografico . Scuola Vaticana di Bibliotecomia , C itta de! Vaticano, 1973 . 3. Lacko, Mich al. Slovak Studies : Bibliographica 1, VII ( 1967), a nd Slovak Studies: Bibliographica 2, XVII (1977). Autobiographical , reminscient, and other writings by Hronsky: 4. Bronsky, J .C. "Zivotopis" [11 May 1922], in " ' Obsfrnejsf 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. zivotopis' J .C . B ronskeho," by J . M . R ydlo, Most (C leveland), XX , No. 1-2 (1973), 44-47. ________ "Autobiografia , 10 Nov. 1930," Slovenske pohl'ady, 86, No. 3 ( 1970), 44. - - - - - - - - and Elen a Mar6thy Soltesova. "Slovenskej verejnosti," Narodnie noviny, 00 May 1932, vol. 63, p. 2. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Cesta slovenskou Am erikou. 2 vols. Turc. Sv. Martin: M at ica slovenska, 1940 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Nove Slovensko." Slovensko, V (1939), 3-5; "Sme na novej ceste." Slovensko, V (1939), 36-38; "Ako treba zit' n a svete." Slovenske pohl'ady , 60 (1944), 670-77. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Pred avac talizmanov Liberius Gaius od Por- �138 10 . 11. 12 . 13 . 14 . 15. 16. 17 . SLOVAKIA ta Collina." In N adej vft'azn a . Scranton: Ob rana Press, 1947, pp . 7-50 (not seen); Predavac talizmanov , 2nd ed . Introduction " Zapadalo slnko" by K arol Strmen. Cambridge (Ontario) : Dobra Kniha, 1972 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Andreas Bur M aj ster. Scranton : Obrana Press , 1948; 2nd ed. Bratislava : T atran , 1970 . _ _ __ _ _ _ '' Rozvoj Matice sloven skej . '' In Sloven ska republika 1939-49 . Ed . Mikul as Sprinc. Obrana Press, Inc. , 1949 , pp . 191 -201. _ _ __ _ _ _ " List redaktorovi ." Most, II , No. 4 (1 955) , 1-3; and "Spolku' slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956), 145-46 . _ _ __ _ __ " Mostoskovi ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956) , 160-61. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ " O Gregorovi Tajovskom. " Most , III , No . 4 ( 1956) , 189-90 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Dve slovenske Ameriky. ' 'Svetl a No. 1.'' Buenos Aires, 1958. 44 pp. (not seen) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Svet na Trasovisku . Knizni ca Litera rneho Almanachu , Vol. 2 , Whiting, Ind.: Rev. Jan . J . Lach , Publisher , 1960 . _ _ __ __ _ " Lucko patra Andrea." In K alenda r slovenskeho kulturneho spolku v Argentfne. Ed . Ladislav Jankovic. Buenos Aires: Sloven sky kulturny spolok, 1977, pp . 182-99. Reminiscences by family and friends: 18 . Cfger, Anton , " Nesplnena tu zba J . C . Hronskeho." M aticne cftanie (Martin) , 23 N ove mber 1968, pp . 1-2 . (This article includes a letter from Hronsky's so n about their life in Argentin a .) 19. Hrusovsky , Frantisek . " J ozef C fger-Hron sky. " M ost , III , o. 1 (1956), 2-1 2. 20. Sprinc, Mikulas. " Nad hrobomJozefa C. Hronskeho. " In Pam iatke J ozefa Cfgra- Hron skeho. Ed . J ozef P au co . V ol. 3 Li te rarn y Alm anach Slovaka v Am erike . Middletown , PA : J edn ota Press, 1960 , pp . 5-6. 21. Bor, J an E. (pseud . E rnest Zatko). " Spisovatel' J ozefC. H ron sky" and " P ochovali sme spi sovatel'a J ozefa Cfgra-H ro nskeho." In P am iatke (ref. 20), pp. 8-20 and 38-44 . 22 . Culen , K on stantfn . " P osled ne posedenie s j ozefom Cfgrom H ron- �SLOV AKIA 23 . 24 . 25 . 26. 27. 28 . 139 skym . " In P amiatke, pp . 21-32. Kirschbaum , ]. M . " Pamiatke J ozefa C . H ronskeho." In Pamiatke, pp . 35 -36. J ankovic, Ladislav . " O statne chvfle J . C. Hronskeho." InPamiatke, p . 37. O ka!', J an . " Spomien ka na J ozefa C fgra- H ron skeho ." M ost , VII , No. 3-4 (1960) , 97 -104. M eciar , Stanislav. " J ozef Cfger-Hronsky (1896-1 960), " (Speech given on 12 Au gust 1960). In Letopis M atice sloven skej v zahranicf. Ed . Sta ni slav M eciar . Buenos Aires : Zahranicn a M a tica Slovenska , 1963, pp . 141- 46 . Oka!' , J an. " K omu dnes patrf satocka?" Most , XIX , No . 1-2 (1972), 20-25 . (This is also a review of Predavac talizmanov , ref. 9) . R ydlo , J ozef. " J .C . H ronsky - vazen ." In Litera rny almanach Slovaka v Amerike. Ed . J ozef P auco . Middletown , 1974 , pp . 13-17 . Critical studies (in Slovakia, in the West, then in preparation): 29 . M a tu ska , Alexander . " Profil na sku sku . " Kulturny zivot (Bratislava), 4 M arch 1966 , pp . 2-3. 30. Stevcek , J an . " D oslov." In Jozef Mak by J ozef Cfger-Hronsky . Bratislava : Tatran , 1966, pp . 233-3 8. 31. Stevcek, J an . " JozefCfger Hronsky." In Slovensky literarny album . Ed. J anJurfcek and Vl adimir P etrfk . Bratislava: Obzor, 1968, pp . 38 1-84 . 32. N inzansky, J ozefR . " J edno a sedem sfdc ." In Sedem sfdc by J ozef C fge r H ron sky . Bra tislava: T a tra n , 1969, pp . 217-33. 33 . " H ro nskeho Pisar Grae a sloven ska pr6za" [symposium] . Slovenske pohl'ady , 86 , No. 3 (1970), 30-43. 34. M atu ska , Alexander , J . C . H ronsky. Bratislava : Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1970 . Rpt. in O sobnosti : V ybrane spisy Alexa ndra M a tu sku. Bra tislava: Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1973 . 35. Stevcek, J an . Nezbadane pr6zy. Bratislava: Slove nsky spisovatel' , 1971 ; Lyrizova na pr6za . Brati slava: T atran , 197 3. 36. M eciar , Stanislav . " D oslov . " In P ohar z bru se neho skla by J . C . H ro nsky. Buenos A ire s: Zahranicna Matica Sloven ska , 1964, pp . 169-74. 37. Kru zli ak, Im rich . R eview of Poha r z bru seneho skla . M ost , XII , No . 1-2 ( 1965) , 89-9 1. �140 SLOVAKIA 38. Meciar, Stanislav. "Doslov ." In Nakrfznychcestach byJ. C. Hronsky. Buenos Aires: Zahranicna Matica Slovenska, 1966, pp. 165-73. 39. Kruzliak, lmrich, "Domov boljeho vesmfrom (Na. 10. vyrocie smrti J.C. Hronskeho, 23.11.1896 - 13.VII.1960)." Most, XVII, No. 1-2 (1970), 1-10. 40. Kruzliak, Imrich. Review ofJ. C. Hronsky, by Alexander Matuska (ref. 34). Most, XVII, No. 3-4 (1970), 179-82. 41. Rydlo, Jozef M . "Svet na Trasovisku" nell'opera letteraria di Jozef Cfger-Hronsky. Con un epistolario inedito . Ph.D . Dissertation , University of Padua, 1971. 431 pp. typescript (not seen) 42. Rydlo, Jozef. "Smakova mucha . " Most, XIX, No . 1-2 (1972), 32 -38. 43 . Rydlo, Jozef M. "The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of JozefCfger Hronsky." Slovak Studies, XV (1975), 117-42. 44 . Cincura, Andrew, trans . An Anthology of Slovak Literature, with "Slovak Literature : A Brief History" by Karol Strmen. Riverside, CA: University Hardcovers, 1976. 45 . Kester, JohnJ . , trans. Seller of Talismans : Liberius Gaius. Scotch Plains , N.J. : privately printed , 1978. 46. Cincura, Andrew, trans . Jozef Mak. Introduction by Peter Petro. Columbus, OH : Slavica Publishers, in press. 47. Noge,Julius. Podoby realizmu v medzivojnovej pr6ze. Bratislava: Veda, 1983 (in preparation). 48. Lackova-Furimska, Maria. "Jozef Mak , " (in preparation). 49. Petro, Peter . "Pisar Grae," (in preparation) . 50. Sabo, Gerald J. " Andreas Bur Majster and Predavac talizmanov," (in preparation). 51. Morison, W.A., trans. " Mother Macik Goes to the Polls," Slavonic Review (London), XVII (1938-39), 21-35. 52. Winkler, Tomas. Matica slovenska v rokoch 1919-1945. Martin: Matica Slovenska, 1971. �SLOVAKIA 141 Much of the published information was verified with unpublished materials in the Literarny archfv of the Matica slovenska in Martin, Czechoslovakia, which I was able to examine while on an International Research and Exchange Board fellowship in 1982 . Presented in part in Panel 11-10 , "20th Century Slovak Literature : Jozef CfgerHronsky," and Panel 10-6, The Matica Slovenska: 120 Years of Survival," at the AAASS convention in Kansas C ity, MO on 24 October 1983 . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 128 SLOVAKIA Jozef Ciger-Hronsky: Chronology and Partial Bibliography Norma L. Rudinsky The fi ctio n ofjozefCiger-Hronsky, besides being exte n sive , shows such a variety of techniques and styles that only a full critical and descriptive bibliography could indi cate its range of experime ntal forms. The following chronology merely indicates that variety and is not complete, because Hronsky's works have not been collected and many shorter pieces are scattered in magazines in Slovakia and in other publications in North and South America ; his literary remains have not been published. Some previously unreported information is given of Hronsky's service as an infantryman in the Hungarian army on the Italian front in World War I ; this experience is mentioned in one of the biblio graphies ( 1) and is referred to by Hron sky in his tribute to a fellow soldier, the sculptor Ferdin a nd Motoska ( 13). The re is also previously unpublish ed information on his experiences in 1944. Not included here are brief or general refere nces to Hronsky in histories and encyclopedias, e.g . in English, J. M . Kirschbaum , Slovak Language and Literature (Winnipeg, 1975) and The Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington, 1967). In fact, there are almost no noti ces of Hronsky' s fiction in the standard English treatments of Slavic or eve n Czechoslovak literature despite his establi shed place in Slovak literary criticism . Hronsky's nam e is so tied to the activity of the Matica slovenska that the Chronology gives more than might be expected of his administrative activity as director (spravca). The concept of a matica, which is specifically Slavic and central/eastern European , needs explanation for the Anglo-Saxon reader to understand the great devotion inspired by this institution among the Slavic nations that had few other cultural institutions in th e Austro-Hungarian empire. A matica was a national library , publishing house, university, scientific in st itute, academy of scholars, and nationalistic missionary society - all in one. Founded in 1863, but abolished by the M agyar government in 1875, and reopened SLOVAKIA 129 with the origin of Czechoslovakia in 1918 , the Slovak Matica was esse ntiall y the national center also later (May 1932) in the disagreement with Czech linguists ove r the status of Slovak as a separate language , in which Hronsky played a leading role (6,8,11,14) . Hronsky's life abroad a fter World War II was in many ways tragic . After suffering at the h and s of partisans near the end of the war ( 18 , 22) , he went into exile while still a t the height of his creativity. In the remaining fifteen years of his life , he published only two novels and a novella, mostly writte n in the first two years abroad. According to Konstantfn Culen (22), Hronsky expected to move to the United States fro m Italy in 1945-48 , but was prevented from obtaining a visa by the U .S . policy of agreement with the Czechoslovak " R e pa triation Commi ss ion ,'' the full story of which may be co mp a rable to the tragedies revealed by Julius Epstein in Operation Keelh aul (New York : D evinAdair , 1973). The part played by Slovak-Ameri cans or their inactivity o n Hronsky's beh alf, h as also not been told (22). H owever, who can say whether H ro nsky's literary activity would have gai ned o r lost if he had settled a mong Slovak-Americans? He might have been spared the tiring work by which he earned a living in Argentin a; however, physical nearness to the Slovak exil e centers in North America a nd therefore greater involvement in the difficulties, frustration s, a nd frequently fruitless activities in ev itable to ex il e politi cal groups, might not have stimulated him to further literary creation . This qu es tio n can only b e conside red w hen all of Hronsky's unpublished a nd unfini shed writings beco m e avail able; at prese nt , o nly one is known to me ( 17). Hronsky did not live to know of his "rehabilitation " in Bratislava, nor the recognition of his novels as, in the words of J a n Stevcek, '' the emb ryos of almost every developin g tendency of Slovak prose, the most distinctive of which is the line joining the mode rn socia l novel with the la ter, specificall y Slovak ' natu ral' expressionism but also wit h other importa nt develo pme n ts" (35, p . 108 ; tran slation min e) no r th e judge m ent of Alexander Matuska that Hronsky is so far the only Slovak author whose trul y excellent works number not o ne or two but at least fi ve (34 , pp. 574-75). 1896 Born on 23 February as Jozef Cfger in Zvolen , central Slovaki a, of working-class parents, hi s fat he r being a sawyer. 130 1914 1914-18 1917-18 1919 1918-23 1922 1923-33 1923 1924 1925 1927 1928 1929 1930 SLOVAKIA He attended school in Zvolen, Krupina , and Levice. Received a teacher's diploma in Levice. Taught school in Horne Madunice and Senohrad. Was in the 16th Infantry Division of the Hungarian army from 1 October 1917 to 20 November 1918, and participated in the very bloody defeat of the Austro-Hungarian summer offensive at Piava on the Italian front. He stayed in the reserve until 1928, and his fin al rank as an officer was rotny v zaloze, as listed on his discharge papers. Hronsky' s military experience is reflected in several of his works , includingjozef Mak, b,ut especially Pisar Grae. Married Anna Valeria Ruzinakova on 1 M arch . Taught school in Senohrad and Krupina. His only child Juraj was born . Taught school in Kremnica and Martin. Published his first collection of realistic adult stories, U nas (At Our Place), many of which had been published previously in magazines. He took the additional name Hronsky in the Pan-Slav tradition of earlier Slovak writers, from the Hron River that runs through central Slovakia . Published his first children's book, Najmladsf Zavodsky (The Youngest Zavodsky Child) . Published Domov (Going Home), another collection of realistic stories similar to those of Martin Kukucfn, and Kremnicke povesti (Tales of Kremnica) for children, as well as a collection of adapted Serbian tales . Published his first novel Zlty dom v Klokoci (The Yellow House in the Village Klokoc), which was still realistic but refl ected Hronsky' s interest in new psychologically expressive techniques (44, Strmen, p . xlv). During 1927-41 he also helped prepare numerous grade school readers . Published the collection Pod kozubkom (By the Hearth) . He also became an editor of the children's m agazine Slniecko (Little Sun). Published another collection of adult stories , Medove srdce (Gingerbread H eart). Published one of his few novels on artistic and urban life, Proroctvo Doktora Stankovskeho (The Prophecy of Dr. Stankov- SLOVAKIA 193 1 1932 1933-40 131 sky) and also one of his most popular animal stories for children , Smely zajko (The D a ring R a bbit). Published a variety of books: the sequel Smely zajko v Afrike (The D aring R a bbit in Africa); two collec tions of roma ntic legends a nd historical novellas, T raj a bratia (Three Brothers) and Zakopan y m ec (The Buried Sword) ; and the experimental novel C hlieb (Bread), in which Hronsky introdu ced the vill age as a livin g, indes tructibl e organism with a collective co nsc10u sness. Published an even greater variety: the romantic Podpolianske rozp rav ky (Stories from the Foot of Mount Pol'ana) in the spirit of Andrej Sladkovic; the animal story of Budkacik a Dubkaci k(un tra nslatable title: comic nam es for two pigs); a historical novel fo r young people, Sokoliar Tomas (The Falconer Thom as); the fairy tales Brondove rozpravky (Tales by the Storytell er J ozef Ru znak Bronda); and the educational book for children Zabav ky stryca Kurkovskeho (Gam es with Uncle Kurkovsky). In the so-call ed " May 12 affair, " Hronsky was a leading m ember of the group of 130 Slovak writers who signed a statem ent against the " C zechoslovak " linguistic tendency of the fi rs t P ravidla slovenskeho pravopisu ( 193 1), a gramm ar book and writer's guide which had been prepared p rim aril y by Czech linguists in the M atica and which m ad e Slovak m ore similar to Czech (6, 11 , 14). In 1933 H ro nsky stopped his teaching caree r on April 1 to beco me secreta ry of the M atica slove nska a t the time when its position was very shaky financially and politically after withdrawal of sta te fund s in 193 2 and the d epa rture of m an y Czechs from the M a tica because of the battle over the P ravidla slove nskeho pravopisu . For the next several years H ro nsky's intensive literary creation was acco mpanied by extensive administrative act ivities in the M a tica. Acco rdin g to fri ends ( 19,2 1) H ro nsky wrote m a inly at ni ght , seeming to th rive on lit tle slee p . O ne of hi s first adm inistrative efforts was to enlarge the m embership base of the M atica and to increase book sales fo r greater fin ancial security without a id (and su pervision) from P rague; ano ther a im was to enlarge the schola rly and cu ltural de partments ( 11 ). 132 1933 1934 1935 1935-36 193 7 1938 1939 1940 SLOVAKIA Published a children's book of tales Zlaty dazd' (The Golden Shower); a series of realistic satiric stories Tomefkovci (The Tomefk Clan); and his most important novel Jozef Mak. A major review of this novel was by Andrej Mraz in Slovenske pohl'ady , Vol. 49 , pp. 761-64 . Published a collection of stories about women, Sedem sfdc (Seven Hearts) , and a group of tales , Zlate hodinky (A Gold Watch). Published Strycovo vrtielko (Uncle's Spinning Top) for children, and numerous speeches and reports on Matica activities. Several chapters of a sequel to Jozef Mak were published in Slovenske pohl'ady , titled "Jozef Mak mladsf," in which Mak's inability to express his love is continued with his son; but the sequel was apparently abandoned. Led a delegation from the Matica to visit Slovak-Americans in the United States from November to July . H e also published Tri rozpravky (Three Stories). Published a collection of tales, Zlatovlasa sestra (The Goldenhaired Sister), and articles about Matica activities ( 1). In a major review (Slovenske pohl'ady , 53 , 366- 72) of the second edition of Jozef Mak, the critic Michal Povazan placed Hronsky between Martin Kukuefn and Milo Urban, author of Zivy bie (The Living Scourge, 1927). Published a collection of stories previously printed in magazines , Jarny vietor a ine rozpravky (Spring Wind and Other Tales) as the first volume of his collected works. Published the historical Budatfnski Frgacovci (The Frgae Family of Budatfn Castle); and the novel a krfznych cestach (At the Crossroads), which was serialized in Slovenske pohl'ady. A story was translated into English (51). Published the description of his American trip in Cesta slovenskou Amerikou (A Trip through Slovak America) (7); also the children's book Tri mudre kozliatka (Three Clever Kidlets) and the first "grotesqu e" novel in Slovak , Pisar Grae (Grae the Clerk) , in which Hronsky experimentall y developed a multi-level structure to express various depths of the human personality , both rational and irrational, consciou s and unconscious; it is built around an "axis of imagin ary con versa- SLOVAKIA 133 tions betwee n the main character and a certain dead person " (43, p. 123). 1940-43 Was elected spravca or director of the Matica in 1940 . During this period (which also included increased government support during th e Slovak R epublic) , new research departments for philosophy, geography, and music were added, and other departments were enlarged , e.g. the dictionary group. A new cen tral building was built, and a modern press was purchased and named Neografia. M embership in the M atica rose to 74 ,000 , a nd from a debt-ridden status in 1933 Matica grew to be worth 80 ,000,000 crowns. Several new journals were begun, alo ng with a new edition of the Pravidla (11 ,52). Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published . During this time Jozef M ak was translated into G erman by P . Kutzner and published in Stuttgart with the new title Die a rmen Seeligkeiten desjosefMak (no date give n in the book, probabl y 1942). In 1943 it was translated into Croatian by Jozip Niksic and published by the Matica hrvatska in Zagreb . 1944 Published the lyrical novel Na Bukvovo m d vore (In Bukva' s Courtyard) and a collec tion of satiric allegories, Smakova mucha (The Filthy Fl y) (42). In late August Hronsky was seized, abused, and threatened with death by partisans in Martin during the '' Slovak National Uprising'' despite the fact that he had neve r been politically active. This very unhappy eve nt , whi ch apparentl y occurred at the instigation of other Matica offi cials ( 18 ,22,28), profoundly shocked and demoralized H ronsky, who was ultim a tely freed at the personal intervention of a leader of the Uprising ( 18), said to be the Communist poet Laco ovomesky. D etail s have been published onl y in part. 1945 Organi zed the evacuation of part of the Matica before the advancing front of Soviet and G erman arrriies, and left Slovakia for Austria and Bavaria, then moved to Italy with hi s wife a nd son ( 18, 19). 1946-47 Li ved in R ome and studied painting besides writing . H e publi shed a short novell a about ancient R om a n Christians, Predavac talizmanov: Liberius Caius (The Talisman Mercha nt: Liberiu s Caius), which Strmen says shows Hronsky 134 1948 1949 1950-55 1956 1957 SLOVAKIA "without a mask" and thus makes his previous heroes appear as "pre-Christian heroes, existentially imprisoned on the fringes of the Christian message , which has never been heard completely or distinctly " (9, p . 79 , translation mine). He also wrote his novel about the war, though it was published only in 1960 (12,16 ,2 7). Published the lyrical novel Andreas Bur Majster (Andrew Bur, Master Sawyer) in the U.S ., from the manuscript completed in Rome in 1947 (10). He also emigrated to Argentina , because the Czechoslovak government was attempting to have him extradited. Through the intervention a nd influence of Karol Sidor, he was helped to leave Italy by sympathetic Italian officials; he had been refused a visa to the U.S. by American officials who failed to understand the Slovak situation (22). Settled in the Argentine town of Lujan, near Buenos Aires , where he worked as a draftsman and textile designer, taught painting, painted, designed stained glass windows, etc. (18), but was also somewhat active in Slovak emigre cultural activities. He published an account of his administration of the Matica slovenska ( 11). Lived quietly in Lujan working and sometimes writing, but little of this work is known, except one fragment (17). His son Juraj described their life in Argentine (18). Was elected honorary president of the exile '' Spolok slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov" (12). In honor of his 60th birthday, the journal Most published a reminiscence of Hronsky (19) with a partial bibliography of his works. In the last issue of Most for 1956 Hronsky wrote a short but sympathetic reminiscence of the Slovak playwright Jozef Gregor Tajovsky' s apologetic retraction (shortly before his death) of his previous position on the "Czechoslovak language" in the Matica affair of May 1932 (14). In the same issue, Hronsky published three satiric sketches: Dazdnik (Umbrella), Gombfk (Button) , and Rebrfk (Ladder), the latter signed by "Jozef Mak" (for other such pieces see 2). Became honorary president of the political and cultural organization "Slovak National Council Abroad ," but was not SLOVAKIA 1958 1959 1959-60 1960 1964 1965 1966 135 active in it. Published Dve slovenske Ameriky (Two Slovak Americas) about the Slovak League of America and the Argentine Slovak Cultural Society ( 15). Organized the " Zahranicna Matica Slovenska" after the Matica in Martin was relieved of its publishing and educational activities and given the status of a national library by the law of 1953. The purpose of this '' Matica Abroad'' was to encourage Slovak cultural publications and other educational activities impossible in Slovakia. H ad a column in the weekly newspaper Slovak v Amerike (Middletown , PA) titled "Lepsie zazfhat' svetielko aka preklinat' tmu" (Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness). Hronsky published his last novel, Svet na Trasovisku (The People of the Village Trasovisko and also a pun meaning The World Caught in Quicksand), as a serial in Slovak v Amerike, then in book form (16). This novel gives a complex picture of the effects of World War II on a Slovak village, especiall y the effects of the Uprising, which Hronsky presents as a tragic betrayal of the Slovak people and the R epublic of 1939-45 . On July 13 Hronsky died suddenly of a stroke in Lujan. Memorial articles were published by the Slovak League in Pamiatkejozefa Cfgra-Hronskeho (20-24) , by Most (25) , and by the Zahranicna Matica (26). Hronsky's,wife died six weeks later. Posthumously, a collection of stories, Poha.r z bruseneho skla (A Cut-Glass Goblet) was published in Buenos Aires; one story, " Dobry syn " (A Good Son), was new, the rest having been printed in Slovak magazines in 1940-41 (36-3 7). The "thaw" in Bratislava brought an announcement in the newspaper Pravda that some of Hronsky's works would be reprinted. The children's book Budka.cik a Dubka.cik was set to music and presented in a Bratislava puppet theater, then republished by the Mlade Leto press. One of the foremost Bratislava critics , Alexander Matuska , published " Profil na skusku" (A n Attempt at a Profile) on Hronsky in a weekly newspaper (29) . 136 SLOVAKIA Jozef Mak was republished with a foreword by another major critic, Jan Stevcek (30). In Buenos Aires the Zahranicna Matica republished in book form Hronsky's serialized novel from 1939, Na krfznych cestach, with an analysis by Stanislav Meciar (38). 1967-69 Numerous re-editions of Hronsky's works were published in Bratislava and Martin with critical appreciations (1-2). During the liberal period of Alexander Dubcek, efforts were made in both Argentina and Slovakia to return Hronsky's body for burial in the National Cemetery in Martin (18), but they were unsuccessful. Jozef Mak was translated into Magyar by Zaly~mi Antal and published in Bratislava in 1968 . 1970 Andreas Bur Majster was republished in Bratislava, the only "exile" work to appear in Slovakia (10). Alexander Matuska's perceptive criticism of this book too and his brief analysis of Svet na Trasovisku in j. C. Hronsky (34) completed the rehabilitation process except for continued (to this day) condemnation or silence about Svet na Trasovisku . 1971 Jan Stevcek's analysis of "lyrizovana pr6za " related Hronsky to its origins (35). Jozef M . Rydlo 's Italian disserta tion on Hronsky at the University of Padua was apparently the first critical study in a western language ( 41 ), with the possible exception of G erman studies following the translation of Jozef Mak and of Podpolianske rozpravky (Stuttgart, 1944). 1972 Jozef Mak was translated into Russian by I. Bogdanova (Moscow, Progress Publishers) and into Czech by Emil Charous with the new title Clovek milion (The Ordinary Person of Whom There are Millions) and a critical evaluation of the novel as an achievement on the European level (Prague, Odeon). In Canada Predavac talizmanov was republished with an introduction by Karol Strmen (9,27). 197 3 Jan Stevcek further developed his analysis of Hronsky' s work as the most importa nt impulse in Slovak lyri cal prose (35). 1975 The first intensive criticism ofHronsky's work in English was published by Rydlo (43). 1976 The second translation into English , excerpts fromJozefMak and from Tomcfkovci, was made by Andrew C incura (44). 1977 Jozef Mak was translated into Polish by Andrzej Sieczkowski SLOVAKIA 1978 1982 1983 137 (Warsaw, Panstrv . Inst.). In Buenos Aires was published a single piece from Bronsky's litera ry remains about Argentine life ( 1 7). Predavac tali zmanov was translated into English (45). J ozef Mak was translated into English by Andrew Cincura with a critical analysis of Bronsky' s importance by Peter Petro (46) . The Bra ti slava critic Juliu s Noge prepared a n ew study of Bronsky, includin g som e of the unfinished manuscripts in th e archi ves of the Matica sloven ska ( 4 7). A panel on Bronsky at the American Associat ion for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annu al meeting had papers on three novels ( 48-50), wh ich will be printed in the journal Slovakia as the first compreh ensive studies of Bronsky in English . Bibliographies of Hronsky's work: 1. Mat'ovcfk, A., G. R ezna, V . Podmajerska. " Bio-bibliografiaJozefa Cfgra-Bronskeho." Biograficke studie (Martin), II (1971), 101-20 . 2. R ydlo, J . M. J ozef Cfger Bronsky 1896-1 960. Abbozzo bibliografico . Scuola Vaticana di Bibliotecomia , C itta de! Vaticano, 1973 . 3. Lacko, Mich al. Slovak Studies : Bibliographica 1, VII ( 1967), a nd Slovak Studies: Bibliographica 2, XVII (1977). Autobiographical , reminscient, and other writings by Hronsky: 4. Bronsky, J .C. "Zivotopis" [11 May 1922], in " ' Obsfrnejsf 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. zivotopis' J .C . B ronskeho," by J . M . R ydlo, Most (C leveland), XX , No. 1-2 (1973), 44-47. ________ "Autobiografia , 10 Nov. 1930," Slovenske pohl'ady, 86, No. 3 ( 1970), 44. - - - - - - - - and Elen a Mar6thy Soltesova. "Slovenskej verejnosti," Narodnie noviny, 00 May 1932, vol. 63, p. 2. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Cesta slovenskou Am erikou. 2 vols. Turc. Sv. Martin: M at ica slovenska, 1940 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Nove Slovensko." Slovensko, V (1939), 3-5; "Sme na novej ceste." Slovensko, V (1939), 36-38; "Ako treba zit' n a svete." Slovenske pohl'ady , 60 (1944), 670-77. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "Pred avac talizmanov Liberius Gaius od Por- 138 10 . 11. 12 . 13 . 14 . 15. 16. 17 . SLOVAKIA ta Collina." In N adej vft'azn a . Scranton: Ob rana Press, 1947, pp . 7-50 (not seen); Predavac talizmanov , 2nd ed . Introduction " Zapadalo slnko" by K arol Strmen. Cambridge (Ontario) : Dobra Kniha, 1972 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Andreas Bur M aj ster. Scranton : Obrana Press , 1948; 2nd ed. Bratislava : T atran , 1970 . _ _ __ _ _ _ '' Rozvoj Matice sloven skej . '' In Sloven ska republika 1939-49 . Ed . Mikul as Sprinc. Obrana Press, Inc. , 1949 , pp . 191 -201. _ _ __ _ _ _ " List redaktorovi ." Most, II , No. 4 (1 955) , 1-3; and "Spolku' slovenskych spisovatel'ov a umelcov ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956), 145-46 . _ _ __ _ __ " Mostoskovi ." Most, III , No . 4 (1956) , 160-61. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ " O Gregorovi Tajovskom. " Most , III , No . 4 ( 1956) , 189-90 . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Dve slovenske Ameriky. ' 'Svetl a No. 1.'' Buenos Aires, 1958. 44 pp. (not seen) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Svet na Trasovisku . Knizni ca Litera rneho Almanachu , Vol. 2 , Whiting, Ind.: Rev. Jan . J . Lach , Publisher , 1960 . _ _ __ __ _ " Lucko patra Andrea." In K alenda r slovenskeho kulturneho spolku v Argentfne. Ed . Ladislav Jankovic. Buenos Aires: Sloven sky kulturny spolok, 1977, pp . 182-99. Reminiscences by family and friends: 18 . Cfger, Anton , " Nesplnena tu zba J . C . Hronskeho." M aticne cftanie (Martin) , 23 N ove mber 1968, pp . 1-2 . (This article includes a letter from Hronsky's so n about their life in Argentin a .) 19. Hrusovsky , Frantisek . " J ozef C fger-Hron sky. " M ost , III , o. 1 (1956), 2-1 2. 20. Sprinc, Mikulas. " Nad hrobomJozefa C. Hronskeho. " In Pam iatke J ozefa Cfgra- Hron skeho. Ed . J ozef P au co . V ol. 3 Li te rarn y Alm anach Slovaka v Am erike . Middletown , PA : J edn ota Press, 1960 , pp . 5-6. 21. Bor, J an E. (pseud . E rnest Zatko). " Spisovatel' J ozefC. H ron sky" and " P ochovali sme spi sovatel'a J ozefa Cfgra-H ro nskeho." In P am iatke (ref. 20), pp. 8-20 and 38-44 . 22 . Culen , K on stantfn . " P osled ne posedenie s j ozefom Cfgrom H ron- SLOV AKIA 23 . 24 . 25 . 26. 27. 28 . 139 skym . " In P amiatke, pp . 21-32. Kirschbaum , ]. M . " Pamiatke J ozefa C . H ronskeho." In Pamiatke, pp . 35 -36. J ankovic, Ladislav . " O statne chvfle J . C. Hronskeho." InPamiatke, p . 37. O ka!', J an . " Spomien ka na J ozefa C fgra- H ron skeho ." M ost , VII , No. 3-4 (1960) , 97 -104. M eciar , Stanislav. " J ozef Cfger-Hronsky (1896-1 960), " (Speech given on 12 Au gust 1960). In Letopis M atice sloven skej v zahranicf. Ed . Sta ni slav M eciar . Buenos Aires : Zahranicn a M a tica Slovenska , 1963, pp . 141- 46 . Oka!' , J an. " K omu dnes patrf satocka?" Most , XIX , No . 1-2 (1972), 20-25 . (This is also a review of Predavac talizmanov , ref. 9) . R ydlo , J ozef. " J .C . H ronsky - vazen ." In Litera rny almanach Slovaka v Amerike. Ed . J ozef P auco . Middletown , 1974 , pp . 13-17 . Critical studies (in Slovakia, in the West, then in preparation): 29 . M a tu ska , Alexander . " Profil na sku sku . " Kulturny zivot (Bratislava), 4 M arch 1966 , pp . 2-3. 30. Stevcek , J an . " D oslov." In Jozef Mak by J ozef Cfger-Hronsky . Bratislava : Tatran , 1966, pp . 233-3 8. 31. Stevcek, J an . " JozefCfger Hronsky." In Slovensky literarny album . Ed. J anJurfcek and Vl adimir P etrfk . Bratislava: Obzor, 1968, pp . 38 1-84 . 32. N inzansky, J ozefR . " J edno a sedem sfdc ." In Sedem sfdc by J ozef C fge r H ron sky . Bra tislava: T a tra n , 1969, pp . 217-33. 33 . " H ro nskeho Pisar Grae a sloven ska pr6za" [symposium] . Slovenske pohl'ady , 86 , No. 3 (1970), 30-43. 34. M atu ska , Alexander , J . C . H ronsky. Bratislava : Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1970 . Rpt. in O sobnosti : V ybrane spisy Alexa ndra M a tu sku. Bra tislava: Sloven sky spisovatel' , 1973 . 35. Stevcek, J an . Nezbadane pr6zy. Bratislava: Slove nsky spisovatel' , 1971 ; Lyrizova na pr6za . Brati slava: T atran , 197 3. 36. M eciar , Stanislav . " D oslov . " In P ohar z bru se neho skla by J . C . H ro nsky. Buenos A ire s: Zahranicna Matica Sloven ska , 1964, pp . 169-74. 37. Kru zli ak, Im rich . R eview of Poha r z bru seneho skla . M ost , XII , No . 1-2 ( 1965) , 89-9 1. 140 SLOVAKIA 38. Meciar, Stanislav. "Doslov ." In Nakrfznychcestach byJ. C. Hronsky. Buenos Aires: Zahranicna Matica Slovenska, 1966, pp. 165-73. 39. Kruzliak, lmrich, "Domov boljeho vesmfrom (Na. 10. vyrocie smrti J.C. Hronskeho, 23.11.1896 - 13.VII.1960)." Most, XVII, No. 1-2 (1970), 1-10. 40. Kruzliak, Imrich. Review ofJ. C. Hronsky, by Alexander Matuska (ref. 34). Most, XVII, No. 3-4 (1970), 179-82. 41. Rydlo, Jozef M . "Svet na Trasovisku" nell'opera letteraria di Jozef Cfger-Hronsky. Con un epistolario inedito . Ph.D . Dissertation , University of Padua, 1971. 431 pp. typescript (not seen) 42. Rydlo, Jozef. "Smakova mucha . " Most, XIX, No . 1-2 (1972), 32 -38. 43 . Rydlo, Jozef M. "The World on a Quagmire : The Last Literary Work of JozefCfger Hronsky." Slovak Studies, XV (1975), 117-42. 44 . Cincura, Andrew, trans . An Anthology of Slovak Literature, with "Slovak Literature : A Brief History" by Karol Strmen. Riverside, CA: University Hardcovers, 1976. 45 . Kester, JohnJ . , trans. Seller of Talismans : Liberius Gaius. Scotch Plains , N.J. : privately printed , 1978. 46. Cincura, Andrew, trans . Jozef Mak. Introduction by Peter Petro. Columbus, OH : Slavica Publishers, in press. 47. Noge,Julius. Podoby realizmu v medzivojnovej pr6ze. Bratislava: Veda, 1983 (in preparation). 48. Lackova-Furimska, Maria. "Jozef Mak , " (in preparation). 49. Petro, Peter . "Pisar Grae," (in preparation) . 50. Sabo, Gerald J. " Andreas Bur Majster and Predavac talizmanov," (in preparation). 51. Morison, W.A., trans. " Mother Macik Goes to the Polls," Slavonic Review (London), XVII (1938-39), 21-35. 52. Winkler, Tomas. Matica slovenska v rokoch 1919-1945. Martin: Matica Slovenska, 1971. SLOVAKIA 141 Much of the published information was verified with unpublished materials in the Literarny archfv of the Matica slovenska in Martin, Czechoslovakia, which I was able to examine while on an International Research and Exchange Board fellowship in 1982 . Presented in part in Panel 11-10 , "20th Century Slovak Literature : Jozef CfgerHronsky," and Panel 10-6, The Matica Slovenska: 120 Years of Survival," at the AAASS convention in Kansas C ity, MO on 24 October 1983 .  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jozef Cíger-Hronský: Chronology and Partial Bibliography Description An account of the resource Norma L. Rudinsky Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 128-141 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rudinsky, Norma Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/cc95dcff198ab0f0d9f8cf94c98703d5.pdf 31701ba8374c84847f687ba1aa345854 PDF Text Text 112 SLOVAKIA Kukucfn's Village Stories and Shukshin's ''Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald J. Sabo The topic of this article stems from an experien ce I had in Slovakia some years ago attending a showing of Vasily Shukshin ' s film Kalina Krasnaja (Snowball Berry- R ed), which is based on his story of the same name. The showing, indeed every showing of the movie, w as sold out. When I attended, the audience was predominantly university students, and I wondered what valu es and per spectives from this contempora ry Russian story in a rural setting reson a ted with this mostly young and urban Slovak audience. Why were they captivated b y the story of a n ex-convict who struggles to find a place in peasant , rural society only to be killed by his form er gang just as he is finding p eace of soul? In deciding , then , on a topic for the panel o n the village in Slovak literature, I chose to compare co untry livin g in Shukshin as ex pressed in the story and film " Snowball Berry- R ed " with several village stories b y Martin Kukucfn: a contemporary Ru ss ia n author, indeed a prominent write r in the "rural or village prose" genre, and a Slovak writer of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century , whose positive evalu a tion of the Slova k village as the best repository of ethnic and human values is well known . F rom Kukucfn 's corpus, I have chosen three stories . 2 Neprebuden y (The Unawakened Boy) , published in 1886, is con sidered " the paramount work of the years 1884-86 . " 3 Dies irae, L atin for "Day of Wrath , " 4 published some seven years a fter Neprebudeny, is seen as belonging to "the best Slovak stories of all, " 5 as " indisputably the summi t ofKukucfn's creative work in the story genre." 6 And finall y, Na obecnom salasi (At the Community Sheepfold), published just sh ortl y a fter Neprebuden y in 1886 , can be considered Kukucfn 's paean to Slovak village and salas or mountain-shepherdin g life. 7 In the story " At the Community Sheepfold," the na rrator , in effect Kukucfn 's persona, is a n urban a dult who is remini scing a bout an especially m emorable boyhood visit to a village and salas. From the begin1 �SLOVAKIA 11 3 ning of the story, the narrator shows a definite Slovak ethnic consciousness. He insists that the vill age of his m emorable visit will always be known as Topol'any, the Slovak name for it, rather than Topoian, the Magyar designation for his beloved village . The narrator's description of Topol'a ny 's location conveys the natural , distinctive beauty of the village, so close to nature and as though protected by nature against any encroachments from outside the village environs. Even though the boy's father is a confirmed city dweller, his godfather is the richta.r (village mayor) ofTopol'any. Like his father, the boy is and will be urban , but through visits to the village of his godfather - someone who is a father to him in spirit and religion - he nurtures a spiritual relationship to village life. His parents may be very intent on his becoming someone through education in the city, yet ironically success in his formal studies gives him an opportunity to deepen his knowledge precisely in that area from which his parents try to keep him isolated: village life . Because of a good academic report, the parents accede to their son's wish to visit his godfather, the richtar of Topol'any . It is this visit that will prove the most memorable and influential of all his stays. From the arrival of the narrator as a boy in Topol'any through the last sentences of the story, the reader witnesses a significant change in his outlook on life and self-appreciation. On his arrival, he perce ives himself as a stranger in this rural setting. Indeed, he is too self-conscious. Gradually, though, as he spends time in the village and especially in the salas, that sense of strangeness disappears. By the end of the story, he has become an intiate, in a very real sense, a spiritual m e mber of village and salas society. Now even nature h as becom e an attractive and deepl y a ppreciated part of his living. The boy readily admits that he has n ever been in a salas, when the opportunity to visit one presents itself. His visit to the salas and his actual stay in it mark the turning point in his special sojourn in Topol'any . As he becomes more familiar with the various aspects of salas life and society, he increasin gly eulogizes this way of living: To know all the markings, to remember every sh eep : what kind of wool it has ; where it was born, where it was bought, for what price, when, h ow old it is, how good it is for milking, and besides all this to give it a name . These people know their responsibilities and their flo ck. It was not in vain that the Savior had before his eyes the example of the good �114 SLOVAKIA shepherd when he said: "I am the good shepherd and I know mine and mine know me." (III, 73) H owever much he tries to play the devil's advocate in evalu ating salas life, his comments and reflections reveal a growing admiration for the salas and his desire to be very much a part of it: This fresh, fine-smelling air, the immediate friendly closeness to great nature, this free view of life, the sun's morning rise and evening setting: I envied them all of this .. .. Salas - salas! To remain here, to forget everything that I have learned ... and to learn to recognize the ancient signs of the sheep's ears .. . . To forget also algebra . .. and to study rather from the baca [head-shepherd] . . . the passage of large sph eres in the heavens. (I II , 76) The aspiration of Kukucfn's narrator is especially for ta vol'nost' (that freedom) of salas life, ''wide and not restricted by anyone,'' ' ' what was dearest" to him (II I , 78). His aspiration for ta vol'nost' resonates with the consuming desire of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin for volja (freedom) . Indeed, for Shukshin in general, and for Egor in particular, volja is a key word. 8 Just as for the narrator of Kukucfn' s story, so for Egor of'' Snowball Berry-Red,'' freedom is associated with nature and rural settings. In the beginning of the story, Egor links freedom with spring, that time of year when nature is new, fresh, and alive: "Freedom and Spring! What else does a person need?" (208/ 128) There are also a number of scenes with the white birches when Egor is so at ease with himself and the natural world around him. 9 For instance: All around was an unbroken birch forest.... Egor leaned against a birch tree and looked around. "Well, will you look at what we have here!" he said with quiet rapture . He turned toward the birch tree and stroked it with the palm of his hand. "Hullo, there! Ah, you look so ... You're like a bride . Are you waiting for your groom? Soon, soon he'll come." (210/ 131) And there spread out before his eyes was a birch grove: the entire numerous family of trees seemed to run up and greet him . "Ah, you!" he said. And he walked into the grove. �SLOVAKIA 115 He strolled among the birches . . .. He stepped back and admired them from the side . . . . He felt a lot better now. (255/ 1 79) For the narrator of Kukucfn 's story, the salas is an especially apt setting in which to express his d esire for vol'nost'. For in Slovak history and culture, the salas and valasi or mountain shepherds have acquired a tradition of special associations. In Kukucfn 's time as even today, the salas and valasi connote a closeness to nature, a distinctively Slovak consciousness, and a special status of freedom and movement in a society more and more regimented and organized. 10 The eventful night spent by the narrator as a boy in the salas, his description of the baca, the good-natured trick played on him by the valasi, and finally the appropriate sharing of story, bowl , and spoon all these show how deeply and irrevocably he has become a member of this Slovak village and salas life. Indeed, the last sentences of the story aptly express this as well in the readiness of the villagers to defend what they , like the narrator , know to be most important to their being their village and salas way oflife. As the narrator notes, the mackintosh worn by him that fateful night in the salas is always taken along by him on his trips to Topol'any . And the then honelnfk (young shepherd), now the baca, retorts to the narrator's reminder of the form er' s teasing on that fateful night: "Akf su pani, takf budeme i my (We'll act just like the gentlemen)" (III, 86). From the story '' At the Community Sheepfold,' ' the reader would have the impression that Slovak village life is the perfect repository of Slovak ethnic and human values. Yet just as Topol'any is a single village in the Slovak countryside, so this story is simply one expression of Kukucfn's appreciation of village society and living. Indeed, Kukucfn's awe for the village and salas in this story does give way to a credible, rather realistic view of human relations in a rural setting in the stories " The Unawaken ed Boy ," and Dies irae. In Dies irae , the focus is on self, strongly accentuated by the element of money , m aterial gain and possession. Indeed, Julius N oge con tends in writing about Dies irae that money is "merely the physically graspable expression of the societal system that rules and permeates the morality, economics, psychology, and emotional relations of this era.'' 11 From the very beginning of Dies irae, three forces course through the lives of the villagers of Lomnica: the cholera epidemic, money, and �116 SLOVAKIA a related concern for self. Together , these three forces drastically change the lives of so m any in Lomni ca. Indeed , the physical infection of the cholera epidemic seems to refl ect in a way the serious infection eating away at the life of the village , many of whose inhabitants a re focused on themselves and are concerned with the role of money in their lives. The ex treme situation caused by the cholera epidemic h elps to bring to the surface what has been for a long time an undercurrent in the lives of many villagers: concern for money and, relatedl y, for self. Greed and egotism pervade the character of Sykora, the vice-rich tar (deputy mayor) of the village, who drove his older sonjan into the army. Sykora' s younger son J uro is in love with Evka, the daughter of Sykora' s rival, the richtar Jan Zima, but Sykora's concern for his mon ey" leads him to suspect - quite incorrectly - that the Zima family is luring Juro into marriage with Evka for the sake of Sykora 's money . Sykora, in effect , forcesjuro to leave his family home, and even whenjuro catches cholera, Sykora goes to the Zima ho use where J uro is a ilin g for only one reason: to see the rich tar about some lost money. In Kukucfn's characterization of Sykora, the latter is virtually the embodiment of evil. Even Sykora's house is aptly described as "cold and dark, " suitable words not only for the house but for Sykora's character (V, 342 and 362). Money also plays a definite role in the lives of all the other major characters. For them, however , unlike for'Sykora, money is not an end in itself. Eithe r money is used to achieve some non-materialistic end , or they becom e its suffering victims. Masliacka, a former sweetheart of the rich tar Zima , uses money to avenge herself on Zima and also his family . In his secret borrowings from Masliacka for the sake of the village community, Zim a jeopardizes himself as rich tar but most of all his marriage and family. On hearing about h er husband 's secret meetings with Masliacka, Zim a's wife Katre na alternately expresses jealousy of Masliacka , anger at her husband, and bitte r self- castigation for marryin g Zima. (Still , she must h ave been aware that Masliacka was pregnant by Zima before his marriage to herself and that he r own riches were a factor in their marriage .) A stock character - the village usurer , here the Jewish tave rnkeeper Mojzis - is not depicted in the usual negative, anti-Semitic tone. 12 Rather , his Christian-like characterization and tran sfe r of money to his wife are very positive features of the story. Still , throughout the narrative, Mojzis suffers because of money-related activities, done actually for old Sykora. �SLOVAKIA 117 Although the young characters, Evka Zima a nd espec iall y Juro Sykora, suffer from the ill e ffects o f m o ney graspin g a nd u se, their characterization s help to counter the evil the reb y cau sed a nd bode well for the future of the vill age community. Indeed , each of them becomes for others a catalyst to change for the bette r - Evka for Masliacka and her father, J uro for his father. Because of Evka a nd J uro , love and forgiveness are the fate of Masliacka, Zima , and old Sykora . For Zima but especially for old Sykora, the ir childre n become the m edium for m etanoia . 13 The basically good village r s a mong th e m ajo r characters, Evka a nd Juro , em bod y well the co ntrast to old Sykora's d efinition of a n ob ec (co mmunity) as con suming but neve r helpin g (V, 292 ). Disd a ining the e ntrapm ent o f m on etary and m a te rial accumul at ion , Evka a nd J uro essentiall y forget th emselves for the sake o f othe rs. In Shukshin 's "S nowb all Berry- R ed," m o ney a nd co ncern for self pl ay a d e finite role in the characte rizatio n o f Egor Prokudin . Through money, Egor tries to satisfy th e longing of his sou l for a holiday. H owever much he tries to achieve this, he never su cceeds . Gradually, though, perhaps only subconsciously, Egor appreciates tha t m o ney d oes not bring real happiness . Finally , he gives up trying to give his soul peace through mon ey -related activities. Money and concern for self give way to newly rece ived feelin gs for hi s mothe r , to actions in d efen se of his '' pe n pal'' L yuba against her for m er alcoholic hu sband , a nd above all , to an ever growin g closeness to n ature, as yet unspoiled b y the so-call ed prog ress of civili zatio n . Unfortunately, Egor's unexpected murder by hi s former gan g cut s short the hope ful glimme rs o f hum a n life that hi s ex iste nce had been showing. "S nowb all Be rry- R ed " h as its m ost signifi can t resonance w ith Kukucfn 's sto ry "The Unawakened Boy." H ere, as in "S nowball BerryR ed," good triumph s over evil but only with th e death of the main ch aracter. Like the characte r a nd death of Egor Prokudin , those of Ondras Machu Fa are poignantly depicted. This m ay be o ne of the reasons why these stories stand ou t among the writings of their respective authors. In " The Unawakened Boy , " there is a stro ng contrast between real ity and im agin at io n/ appearan ce, cru cia l to th e plot a nd present from the first se nte nce of the story . The focal ch aracte r o f the sto ry, Ondras M achul'a, is called a hu sar. 14 I s he a hu ssar-husar , the dashing youn g soldie r who steals th e hearts of v ill age g irl s o nl y to run off to b attle or to a nother village for furth e r a morou s co nqu ests? Or is Ondras a �118 SLOVAKIA goose herd-hu sar , whose occupation is usuall y performed by girls and women but hardly eve r by a man ? Within a few sentences, it becomes clear that Ondras is a gooseherd but with hussar fantasies. The stark co ntrast between what matters are a nd what they m ay be imagined or may a ppear to be is continuou sly ev ident in the story becau se of certain human flaws and weaknesses : caprice and presumptu ousness, fear and shame , a lack of forthright but sensitive honesty , and a lack of committed genuine feeling for another whatever this entails . In their fallibility and human frailty, the characters of " The Unawakened Boy" act in ways that may seem good and apt but merely co ntribute to the power of evil in their lives . In his hu sacia respublika (Republic of G eese), Ondras may play a prominent role, but in village society, he occupies a special caste of one . Th rou gh no fault of hi s ow n , hi s m ental retardation and less than attractive physical a ppearance make him a problem , a cause of difficulty in the village. Even though he is a human being like everyone else, Ondras simpl y does not m easure up to the expectations of others - not that of his father who becom es a drunkard and abandons the family nor those of the other villagers. As his mother observes , " People always look for what they d o not have . What they do have, they value less than a gra in of poppyseed " (II, 177). So many of the villagers seem to forget that in Ondras , there is a soul as in everyone else. Eve n though Ondras is twenty years old , young children are his peers in society , for among them , he ge ts along best because in some ways Ondras is childlike but also perhaps becau se among the young children , he is treated seriously a nd respectfully accepted as a peer. The conflict in the story arises from a caprice of the village girl Zuzka Bezan, a contemporary of Ondras. After giving Ondras his lunch out in the fi elds where he is tending the geese, Zuzka becomes upset tha t Ondras is apparently not his u su al submissive self before her. In order to re-asse rt her hold over him and his affections, she lead s Ondras to believe that he has a cha nce to becom e her betrothed and hu sband even though she is betrothed to J ano Dubrav . For Ondras, Zu zka then becom es the em bodiment of the fairytale princess whom in hi s d aydreams he seeks to win for him self. In the course of the story , Zuzka and her mother never really tell Ondras that he will not realize hi s dream of marrying Zuzka, while hi s aunt cannot reason with him . Ondras, always relating to others do vern e (trustingly) (II , 182 a nd 195), rem a ins co n- �SLOVAKIA 119 vinced of Zuzka' s capricious proposal almost to the tragic end of the story. The "evil" world of the village is evident among the villagers on the wedding day of Zuzka and J ano Dubrav. The young men may be happy for J ano in his marriage to Zuzka, but they are also glad that he would no longer be competing with them for the young girls. Many villagers do attend the wedding ceremony, but especially to see whether Zuzka wears a flower wreath as a sign of her virginity, for she had rarely been seen outside her house before the wedding day. Zuzka does wear the wreath, for she is not pregnant as some villagers suspect. Belatedly, the suspicions about Zuzka aroused by moving forward the wedding date are further shown groundless by the wedding celebration. For the quality of the feast and the music are the effects of long-range planning and not the result of rush preparation . After escaping from the room where his aunt locked him up, Ondras arrives at the wedding celebration in the Bezan home. Ironically, the first person he meets all alone in the yard is the zvac, the villager who invites people to wedding celebrations in the village . The zvac whom Ondras meets is quite drunk and heading for the hayshed with a cigar stump in his mouth. The irony here is that Ondras should meet the man who called people to Zuzka's wedding withjano but not with Ondras as Ondras had hoped. Even more ironic is that the zvac will be the one whose condition - drunk and smoking in the hayshed - is the cause of the fire for which Ondras will be accused and in which the two of them will perish. The zvac, then, the man who heralded the happiness of Zuzka, seems also to have been the unwitting instrument of God's punishment against her and her mother for their carelessness and insensitivity in dealing with Ondras. 15 Like the wedding ceremony and celebration, the fire provides another occasion for the villagers to reveal their true character. The dancers go from an extreme mood of carefreeness to a frenetic rush through doors and windows to save their own lives. The villagers whose homes are close by run first of all to save their own possessions. As the fire consumes the hayshed, Zuzka's mother realizes that her most productive goose is trapped in the burning hayshed. To her pleas to save the goose, one bystander replies , "Aja ie co! (And what am I!) " (II, 227). For him, his human life outweighs that of a goose . For Ondras, though, the pleas are a different matter. He attempts to save the goose, �120 SLO VAKIA a m ember of hi s husacia respublika, onl y to peri sh with it a mid the fl am es ben eath the coll a p sin g hayshed roof. P rofo und gri ef ove r Ondras's death overcom es virtu all y all of the v ill age rs w ho h a d see n the hayshed roof coll a p se. The gooseherd 's a unt ex presses tha t now at least O ndras "won ' t be in a n yo ne's way" (II , 228). Onl y the starejsf (M aster of C erem o ni es) m a r s the scen e of grief with hi s in sen sitiv ity . Ri gh teou sly , he n o tes tha t su ch is God 's punishm en t fo r a rsoni sts who can n eve r escape Him . In th e last two sentences, Kuku cfn see m s to impl y th a t a t last even the cl ever, ri gh teo u s M C m ay also b e sha rin g to som e exte n t in the profound gri e f ex pressed b y so m a n y a t the d eath of On dras: "They co uld n o t find th e zvac a n yw here. Th e cleve r MC n o lo n ge r no ted : ' H e re's the puni shm e nt of G od , the puni shm ent of God ... ' " (II , 228). Fro m the tragic end of the sto ry, it m ight seem tha t Ond ras dies a senseless d eath for th e sake of a goose. P erha p s by th e stand ards of th e vill age world, dy in g for a goose is folly, but Ondras' a ttempt to help on e of hi s own , eve n if it is a goose, is m ore exe mpl a ry th a n a t first reali zed. It is Ond ras w ho lays d own his life, n ot Zu zka's m other wh o so treasu red the goose but n o t e nou gh to end a n ge r her own life. The m a n who was m ade a foo l ofb y the d a u ghte r of the goose's own er shows a ce rta in selfl essn ess th at few, if a n y, of the vill age rs ex hibi t in the sto ry. Un a bl e to reali ze hi s hu ssar-husar fantasy of marryin g Zu zka, Ondras gives up hi s life as wh a t he is - a gooseh e rd-hu sa.r . H e m ay n o t h ave saved th e goose, bu t in hi s death , h e sobe rs the vill ager s. Indeed , in Kuku cfn 's ve ry sympathet ic po r trayal o fO ndras th rough o u t th e story, a ce rta in desc ript ion sta n ds ou t whi ch may be a clue to O nd ras' proto type. Ju st before the fire, the n arrato r d escribes him as " tich y ak a j ahniatko (qui e t as a la mb)" (II , 21 9). T he wo rd s brin g to m ind a ve rse fro m th e d esc rip tio n of th e S u ffe rin g Se rvant b y the prophe t I saia h a d esc rip tio n u su all y associa ted in C h r isti an interp re ta ti o n w ith C hri st : H e was oppressed , a n d he was a ffli cted, ye t he o pened n o t hi mou th ; like a lamb that is led to the sla u ghter a nd like a sheep before it s sh eare rs is du m b , so he o pe ned n o t hi s mo u th . I s. 53:7 Eve n more str ikin g are man y of th e o th er ver ses in the passage on the Suffe rin g Se rvan t w he n compared to Kuku cfn 's characte ri zatio n of O nd ras: �SLOVAKIA 121 H e had not form or co m elin ess that we shou ld look at him and no beauty th a t we should des ire him. H e was d espised and rejected by m en ; a m a n of sorrows a nd acqu a inted with grief a nd as one from whom m e n hid e the ir faces, he was despised a nd we es tee m ed him not. Surely, he h as b o rne our griefs a nd carri ed o ut so rrows; yet we esteem ed him st ri cke n b y God a nd a ffli cted. But he was wounded for o ur transgressions, he was brui sed for ou r iniquiti es; upo n him was the ch astisement th a t m ad e us whole ... All we like sh eep have go ne astray ; we h ave turn ed eve ryon e to his own way ; a nd the Lord has la id on him th e iniqui ty of u s all. (Verse 7 quoted above occurs here.) By op press io n a nd judg m ent , he was taken away ...... he had d one no violen ce a nd there was no deceit in hi s m outh . Ye t it was th e will of th e Lord to bruise him ; he has put him to g ri ef; when he makes himself an offering for sin ... T he refo re I will divide him a portion with the g reat , ... becau se he poured out hi s sou l to death and was numbe red with the tra nsgresso rs; ye t he bore the sin of m a n y a nd m ade inte rcess ion for the transgressor s. (vv. 26-12) Lik e th e Isaian Suffe rin g Se rva nt (and Christ) , Ondras is not a handsom e person , a nd he suffers in variou s ways a t the hands of o ther human beings. Acco rdin g to the vol'a bozia (God 's will) (II , 219) , Ondras' life , but es pec iall y hi s death , have so m e bene fi cia l effect on those ame persons who rejected him a nd ot hers who m a li gn ed him without cause. If we co mpare th e portrayal of Ondras with the ch aracterization of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin , ce rt a in points of simila rity a r e ev ide nt. Lik e Ondras, Egor Prokudin finds som e sort of ease and peace in a na tura l se ttin g. For Ondras, it is with hi s geese in th e fi eld s, but for Ego r , it is espec iall y with the white birches, as already noted a bove in rela ti on to " At th e Comm unity Sheepfold." Indeed , Shukshin 's portrayal of Egor's dying a nd death shows th at Egor is n ot on ly close to nature but even o nce again rooted in it : H e stagge red, clutchin g at the trees with hi s ot he r ha nd . And o n the white birches bri g ht -red sta in s appeared. �122 SLOVAKIA ... A single tear squeezed out from Egor's closed eyelids, rolled down his scalp toward his ear, hung there a minute, detached itself and fell into the grass. Egor was dead . And there he lay, a Russian peasant [krestJanin] on his native steppe, not far from home ... He lay with his cheek pressed to the earth , as though he were listening to something that only he could hear. That was how he had listened to telegraph poles in his childhood . (271- 72/196-98) In the film version of the story, in a scene just after what is quoted above, the gang member Fat Lip , Egor 's murderer , says of him : " He was not even a man. H e was a muzhik [Russian peasant/country dweller as opposed to urban resident]. And of these Rus ' [ ancient name for Russian area] has many. '' 16 In the movie, this comment further emphasizes Egor's rural roots and commitment to historical country living in Rus ' . Like Ondras, Egor stands out in the rural collective where Lyuba his "pen pal " lives with her family, and where Egor was finally beginning to settle down . Here, though, it is not a matter of mental condition and physical appearance, but criminal background that distinguishes Egor from others. As the story of Egor proceeds, his criminal past becomes less damning. As Geoffrey Hosking has said: Egor is a classic victim of Soviet social experimentation. Brought up as a small child in a Siberian village, he becomes separated from his mother during the terrible famine of 1933 , and has never seen her since (till the events of the story). When the old people of the villages round about get together , they discuss the fates which befell their families at the times of "dekulakization," so that we know this is a memory which is still living, indeed dominant , in the villagers' life .... The collectivization, dekulakization, and famine form the setting in which Egor's life must be seen. 17 Under the circumstances, Egor has learned to live as best he could. Like the tragic love story of Ondras which ends in his death, the search of Egor for his much desired freedom also ends unhappily with his d eath . It is notewo rthy that among the various meanings associated with the kalina plant (in the title and the song sung in a couple of places in the story) is one with a tragic love quality. "According to popular �SLOVAKIA 123 belief, the red kalina berry is a symbol of first love, more often than not, of unhappy love." 18 In Egor's search for volja, d eath prevents him from really achieving his deeply felt and loved goal of freedom. The most striking similarity of characterization b etween Ondras and Egor is their respective religious associations and interpretations. As noted above, Ondras' characterization seems to resemble the depiction of Isaiah's Suffering Servant extended in Christian interpretation to J esus Christ. Egor, whose nickname is Gore (Grief/Sorrow) (212/132), can also be seen as refl ecting the Suffering Servant. Even more , however, Donald Fiene contends and shows extensively that the story of Egor Prokudin makes sense psychologically and literarily only if we see it as a modern hagiograph y modeled on the ancient Russian saints' lives. What this means is that Egor's often strangely unaccountable pacifistic behavior is ... the embodiment of an ancient Russian ideal of kenotic martyrdom exemplified by Boris and Gleb, the first saints canonized by the Russian church . What is of interest in Boris and Gleb is . .. that they yielded voluntarily to dea th. Ultimately, this act of nonresistance becomes a national Ru ssian feature, which G . P . Fedotov in the Russian R eligious Mind considers an "authentic religious discovery of the newly-converted Russian Christians . '' 19 Allegorically, Egor is a disciple of the Russian Christ both as an innocent sufferer in the tradition of the suffering Ru ssian p eople (the narod) 20 and as a voluntary sufferer in the kenotic tradition of Boris and Gleb . But in the Ru ssian kenotic tradition , the Christian is not m erely a follower of Christ , but an imitator of him. One is saved only through suffering in the image of a meek and suffering Christ. 21 In his death, then , Egor, like Ondras, is not acting foolishl y or even commiting suicide. Indeed, in his dying , Egor shows a certain forgetfuln ess of self in hi s own unfolding tragedy. As he is dying, he implores L yu ba : " 'Mo ney .. .' Egor strained to get out his last words . 'in jacket. .share it. .. with my mothe r. . .' "(272/197) In the film , to spare Lyuba the sight of him dying, he sends her for some water nearby. When she returns, he is dead. In response to his death , P etro, Lyuba's brother, then chases the gan g in his truck a nd drives them an d their car into �124 SLOVAKIA th e ri ve r. G ood does triumph ove r ev il even if, o r pe rh a p s more appropriately sa id, especially if there has bee n some selfl ess sacrifi ce of life . In th e Christian view of life, the death of Egor , like that of Ondras , becomes m eaningful a nd in some way even bene fi cial fo r ot hers ' sake. n At first sight, a comparison of Kukucfn with Shukshin is provocative but somewhat farfetched . Chronologically, they a re not co ntempora ries. Kuku cfn died in 1928, while Shukshin was born in 1929 . They may both be Slavs ·but from distinctly diffe re nt n a tional gro up s - the b as icall y C a tholic or Lutheran , Western Slav ic Slovaks vs. the Ru ss ian Orthodox, Easte rn Slavic Ru ssians. Eve n more, the soc iet ies a nd a udie n ces of these two a uthQrs a re d ec id edly di stin ctive. For Kuku cfn , society m ay be ex pe rie ncing some of the e ffects of urba nization , but for Shukshin , urbani zed livin g is the predomin a nt mode of ex istence that e ncroaches even upon re mote rural coll ect ions. In his writing , Kuku cfn con veys a " fightin g cha nce" for village life, while Shukshin depicts rather nostalgicall y country livin g which is found in creasingly furth er from the primary co nce rn s of Soviet n at ional consciou sness. These diffe re nces, then , betwee n Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin a re re fl ect io n s of time a nd socie ty , of histor ical, cultural background . The two writers are similar or co ncur precisely in valu es a nd perspect ives that transce nd tim e, culture , a nd society. In the writings o f both , th ere i~ a d e finit e d es ire for freedom - a hum a ne freedom whi ch is often assoc iated with n a tural set tings. Ind eed , both a utho rs show a great se n sit iv ity to nat ure a nd its beaut y in hum an li ving. In Kuku cfn, as wel l as in Shukshin , there is a d e finit e se nse o f the tra n sce nde ntal, espec ially as ex pre ·sed th rough the J udaeo Chri stia n traditi o n . D o nald Fiene conte nds tha t es peciall y in " Snowball Be rr y- R ed ," '' Shukshin 's basic m essage is ... all m e n a re Christ; we must love one a not her o r die. " 23 And as Geoffrey H os kin g has noted: "Shuk shin h as red iscovered an d dram a ti zed m a n 's dri ve towa rds the t ra n sce nd e nt a l , whi ch M a rxi sm d e ni ed a nd Socia li st R eali sm di storted. " 24 Th e importance of C h r isti an love a nd to le rance, a nd the stro n g feelin g th at these a re in so m e way integral to vill age li fe is evid ent in bo th write rs: Christian se lfless ness is worthy co ndu ct , eve n if its conseq ue nce is as drastic as death, whi le ac tion s pursu ed for th e sake o f money or through the m edium o f mon ey o ffer little, if any, real human happin ess. It might th e n be sa id that Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin do differ in some obvious ways but substantively rese mbl e each othe r a nd even �SLOVAKIA 125 concur in principles of human li ving that are in ext ri cably pa rt of and especially evident in rural life. NOTES ' Vasil y Shukshin , " K alina krasnaj a," Kin opovesti (M oscow: Isku ss tvo , 1975), pp . 205-72 ; " Snowba ll Berry-Red ," S nowball Berry-R ed and Oth er Stories, D onald Fiene, ed. (Ann Arbor, Michi gan : Ardis , 1979), pp . 125 -199. H ereaft er , references for qu otations from this wo rk will be given in the text with Ru ssia n page number(s) first , th en those for th e Engli sh ve rsion . ' The stories a re taken from the criti cal edition of Kuku cfn 's works: M artin Kuku cin : Die/o , M arian na Prfdav kova- Min a rikova , ed ., 21 vols. (Brati slava, 195 7-74). An English translation of all three is in Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kukucfn , Norma Rudin sky, tr. and ed . (Clevela nd and Rom e: Slova k I nstitute , 1980). H ereaft er , volu me a nd page refere nces of th e Slovak ve rsion are give n in the text. ' Juliu s N oge, Martin Kukucfn: tradicionalista a novator (Zivot a die/o 1860-1 907) (Brat islava: Y yd avatel'stvo Slove nskej akademie v ied, 1962), p . 75. • The phrase Dies irae co mes from Zephaniah 1:15: "A day of wrath is th at d ay, a d ay o f distress and angui sh , a day of ruin a nd devastat ion , a day of d a rkn ess and gloom ," Th e New Ox fo rd Annotated Bible with th e Apocryph a (New Yo rk : O xford University Press, 1977) , p . 1141 . 5 Noge, p. 182. 6 N oge , p . 183. ' On pages 85 and 86, Noge discusses Kuku cfn 's familiarity with and documentary- like prese ntat ion of th e sa/a s. 8 Michel H elle r , " Vasil y Shukshin: In Search of Freedom ," George G utsche, tr. , Sn owball Berry -R ed and Och er Stories, Donald Fiene , ed. (A nn Arbor, Michigan : Ardi s, 1979),), pp . 2 15 an d 2 17 especiall y. For volja , see: " Snowba ll ," 205 / 125; 207 / 128; 208/ 128; 2 18/ 139; 248/ 171 ; a nd 253/ 177. On page 225, H elle r notes that in his stories , " Shukshin 's hero is look ing for freedom .... The sea rch ... bears a speculative character, a philosophical character. In Shukshin 's world an answe r to the 'main quest ions' is sought with unu sual intensity, with a powerful pass ion : I n what is the mean ing of life, what is death , wha t is God ?" 9 Besides those cited, see also: 253/ 177 a nd 263/ 188-1 89. On pages 228-29, H eller notes that in th e film ve rsion , a " white church - and th e white birches - appea r on th e sc ree n each time Egor P ro kudin pond ers the mea nin g of his life.'' 0 ' On th·e histo ry and culture of va/asi , especiall y in Slovaki a, see: Gerald J. Sabo , "Slova k Didac ti c Poet ry: G av lovic's V alask a Skala, V olum e I - Introdu ctory Stud y, " Ph .D . d isse rt at ion , Yale, 1978, pp . 37-38 a nd rela ted footno tes. Also , J an Podolak, " The Pas toral C ul ture o f th e Carpathi ans as a Subjec t of an Ethnological Study , " E thn ologica s/avica, 1 ( 1969), especiall y 70-77; a nd Encyklopedia Slovenska , Y I ( 1982) , sub verbo " Valasi," " Y a lass ka l'udova pieseil. ," a nd " V a!ass ke pravo ." For oth er sources , see foo tnote 24 of m y a rticl e on Hu golfn Gav lovic in cluded in th is journal issue. �126 SLOVAKIA " N oge , p . 183. " In her in trodu ctory commentary for Dies irae, N orma Rudin sky is probabl y the first crit ic to d iscuss Kuku cfn 's fa vorable depiction of M oj zis; this portrayal contras ts with those of other J ewish characters in Kukucin and other Slovak writers where the J ewish fi gure is d epicted in th e negative tones of ant i-Semi tism : Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kuku cfn , pp . 160-62. " Indeed , the narrator as Kukucin 's persona comments in two places especially to make clear the indictmen t of Sykora and fathers like him who treat their children so poo rly: Dies irae, (V , 367 -68). Acco rdin g to Noge (p. 138), Kuku cin wro te in a lette r to Skultety that the authori al comm enta ry on page 367 noted above was a very importan t part of the text. W ere it to be removed, Kukucin would have bee n "gri eved ." " In contemporar y, standard Slova k, hu sar is a hussar : Slo vnfk slo ven sk eh o j azyk a: I die], a-k , 2nd editi on (Bratislava: Vyd ava tel'stvo Slovenskej akad emie vied , 197 1), p . 542. T hat hu sar also can m ean a gooseherd (hu siar in contem po rary, standard Slova k) is clear from K a rel Kalal and Mi ros lav K alal, Sloven sk y slovn fk z literatury aj n arecf (Banska Bys trica: Slovenska gra fi a, 1923), p . 192. " Indeed , the fire, even Ond ras' death , seem in a way to be G od's response to the word s ofOnd ras ' aunt ju st a short time before the fire is noti ced : " W ell let God's will (vol'a boiia) be done. I entru st everything to Him . H e knows best what is needed" (II , 219). For Zu zka, her wedding day will always rem ain a sad even t; fo r her moth er, her precious goose tha t perishes in the fire will be gone fo rever , but for Ondras , death in th e fire see m s almos t a blessing. " Donald Fiene, "Vasily Shukshin 's 'Kalina krasania ', " Snowball Berry-R ed and O ther Stories, D onald Fiene, ed . (Ann A rbor , Michi gan : Ardis, 1979), pp. 2 11-1 2, footnote 12. Michel H eller notes this same informati on on page 217. 11 G eoffrey H oskin g, " V asily Shukshin ," Beyond Socialist R ealism : S oviet Fiction Since I van D enisovich (New York : H olmes a nd M eier Publishers, I nc., 1980), p . 166. " Fiene, p . 202. 19 Th e Ru ssian R eligious Min d (I ), volume 3 in the Collected Wo rks of George P . Fed otov (Belmont , M ass: N ordland Publishin g C ompan y, 1975) p . 104. 0 ' In his foo tn ote 12 (pp . 211-1 2), Fiene notes tha t Fat Li p's comments about Ego r as a mu zhik in Ru s' emphas ize in the fil m Egor as a symbolic represe ntati ve of the sufferin g n arod. H e also ind icates tha t Fat Lip ' s co mments do not appear in the published film sc ript . Fiene hi mself used as the text for th ese comments the ve rsion of them quoted by J urii Tiurin in ' ' 'Kalina k rasn aia ' - kin opovest' i fil'm , '' M osk va, 4 (1976), 194 . " Fiene, pp. 206-07 . " M y m em ory of the film 's endin g is not perfect , but I do recall th a t th e last sce ne, unli ke that of the pu blished story, has Lyuba mentally recalling wo rds by Ego r about living, about wha t it mean s to li ve and how one should live. T here m ay also have bee n menti oned so methin g about pass ing th is info rm a ti on on to othe rs an d oth er genera tions. If eve n a pa rt of wh a t I have noted is correct , this woul d furth er affirm the m eanin gfuln ess and benefit of Egor 's life and deat h . " Fiene, p . 2 11 . M ichel H eller notes on page 229: " The th eme of fa ith and God whi ch parallels the th em e of death - occu pies a place in Shukshin 's short stories �SLOVAKIA 127 that gradually becomes more and more noticable.'' And also on page 23 2, in Shukshin's stories, the " hero . .. fill s the emptiness in his soul with a faith in Russia which is more and m ore oft en symbolized by a church. " " Hosking, p. 179 . Presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asiloma r , C alifornia on 21 September 1981. � 112 SLOVAKIA Kukucfn's Village Stories and Shukshin's ''Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald J. Sabo The topic of this article stems from an experien ce I had in Slovakia some years ago attending a showing of Vasily Shukshin ' s film Kalina Krasnaja (Snowball Berry- R ed), which is based on his story of the same name. The showing, indeed every showing of the movie, w as sold out. When I attended, the audience was predominantly university students, and I wondered what valu es and per spectives from this contempora ry Russian story in a rural setting reson a ted with this mostly young and urban Slovak audience. Why were they captivated b y the story of a n ex-convict who struggles to find a place in peasant , rural society only to be killed by his form er gang just as he is finding p eace of soul? In deciding , then , on a topic for the panel o n the village in Slovak literature, I chose to compare co untry livin g in Shukshin as ex pressed in the story and film " Snowball Berry- R ed " with several village stories b y Martin Kukucfn: a contemporary Ru ss ia n author, indeed a prominent write r in the "rural or village prose" genre, and a Slovak writer of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century , whose positive evalu a tion of the Slova k village as the best repository of ethnic and human values is well known . F rom Kukucfn 's corpus, I have chosen three stories . 2 Neprebuden y (The Unawakened Boy) , published in 1886, is con sidered " the paramount work of the years 1884-86 . " 3 Dies irae, L atin for "Day of Wrath , " 4 published some seven years a fter Neprebudeny, is seen as belonging to "the best Slovak stories of all, " 5 as " indisputably the summi t ofKukucfn's creative work in the story genre." 6 And finall y, Na obecnom salasi (At the Community Sheepfold), published just sh ortl y a fter Neprebuden y in 1886 , can be considered Kukucfn 's paean to Slovak village and salas or mountain-shepherdin g life. 7 In the story " At the Community Sheepfold," the na rrator , in effect Kukucfn 's persona, is a n urban a dult who is remini scing a bout an especially m emorable boyhood visit to a village and salas. From the begin1 �SLOVAKIA 11 3 ning of the story, the narrator shows a definite Slovak ethnic consciousness. He insists that the vill age of his m emorable visit will always be known as Topol'any, the Slovak name for it, rather than Topoian, the Magyar designation for his beloved village . The narrator's description of Topol'a ny 's location conveys the natural , distinctive beauty of the village, so close to nature and as though protected by nature against any encroachments from outside the village environs. Even though the boy's father is a confirmed city dweller, his godfather is the richta.r (village mayor) ofTopol'any. Like his father, the boy is and will be urban , but through visits to the village of his godfather - someone who is a father to him in spirit and religion - he nurtures a spiritual relationship to village life. His parents may be very intent on his becoming someone through education in the city, yet ironically success in his formal studies gives him an opportunity to deepen his knowledge precisely in that area from which his parents try to keep him isolated: village life . Because of a good academic report, the parents accede to their son's wish to visit his godfather, the richtar of Topol'any . It is this visit that will prove the most memorable and influential of all his stays. From the arrival of the narrator as a boy in Topol'any through the last sentences of the story, the reader witnesses a significant change in his outlook on life and self-appreciation. On his arrival, he perce ives himself as a stranger in this rural setting. Indeed, he is too self-conscious. Gradually, though, as he spends time in the village and especially in the salas, that sense of strangeness disappears. By the end of the story, he has become an intiate, in a very real sense, a spiritual m e mber of village and salas society. Now even nature h as becom e an attractive and deepl y a ppreciated part of his living. The boy readily admits that he has n ever been in a salas, when the opportunity to visit one presents itself. His visit to the salas and his actual stay in it mark the turning point in his special sojourn in Topol'any . As he becomes more familiar with the various aspects of salas life and society, he increasin gly eulogizes this way of living: To know all the markings, to remember every sh eep : what kind of wool it has ; where it was born, where it was bought, for what price, when, h ow old it is, how good it is for milking, and besides all this to give it a name . These people know their responsibilities and their flo ck. It was not in vain that the Savior had before his eyes the example of the good �114 SLOVAKIA shepherd when he said: "I am the good shepherd and I know mine and mine know me." (III, 73) H owever much he tries to play the devil's advocate in evalu ating salas life, his comments and reflections reveal a growing admiration for the salas and his desire to be very much a part of it: This fresh, fine-smelling air, the immediate friendly closeness to great nature, this free view of life, the sun's morning rise and evening setting: I envied them all of this .. .. Salas - salas! To remain here, to forget everything that I have learned ... and to learn to recognize the ancient signs of the sheep's ears .. . . To forget also algebra . .. and to study rather from the baca [head-shepherd] . . . the passage of large sph eres in the heavens. (I II , 76) The aspiration of Kukucfn's narrator is especially for ta vol'nost' (that freedom) of salas life, ''wide and not restricted by anyone,'' ' ' what was dearest" to him (II I , 78). His aspiration for ta vol'nost' resonates with the consuming desire of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin for volja (freedom) . Indeed, for Shukshin in general, and for Egor in particular, volja is a key word. 8 Just as for the narrator of Kukucfn' s story, so for Egor of'' Snowball Berry-Red,'' freedom is associated with nature and rural settings. In the beginning of the story, Egor links freedom with spring, that time of year when nature is new, fresh, and alive: "Freedom and Spring! What else does a person need?" (208/ 128) There are also a number of scenes with the white birches when Egor is so at ease with himself and the natural world around him. 9 For instance: All around was an unbroken birch forest.... Egor leaned against a birch tree and looked around. "Well, will you look at what we have here!" he said with quiet rapture . He turned toward the birch tree and stroked it with the palm of his hand. "Hullo, there! Ah, you look so ... You're like a bride . Are you waiting for your groom? Soon, soon he'll come." (210/ 131) And there spread out before his eyes was a birch grove: the entire numerous family of trees seemed to run up and greet him . "Ah, you!" he said. And he walked into the grove. �SLOVAKIA 115 He strolled among the birches . . .. He stepped back and admired them from the side . . . . He felt a lot better now. (255/ 1 79) For the narrator of Kukucfn 's story, the salas is an especially apt setting in which to express his d esire for vol'nost'. For in Slovak history and culture, the salas and valasi or mountain shepherds have acquired a tradition of special associations. In Kukucfn 's time as even today, the salas and valasi connote a closeness to nature, a distinctively Slovak consciousness, and a special status of freedom and movement in a society more and more regimented and organized. 10 The eventful night spent by the narrator as a boy in the salas, his description of the baca, the good-natured trick played on him by the valasi, and finally the appropriate sharing of story, bowl , and spoon all these show how deeply and irrevocably he has become a member of this Slovak village and salas life. Indeed, the last sentences of the story aptly express this as well in the readiness of the villagers to defend what they , like the narrator , know to be most important to their being their village and salas way oflife. As the narrator notes, the mackintosh worn by him that fateful night in the salas is always taken along by him on his trips to Topol'any . And the then honelnfk (young shepherd), now the baca, retorts to the narrator's reminder of the form er' s teasing on that fateful night: "Akf su pani, takf budeme i my (We'll act just like the gentlemen)" (III, 86). From the story '' At the Community Sheepfold,' ' the reader would have the impression that Slovak village life is the perfect repository of Slovak ethnic and human values. Yet just as Topol'any is a single village in the Slovak countryside, so this story is simply one expression of Kukucfn's appreciation of village society and living. Indeed, Kukucfn's awe for the village and salas in this story does give way to a credible, rather realistic view of human relations in a rural setting in the stories " The Unawaken ed Boy ," and Dies irae. In Dies irae , the focus is on self, strongly accentuated by the element of money , m aterial gain and possession. Indeed, Julius N oge con tends in writing about Dies irae that money is "merely the physically graspable expression of the societal system that rules and permeates the morality, economics, psychology, and emotional relations of this era.'' 11 From the very beginning of Dies irae, three forces course through the lives of the villagers of Lomnica: the cholera epidemic, money, and �116 SLOVAKIA a related concern for self. Together , these three forces drastically change the lives of so m any in Lomni ca. Indeed , the physical infection of the cholera epidemic seems to refl ect in a way the serious infection eating away at the life of the village , many of whose inhabitants a re focused on themselves and are concerned with the role of money in their lives. The ex treme situation caused by the cholera epidemic h elps to bring to the surface what has been for a long time an undercurrent in the lives of many villagers: concern for money and, relatedl y, for self. Greed and egotism pervade the character of Sykora, the vice-rich tar (deputy mayor) of the village, who drove his older sonjan into the army. Sykora' s younger son J uro is in love with Evka, the daughter of Sykora' s rival, the richtar Jan Zima, but Sykora's concern for his mon ey" leads him to suspect - quite incorrectly - that the Zima family is luring Juro into marriage with Evka for the sake of Sykora 's money . Sykora, in effect , forcesjuro to leave his family home, and even whenjuro catches cholera, Sykora goes to the Zima ho use where J uro is a ilin g for only one reason: to see the rich tar about some lost money. In Kukucfn's characterization of Sykora, the latter is virtually the embodiment of evil. Even Sykora's house is aptly described as "cold and dark, " suitable words not only for the house but for Sykora's character (V, 342 and 362). Money also plays a definite role in the lives of all the other major characters. For them, however , unlike for'Sykora, money is not an end in itself. Eithe r money is used to achieve some non-materialistic end , or they becom e its suffering victims. Masliacka, a former sweetheart of the rich tar Zima , uses money to avenge herself on Zima and also his family . In his secret borrowings from Masliacka for the sake of the village community, Zim a jeopardizes himself as rich tar but most of all his marriage and family. On hearing about h er husband 's secret meetings with Masliacka, Zim a's wife Katre na alternately expresses jealousy of Masliacka , anger at her husband, and bitte r self- castigation for marryin g Zima. (Still , she must h ave been aware that Masliacka was pregnant by Zima before his marriage to herself and that he r own riches were a factor in their marriage .) A stock character - the village usurer , here the Jewish tave rnkeeper Mojzis - is not depicted in the usual negative, anti-Semitic tone. 12 Rather , his Christian-like characterization and tran sfe r of money to his wife are very positive features of the story. Still , throughout the narrative, Mojzis suffers because of money-related activities, done actually for old Sykora. �SLOVAKIA 117 Although the young characters, Evka Zima a nd espec iall y Juro Sykora, suffer from the ill e ffects o f m o ney graspin g a nd u se, their characterization s help to counter the evil the reb y cau sed a nd bode well for the future of the vill age community. Indeed , each of them becomes for others a catalyst to change for the bette r - Evka for Masliacka and her father, J uro for his father. Because of Evka a nd J uro , love and forgiveness are the fate of Masliacka, Zima , and old Sykora . For Zima but especially for old Sykora, the ir childre n become the m edium for m etanoia . 13 The basically good village r s a mong th e m ajo r characters, Evka a nd Juro , em bod y well the co ntrast to old Sykora's d efinition of a n ob ec (co mmunity) as con suming but neve r helpin g (V, 292 ). Disd a ining the e ntrapm ent o f m on etary and m a te rial accumul at ion , Evka a nd J uro essentiall y forget th emselves for the sake o f othe rs. In Shukshin 's "S nowb all Berry- R ed," m o ney a nd co ncern for self pl ay a d e finite role in the characte rizatio n o f Egor Prokudin . Through money, Egor tries to satisfy th e longing of his sou l for a holiday. H owever much he tries to achieve this, he never su cceeds . Gradually, though, perhaps only subconsciously, Egor appreciates tha t m o ney d oes not bring real happiness . Finally , he gives up trying to give his soul peace through mon ey -related activities. Money and concern for self give way to newly rece ived feelin gs for hi s mothe r , to actions in d efen se of his '' pe n pal'' L yuba against her for m er alcoholic hu sband , a nd above all , to an ever growin g closeness to n ature, as yet unspoiled b y the so-call ed prog ress of civili zatio n . Unfortunately, Egor's unexpected murder by hi s former gan g cut s short the hope ful glimme rs o f hum a n life that hi s ex iste nce had been showing. "S nowb all Be rry- R ed " h as its m ost signifi can t resonance w ith Kukucfn 's sto ry "The Unawakened Boy." H ere, as in "S nowball BerryR ed," good triumph s over evil but only with th e death of the main ch aracter. Like the characte r a nd death of Egor Prokudin , those of Ondras Machu Fa are poignantly depicted. This m ay be o ne of the reasons why these stories stand ou t among the writings of their respective authors. In " The Unawakened Boy , " there is a stro ng contrast between real ity and im agin at io n/ appearan ce, cru cia l to th e plot a nd present from the first se nte nce of the story . The focal ch aracte r o f the sto ry, Ondras M achul'a, is called a hu sar. 14 I s he a hu ssar-husar , the dashing youn g soldie r who steals th e hearts of v ill age g irl s o nl y to run off to b attle or to a nother village for furth e r a morou s co nqu ests? Or is Ondras a �118 SLOVAKIA goose herd-hu sar , whose occupation is usuall y performed by girls and women but hardly eve r by a man ? Within a few sentences, it becomes clear that Ondras is a gooseherd but with hussar fantasies. The stark co ntrast between what matters are a nd what they m ay be imagined or may a ppear to be is continuou sly ev ident in the story becau se of certain human flaws and weaknesses : caprice and presumptu ousness, fear and shame , a lack of forthright but sensitive honesty , and a lack of committed genuine feeling for another whatever this entails . In their fallibility and human frailty, the characters of " The Unawakened Boy" act in ways that may seem good and apt but merely co ntribute to the power of evil in their lives . In his hu sacia respublika (Republic of G eese), Ondras may play a prominent role, but in village society, he occupies a special caste of one . Th rou gh no fault of hi s ow n , hi s m ental retardation and less than attractive physical a ppearance make him a problem , a cause of difficulty in the village. Even though he is a human being like everyone else, Ondras simpl y does not m easure up to the expectations of others - not that of his father who becom es a drunkard and abandons the family nor those of the other villagers. As his mother observes , " People always look for what they d o not have . What they do have, they value less than a gra in of poppyseed " (II, 177). So many of the villagers seem to forget that in Ondras , there is a soul as in everyone else. Eve n though Ondras is twenty years old , young children are his peers in society , for among them , he ge ts along best because in some ways Ondras is childlike but also perhaps becau se among the young children , he is treated seriously a nd respectfully accepted as a peer. The conflict in the story arises from a caprice of the village girl Zuzka Bezan, a contemporary of Ondras. After giving Ondras his lunch out in the fi elds where he is tending the geese, Zuzka becomes upset tha t Ondras is apparently not his u su al submissive self before her. In order to re-asse rt her hold over him and his affections, she lead s Ondras to believe that he has a cha nce to becom e her betrothed and hu sband even though she is betrothed to J ano Dubrav . For Ondras, Zu zka then becom es the em bodiment of the fairytale princess whom in hi s d aydreams he seeks to win for him self. In the course of the story , Zuzka and her mother never really tell Ondras that he will not realize hi s dream of marrying Zuzka, while hi s aunt cannot reason with him . Ondras, always relating to others do vern e (trustingly) (II , 182 a nd 195), rem a ins co n- �SLOVAKIA 119 vinced of Zuzka' s capricious proposal almost to the tragic end of the story. The "evil" world of the village is evident among the villagers on the wedding day of Zuzka and J ano Dubrav. The young men may be happy for J ano in his marriage to Zuzka, but they are also glad that he would no longer be competing with them for the young girls. Many villagers do attend the wedding ceremony, but especially to see whether Zuzka wears a flower wreath as a sign of her virginity, for she had rarely been seen outside her house before the wedding day. Zuzka does wear the wreath, for she is not pregnant as some villagers suspect. Belatedly, the suspicions about Zuzka aroused by moving forward the wedding date are further shown groundless by the wedding celebration. For the quality of the feast and the music are the effects of long-range planning and not the result of rush preparation . After escaping from the room where his aunt locked him up, Ondras arrives at the wedding celebration in the Bezan home. Ironically, the first person he meets all alone in the yard is the zvac, the villager who invites people to wedding celebrations in the village . The zvac whom Ondras meets is quite drunk and heading for the hayshed with a cigar stump in his mouth. The irony here is that Ondras should meet the man who called people to Zuzka's wedding withjano but not with Ondras as Ondras had hoped. Even more ironic is that the zvac will be the one whose condition - drunk and smoking in the hayshed - is the cause of the fire for which Ondras will be accused and in which the two of them will perish. The zvac, then, the man who heralded the happiness of Zuzka, seems also to have been the unwitting instrument of God's punishment against her and her mother for their carelessness and insensitivity in dealing with Ondras. 15 Like the wedding ceremony and celebration, the fire provides another occasion for the villagers to reveal their true character. The dancers go from an extreme mood of carefreeness to a frenetic rush through doors and windows to save their own lives. The villagers whose homes are close by run first of all to save their own possessions. As the fire consumes the hayshed, Zuzka's mother realizes that her most productive goose is trapped in the burning hayshed. To her pleas to save the goose, one bystander replies , "Aja ie co! (And what am I!) " (II, 227). For him, his human life outweighs that of a goose . For Ondras, though, the pleas are a different matter. He attempts to save the goose, �120 SLO VAKIA a m ember of hi s husacia respublika, onl y to peri sh with it a mid the fl am es ben eath the coll a p sin g hayshed roof. P rofo und gri ef ove r Ondras's death overcom es virtu all y all of the v ill age rs w ho h a d see n the hayshed roof coll a p se. The gooseherd 's a unt ex presses tha t now at least O ndras "won ' t be in a n yo ne's way" (II , 228). Onl y the starejsf (M aster of C erem o ni es) m a r s the scen e of grief with hi s in sen sitiv ity . Ri gh teou sly , he n o tes tha t su ch is God 's punishm en t fo r a rsoni sts who can n eve r escape Him . In th e last two sentences, Kuku cfn see m s to impl y th a t a t last even the cl ever, ri gh teo u s M C m ay also b e sha rin g to som e exte n t in the profound gri e f ex pressed b y so m a n y a t the d eath of On dras: "They co uld n o t find th e zvac a n yw here. Th e cleve r MC n o lo n ge r no ted : ' H e re's the puni shm e nt of G od , the puni shm ent of God ... ' " (II , 228). Fro m the tragic end of the sto ry, it m ight seem tha t Ond ras dies a senseless d eath for th e sake of a goose. P erha p s by th e stand ards of th e vill age world, dy in g for a goose is folly, but Ondras' a ttempt to help on e of hi s own , eve n if it is a goose, is m ore exe mpl a ry th a n a t first reali zed. It is Ond ras w ho lays d own his life, n ot Zu zka's m other wh o so treasu red the goose but n o t e nou gh to end a n ge r her own life. The m a n who was m ade a foo l ofb y the d a u ghte r of the goose's own er shows a ce rta in selfl essn ess th at few, if a n y, of the vill age rs ex hibi t in the sto ry. Un a bl e to reali ze hi s hu ssar-husar fantasy of marryin g Zu zka, Ondras gives up hi s life as wh a t he is - a gooseh e rd-hu sa.r . H e m ay n o t h ave saved th e goose, bu t in hi s death , h e sobe rs the vill ager s. Indeed , in Kuku cfn 's ve ry sympathet ic po r trayal o fO ndras th rough o u t th e story, a ce rta in desc ript ion sta n ds ou t whi ch may be a clue to O nd ras' proto type. Ju st before the fire, the n arrato r d escribes him as " tich y ak a j ahniatko (qui e t as a la mb)" (II , 21 9). T he wo rd s brin g to m ind a ve rse fro m th e d esc rip tio n of th e S u ffe rin g Se rvant b y the prophe t I saia h a d esc rip tio n u su all y associa ted in C h r isti an interp re ta ti o n w ith C hri st : H e was oppressed , a n d he was a ffli cted, ye t he o pened n o t hi mou th ; like a lamb that is led to the sla u ghter a nd like a sheep before it s sh eare rs is du m b , so he o pe ned n o t hi s mo u th . I s. 53:7 Eve n more str ikin g are man y of th e o th er ver ses in the passage on the Suffe rin g Se rvan t w he n compared to Kuku cfn 's characte ri zatio n of O nd ras: �SLOVAKIA 121 H e had not form or co m elin ess that we shou ld look at him and no beauty th a t we should des ire him. H e was d espised and rejected by m en ; a m a n of sorrows a nd acqu a inted with grief a nd as one from whom m e n hid e the ir faces, he was despised a nd we es tee m ed him not. Surely, he h as b o rne our griefs a nd carri ed o ut so rrows; yet we esteem ed him st ri cke n b y God a nd a ffli cted. But he was wounded for o ur transgressions, he was brui sed for ou r iniquiti es; upo n him was the ch astisement th a t m ad e us whole ... All we like sh eep have go ne astray ; we h ave turn ed eve ryon e to his own way ; a nd the Lord has la id on him th e iniqui ty of u s all. (Verse 7 quoted above occurs here.) By op press io n a nd judg m ent , he was taken away ...... he had d one no violen ce a nd there was no deceit in hi s m outh . Ye t it was th e will of th e Lord to bruise him ; he has put him to g ri ef; when he makes himself an offering for sin ... T he refo re I will divide him a portion with the g reat , ... becau se he poured out hi s sou l to death and was numbe red with the tra nsgresso rs; ye t he bore the sin of m a n y a nd m ade inte rcess ion for the transgressor s. (vv. 26-12) Lik e th e Isaian Suffe rin g Se rva nt (and Christ) , Ondras is not a handsom e person , a nd he suffers in variou s ways a t the hands of o ther human beings. Acco rdin g to the vol'a bozia (God 's will) (II , 219) , Ondras' life , but es pec iall y hi s death , have so m e bene fi cia l effect on those ame persons who rejected him a nd ot hers who m a li gn ed him without cause. If we co mpare th e portrayal of Ondras with the ch aracterization of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin , ce rt a in points of simila rity a r e ev ide nt. Lik e Ondras, Egor Prokudin finds som e sort of ease and peace in a na tura l se ttin g. For Ondras, it is with hi s geese in th e fi eld s, but for Ego r , it is espec iall y with the white birches, as already noted a bove in rela ti on to " At th e Comm unity Sheepfold." Indeed , Shukshin 's portrayal of Egor's dying a nd death shows th at Egor is n ot on ly close to nature but even o nce again rooted in it : H e stagge red, clutchin g at the trees with hi s ot he r ha nd . And o n the white birches bri g ht -red sta in s appeared. �122 SLOVAKIA ... A single tear squeezed out from Egor's closed eyelids, rolled down his scalp toward his ear, hung there a minute, detached itself and fell into the grass. Egor was dead . And there he lay, a Russian peasant [krestJanin] on his native steppe, not far from home ... He lay with his cheek pressed to the earth , as though he were listening to something that only he could hear. That was how he had listened to telegraph poles in his childhood . (271- 72/196-98) In the film version of the story, in a scene just after what is quoted above, the gang member Fat Lip , Egor 's murderer , says of him : " He was not even a man. H e was a muzhik [Russian peasant/country dweller as opposed to urban resident]. And of these Rus ' [ ancient name for Russian area] has many. '' 16 In the movie, this comment further emphasizes Egor's rural roots and commitment to historical country living in Rus ' . Like Ondras, Egor stands out in the rural collective where Lyuba his "pen pal " lives with her family, and where Egor was finally beginning to settle down . Here, though, it is not a matter of mental condition and physical appearance, but criminal background that distinguishes Egor from others. As the story of Egor proceeds, his criminal past becomes less damning. As Geoffrey Hosking has said: Egor is a classic victim of Soviet social experimentation. Brought up as a small child in a Siberian village, he becomes separated from his mother during the terrible famine of 1933 , and has never seen her since (till the events of the story). When the old people of the villages round about get together , they discuss the fates which befell their families at the times of "dekulakization," so that we know this is a memory which is still living, indeed dominant , in the villagers' life .... The collectivization, dekulakization, and famine form the setting in which Egor's life must be seen. 17 Under the circumstances, Egor has learned to live as best he could. Like the tragic love story of Ondras which ends in his death, the search of Egor for his much desired freedom also ends unhappily with his d eath . It is notewo rthy that among the various meanings associated with the kalina plant (in the title and the song sung in a couple of places in the story) is one with a tragic love quality. "According to popular �SLOVAKIA 123 belief, the red kalina berry is a symbol of first love, more often than not, of unhappy love." 18 In Egor's search for volja, d eath prevents him from really achieving his deeply felt and loved goal of freedom. The most striking similarity of characterization b etween Ondras and Egor is their respective religious associations and interpretations. As noted above, Ondras' characterization seems to resemble the depiction of Isaiah's Suffering Servant extended in Christian interpretation to J esus Christ. Egor, whose nickname is Gore (Grief/Sorrow) (212/132), can also be seen as refl ecting the Suffering Servant. Even more , however, Donald Fiene contends and shows extensively that the story of Egor Prokudin makes sense psychologically and literarily only if we see it as a modern hagiograph y modeled on the ancient Russian saints' lives. What this means is that Egor's often strangely unaccountable pacifistic behavior is ... the embodiment of an ancient Russian ideal of kenotic martyrdom exemplified by Boris and Gleb, the first saints canonized by the Russian church . What is of interest in Boris and Gleb is . .. that they yielded voluntarily to dea th. Ultimately, this act of nonresistance becomes a national Ru ssian feature, which G . P . Fedotov in the Russian R eligious Mind considers an "authentic religious discovery of the newly-converted Russian Christians . '' 19 Allegorically, Egor is a disciple of the Russian Christ both as an innocent sufferer in the tradition of the suffering Ru ssian p eople (the narod) 20 and as a voluntary sufferer in the kenotic tradition of Boris and Gleb . But in the Ru ssian kenotic tradition , the Christian is not m erely a follower of Christ , but an imitator of him. One is saved only through suffering in the image of a meek and suffering Christ. 21 In his death, then , Egor, like Ondras, is not acting foolishl y or even commiting suicide. Indeed, in his dying , Egor shows a certain forgetfuln ess of self in hi s own unfolding tragedy. As he is dying, he implores L yu ba : " 'Mo ney .. .' Egor strained to get out his last words . 'in jacket. .share it. .. with my mothe r. . .' "(272/197) In the film , to spare Lyuba the sight of him dying, he sends her for some water nearby. When she returns, he is dead. In response to his death , P etro, Lyuba's brother, then chases the gan g in his truck a nd drives them an d their car into �124 SLOVAKIA th e ri ve r. G ood does triumph ove r ev il even if, o r pe rh a p s more appropriately sa id, especially if there has bee n some selfl ess sacrifi ce of life . In th e Christian view of life, the death of Egor , like that of Ondras , becomes m eaningful a nd in some way even bene fi cial fo r ot hers ' sake. n At first sight, a comparison of Kukucfn with Shukshin is provocative but somewhat farfetched . Chronologically, they a re not co ntempora ries. Kuku cfn died in 1928, while Shukshin was born in 1929 . They may both be Slavs ·but from distinctly diffe re nt n a tional gro up s - the b as icall y C a tholic or Lutheran , Western Slav ic Slovaks vs. the Ru ss ian Orthodox, Easte rn Slavic Ru ssians. Eve n more, the soc iet ies a nd a udie n ces of these two a uthQrs a re d ec id edly di stin ctive. For Kuku cfn , society m ay be ex pe rie ncing some of the e ffects of urba nization , but for Shukshin , urbani zed livin g is the predomin a nt mode of ex istence that e ncroaches even upon re mote rural coll ect ions. In his writing , Kuku cfn con veys a " fightin g cha nce" for village life, while Shukshin depicts rather nostalgicall y country livin g which is found in creasingly furth er from the primary co nce rn s of Soviet n at ional consciou sness. These diffe re nces, then , betwee n Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin a re re fl ect io n s of time a nd socie ty , of histor ical, cultural background . The two writers are similar or co ncur precisely in valu es a nd perspect ives that transce nd tim e, culture , a nd society. In the writings o f both , th ere i~ a d e finit e d es ire for freedom - a hum a ne freedom whi ch is often assoc iated with n a tural set tings. Ind eed , both a utho rs show a great se n sit iv ity to nat ure a nd its beaut y in hum an li ving. In Kuku cfn, as wel l as in Shukshin , there is a d e finit e se nse o f the tra n sce nde ntal, espec ially as ex pre ·sed th rough the J udaeo Chri stia n traditi o n . D o nald Fiene conte nds tha t es peciall y in " Snowball Be rr y- R ed ," '' Shukshin 's basic m essage is ... all m e n a re Christ; we must love one a not her o r die. " 23 And as Geoffrey H os kin g has noted: "Shuk shin h as red iscovered an d dram a ti zed m a n 's dri ve towa rds the t ra n sce nd e nt a l , whi ch M a rxi sm d e ni ed a nd Socia li st R eali sm di storted. " 24 Th e importance of C h r isti an love a nd to le rance, a nd the stro n g feelin g th at these a re in so m e way integral to vill age li fe is evid ent in bo th write rs: Christian se lfless ness is worthy co ndu ct , eve n if its conseq ue nce is as drastic as death, whi le ac tion s pursu ed for th e sake o f money or through the m edium o f mon ey o ffer little, if any, real human happin ess. It might th e n be sa id that Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin do differ in some obvious ways but substantively rese mbl e each othe r a nd even �SLOVAKIA 125 concur in principles of human li ving that are in ext ri cably pa rt of and especially evident in rural life. NOTES ' Vasil y Shukshin , " K alina krasnaj a," Kin opovesti (M oscow: Isku ss tvo , 1975), pp . 205-72 ; " Snowba ll Berry-Red ," S nowball Berry-R ed and Oth er Stories, D onald Fiene, ed. (Ann Arbor, Michi gan : Ardis , 1979), pp . 125 -199. H ereaft er , references for qu otations from this wo rk will be given in the text with Ru ssia n page number(s) first , th en those for th e Engli sh ve rsion . ' The stories a re taken from the criti cal edition of Kuku cfn 's works: M artin Kuku cin : Die/o , M arian na Prfdav kova- Min a rikova , ed ., 21 vols. (Brati slava, 195 7-74). An English translation of all three is in Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kukucfn , Norma Rudin sky, tr. and ed . (Clevela nd and Rom e: Slova k I nstitute , 1980). H ereaft er , volu me a nd page refere nces of th e Slovak ve rsion are give n in the text. ' Juliu s N oge, Martin Kukucfn: tradicionalista a novator (Zivot a die/o 1860-1 907) (Brat islava: Y yd avatel'stvo Slove nskej akademie v ied, 1962), p . 75. • The phrase Dies irae co mes from Zephaniah 1:15: "A day of wrath is th at d ay, a d ay o f distress and angui sh , a day of ruin a nd devastat ion , a day of d a rkn ess and gloom ," Th e New Ox fo rd Annotated Bible with th e Apocryph a (New Yo rk : O xford University Press, 1977) , p . 1141 . 5 Noge, p. 182. 6 N oge , p . 183. ' On pages 85 and 86, Noge discusses Kuku cfn 's familiarity with and documentary- like prese ntat ion of th e sa/a s. 8 Michel H elle r , " Vasil y Shukshin: In Search of Freedom ," George G utsche, tr. , Sn owball Berry -R ed and Och er Stories, Donald Fiene , ed. (A nn Arbor, Michigan : Ardi s, 1979),), pp . 2 15 an d 2 17 especiall y. For volja , see: " Snowba ll ," 205 / 125; 207 / 128; 208/ 128; 2 18/ 139; 248/ 171 ; a nd 253/ 177. On page 225, H elle r notes that in his stories , " Shukshin 's hero is look ing for freedom .... The sea rch ... bears a speculative character, a philosophical character. In Shukshin 's world an answe r to the 'main quest ions' is sought with unu sual intensity, with a powerful pass ion : I n what is the mean ing of life, what is death , wha t is God ?" 9 Besides those cited, see also: 253/ 177 a nd 263/ 188-1 89. On pages 228-29, H eller notes that in th e film ve rsion , a " white church - and th e white birches - appea r on th e sc ree n each time Egor P ro kudin pond ers the mea nin g of his life.'' 0 ' On th·e histo ry and culture of va/asi , especiall y in Slovaki a, see: Gerald J. Sabo , "Slova k Didac ti c Poet ry: G av lovic's V alask a Skala, V olum e I - Introdu ctory Stud y, " Ph .D . d isse rt at ion , Yale, 1978, pp . 37-38 a nd rela ted footno tes. Also , J an Podolak, " The Pas toral C ul ture o f th e Carpathi ans as a Subjec t of an Ethnological Study , " E thn ologica s/avica, 1 ( 1969), especiall y 70-77; a nd Encyklopedia Slovenska , Y I ( 1982) , sub verbo " Valasi," " Y a lass ka l'udova pieseil. ," a nd " V a!ass ke pravo ." For oth er sources , see foo tnote 24 of m y a rticl e on Hu golfn Gav lovic in cluded in th is journal issue. �126 SLOVAKIA " N oge , p . 183. " In her in trodu ctory commentary for Dies irae, N orma Rudin sky is probabl y the first crit ic to d iscuss Kuku cfn 's fa vorable depiction of M oj zis; this portrayal contras ts with those of other J ewish characters in Kukucin and other Slovak writers where the J ewish fi gure is d epicted in th e negative tones of ant i-Semi tism : Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kuku cfn , pp . 160-62. " Indeed , the narrator as Kukucin 's persona comments in two places especially to make clear the indictmen t of Sykora and fathers like him who treat their children so poo rly: Dies irae, (V , 367 -68). Acco rdin g to Noge (p. 138), Kuku cin wro te in a lette r to Skultety that the authori al comm enta ry on page 367 noted above was a very importan t part of the text. W ere it to be removed, Kukucin would have bee n "gri eved ." " In contemporar y, standard Slova k, hu sar is a hussar : Slo vnfk slo ven sk eh o j azyk a: I die], a-k , 2nd editi on (Bratislava: Vyd ava tel'stvo Slovenskej akad emie vied , 197 1), p . 542. T hat hu sar also can m ean a gooseherd (hu siar in contem po rary, standard Slova k) is clear from K a rel Kalal and Mi ros lav K alal, Sloven sk y slovn fk z literatury aj n arecf (Banska Bys trica: Slovenska gra fi a, 1923), p . 192. " Indeed , the fire, even Ond ras' death , seem in a way to be G od's response to the word s ofOnd ras ' aunt ju st a short time before the fire is noti ced : " W ell let God's will (vol'a boiia) be done. I entru st everything to Him . H e knows best what is needed" (II , 219). For Zu zka, her wedding day will always rem ain a sad even t; fo r her moth er, her precious goose tha t perishes in the fire will be gone fo rever , but for Ondras , death in th e fire see m s almos t a blessing. " Donald Fiene, "Vasily Shukshin 's 'Kalina krasania ', " Snowball Berry-R ed and O ther Stories, D onald Fiene, ed . (Ann A rbor , Michi gan : Ardis, 1979), pp. 2 11-1 2, footnote 12. Michel H eller notes this same informati on on page 217. 11 G eoffrey H oskin g, " V asily Shukshin ," Beyond Socialist R ealism : S oviet Fiction Since I van D enisovich (New York : H olmes a nd M eier Publishers, I nc., 1980), p . 166. " Fiene, p . 202. 19 Th e Ru ssian R eligious Min d (I ), volume 3 in the Collected Wo rks of George P . Fed otov (Belmont , M ass: N ordland Publishin g C ompan y, 1975) p . 104. 0 ' In his foo tn ote 12 (pp . 211-1 2), Fiene notes tha t Fat Li p's comments about Ego r as a mu zhik in Ru s' emphas ize in the fil m Egor as a symbolic represe ntati ve of the sufferin g n arod. H e also ind icates tha t Fat Lip ' s co mments do not appear in the published film sc ript . Fiene hi mself used as the text for th ese comments the ve rsion of them quoted by J urii Tiurin in ' ' 'Kalina k rasn aia ' - kin opovest' i fil'm , '' M osk va, 4 (1976), 194 . " Fiene, pp. 206-07 . " M y m em ory of the film 's endin g is not perfect , but I do recall th a t th e last sce ne, unli ke that of the pu blished story, has Lyuba mentally recalling wo rds by Ego r about living, about wha t it mean s to li ve and how one should live. T here m ay also have bee n menti oned so methin g about pass ing th is info rm a ti on on to othe rs an d oth er genera tions. If eve n a pa rt of wh a t I have noted is correct , this woul d furth er affirm the m eanin gfuln ess and benefit of Egor 's life and deat h . " Fiene, p . 2 11 . M ichel H eller notes on page 229: " The th eme of fa ith and God whi ch parallels the th em e of death - occu pies a place in Shukshin 's short stories �SLOVAKIA 127 that gradually becomes more and more noticable.'' And also on page 23 2, in Shukshin's stories, the " hero . .. fill s the emptiness in his soul with a faith in Russia which is more and m ore oft en symbolized by a church. " " Hosking, p. 179 . Presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asiloma r , C alifornia on 21 September 1981. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 112 SLOVAKIA Kukucfn's Village Stories and Shukshin's ''Snowball Berry-Red" Gerald J. Sabo The topic of this article stems from an experien ce I had in Slovakia some years ago attending a showing of Vasily Shukshin ' s film Kalina Krasnaja (Snowball Berry- R ed), which is based on his story of the same name. The showing, indeed every showing of the movie, w as sold out. When I attended, the audience was predominantly university students, and I wondered what valu es and per spectives from this contempora ry Russian story in a rural setting reson a ted with this mostly young and urban Slovak audience. Why were they captivated b y the story of a n ex-convict who struggles to find a place in peasant , rural society only to be killed by his form er gang just as he is finding p eace of soul? In deciding , then , on a topic for the panel o n the village in Slovak literature, I chose to compare co untry livin g in Shukshin as ex pressed in the story and film " Snowball Berry- R ed " with several village stories b y Martin Kukucfn: a contemporary Ru ss ia n author, indeed a prominent write r in the "rural or village prose" genre, and a Slovak writer of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century , whose positive evalu a tion of the Slova k village as the best repository of ethnic and human values is well known . F rom Kukucfn 's corpus, I have chosen three stories . 2 Neprebuden y (The Unawakened Boy) , published in 1886, is con sidered " the paramount work of the years 1884-86 . " 3 Dies irae, L atin for "Day of Wrath , " 4 published some seven years a fter Neprebudeny, is seen as belonging to "the best Slovak stories of all, " 5 as " indisputably the summi t ofKukucfn's creative work in the story genre." 6 And finall y, Na obecnom salasi (At the Community Sheepfold), published just sh ortl y a fter Neprebuden y in 1886 , can be considered Kukucfn 's paean to Slovak village and salas or mountain-shepherdin g life. 7 In the story " At the Community Sheepfold," the na rrator , in effect Kukucfn 's persona, is a n urban a dult who is remini scing a bout an especially m emorable boyhood visit to a village and salas. From the begin1 SLOVAKIA 11 3 ning of the story, the narrator shows a definite Slovak ethnic consciousness. He insists that the vill age of his m emorable visit will always be known as Topol'any, the Slovak name for it, rather than Topoian, the Magyar designation for his beloved village . The narrator's description of Topol'a ny 's location conveys the natural , distinctive beauty of the village, so close to nature and as though protected by nature against any encroachments from outside the village environs. Even though the boy's father is a confirmed city dweller, his godfather is the richta.r (village mayor) ofTopol'any. Like his father, the boy is and will be urban , but through visits to the village of his godfather - someone who is a father to him in spirit and religion - he nurtures a spiritual relationship to village life. His parents may be very intent on his becoming someone through education in the city, yet ironically success in his formal studies gives him an opportunity to deepen his knowledge precisely in that area from which his parents try to keep him isolated: village life . Because of a good academic report, the parents accede to their son's wish to visit his godfather, the richtar of Topol'any . It is this visit that will prove the most memorable and influential of all his stays. From the arrival of the narrator as a boy in Topol'any through the last sentences of the story, the reader witnesses a significant change in his outlook on life and self-appreciation. On his arrival, he perce ives himself as a stranger in this rural setting. Indeed, he is too self-conscious. Gradually, though, as he spends time in the village and especially in the salas, that sense of strangeness disappears. By the end of the story, he has become an intiate, in a very real sense, a spiritual m e mber of village and salas society. Now even nature h as becom e an attractive and deepl y a ppreciated part of his living. The boy readily admits that he has n ever been in a salas, when the opportunity to visit one presents itself. His visit to the salas and his actual stay in it mark the turning point in his special sojourn in Topol'any . As he becomes more familiar with the various aspects of salas life and society, he increasin gly eulogizes this way of living: To know all the markings, to remember every sh eep : what kind of wool it has ; where it was born, where it was bought, for what price, when, h ow old it is, how good it is for milking, and besides all this to give it a name . These people know their responsibilities and their flo ck. It was not in vain that the Savior had before his eyes the example of the good 114 SLOVAKIA shepherd when he said: "I am the good shepherd and I know mine and mine know me." (III, 73) H owever much he tries to play the devil's advocate in evalu ating salas life, his comments and reflections reveal a growing admiration for the salas and his desire to be very much a part of it: This fresh, fine-smelling air, the immediate friendly closeness to great nature, this free view of life, the sun's morning rise and evening setting: I envied them all of this .. .. Salas - salas! To remain here, to forget everything that I have learned ... and to learn to recognize the ancient signs of the sheep's ears .. . . To forget also algebra . .. and to study rather from the baca [head-shepherd] . . . the passage of large sph eres in the heavens. (I II , 76) The aspiration of Kukucfn's narrator is especially for ta vol'nost' (that freedom) of salas life, ''wide and not restricted by anyone,'' ' ' what was dearest" to him (II I , 78). His aspiration for ta vol'nost' resonates with the consuming desire of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin for volja (freedom) . Indeed, for Shukshin in general, and for Egor in particular, volja is a key word. 8 Just as for the narrator of Kukucfn' s story, so for Egor of'' Snowball Berry-Red,'' freedom is associated with nature and rural settings. In the beginning of the story, Egor links freedom with spring, that time of year when nature is new, fresh, and alive: "Freedom and Spring! What else does a person need?" (208/ 128) There are also a number of scenes with the white birches when Egor is so at ease with himself and the natural world around him. 9 For instance: All around was an unbroken birch forest.... Egor leaned against a birch tree and looked around. "Well, will you look at what we have here!" he said with quiet rapture . He turned toward the birch tree and stroked it with the palm of his hand. "Hullo, there! Ah, you look so ... You're like a bride . Are you waiting for your groom? Soon, soon he'll come." (210/ 131) And there spread out before his eyes was a birch grove: the entire numerous family of trees seemed to run up and greet him . "Ah, you!" he said. And he walked into the grove. SLOVAKIA 115 He strolled among the birches . . .. He stepped back and admired them from the side . . . . He felt a lot better now. (255/ 1 79) For the narrator of Kukucfn 's story, the salas is an especially apt setting in which to express his d esire for vol'nost'. For in Slovak history and culture, the salas and valasi or mountain shepherds have acquired a tradition of special associations. In Kukucfn 's time as even today, the salas and valasi connote a closeness to nature, a distinctively Slovak consciousness, and a special status of freedom and movement in a society more and more regimented and organized. 10 The eventful night spent by the narrator as a boy in the salas, his description of the baca, the good-natured trick played on him by the valasi, and finally the appropriate sharing of story, bowl , and spoon all these show how deeply and irrevocably he has become a member of this Slovak village and salas life. Indeed, the last sentences of the story aptly express this as well in the readiness of the villagers to defend what they , like the narrator , know to be most important to their being their village and salas way oflife. As the narrator notes, the mackintosh worn by him that fateful night in the salas is always taken along by him on his trips to Topol'any . And the then honelnfk (young shepherd), now the baca, retorts to the narrator's reminder of the form er' s teasing on that fateful night: "Akf su pani, takf budeme i my (We'll act just like the gentlemen)" (III, 86). From the story '' At the Community Sheepfold,' ' the reader would have the impression that Slovak village life is the perfect repository of Slovak ethnic and human values. Yet just as Topol'any is a single village in the Slovak countryside, so this story is simply one expression of Kukucfn's appreciation of village society and living. Indeed, Kukucfn's awe for the village and salas in this story does give way to a credible, rather realistic view of human relations in a rural setting in the stories " The Unawaken ed Boy ," and Dies irae. In Dies irae , the focus is on self, strongly accentuated by the element of money , m aterial gain and possession. Indeed, Julius N oge con tends in writing about Dies irae that money is "merely the physically graspable expression of the societal system that rules and permeates the morality, economics, psychology, and emotional relations of this era.'' 11 From the very beginning of Dies irae, three forces course through the lives of the villagers of Lomnica: the cholera epidemic, money, and 116 SLOVAKIA a related concern for self. Together , these three forces drastically change the lives of so m any in Lomni ca. Indeed , the physical infection of the cholera epidemic seems to refl ect in a way the serious infection eating away at the life of the village , many of whose inhabitants a re focused on themselves and are concerned with the role of money in their lives. The ex treme situation caused by the cholera epidemic h elps to bring to the surface what has been for a long time an undercurrent in the lives of many villagers: concern for money and, relatedl y, for self. Greed and egotism pervade the character of Sykora, the vice-rich tar (deputy mayor) of the village, who drove his older sonjan into the army. Sykora' s younger son J uro is in love with Evka, the daughter of Sykora' s rival, the richtar Jan Zima, but Sykora's concern for his mon ey" leads him to suspect - quite incorrectly - that the Zima family is luring Juro into marriage with Evka for the sake of Sykora 's money . Sykora, in effect , forcesjuro to leave his family home, and even whenjuro catches cholera, Sykora goes to the Zima ho use where J uro is a ilin g for only one reason: to see the rich tar about some lost money. In Kukucfn's characterization of Sykora, the latter is virtually the embodiment of evil. Even Sykora's house is aptly described as "cold and dark, " suitable words not only for the house but for Sykora's character (V, 342 and 362). Money also plays a definite role in the lives of all the other major characters. For them, however , unlike for'Sykora, money is not an end in itself. Eithe r money is used to achieve some non-materialistic end , or they becom e its suffering victims. Masliacka, a former sweetheart of the rich tar Zima , uses money to avenge herself on Zima and also his family . In his secret borrowings from Masliacka for the sake of the village community, Zim a jeopardizes himself as rich tar but most of all his marriage and family. On hearing about h er husband 's secret meetings with Masliacka, Zim a's wife Katre na alternately expresses jealousy of Masliacka , anger at her husband, and bitte r self- castigation for marryin g Zima. (Still , she must h ave been aware that Masliacka was pregnant by Zima before his marriage to herself and that he r own riches were a factor in their marriage .) A stock character - the village usurer , here the Jewish tave rnkeeper Mojzis - is not depicted in the usual negative, anti-Semitic tone. 12 Rather , his Christian-like characterization and tran sfe r of money to his wife are very positive features of the story. Still , throughout the narrative, Mojzis suffers because of money-related activities, done actually for old Sykora. SLOVAKIA 117 Although the young characters, Evka Zima a nd espec iall y Juro Sykora, suffer from the ill e ffects o f m o ney graspin g a nd u se, their characterization s help to counter the evil the reb y cau sed a nd bode well for the future of the vill age community. Indeed , each of them becomes for others a catalyst to change for the bette r - Evka for Masliacka and her father, J uro for his father. Because of Evka a nd J uro , love and forgiveness are the fate of Masliacka, Zima , and old Sykora . For Zima but especially for old Sykora, the ir childre n become the m edium for m etanoia . 13 The basically good village r s a mong th e m ajo r characters, Evka a nd Juro , em bod y well the co ntrast to old Sykora's d efinition of a n ob ec (co mmunity) as con suming but neve r helpin g (V, 292 ). Disd a ining the e ntrapm ent o f m on etary and m a te rial accumul at ion , Evka a nd J uro essentiall y forget th emselves for the sake o f othe rs. In Shukshin 's "S nowb all Berry- R ed," m o ney a nd co ncern for self pl ay a d e finite role in the characte rizatio n o f Egor Prokudin . Through money, Egor tries to satisfy th e longing of his sou l for a holiday. H owever much he tries to achieve this, he never su cceeds . Gradually, though, perhaps only subconsciously, Egor appreciates tha t m o ney d oes not bring real happiness . Finally , he gives up trying to give his soul peace through mon ey -related activities. Money and concern for self give way to newly rece ived feelin gs for hi s mothe r , to actions in d efen se of his '' pe n pal'' L yuba against her for m er alcoholic hu sband , a nd above all , to an ever growin g closeness to n ature, as yet unspoiled b y the so-call ed prog ress of civili zatio n . Unfortunately, Egor's unexpected murder by hi s former gan g cut s short the hope ful glimme rs o f hum a n life that hi s ex iste nce had been showing. "S nowb all Be rry- R ed " h as its m ost signifi can t resonance w ith Kukucfn 's sto ry "The Unawakened Boy." H ere, as in "S nowball BerryR ed," good triumph s over evil but only with th e death of the main ch aracter. Like the characte r a nd death of Egor Prokudin , those of Ondras Machu Fa are poignantly depicted. This m ay be o ne of the reasons why these stories stand ou t among the writings of their respective authors. In " The Unawakened Boy , " there is a stro ng contrast between real ity and im agin at io n/ appearan ce, cru cia l to th e plot a nd present from the first se nte nce of the story . The focal ch aracte r o f the sto ry, Ondras M achul'a, is called a hu sar. 14 I s he a hu ssar-husar , the dashing youn g soldie r who steals th e hearts of v ill age g irl s o nl y to run off to b attle or to a nother village for furth e r a morou s co nqu ests? Or is Ondras a 118 SLOVAKIA goose herd-hu sar , whose occupation is usuall y performed by girls and women but hardly eve r by a man ? Within a few sentences, it becomes clear that Ondras is a gooseherd but with hussar fantasies. The stark co ntrast between what matters are a nd what they m ay be imagined or may a ppear to be is continuou sly ev ident in the story becau se of certain human flaws and weaknesses : caprice and presumptu ousness, fear and shame , a lack of forthright but sensitive honesty , and a lack of committed genuine feeling for another whatever this entails . In their fallibility and human frailty, the characters of " The Unawakened Boy" act in ways that may seem good and apt but merely co ntribute to the power of evil in their lives . In his hu sacia respublika (Republic of G eese), Ondras may play a prominent role, but in village society, he occupies a special caste of one . Th rou gh no fault of hi s ow n , hi s m ental retardation and less than attractive physical a ppearance make him a problem , a cause of difficulty in the village. Even though he is a human being like everyone else, Ondras simpl y does not m easure up to the expectations of others - not that of his father who becom es a drunkard and abandons the family nor those of the other villagers. As his mother observes , " People always look for what they d o not have . What they do have, they value less than a gra in of poppyseed " (II, 177). So many of the villagers seem to forget that in Ondras , there is a soul as in everyone else. Eve n though Ondras is twenty years old , young children are his peers in society , for among them , he ge ts along best because in some ways Ondras is childlike but also perhaps becau se among the young children , he is treated seriously a nd respectfully accepted as a peer. The conflict in the story arises from a caprice of the village girl Zuzka Bezan, a contemporary of Ondras. After giving Ondras his lunch out in the fi elds where he is tending the geese, Zuzka becomes upset tha t Ondras is apparently not his u su al submissive self before her. In order to re-asse rt her hold over him and his affections, she lead s Ondras to believe that he has a cha nce to becom e her betrothed and hu sband even though she is betrothed to J ano Dubrav . For Ondras, Zu zka then becom es the em bodiment of the fairytale princess whom in hi s d aydreams he seeks to win for him self. In the course of the story , Zuzka and her mother never really tell Ondras that he will not realize hi s dream of marrying Zuzka, while hi s aunt cannot reason with him . Ondras, always relating to others do vern e (trustingly) (II , 182 a nd 195), rem a ins co n- SLOVAKIA 119 vinced of Zuzka' s capricious proposal almost to the tragic end of the story. The "evil" world of the village is evident among the villagers on the wedding day of Zuzka and J ano Dubrav. The young men may be happy for J ano in his marriage to Zuzka, but they are also glad that he would no longer be competing with them for the young girls. Many villagers do attend the wedding ceremony, but especially to see whether Zuzka wears a flower wreath as a sign of her virginity, for she had rarely been seen outside her house before the wedding day. Zuzka does wear the wreath, for she is not pregnant as some villagers suspect. Belatedly, the suspicions about Zuzka aroused by moving forward the wedding date are further shown groundless by the wedding celebration. For the quality of the feast and the music are the effects of long-range planning and not the result of rush preparation . After escaping from the room where his aunt locked him up, Ondras arrives at the wedding celebration in the Bezan home. Ironically, the first person he meets all alone in the yard is the zvac, the villager who invites people to wedding celebrations in the village . The zvac whom Ondras meets is quite drunk and heading for the hayshed with a cigar stump in his mouth. The irony here is that Ondras should meet the man who called people to Zuzka's wedding withjano but not with Ondras as Ondras had hoped. Even more ironic is that the zvac will be the one whose condition - drunk and smoking in the hayshed - is the cause of the fire for which Ondras will be accused and in which the two of them will perish. The zvac, then, the man who heralded the happiness of Zuzka, seems also to have been the unwitting instrument of God's punishment against her and her mother for their carelessness and insensitivity in dealing with Ondras. 15 Like the wedding ceremony and celebration, the fire provides another occasion for the villagers to reveal their true character. The dancers go from an extreme mood of carefreeness to a frenetic rush through doors and windows to save their own lives. The villagers whose homes are close by run first of all to save their own possessions. As the fire consumes the hayshed, Zuzka's mother realizes that her most productive goose is trapped in the burning hayshed. To her pleas to save the goose, one bystander replies , "Aja ie co! (And what am I!) " (II, 227). For him, his human life outweighs that of a goose . For Ondras, though, the pleas are a different matter. He attempts to save the goose, 120 SLO VAKIA a m ember of hi s husacia respublika, onl y to peri sh with it a mid the fl am es ben eath the coll a p sin g hayshed roof. P rofo und gri ef ove r Ondras's death overcom es virtu all y all of the v ill age rs w ho h a d see n the hayshed roof coll a p se. The gooseherd 's a unt ex presses tha t now at least O ndras "won ' t be in a n yo ne's way" (II , 228). Onl y the starejsf (M aster of C erem o ni es) m a r s the scen e of grief with hi s in sen sitiv ity . Ri gh teou sly , he n o tes tha t su ch is God 's punishm en t fo r a rsoni sts who can n eve r escape Him . In th e last two sentences, Kuku cfn see m s to impl y th a t a t last even the cl ever, ri gh teo u s M C m ay also b e sha rin g to som e exte n t in the profound gri e f ex pressed b y so m a n y a t the d eath of On dras: "They co uld n o t find th e zvac a n yw here. Th e cleve r MC n o lo n ge r no ted : ' H e re's the puni shm e nt of G od , the puni shm ent of God ... ' " (II , 228). Fro m the tragic end of the sto ry, it m ight seem tha t Ond ras dies a senseless d eath for th e sake of a goose. P erha p s by th e stand ards of th e vill age world, dy in g for a goose is folly, but Ondras' a ttempt to help on e of hi s own , eve n if it is a goose, is m ore exe mpl a ry th a n a t first reali zed. It is Ond ras w ho lays d own his life, n ot Zu zka's m other wh o so treasu red the goose but n o t e nou gh to end a n ge r her own life. The m a n who was m ade a foo l ofb y the d a u ghte r of the goose's own er shows a ce rta in selfl essn ess th at few, if a n y, of the vill age rs ex hibi t in the sto ry. Un a bl e to reali ze hi s hu ssar-husar fantasy of marryin g Zu zka, Ondras gives up hi s life as wh a t he is - a gooseh e rd-hu sa.r . H e m ay n o t h ave saved th e goose, bu t in hi s death , h e sobe rs the vill ager s. Indeed , in Kuku cfn 's ve ry sympathet ic po r trayal o fO ndras th rough o u t th e story, a ce rta in desc ript ion sta n ds ou t whi ch may be a clue to O nd ras' proto type. Ju st before the fire, the n arrato r d escribes him as " tich y ak a j ahniatko (qui e t as a la mb)" (II , 21 9). T he wo rd s brin g to m ind a ve rse fro m th e d esc rip tio n of th e S u ffe rin g Se rvant b y the prophe t I saia h a d esc rip tio n u su all y associa ted in C h r isti an interp re ta ti o n w ith C hri st : H e was oppressed , a n d he was a ffli cted, ye t he o pened n o t hi mou th ; like a lamb that is led to the sla u ghter a nd like a sheep before it s sh eare rs is du m b , so he o pe ned n o t hi s mo u th . I s. 53:7 Eve n more str ikin g are man y of th e o th er ver ses in the passage on the Suffe rin g Se rvan t w he n compared to Kuku cfn 's characte ri zatio n of O nd ras: SLOVAKIA 121 H e had not form or co m elin ess that we shou ld look at him and no beauty th a t we should des ire him. H e was d espised and rejected by m en ; a m a n of sorrows a nd acqu a inted with grief a nd as one from whom m e n hid e the ir faces, he was despised a nd we es tee m ed him not. Surely, he h as b o rne our griefs a nd carri ed o ut so rrows; yet we esteem ed him st ri cke n b y God a nd a ffli cted. But he was wounded for o ur transgressions, he was brui sed for ou r iniquiti es; upo n him was the ch astisement th a t m ad e us whole ... All we like sh eep have go ne astray ; we h ave turn ed eve ryon e to his own way ; a nd the Lord has la id on him th e iniqui ty of u s all. (Verse 7 quoted above occurs here.) By op press io n a nd judg m ent , he was taken away ...... he had d one no violen ce a nd there was no deceit in hi s m outh . Ye t it was th e will of th e Lord to bruise him ; he has put him to g ri ef; when he makes himself an offering for sin ... T he refo re I will divide him a portion with the g reat , ... becau se he poured out hi s sou l to death and was numbe red with the tra nsgresso rs; ye t he bore the sin of m a n y a nd m ade inte rcess ion for the transgressor s. (vv. 26-12) Lik e th e Isaian Suffe rin g Se rva nt (and Christ) , Ondras is not a handsom e person , a nd he suffers in variou s ways a t the hands of o ther human beings. Acco rdin g to the vol'a bozia (God 's will) (II , 219) , Ondras' life , but es pec iall y hi s death , have so m e bene fi cia l effect on those ame persons who rejected him a nd ot hers who m a li gn ed him without cause. If we co mpare th e portrayal of Ondras with the ch aracterization of Shukshin's Egor Prokudin , ce rt a in points of simila rity a r e ev ide nt. Lik e Ondras, Egor Prokudin finds som e sort of ease and peace in a na tura l se ttin g. For Ondras, it is with hi s geese in th e fi eld s, but for Ego r , it is espec iall y with the white birches, as already noted a bove in rela ti on to " At th e Comm unity Sheepfold." Indeed , Shukshin 's portrayal of Egor's dying a nd death shows th at Egor is n ot on ly close to nature but even o nce again rooted in it : H e stagge red, clutchin g at the trees with hi s ot he r ha nd . And o n the white birches bri g ht -red sta in s appeared. 122 SLOVAKIA ... A single tear squeezed out from Egor's closed eyelids, rolled down his scalp toward his ear, hung there a minute, detached itself and fell into the grass. Egor was dead . And there he lay, a Russian peasant [krestJanin] on his native steppe, not far from home ... He lay with his cheek pressed to the earth , as though he were listening to something that only he could hear. That was how he had listened to telegraph poles in his childhood . (271- 72/196-98) In the film version of the story, in a scene just after what is quoted above, the gang member Fat Lip , Egor 's murderer , says of him : " He was not even a man. H e was a muzhik [Russian peasant/country dweller as opposed to urban resident]. And of these Rus ' [ ancient name for Russian area] has many. '' 16 In the movie, this comment further emphasizes Egor's rural roots and commitment to historical country living in Rus ' . Like Ondras, Egor stands out in the rural collective where Lyuba his "pen pal " lives with her family, and where Egor was finally beginning to settle down . Here, though, it is not a matter of mental condition and physical appearance, but criminal background that distinguishes Egor from others. As the story of Egor proceeds, his criminal past becomes less damning. As Geoffrey Hosking has said: Egor is a classic victim of Soviet social experimentation. Brought up as a small child in a Siberian village, he becomes separated from his mother during the terrible famine of 1933 , and has never seen her since (till the events of the story). When the old people of the villages round about get together , they discuss the fates which befell their families at the times of "dekulakization," so that we know this is a memory which is still living, indeed dominant , in the villagers' life .... The collectivization, dekulakization, and famine form the setting in which Egor's life must be seen. 17 Under the circumstances, Egor has learned to live as best he could. Like the tragic love story of Ondras which ends in his death, the search of Egor for his much desired freedom also ends unhappily with his d eath . It is notewo rthy that among the various meanings associated with the kalina plant (in the title and the song sung in a couple of places in the story) is one with a tragic love quality. "According to popular SLOVAKIA 123 belief, the red kalina berry is a symbol of first love, more often than not, of unhappy love." 18 In Egor's search for volja, d eath prevents him from really achieving his deeply felt and loved goal of freedom. The most striking similarity of characterization b etween Ondras and Egor is their respective religious associations and interpretations. As noted above, Ondras' characterization seems to resemble the depiction of Isaiah's Suffering Servant extended in Christian interpretation to J esus Christ. Egor, whose nickname is Gore (Grief/Sorrow) (212/132), can also be seen as refl ecting the Suffering Servant. Even more , however, Donald Fiene contends and shows extensively that the story of Egor Prokudin makes sense psychologically and literarily only if we see it as a modern hagiograph y modeled on the ancient Russian saints' lives. What this means is that Egor's often strangely unaccountable pacifistic behavior is ... the embodiment of an ancient Russian ideal of kenotic martyrdom exemplified by Boris and Gleb, the first saints canonized by the Russian church . What is of interest in Boris and Gleb is . .. that they yielded voluntarily to dea th. Ultimately, this act of nonresistance becomes a national Ru ssian feature, which G . P . Fedotov in the Russian R eligious Mind considers an "authentic religious discovery of the newly-converted Russian Christians . '' 19 Allegorically, Egor is a disciple of the Russian Christ both as an innocent sufferer in the tradition of the suffering Ru ssian p eople (the narod) 20 and as a voluntary sufferer in the kenotic tradition of Boris and Gleb . But in the Ru ssian kenotic tradition , the Christian is not m erely a follower of Christ , but an imitator of him. One is saved only through suffering in the image of a meek and suffering Christ. 21 In his death, then , Egor, like Ondras, is not acting foolishl y or even commiting suicide. Indeed, in his dying , Egor shows a certain forgetfuln ess of self in hi s own unfolding tragedy. As he is dying, he implores L yu ba : " 'Mo ney .. .' Egor strained to get out his last words . 'in jacket. .share it. .. with my mothe r. . .' "(272/197) In the film , to spare Lyuba the sight of him dying, he sends her for some water nearby. When she returns, he is dead. In response to his death , P etro, Lyuba's brother, then chases the gan g in his truck a nd drives them an d their car into 124 SLOVAKIA th e ri ve r. G ood does triumph ove r ev il even if, o r pe rh a p s more appropriately sa id, especially if there has bee n some selfl ess sacrifi ce of life . In th e Christian view of life, the death of Egor , like that of Ondras , becomes m eaningful a nd in some way even bene fi cial fo r ot hers ' sake. n At first sight, a comparison of Kukucfn with Shukshin is provocative but somewhat farfetched . Chronologically, they a re not co ntempora ries. Kuku cfn died in 1928, while Shukshin was born in 1929 . They may both be Slavs ·but from distinctly diffe re nt n a tional gro up s - the b as icall y C a tholic or Lutheran , Western Slav ic Slovaks vs. the Ru ss ian Orthodox, Easte rn Slavic Ru ssians. Eve n more, the soc iet ies a nd a udie n ces of these two a uthQrs a re d ec id edly di stin ctive. For Kuku cfn , society m ay be ex pe rie ncing some of the e ffects of urba nization , but for Shukshin , urbani zed livin g is the predomin a nt mode of ex istence that e ncroaches even upon re mote rural coll ect ions. In his writing , Kuku cfn con veys a " fightin g cha nce" for village life, while Shukshin depicts rather nostalgicall y country livin g which is found in creasingly furth er from the primary co nce rn s of Soviet n at ional consciou sness. These diffe re nces, then , betwee n Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin a re re fl ect io n s of time a nd socie ty , of histor ical, cultural background . The two writers are similar or co ncur precisely in valu es a nd perspect ives that transce nd tim e, culture , a nd society. In the writings o f both , th ere i~ a d e finit e d es ire for freedom - a hum a ne freedom whi ch is often assoc iated with n a tural set tings. Ind eed , both a utho rs show a great se n sit iv ity to nat ure a nd its beaut y in hum an li ving. In Kuku cfn, as wel l as in Shukshin , there is a d e finit e se nse o f the tra n sce nde ntal, espec ially as ex pre ·sed th rough the J udaeo Chri stia n traditi o n . D o nald Fiene conte nds tha t es peciall y in " Snowball Be rr y- R ed ," '' Shukshin 's basic m essage is ... all m e n a re Christ; we must love one a not her o r die. " 23 And as Geoffrey H os kin g has noted: "Shuk shin h as red iscovered an d dram a ti zed m a n 's dri ve towa rds the t ra n sce nd e nt a l , whi ch M a rxi sm d e ni ed a nd Socia li st R eali sm di storted. " 24 Th e importance of C h r isti an love a nd to le rance, a nd the stro n g feelin g th at these a re in so m e way integral to vill age li fe is evid ent in bo th write rs: Christian se lfless ness is worthy co ndu ct , eve n if its conseq ue nce is as drastic as death, whi le ac tion s pursu ed for th e sake o f money or through the m edium o f mon ey o ffer little, if any, real human happin ess. It might th e n be sa id that Kuku cfn a nd Shukshin do differ in some obvious ways but substantively rese mbl e each othe r a nd even SLOVAKIA 125 concur in principles of human li ving that are in ext ri cably pa rt of and especially evident in rural life. NOTES ' Vasil y Shukshin , " K alina krasnaj a," Kin opovesti (M oscow: Isku ss tvo , 1975), pp . 205-72 ; " Snowba ll Berry-Red ," S nowball Berry-R ed and Oth er Stories, D onald Fiene, ed. (Ann Arbor, Michi gan : Ardis , 1979), pp . 125 -199. H ereaft er , references for qu otations from this wo rk will be given in the text with Ru ssia n page number(s) first , th en those for th e Engli sh ve rsion . ' The stories a re taken from the criti cal edition of Kuku cfn 's works: M artin Kuku cin : Die/o , M arian na Prfdav kova- Min a rikova , ed ., 21 vols. (Brati slava, 195 7-74). An English translation of all three is in Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kukucfn , Norma Rudin sky, tr. and ed . (Clevela nd and Rom e: Slova k I nstitute , 1980). H ereaft er , volu me a nd page refere nces of th e Slovak ve rsion are give n in the text. ' Juliu s N oge, Martin Kukucfn: tradicionalista a novator (Zivot a die/o 1860-1 907) (Brat islava: Y yd avatel'stvo Slove nskej akademie v ied, 1962), p . 75. • The phrase Dies irae co mes from Zephaniah 1:15: "A day of wrath is th at d ay, a d ay o f distress and angui sh , a day of ruin a nd devastat ion , a day of d a rkn ess and gloom ," Th e New Ox fo rd Annotated Bible with th e Apocryph a (New Yo rk : O xford University Press, 1977) , p . 1141 . 5 Noge, p. 182. 6 N oge , p . 183. ' On pages 85 and 86, Noge discusses Kuku cfn 's familiarity with and documentary- like prese ntat ion of th e sa/a s. 8 Michel H elle r , " Vasil y Shukshin: In Search of Freedom ," George G utsche, tr. , Sn owball Berry -R ed and Och er Stories, Donald Fiene , ed. (A nn Arbor, Michigan : Ardi s, 1979),), pp . 2 15 an d 2 17 especiall y. For volja , see: " Snowba ll ," 205 / 125; 207 / 128; 208/ 128; 2 18/ 139; 248/ 171 ; a nd 253/ 177. On page 225, H elle r notes that in his stories , " Shukshin 's hero is look ing for freedom .... The sea rch ... bears a speculative character, a philosophical character. In Shukshin 's world an answe r to the 'main quest ions' is sought with unu sual intensity, with a powerful pass ion : I n what is the mean ing of life, what is death , wha t is God ?" 9 Besides those cited, see also: 253/ 177 a nd 263/ 188-1 89. On pages 228-29, H eller notes that in th e film ve rsion , a " white church - and th e white birches - appea r on th e sc ree n each time Egor P ro kudin pond ers the mea nin g of his life.'' 0 ' On th·e histo ry and culture of va/asi , especiall y in Slovaki a, see: Gerald J. Sabo , "Slova k Didac ti c Poet ry: G av lovic's V alask a Skala, V olum e I - Introdu ctory Stud y, " Ph .D . d isse rt at ion , Yale, 1978, pp . 37-38 a nd rela ted footno tes. Also , J an Podolak, " The Pas toral C ul ture o f th e Carpathi ans as a Subjec t of an Ethnological Study , " E thn ologica s/avica, 1 ( 1969), especiall y 70-77; a nd Encyklopedia Slovenska , Y I ( 1982) , sub verbo " Valasi," " Y a lass ka l'udova pieseil. ," a nd " V a!ass ke pravo ." For oth er sources , see foo tnote 24 of m y a rticl e on Hu golfn Gav lovic in cluded in th is journal issue. 126 SLOVAKIA " N oge , p . 183. " In her in trodu ctory commentary for Dies irae, N orma Rudin sky is probabl y the first crit ic to d iscuss Kuku cfn 's fa vorable depiction of M oj zis; this portrayal contras ts with those of other J ewish characters in Kukucin and other Slovak writers where the J ewish fi gure is d epicted in th e negative tones of ant i-Semi tism : Seven Slovak Stories by M artin Kuku cfn , pp . 160-62. " Indeed , the narrator as Kukucin 's persona comments in two places especially to make clear the indictmen t of Sykora and fathers like him who treat their children so poo rly: Dies irae, (V , 367 -68). Acco rdin g to Noge (p. 138), Kuku cin wro te in a lette r to Skultety that the authori al comm enta ry on page 367 noted above was a very importan t part of the text. W ere it to be removed, Kukucin would have bee n "gri eved ." " In contemporar y, standard Slova k, hu sar is a hussar : Slo vnfk slo ven sk eh o j azyk a: I die], a-k , 2nd editi on (Bratislava: Vyd ava tel'stvo Slovenskej akad emie vied , 197 1), p . 542. T hat hu sar also can m ean a gooseherd (hu siar in contem po rary, standard Slova k) is clear from K a rel Kalal and Mi ros lav K alal, Sloven sk y slovn fk z literatury aj n arecf (Banska Bys trica: Slovenska gra fi a, 1923), p . 192. " Indeed , the fire, even Ond ras' death , seem in a way to be G od's response to the word s ofOnd ras ' aunt ju st a short time before the fire is noti ced : " W ell let God's will (vol'a boiia) be done. I entru st everything to Him . H e knows best what is needed" (II , 219). For Zu zka, her wedding day will always rem ain a sad even t; fo r her moth er, her precious goose tha t perishes in the fire will be gone fo rever , but for Ondras , death in th e fire see m s almos t a blessing. " Donald Fiene, "Vasily Shukshin 's 'Kalina krasania ', " Snowball Berry-R ed and O ther Stories, D onald Fiene, ed . (Ann A rbor , Michi gan : Ardis, 1979), pp. 2 11-1 2, footnote 12. Michel H eller notes this same informati on on page 217. 11 G eoffrey H oskin g, " V asily Shukshin ," Beyond Socialist R ealism : S oviet Fiction Since I van D enisovich (New York : H olmes a nd M eier Publishers, I nc., 1980), p . 166. " Fiene, p . 202. 19 Th e Ru ssian R eligious Min d (I ), volume 3 in the Collected Wo rks of George P . Fed otov (Belmont , M ass: N ordland Publishin g C ompan y, 1975) p . 104. 0 ' In his foo tn ote 12 (pp . 211-1 2), Fiene notes tha t Fat Li p's comments about Ego r as a mu zhik in Ru s' emphas ize in the fil m Egor as a symbolic represe ntati ve of the sufferin g n arod. H e also ind icates tha t Fat Lip ' s co mments do not appear in the published film sc ript . Fiene hi mself used as the text for th ese comments the ve rsion of them quoted by J urii Tiurin in ' ' 'Kalina k rasn aia ' - kin opovest' i fil'm , '' M osk va, 4 (1976), 194 . " Fiene, pp. 206-07 . " M y m em ory of the film 's endin g is not perfect , but I do recall th a t th e last sce ne, unli ke that of the pu blished story, has Lyuba mentally recalling wo rds by Ego r about living, about wha t it mean s to li ve and how one should live. T here m ay also have bee n menti oned so methin g about pass ing th is info rm a ti on on to othe rs an d oth er genera tions. If eve n a pa rt of wh a t I have noted is correct , this woul d furth er affirm the m eanin gfuln ess and benefit of Egor 's life and deat h . " Fiene, p . 2 11 . M ichel H eller notes on page 229: " The th eme of fa ith and God whi ch parallels the th em e of death - occu pies a place in Shukshin 's short stories SLOVAKIA 127 that gradually becomes more and more noticable.'' And also on page 23 2, in Shukshin's stories, the " hero . .. fill s the emptiness in his soul with a faith in Russia which is more and m ore oft en symbolized by a church. " " Hosking, p. 179 . Presented in Pa nel 65 , " The Village in Slovak Literature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asiloma r , C alifornia on 21 September 1981.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kukučín's Village Stories and Shukshin's "Snowball Berry-Red" Description An account of the resource Gerald J. Sabo Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 112-127 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sabo, Gerald J., 1945–2020 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF+dates https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/799b5c7c131b6084f79b53afed77cefa.pdf d174f9ebf9e39c37f43eb11bc0bbfca8 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 153 Modern Slovak Fiction: The Sixties, A Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro During the l 960's literatures of the Eastern European countries experienced a revival. On the one hand this revival became possible by the gradual relaxation of political control over literature; on the other hand it was spurred on by literary developments in the West as well as in the East. I t would be difficult to overestimate this foreign factor in the general revival. Nor was it always a case of the local application of some hitherto unavailabl e literary techniques of experimental character. Very often it was simply the act of rediscovering authors whose reputations had already been made some decades ago. This was the case with Proust , Joyce , Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Babel , Pilnyak, Platonov, and many , many others. Franz Kafka held a special position among these rediscovered authors. His appearance in print was hailed as a symbolic, liberating event of major proportion in the literary ( and cultural) history of both the Czech and Slovak nations. As for the experimental impulses emanating from the West, the anti-novel or nouveau-roman (of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute) , and the thea tre of the absurd (not only oflonesco, but of the mu ch older Alfred Jarry) quickly found willing practitioners as well. Not the least among these factors was the re-evaluation of native authors rehabilitated and brought back from oblivion, or rather from a literary limbo (in Slovakia they were Milo Urban , J.C. Hronsk y, Tido J. Gaspar, and others). In Slovakia, as indeed in the entire Eastern Europe, the important mileposts were the years 1956 and 1962. We can get an insight into what went on after 1956 and 1962 in Czech literature from a recently published work edited by William E. Harkins and Paul I. Trensky . 1 But here, too, the center of grav ity lies in the sixties and the reader's atten tion is directed to some half a dozen names that became known , not only in Bohemia , but also abroad. Slovak literary developments, inasmuch as these were influ en ced by political events occurring in the power cen- �154 SLOV AKI A te rs of P ragu e a nd Mosco w, to which Sl ovak literatu re h ad b ee n di rectly o r indirectly subo rdin a ted , could n ot bu t foll ow a path simil a r to the Czech d evelo pments . However , thi s d oes n ot m ean tha t th ey d evelop ed in the sam e directio n , o r even a t the sam e p ace. U po n examina ti o n of som e re p rese nta tive wo rks of Slovak a u th o r s who a ppea red durin g the p e ri od of th e revival of the six ti es, o n e is impressed b y the varie t y a nd quality of th e literature if compa red to the d ecades tha t preced e a nd follow it. Th a t so m e m as te rpieces p rodu ced a t the t im e still re m a in unkno wn in the W es t is p e rh a p s n o t e n t irely th e fa ult of write r s; the lack of tra n sla tion s is equ ally crippling. F o r this reaso n a look a t some examples of the ex perime ntal fictio n of the sixties could be o f som e help . Tha t decad e was a n ew b eginnin g in Slovak litearture; its accomplishme nts will help us to o rientate ou rselves in co ntemporary Slovak lite ra ture a nd they will help u s, in all proba bility, in the future a s well . If the six ties wer e indeed the n e w b eginnin g, what is really m eant b y thi s " n e wness" and al so b y "expe rime nt " in the context of the six ties? To start w ith , the conte xt o f the sixties w as the coll a pse of the d octrine, concept , or m e thod of socialist realism . 2 Of course, socialist realism h ad n o t b ee n re tired b y a n a dminist ra ti ve fi a t ; it h a d b ee n re -defin ed . But the sp ell h ad b een b ro ke n a nd the ch a n ges in theor y we re follo wed b y ch a n ges in p ractice. E ver yon e still p a id lip service to socialist realism but wh a t matte red m ost to p a rt y offi cials, namely the control of lite rature, was gradually slippin g from the ir h a nds, a nd their periodic a ttempts to re-establi sh con trol we re n ot su ccess ful : they h a d le t the genie out of the b o ttle. And so, whil e th e critics still p e nned th e ir tribu te s to su ch model a u th o r s as F ra n t isek H eck o (b . 190 5), P e te r Jile mnick y (b . 1901 ) , a nd Frano Kral' (b . 1903), the new w rite rs th at b egan to ap pear in print w rote in a w ay th a t w as ofte n e ntirely alie n to th ese " cl assics," som e t im es eve n to the exte nt of u sin g th e sociali st realist m od els in a w ay th at parod ied th e o ri ginal. T h e n ewn ess o f th e li teratu re of th e sixties, th e n , li es in breaki ng with th e p ast, o r rath e r with th e im m edi a te past of socialist real ist literat ure of b uildin g a nd co n stru c tin g, o f o p timi sm, of tr a n spare nt sch e m e a nd ideological or phil osophi cal m o n och rome. H owever , w h en we com e to th e "exp e rim e n t ," we fi n d th at m atters are much more complex tha n th at. F irs t o f a ll , at th e b eginnin g of th e decade (an d already in th e seco nd h alf o f th e fifti es), a n y veerin g off th e established model h ad to b e co n sidered a n experiment. For this reason , o n e h as to take "experi men t" �SLOVAKIA 155 in our con text quite liberally and broadly as meaning a wide variety of writing, from that which merely joins an already established prose current to that which attempts at importing certain contemporary western literary techniques . Most importantly , we have to understand it as the development of a genuine, new literary voice with its own style, its own original seeing of the world. It would hardly be possible for new, unknown writers simply to appear with their new work and displace the established authors overnight. What happened instead was a transition period when the next literary generation of authors following Hecko , Jil emnicky, Kral', and others - namely Vladimfr Minac (b.1922), Ladislav Mnacko (b.1919), Dominik Tata rko (b.1913), and Peter Karvas (b.1920), among others - abandoned their orthodoxy to such an extent that further experiments along the same lines seemed no longer astonishing. Even here one would like to stress that the authors of the sixties were by no means readily accepted. There was first a struggle. There was very often harsh criticism; and , objectively spea king, such criticism was sometimes quite ju stified. On the whole , however, any criticism had to be fundamentally unfair if we take into consideration the still limited freedom to write as the author pleased. Thus , we witness the sorry spectacle of compromised literature criticized by compromised critics. A good example would be the case ofjaroslava Blazkova's Nylonovy mesiac (Nylon Moon, 1961 ). Jozef Kot attacked it by saying: "I do not know why, but Slovak prose has suddenly discovered ero ticism , and Sagan and others," adding a statement difficult to challenge: " Bratislava will never be a Paris and Slovaks will never be erotomaniacs. " 3 Of course, Kot knows full well why was it that there was no erot icism before. It simply was not allowed. Nor were any modern western authors pe rmitted to serve as model s, before. Kot perceives the change and his reaction is a good, though mild , sign of his bewilderment. Alas, in a very few years, by Kot 's standards, Bratislava was teeming with erotomaniac authors as socialist puritanism fizzl ed out. In fact, the standards used to measure the quality of lite rary production in Slovakia were high. P erhaps too high , and that led to contradictions . Thus , J an Rozner took the young writers Blazkova and Anton H ykisch to task: "We can not call that which is being done by the young prose writers experime ntin g. It is ceaseless searching, learning , testing, but not experimenting" (SP, September 1961 , 17) . In the case �156 SLOVAKIA of Hykisch , he was take n to task for using the inte rnal monologu e or strea m of consciousness technique , and it was pointed out to him that this was not new at all , as it h ad been used by mode rnist authors a long time ago. Again the crit ic pretended to be unaware of the fact that even su ch a basic and harmless technique h ad been very suspect just recently. And Hykisch was reacting to the literature immediately preceding him , even though , pe rhaps unconsciously , he actuall y returned to the interrupted modernist line of Slovak prose. " Modernism " - a word of opprobrium only rece ntly - became th e most desired aim in the ge neral atmosphe re of catching up with the W est. But H ykisch would not stop experimenting. Here is the conclusion of his sho rt novel Nad'a (SP August-Dece mbe r 1963): Who is guilty of the librarian 's d eath? Who ? I ? H e? Nadia , you are a merciful Samaritan, should you try to save people who were hurt ? ... The door to the washroom banged shut. They always bang, someone shouted feebly from the next room. Dreaming. At the other end it started to ring . I started. I began to run, the doors are lea ping a t my side and are running b ehind me, there is ringing, a seco nd alarm clock. A third . A fourth. Simultaneously. Voices, banging , slippers , fee t , the first door, a person . Woma n. I closed m y eyes a nd eve rything around m e vibrated, unknown sounds a nd voices, something securely lived here. I stood for a mome nt in front of our room, I heard Liz . I quickly ente red , Good morning , girls . Hi , Nadia, why a re you h a untin g here? I opened the window, hun g the towel on the bed and started to dress quickly. The girls were still sleepy and watched me in surprise . I hurried . It seem ed to m e that it was late for eve rything . It would not be difficult to prove how Hyki sch 's style differs from the more orthodox styles of th e forties a nd fifti es - the sudde n cha nges of voice, the economy , the dynamism , the palpa ble presence of the furniture of life, the reali a, in short, the mode rn shorthand, telegraphic style is here clearly represe nted. But the experime ntal ch a racter of this novel lies in the implications of the plot , in the introduction of a characte r �SLOVAKIA 157 out of favo r with the P arty, a nd the int rodu ctory device of qu ota ti on s from au thors su ch as Campa n ella (his Th e City of the S un ), H. G . W ells (Th e Sh ap e of Thin gs to Com e), qu otation s th at pro m oted qu estionin g, skep ti cism a nd pess imi sm . These qu ota ti on s co m e from Robert, th e m an in di sfavor with wh om adi a, th e hero in e, fall s in love . W e are led to believe th a t R obe rt 's difficulti es ste m from the fact th a t he is a thinker, not a careerist , and also a man of p rinciple. N adi a, a n intellige nt but slightl y fri volou s econ omics student , does n ot measure up to the strictures a nd u tter seriou sn ess of Robert , a libraria n by p ro fession , but a philosoph er b y callin g. Of interest , too, is the sett in g , th e urban se tt in g - Brati slava - which will come to be the set tin g of man y works of the decade. But it is th e city see n throu gh the eyes of a n out sider , N adi a, who com es to Brati slava to study . Th e ambi gu ou s endin g (Robert commits sui cide, but h ove rs b etwee n life an~ death) is also som ethin g new . ot becau se of the a mbi guity , but again fo r su ggestin g (by impli cation) th a t perh aps N adi a was n ot entirely to bl am e for R obert 's sui cide. It woul d not be enti rely in a ppropria te to call R obert a m odern Slovak in carna tion of th e "supe rflu ou s m a n " known to u s from Russian litera ture . The isolated individual , the m a n against the world , against a K afk aesqu e bureau cracy: su ch is th e un co m fo rta bl e situ a tion of the new Slovak literary ch a rac te r of the sixties. In a nothe r urba n writer , J a n J oh a nides, the ch a racte r is isol ated without the h elp of politi cs . R a th er , h e is pressed a nd tried sorely b y the existential choice , by lack of com munication , a nd b y the alien world from which he seem s so woefull y estra n ged . C a mu s a nd Sartre a re the two m ost obviou s m en tors ofj oh a nides, especially the latter, according to Mil a n H amad a (SP , O ctob er 1963 , 134). L ack of co mmunication is the them e of an impressive story entitled Potapaca prit'ahuju pram ene m ora (A Di ve r I s Attracted by O cean Sprin gs). I qu ote from the co nclu sion : Everybody loves hi s wi fe fo r som e m ore or less co ncrete reason , b u t the re a re some who love fo r a less ce rta in , or eve n un ce rtain reason . And th at reaso n could b e the fact that he saw h er, th at they h ave me t a t all , th at sh e too exis ts. It seems tha t I loved Marth a for a sim il a r reason. I saw her, I looked at her w ith these my eyes a n d she wanted me to marry her. And that "more certain " reason fo r whi ch , if I ca n say so, m y love multi pli ed , was her beautiful a r rogan ce. T h a t is �158 SLOVAKIA wha t I would call he r in sisten t d esire to be h appy . Perh a ps she co uld gu ess a t the beginnin g that I could secure her existen ce and would make no claims on her. I call her desire for happiness beautiful a rrogance because she d a red to turn m e into a spring board to aims tha t she thou ght would m a ke h er ha ppy. This a r rogance - of wh a tever kind - I find interestin g; I do n ot judge h er for it. It p roves tha t M a rtha had to be profoundl y unha ppy a nd alone. Little things that I could furnish for her were designed to suggest to he r that this was not the way to ha ppiness. I do not know if she unde rstood . (SP, July 196 1, 111 ) Now the sen sitive n a rrator-hu sb a nd is him self d yin g of cance r , but still goin g a bout hi s tasks, unworried ab out his a pproaching end . Hi s profession is rather prosaic: he is a chef in a resta ura nt . Whe n he find s out a bout his wife ' s unfaithfuln ess, he fail s to ge t a n gry. When he learns a bou t her death of sudden heart failure while drivin g with her love r , he still m a intains his equ animity. Thu s he is almost superna turally calm a nd ra tion al, or em o tion ally defici e nt - a judgem ent th a t is sys tem a tically contradicted by his superior sen sitivity of perception and un d erstandin g . Still , hi s sta nce is suspicious to his fri end s who find him too stran ge for their compa n y . All thi s would b e new and unu su al in Slovak lite rature, but the essenti al experimental feature of J oha nides is his stress on th e private space of the individu al; n ot only his in ne r world tha t he so carefull y sketches, but the ou te r world as well. H owever , it is a highly individu al, private world tha t his cha racte rs see. And for that reaso n th ey are u nabl e to share it wi th an yon e. Con sequ entl y, these wo rlds often clash . Such a cl ash is described by the obj ective n arrator of a title story in J oha nides' s Sukromie (Privacy, 1963). During the fun e ral of a ve ry act ive wo rke r a nd Pa r ty m em ber, the orato r addresses the deceased: I d o n ot know h ow to tha nk you fra nkl y fo r all your effort a nd pe rso nal in volve m en t in our facto ry's cl ub of the R evolutio na ry U nion Move m e nt. You we re a good union m embe r , we deeply honor yo ur wo rk. W e knew yo u , we tru sted you . Bu t d id we really know you ? The wind lifted the red fl ag that covered the coffin, and som eo ne fro m the crowd p assed a n open bottle of soda water �SLOVAKIA 15 9 to the cl a rinet pl aye r . H e put it in to th e condu ctor's h a nd. - But w hy did you leave so su dd enl y? The bo ttle of soda water was ta ken by a sm all m a n in a gray sui t w ith a wart ri ght un der hi s eye. H e was holdin g the wife of the deceased in hi s arms, pou r in g the sod a water o n he r face th rou gh the veil , but som e wom a n too k th e bo ttle away from him a nd lifted the ve il . - Why did you leave so sudde nl y? 4 Two activities are in progress simultan eou sly. T he world of the deceased is no m o re; to who m , then , is th e orator a ddressing hi s m ela ncholy m essage? To him self, fo r th e widow h as fa inted , a nd people a re busy ta king care of h er. The commo tio n of the world " out the re" cl ashes w ith the wo rld of the o rator whose speech a nd qu estion s give the scen e an a b su rd a ir a t first ; it will turn out tha t n o on e, n ot eve n his wife, really kn ew the d eceased . Jan J oh a nid es b a ffl ed hi s critics and div id ed them sh a rply into two groups . Fo r the first group , here is Mila n H am ad a: '' The failure of intellect in J ohanides caused the loss of spiritual and artistic tran scendence " (SP , Au gu st 1966 , 9). For the second , Fra nti sek Miko: "The stren gth of J oh a nides ' s style I see m a inly in w h a t I would like to call indep enden ce. It shows itself in the a n alys is, con cretely in the sh a rp , m a tter -offact an alyti cal to ne. This tone was always very rare h e re, a nd the refore always desirable a nd n ew" (SP , D ecember 1966, 15). In this m a tter-of-fact tone a nd in hi s som etim es excess ive a ttention to detail J oh anides was bested by P eter J aros, who brings into Slovak litera ture perh ap s the m ost experim ental features th a t we associa te with the a nti-n ovel or n ou vea u rom an. H e is playing with ti me, "coll apsing" it , d iffu sin g o ur a ttenti o n in paren thetical deta il s that seem to be la rgely irrelevant to the main action , which itself is ve ry difficult to de fin e . H ere is an example from hi s work Vah y (Scales, 1966): (Some movemen ts attract by the ir u nexpected vigorou sness or their unusual character. Ri gh t now a hu ge clou d mu st have fl ow n away a nd uncove red th e settin g su n , for it su ddenl y brightened up .) We move away carefu ll y from the door , hi t somethin g ge ntl y a nd feel behind our b ack the wall ( eve n the sitting man can be seen mo re clearly). Sudde nl y , as if by m iracle, we e n ter the room w he re the man is sitti ng , and we �160 SLOVAKIA stay there even after the sun sets and the twilight turns to darkness. (The room is a spacious one, from the armchair in which the man is sitting, one can see, n ear the glass door, a double chest of brown walnut wood. There is nothing on the rear wall , although be tween the doo r a nd the chest there is sufficie nt space to fit a big elongated vase that would moderate the sudden transition between the chest and the door. )5 Und erstanda bly , we a re dealing here with literature heavily influenced by foreign models; the expe rime ntatio n does not seem to follow a native model, unless we see J a ros as a follower ofjohanides . Even so , there is injohanides's work also a lyricism which is missing fromjaros's work. Lyricism or rather " lyrical prose " is the main accomplishment of perhaps the most talented writer of the new generation, Vincent Sikula. H ere, for example, is the conclusion of Sikula' s story Dlhe tyzdne sjasnymi n ocami pred odletmi st'ahovavych vtakov (Long Weeks with Bright Nights befo re the Flights of Birds). A boy , Rudko , befriends a village idiot , Viktor, who attracts the boy with his ri ch imagination and asks him to join him secretly at night. Outside, th ey observe the m ysteriou s n a ture, crawl in the wet grass, a nd th en Viktor blindfolds the boy: Rudko, maybe I lied to you, h e said. I told you an hour ago that it 's beginning to d awn , but you could have seen that this was not so. Is the ni gh t bright? I took a mirror with m e, maybe I wanted to confuse you with it . I 've thrown it away, a nd you didn't even notice it. T ell m e, Rudko , what do I n eed a mirror fo r? M aybe yo u really are sick a nd maybe yo u feel like slee ping . But how could you slee p when the ni gh t is so bright? I p rom ised to give you a handke rchief, I didn ' t make a parachute out of it , because I would be sorry to see it go . H e told me th a t he would talk to m e un til I fall asleep. H e m entioned thin gs abo ut which he u sed to talk to me all summ er lo n g, that is, th e merry-go-round , the du ck , ... but also the gander , m aybe it will b e a wild gander and it will take off, lift itself off th e gro und, fl y over Koligram, it will avo id the poplars, it will disa ppear over the fi eld s ... �SLOVAKIA 161 Rudko, can you still see me? I can't. They found me in the morning with my head in the ditch. On my back, there was a heavy stone that was supposed to kill me. 6 Sikula admits that he is a follower of the outstanding village prose writers of the older generation, Jozef Ciger-Hronsky and Milo Urban, but his arrival on the literary scene with his lyricism was still an experiment under the circumstances. He does not flinch from horror when he shows the destruction of the village by sudden change brought on by war or revolution. But the violence of war has been more strikingly portrayed in the work of Ladislav Tazky, especially in his work Amenmaria: Sam[ dobrf vojaci (Amenmaria: All the Good Soldiers, 1964). H ere we see a conscious departure from the older socialist realist depiction of war, such as the schematic picture of the resistance and the horrors of the uprising against the Germans that we find in Jilemnicky' s Kronika (Chronicle, 1947) , where everything is simple and clear. On the one side the partisans, on the other - Germans. In Tazky we find a difference . The experiment lies in introducing to the reader a hero who is a soldier of the Slovak Army fighting in the Ukraine against the Red Army and on the side of the Germans . Although , to be sure, the narrator is a communist, the difficult period, the ambiguities, the different pulls and demands on soldiers, the hell of war, are all rendered in a striking style that lacks comforting simplicity and bewilders us by its provocative character. What follows is a description of a German attack on a hut harboring deserters: Why do the Germans keep the light on at D aytim e and How Come they don 't Shout " H eil "? What are you doing, soldier-boys? At this time they h ave to be near the hut and the officer is commanding them to hit the snow and crawl towards the bark bunker. Boys , how long will you be playing this game? You've done it once before. Do you remember, we answered you then, and now the hut stays mum , it is waiting for you , so break �162 SLOVAKIA her waist, who will fire into he r warmth smelling of human warmth? Nobody will leave the grave, nobody will a nswer, the dead do not fear death , you are death , only the living are afraid of you, those whose waist is still unbroken (SP, June 1965, 154) . But lest I leave the impression that m ost of the n ew prose of the sixties was so depressing and utterly serious, let me turn to humor. Clearly, the most talented practitioners at the time were Milan Lasica and Julius Satinsky : humorists, satirists, p arodists and performers of their work. But I would like to turn to Milan Zelinka instead, because of the allusive character of Lasica and Satinsky's work . Zelinka's work , from which I will quote, won the competition organized by the prestigious journal Slovenske Pohl'ady in 1968 . The story is a pseudo-historical take-off on folklore and infirmities of the age reminiscent of Alfred Jarry' s Ubu . A kingdom is harrassed by a robber whom no one is able to stop. Finally , after cau sing the death of the king, the robber engages the n ew king in correspondence. H ere then is an exchange of letters from Povest' o strasnom zbojnfkovi Folstynskom a nest'astnom katovi Holcusko vi (The Story about the T errible Robber Folstynsky and the Unfortunate Executio n er Holcuska) . After the capture of the robber , who finds out that he is about to be shown to tourists instead of being executed , the robber fires a letter of protest to the king: D ear Sir, I thought tha t you h ad character , but today I found out otherwise . I a m a nnouncing thereby that I protest again st being put on a show for tourists just because you lack good economists! It is against my con science. I swear that if you force m e to do what I hate with all m y soul , I sh all spit upon the tourists and haran gu e them with u gly words to su ch an effe ct that they will be unable to sleep in our guest h ou ses not only because of the fleas, bu t also b ecause of the horror cau sed b y my tongue . Folstynsky �SLOVAKIA 163 The king answered the robber: Dear buddy, I think you are being unfair . Even though I do believe that the postponement of your execution has disappointed you deeply, there's nothing to be done, you'll have to go on living for some time ye t. As for the tourists , don't forget that our country needs money badly . It is partly and mainly your own fault that we find ourselves in a deep economic crisis. You should not forget that . Who was zipping up and down our country causing mischief, but you alone? After all, if I published your opinions in the press, our young people would laugh at you. And you do not want to appear ridiculous to them , do you? Your friend , King Bazulfk P .S . Finally, have no fear . It is not going to be so bad with those tourists. They are generous, I experienced it personally . You ' ll get lots of chewing gum. (SP, March 1968 , 154) . It would be difficult to pretend that anything except broad currents of the variety found in Slovak literature of the sixties were mentioned here. Peter Balgha and Rudolf Slaboda should have been and Vlado Bednar could have been m entioned as well. But rather than piling up a great number of names and titles, it seemed more appropriate to communicate the special flavor of the new prose . Moreover , it is also the special excitem ent that greeted the new experiments, the new works, the new names in the sixties that one would want to evoke here. And that excitem ent was, as is only natural , the property of those who had a good knowledge of the standard , or older socialist realist literature , those who could see how much this new literature differed from the older one. They could see how , quite co nsciously , the new authors began to displace the old rules, the schemata, and above all, the fear. When these were pushed away, the experimenting began . In some cases it was a modest kind of experim ent : the author wanted to see if he could write the way people used to write in the thirties or even twenties. Other writers wanted to bring in forbidde n topics: repressed people, eroticism, foreign philosoph y. Others still concentrated on the style, the form, th e structure of their work. Taken together , the effor ts of youn g Slovak authors (and som e not so you n g) made the decade of the sixties a veritable liter- �164 SLOVAKIA ary revival. That it happened at all is a miracle , despite the ready explanations . One wonders how right Thomas Merton was when he said that "tomorrow the abstract paintings will be on the walls of the Commissars.' ' 8 NOTES ' Czech Literature since 1956: A Symposium , ed . William E . Harkins a nd Paul I. Trensky (New York: Bohemica, 1980). ' Frantisek Vnuk ' ~ Sedemnast' neurodnych rokov (Middletown: Slovak v Amerike , 1965) discusses literary developments after 1956 and into 1962. It is pa rticularly valuable for its description of the infertile period of the reign of socialist realism , as the fertile period of the sixties is mostly outside th e com pass of his work . 3 Jozef Kot , " Ako dalej ," Slovenske pohl'ady, 78 Oanuary 1962), 136-3 7. This journal will hence appear in the text as SP. Translations a re mine . • JanJohanides, Sukromie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1963), p. 118 . ' Peter Jaros , Vahy (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), p. 1011 . 6 Vincent Sikula, Povetrie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968) , p . 13. 7 Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York : New Directions , 1965), p. 168). Presented in Panel 128, '' Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening, ' ' at the AAASS co nventi on in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980. � SLOVAKIA 153 Modern Slovak Fiction: The Sixties, A Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro During the l 960's literatures of the Eastern European countries experienced a revival. On the one hand this revival became possible by the gradual relaxation of political control over literature; on the other hand it was spurred on by literary developments in the West as well as in the East. I t would be difficult to overestimate this foreign factor in the general revival. Nor was it always a case of the local application of some hitherto unavailabl e literary techniques of experimental character. Very often it was simply the act of rediscovering authors whose reputations had already been made some decades ago. This was the case with Proust , Joyce , Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Babel , Pilnyak, Platonov, and many , many others. Franz Kafka held a special position among these rediscovered authors. His appearance in print was hailed as a symbolic, liberating event of major proportion in the literary ( and cultural) history of both the Czech and Slovak nations. As for the experimental impulses emanating from the West, the anti-novel or nouveau-roman (of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute) , and the thea tre of the absurd (not only oflonesco, but of the mu ch older Alfred Jarry) quickly found willing practitioners as well. Not the least among these factors was the re-evaluation of native authors rehabilitated and brought back from oblivion, or rather from a literary limbo (in Slovakia they were Milo Urban , J.C. Hronsk y, Tido J. Gaspar, and others). In Slovakia, as indeed in the entire Eastern Europe, the important mileposts were the years 1956 and 1962. We can get an insight into what went on after 1956 and 1962 in Czech literature from a recently published work edited by William E. Harkins and Paul I. Trensky . 1 But here, too, the center of grav ity lies in the sixties and the reader's atten tion is directed to some half a dozen names that became known , not only in Bohemia , but also abroad. Slovak literary developments, inasmuch as these were influ en ced by political events occurring in the power cen- �154 SLOV AKI A te rs of P ragu e a nd Mosco w, to which Sl ovak literatu re h ad b ee n di rectly o r indirectly subo rdin a ted , could n ot bu t foll ow a path simil a r to the Czech d evelo pments . However , thi s d oes n ot m ean tha t th ey d evelop ed in the sam e directio n , o r even a t the sam e p ace. U po n examina ti o n of som e re p rese nta tive wo rks of Slovak a u th o r s who a ppea red durin g the p e ri od of th e revival of the six ti es, o n e is impressed b y the varie t y a nd quality of th e literature if compa red to the d ecades tha t preced e a nd follow it. Th a t so m e m as te rpieces p rodu ced a t the t im e still re m a in unkno wn in the W es t is p e rh a p s n o t e n t irely th e fa ult of write r s; the lack of tra n sla tion s is equ ally crippling. F o r this reaso n a look a t some examples of the ex perime ntal fictio n of the sixties could be o f som e help . Tha t decad e was a n ew b eginnin g in Slovak litearture; its accomplishme nts will help us to o rientate ou rselves in co ntemporary Slovak lite ra ture a nd they will help u s, in all proba bility, in the future a s well . If the six ties wer e indeed the n e w b eginnin g, what is really m eant b y thi s " n e wness" and al so b y "expe rime nt " in the context of the six ties? To start w ith , the conte xt o f the sixties w as the coll a pse of the d octrine, concept , or m e thod of socialist realism . 2 Of course, socialist realism h ad n o t b ee n re tired b y a n a dminist ra ti ve fi a t ; it h a d b ee n re -defin ed . But the sp ell h ad b een b ro ke n a nd the ch a n ges in theor y we re follo wed b y ch a n ges in p ractice. E ver yon e still p a id lip service to socialist realism but wh a t matte red m ost to p a rt y offi cials, namely the control of lite rature, was gradually slippin g from the ir h a nds, a nd their periodic a ttempts to re-establi sh con trol we re n ot su ccess ful : they h a d le t the genie out of the b o ttle. And so, whil e th e critics still p e nned th e ir tribu te s to su ch model a u th o r s as F ra n t isek H eck o (b . 190 5), P e te r Jile mnick y (b . 1901 ) , a nd Frano Kral' (b . 1903), the new w rite rs th at b egan to ap pear in print w rote in a w ay th a t w as ofte n e ntirely alie n to th ese " cl assics," som e t im es eve n to the exte nt of u sin g th e sociali st realist m od els in a w ay th at parod ied th e o ri ginal. T h e n ewn ess o f th e li teratu re of th e sixties, th e n , li es in breaki ng with th e p ast, o r rath e r with th e im m edi a te past of socialist real ist literat ure of b uildin g a nd co n stru c tin g, o f o p timi sm, of tr a n spare nt sch e m e a nd ideological or phil osophi cal m o n och rome. H owever , w h en we com e to th e "exp e rim e n t ," we fi n d th at m atters are much more complex tha n th at. F irs t o f a ll , at th e b eginnin g of th e decade (an d already in th e seco nd h alf o f th e fifti es), a n y veerin g off th e established model h ad to b e co n sidered a n experiment. For this reason , o n e h as to take "experi men t" �SLOVAKIA 155 in our con text quite liberally and broadly as meaning a wide variety of writing, from that which merely joins an already established prose current to that which attempts at importing certain contemporary western literary techniques . Most importantly , we have to understand it as the development of a genuine, new literary voice with its own style, its own original seeing of the world. It would hardly be possible for new, unknown writers simply to appear with their new work and displace the established authors overnight. What happened instead was a transition period when the next literary generation of authors following Hecko , Jil emnicky, Kral', and others - namely Vladimfr Minac (b.1922), Ladislav Mnacko (b.1919), Dominik Tata rko (b.1913), and Peter Karvas (b.1920), among others - abandoned their orthodoxy to such an extent that further experiments along the same lines seemed no longer astonishing. Even here one would like to stress that the authors of the sixties were by no means readily accepted. There was first a struggle. There was very often harsh criticism; and , objectively spea king, such criticism was sometimes quite ju stified. On the whole , however, any criticism had to be fundamentally unfair if we take into consideration the still limited freedom to write as the author pleased. Thus , we witness the sorry spectacle of compromised literature criticized by compromised critics. A good example would be the case ofjaroslava Blazkova's Nylonovy mesiac (Nylon Moon, 1961 ). Jozef Kot attacked it by saying: "I do not know why, but Slovak prose has suddenly discovered ero ticism , and Sagan and others," adding a statement difficult to challenge: " Bratislava will never be a Paris and Slovaks will never be erotomaniacs. " 3 Of course, Kot knows full well why was it that there was no erot icism before. It simply was not allowed. Nor were any modern western authors pe rmitted to serve as model s, before. Kot perceives the change and his reaction is a good, though mild , sign of his bewilderment. Alas, in a very few years, by Kot 's standards, Bratislava was teeming with erotomaniac authors as socialist puritanism fizzl ed out. In fact, the standards used to measure the quality of lite rary production in Slovakia were high. P erhaps too high , and that led to contradictions . Thus , J an Rozner took the young writers Blazkova and Anton H ykisch to task: "We can not call that which is being done by the young prose writers experime ntin g. It is ceaseless searching, learning , testing, but not experimenting" (SP, September 1961 , 17) . In the case �156 SLOVAKIA of Hykisch , he was take n to task for using the inte rnal monologu e or strea m of consciousness technique , and it was pointed out to him that this was not new at all , as it h ad been used by mode rnist authors a long time ago. Again the crit ic pretended to be unaware of the fact that even su ch a basic and harmless technique h ad been very suspect just recently. And Hykisch was reacting to the literature immediately preceding him , even though , pe rhaps unconsciously , he actuall y returned to the interrupted modernist line of Slovak prose. " Modernism " - a word of opprobrium only rece ntly - became th e most desired aim in the ge neral atmosphe re of catching up with the W est. But H ykisch would not stop experimenting. Here is the conclusion of his sho rt novel Nad'a (SP August-Dece mbe r 1963): Who is guilty of the librarian 's d eath? Who ? I ? H e? Nadia , you are a merciful Samaritan, should you try to save people who were hurt ? ... The door to the washroom banged shut. They always bang, someone shouted feebly from the next room. Dreaming. At the other end it started to ring . I started. I began to run, the doors are lea ping a t my side and are running b ehind me, there is ringing, a seco nd alarm clock. A third . A fourth. Simultaneously. Voices, banging , slippers , fee t , the first door, a person . Woma n. I closed m y eyes a nd eve rything around m e vibrated, unknown sounds a nd voices, something securely lived here. I stood for a mome nt in front of our room, I heard Liz . I quickly ente red , Good morning , girls . Hi , Nadia, why a re you h a untin g here? I opened the window, hun g the towel on the bed and started to dress quickly. The girls were still sleepy and watched me in surprise . I hurried . It seem ed to m e that it was late for eve rything . It would not be difficult to prove how Hyki sch 's style differs from the more orthodox styles of th e forties a nd fifti es - the sudde n cha nges of voice, the economy , the dynamism , the palpa ble presence of the furniture of life, the reali a, in short, the mode rn shorthand, telegraphic style is here clearly represe nted. But the experime ntal ch a racter of this novel lies in the implications of the plot , in the introduction of a characte r �SLOVAKIA 157 out of favo r with the P arty, a nd the int rodu ctory device of qu ota ti on s from au thors su ch as Campa n ella (his Th e City of the S un ), H. G . W ells (Th e Sh ap e of Thin gs to Com e), qu otation s th at pro m oted qu estionin g, skep ti cism a nd pess imi sm . These qu ota ti on s co m e from Robert, th e m an in di sfavor with wh om adi a, th e hero in e, fall s in love . W e are led to believe th a t R obe rt 's difficulti es ste m from the fact th a t he is a thinker, not a careerist , and also a man of p rinciple. N adi a, a n intellige nt but slightl y fri volou s econ omics student , does n ot measure up to the strictures a nd u tter seriou sn ess of Robert , a libraria n by p ro fession , but a philosoph er b y callin g. Of interest , too, is the sett in g , th e urban se tt in g - Brati slava - which will come to be the set tin g of man y works of the decade. But it is th e city see n throu gh the eyes of a n out sider , N adi a, who com es to Brati slava to study . Th e ambi gu ou s endin g (Robert commits sui cide, but h ove rs b etwee n life an~ death) is also som ethin g new . ot becau se of the a mbi guity , but again fo r su ggestin g (by impli cation) th a t perh aps N adi a was n ot entirely to bl am e for R obert 's sui cide. It woul d not be enti rely in a ppropria te to call R obert a m odern Slovak in carna tion of th e "supe rflu ou s m a n " known to u s from Russian litera ture . The isolated individual , the m a n against the world , against a K afk aesqu e bureau cracy: su ch is th e un co m fo rta bl e situ a tion of the new Slovak literary ch a rac te r of the sixties. In a nothe r urba n writer , J a n J oh a nides, the ch a racte r is isol ated without the h elp of politi cs . R a th er , h e is pressed a nd tried sorely b y the existential choice , by lack of com munication , a nd b y the alien world from which he seem s so woefull y estra n ged . C a mu s a nd Sartre a re the two m ost obviou s m en tors ofj oh a nides, especially the latter, according to Mil a n H amad a (SP , O ctob er 1963 , 134). L ack of co mmunication is the them e of an impressive story entitled Potapaca prit'ahuju pram ene m ora (A Di ve r I s Attracted by O cean Sprin gs). I qu ote from the co nclu sion : Everybody loves hi s wi fe fo r som e m ore or less co ncrete reason , b u t the re a re some who love fo r a less ce rta in , or eve n un ce rtain reason . And th at reaso n could b e the fact that he saw h er, th at they h ave me t a t all , th at sh e too exis ts. It seems tha t I loved Marth a for a sim il a r reason. I saw her, I looked at her w ith these my eyes a n d she wanted me to marry her. And that "more certain " reason fo r whi ch , if I ca n say so, m y love multi pli ed , was her beautiful a r rogan ce. T h a t is �158 SLOVAKIA wha t I would call he r in sisten t d esire to be h appy . Perh a ps she co uld gu ess a t the beginnin g that I could secure her existen ce and would make no claims on her. I call her desire for happiness beautiful a rrogance because she d a red to turn m e into a spring board to aims tha t she thou ght would m a ke h er ha ppy. This a r rogance - of wh a tever kind - I find interestin g; I do n ot judge h er for it. It p roves tha t M a rtha had to be profoundl y unha ppy a nd alone. Little things that I could furnish for her were designed to suggest to he r that this was not the way to ha ppiness. I do not know if she unde rstood . (SP, July 196 1, 111 ) Now the sen sitive n a rrator-hu sb a nd is him self d yin g of cance r , but still goin g a bout hi s tasks, unworried ab out his a pproaching end . Hi s profession is rather prosaic: he is a chef in a resta ura nt . Whe n he find s out a bout his wife ' s unfaithfuln ess, he fail s to ge t a n gry. When he learns a bou t her death of sudden heart failure while drivin g with her love r , he still m a intains his equ animity. Thu s he is almost superna turally calm a nd ra tion al, or em o tion ally defici e nt - a judgem ent th a t is sys tem a tically contradicted by his superior sen sitivity of perception and un d erstandin g . Still , hi s sta nce is suspicious to his fri end s who find him too stran ge for their compa n y . All thi s would b e new and unu su al in Slovak lite rature, but the essenti al experimental feature of J oha nides is his stress on th e private space of the individu al; n ot only his in ne r world tha t he so carefull y sketches, but the ou te r world as well. H owever , it is a highly individu al, private world tha t his cha racte rs see. And for that reaso n th ey are u nabl e to share it wi th an yon e. Con sequ entl y, these wo rlds often clash . Such a cl ash is described by the obj ective n arrator of a title story in J oha nides' s Sukromie (Privacy, 1963). During the fun e ral of a ve ry act ive wo rke r a nd Pa r ty m em ber, the orato r addresses the deceased: I d o n ot know h ow to tha nk you fra nkl y fo r all your effort a nd pe rso nal in volve m en t in our facto ry's cl ub of the R evolutio na ry U nion Move m e nt. You we re a good union m embe r , we deeply honor yo ur wo rk. W e knew yo u , we tru sted you . Bu t d id we really know you ? The wind lifted the red fl ag that covered the coffin, and som eo ne fro m the crowd p assed a n open bottle of soda water �SLOVAKIA 15 9 to the cl a rinet pl aye r . H e put it in to th e condu ctor's h a nd. - But w hy did you leave so su dd enl y? The bo ttle of soda water was ta ken by a sm all m a n in a gray sui t w ith a wart ri ght un der hi s eye. H e was holdin g the wife of the deceased in hi s arms, pou r in g the sod a water o n he r face th rou gh the veil , but som e wom a n too k th e bo ttle away from him a nd lifted the ve il . - Why did you leave so sudde nl y? 4 Two activities are in progress simultan eou sly. T he world of the deceased is no m o re; to who m , then , is th e orator a ddressing hi s m ela ncholy m essage? To him self, fo r th e widow h as fa inted , a nd people a re busy ta king care of h er. The commo tio n of the world " out the re" cl ashes w ith the wo rld of the o rator whose speech a nd qu estion s give the scen e an a b su rd a ir a t first ; it will turn out tha t n o on e, n ot eve n his wife, really kn ew the d eceased . Jan J oh a nid es b a ffl ed hi s critics and div id ed them sh a rply into two groups . Fo r the first group , here is Mila n H am ad a: '' The failure of intellect in J ohanides caused the loss of spiritual and artistic tran scendence " (SP , Au gu st 1966 , 9). For the second , Fra nti sek Miko: "The stren gth of J oh a nides ' s style I see m a inly in w h a t I would like to call indep enden ce. It shows itself in the a n alys is, con cretely in the sh a rp , m a tter -offact an alyti cal to ne. This tone was always very rare h e re, a nd the refore always desirable a nd n ew" (SP , D ecember 1966, 15). In this m a tter-of-fact tone a nd in hi s som etim es excess ive a ttention to detail J oh anides was bested by P eter J aros, who brings into Slovak litera ture perh ap s the m ost experim ental features th a t we associa te with the a nti-n ovel or n ou vea u rom an. H e is playing with ti me, "coll apsing" it , d iffu sin g o ur a ttenti o n in paren thetical deta il s that seem to be la rgely irrelevant to the main action , which itself is ve ry difficult to de fin e . H ere is an example from hi s work Vah y (Scales, 1966): (Some movemen ts attract by the ir u nexpected vigorou sness or their unusual character. Ri gh t now a hu ge clou d mu st have fl ow n away a nd uncove red th e settin g su n , for it su ddenl y brightened up .) We move away carefu ll y from the door , hi t somethin g ge ntl y a nd feel behind our b ack the wall ( eve n the sitting man can be seen mo re clearly). Sudde nl y , as if by m iracle, we e n ter the room w he re the man is sitti ng , and we �160 SLOVAKIA stay there even after the sun sets and the twilight turns to darkness. (The room is a spacious one, from the armchair in which the man is sitting, one can see, n ear the glass door, a double chest of brown walnut wood. There is nothing on the rear wall , although be tween the doo r a nd the chest there is sufficie nt space to fit a big elongated vase that would moderate the sudden transition between the chest and the door. )5 Und erstanda bly , we a re dealing here with literature heavily influenced by foreign models; the expe rime ntatio n does not seem to follow a native model, unless we see J a ros as a follower ofjohanides . Even so , there is injohanides's work also a lyricism which is missing fromjaros's work. Lyricism or rather " lyrical prose " is the main accomplishment of perhaps the most talented writer of the new generation, Vincent Sikula. H ere, for example, is the conclusion of Sikula' s story Dlhe tyzdne sjasnymi n ocami pred odletmi st'ahovavych vtakov (Long Weeks with Bright Nights befo re the Flights of Birds). A boy , Rudko , befriends a village idiot , Viktor, who attracts the boy with his ri ch imagination and asks him to join him secretly at night. Outside, th ey observe the m ysteriou s n a ture, crawl in the wet grass, a nd th en Viktor blindfolds the boy: Rudko, maybe I lied to you, h e said. I told you an hour ago that it 's beginning to d awn , but you could have seen that this was not so. Is the ni gh t bright? I took a mirror with m e, maybe I wanted to confuse you with it . I 've thrown it away, a nd you didn't even notice it. T ell m e, Rudko , what do I n eed a mirror fo r? M aybe yo u really are sick a nd maybe yo u feel like slee ping . But how could you slee p when the ni gh t is so bright? I p rom ised to give you a handke rchief, I didn ' t make a parachute out of it , because I would be sorry to see it go . H e told me th a t he would talk to m e un til I fall asleep. H e m entioned thin gs abo ut which he u sed to talk to me all summ er lo n g, that is, th e merry-go-round , the du ck , ... but also the gander , m aybe it will b e a wild gander and it will take off, lift itself off th e gro und, fl y over Koligram, it will avo id the poplars, it will disa ppear over the fi eld s ... �SLOVAKIA 161 Rudko, can you still see me? I can't. They found me in the morning with my head in the ditch. On my back, there was a heavy stone that was supposed to kill me. 6 Sikula admits that he is a follower of the outstanding village prose writers of the older generation, Jozef Ciger-Hronsky and Milo Urban, but his arrival on the literary scene with his lyricism was still an experiment under the circumstances. He does not flinch from horror when he shows the destruction of the village by sudden change brought on by war or revolution. But the violence of war has been more strikingly portrayed in the work of Ladislav Tazky, especially in his work Amenmaria: Sam[ dobrf vojaci (Amenmaria: All the Good Soldiers, 1964). H ere we see a conscious departure from the older socialist realist depiction of war, such as the schematic picture of the resistance and the horrors of the uprising against the Germans that we find in Jilemnicky' s Kronika (Chronicle, 1947) , where everything is simple and clear. On the one side the partisans, on the other - Germans. In Tazky we find a difference . The experiment lies in introducing to the reader a hero who is a soldier of the Slovak Army fighting in the Ukraine against the Red Army and on the side of the Germans . Although , to be sure, the narrator is a communist, the difficult period, the ambiguities, the different pulls and demands on soldiers, the hell of war, are all rendered in a striking style that lacks comforting simplicity and bewilders us by its provocative character. What follows is a description of a German attack on a hut harboring deserters: Why do the Germans keep the light on at D aytim e and How Come they don 't Shout " H eil "? What are you doing, soldier-boys? At this time they h ave to be near the hut and the officer is commanding them to hit the snow and crawl towards the bark bunker. Boys , how long will you be playing this game? You've done it once before. Do you remember, we answered you then, and now the hut stays mum , it is waiting for you , so break �162 SLOVAKIA her waist, who will fire into he r warmth smelling of human warmth? Nobody will leave the grave, nobody will a nswer, the dead do not fear death , you are death , only the living are afraid of you, those whose waist is still unbroken (SP, June 1965, 154) . But lest I leave the impression that m ost of the n ew prose of the sixties was so depressing and utterly serious, let me turn to humor. Clearly, the most talented practitioners at the time were Milan Lasica and Julius Satinsky : humorists, satirists, p arodists and performers of their work. But I would like to turn to Milan Zelinka instead, because of the allusive character of Lasica and Satinsky's work . Zelinka's work , from which I will quote, won the competition organized by the prestigious journal Slovenske Pohl'ady in 1968 . The story is a pseudo-historical take-off on folklore and infirmities of the age reminiscent of Alfred Jarry' s Ubu . A kingdom is harrassed by a robber whom no one is able to stop. Finally , after cau sing the death of the king, the robber engages the n ew king in correspondence. H ere then is an exchange of letters from Povest' o strasnom zbojnfkovi Folstynskom a nest'astnom katovi Holcusko vi (The Story about the T errible Robber Folstynsky and the Unfortunate Executio n er Holcuska) . After the capture of the robber , who finds out that he is about to be shown to tourists instead of being executed , the robber fires a letter of protest to the king: D ear Sir, I thought tha t you h ad character , but today I found out otherwise . I a m a nnouncing thereby that I protest again st being put on a show for tourists just because you lack good economists! It is against my con science. I swear that if you force m e to do what I hate with all m y soul , I sh all spit upon the tourists and haran gu e them with u gly words to su ch an effe ct that they will be unable to sleep in our guest h ou ses not only because of the fleas, bu t also b ecause of the horror cau sed b y my tongue . Folstynsky �SLOVAKIA 163 The king answered the robber: Dear buddy, I think you are being unfair . Even though I do believe that the postponement of your execution has disappointed you deeply, there's nothing to be done, you'll have to go on living for some time ye t. As for the tourists , don't forget that our country needs money badly . It is partly and mainly your own fault that we find ourselves in a deep economic crisis. You should not forget that . Who was zipping up and down our country causing mischief, but you alone? After all, if I published your opinions in the press, our young people would laugh at you. And you do not want to appear ridiculous to them , do you? Your friend , King Bazulfk P .S . Finally, have no fear . It is not going to be so bad with those tourists. They are generous, I experienced it personally . You ' ll get lots of chewing gum. (SP, March 1968 , 154) . It would be difficult to pretend that anything except broad currents of the variety found in Slovak literature of the sixties were mentioned here. Peter Balgha and Rudolf Slaboda should have been and Vlado Bednar could have been m entioned as well. But rather than piling up a great number of names and titles, it seemed more appropriate to communicate the special flavor of the new prose . Moreover , it is also the special excitem ent that greeted the new experiments, the new works, the new names in the sixties that one would want to evoke here. And that excitem ent was, as is only natural , the property of those who had a good knowledge of the standard , or older socialist realist literature , those who could see how much this new literature differed from the older one. They could see how , quite co nsciously , the new authors began to displace the old rules, the schemata, and above all, the fear. When these were pushed away, the experimenting began . In some cases it was a modest kind of experim ent : the author wanted to see if he could write the way people used to write in the thirties or even twenties. Other writers wanted to bring in forbidde n topics: repressed people, eroticism, foreign philosoph y. Others still concentrated on the style, the form, th e structure of their work. Taken together , the effor ts of youn g Slovak authors (and som e not so you n g) made the decade of the sixties a veritable liter- �164 SLOVAKIA ary revival. That it happened at all is a miracle , despite the ready explanations . One wonders how right Thomas Merton was when he said that "tomorrow the abstract paintings will be on the walls of the Commissars.' ' 8 NOTES ' Czech Literature since 1956: A Symposium , ed . William E . Harkins a nd Paul I. Trensky (New York: Bohemica, 1980). ' Frantisek Vnuk ' ~ Sedemnast' neurodnych rokov (Middletown: Slovak v Amerike , 1965) discusses literary developments after 1956 and into 1962. It is pa rticularly valuable for its description of the infertile period of the reign of socialist realism , as the fertile period of the sixties is mostly outside th e com pass of his work . 3 Jozef Kot , " Ako dalej ," Slovenske pohl'ady, 78 Oanuary 1962), 136-3 7. This journal will hence appear in the text as SP. Translations a re mine . • JanJohanides, Sukromie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1963), p. 118 . ' Peter Jaros , Vahy (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), p. 1011 . 6 Vincent Sikula, Povetrie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968) , p . 13. 7 Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York : New Directions , 1965), p. 168). Presented in Panel 128, '' Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening, ' ' at the AAASS co nventi on in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 153 Modern Slovak Fiction: The Sixties, A Decade of Experimentation Peter Petro During the l 960's literatures of the Eastern European countries experienced a revival. On the one hand this revival became possible by the gradual relaxation of political control over literature; on the other hand it was spurred on by literary developments in the West as well as in the East. I t would be difficult to overestimate this foreign factor in the general revival. Nor was it always a case of the local application of some hitherto unavailabl e literary techniques of experimental character. Very often it was simply the act of rediscovering authors whose reputations had already been made some decades ago. This was the case with Proust , Joyce , Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Babel , Pilnyak, Platonov, and many , many others. Franz Kafka held a special position among these rediscovered authors. His appearance in print was hailed as a symbolic, liberating event of major proportion in the literary ( and cultural) history of both the Czech and Slovak nations. As for the experimental impulses emanating from the West, the anti-novel or nouveau-roman (of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute) , and the thea tre of the absurd (not only oflonesco, but of the mu ch older Alfred Jarry) quickly found willing practitioners as well. Not the least among these factors was the re-evaluation of native authors rehabilitated and brought back from oblivion, or rather from a literary limbo (in Slovakia they were Milo Urban , J.C. Hronsk y, Tido J. Gaspar, and others). In Slovakia, as indeed in the entire Eastern Europe, the important mileposts were the years 1956 and 1962. We can get an insight into what went on after 1956 and 1962 in Czech literature from a recently published work edited by William E. Harkins and Paul I. Trensky . 1 But here, too, the center of grav ity lies in the sixties and the reader's atten tion is directed to some half a dozen names that became known , not only in Bohemia , but also abroad. Slovak literary developments, inasmuch as these were influ en ced by political events occurring in the power cen- 154 SLOV AKI A te rs of P ragu e a nd Mosco w, to which Sl ovak literatu re h ad b ee n di rectly o r indirectly subo rdin a ted , could n ot bu t foll ow a path simil a r to the Czech d evelo pments . However , thi s d oes n ot m ean tha t th ey d evelop ed in the sam e directio n , o r even a t the sam e p ace. U po n examina ti o n of som e re p rese nta tive wo rks of Slovak a u th o r s who a ppea red durin g the p e ri od of th e revival of the six ti es, o n e is impressed b y the varie t y a nd quality of th e literature if compa red to the d ecades tha t preced e a nd follow it. Th a t so m e m as te rpieces p rodu ced a t the t im e still re m a in unkno wn in the W es t is p e rh a p s n o t e n t irely th e fa ult of write r s; the lack of tra n sla tion s is equ ally crippling. F o r this reaso n a look a t some examples of the ex perime ntal fictio n of the sixties could be o f som e help . Tha t decad e was a n ew b eginnin g in Slovak litearture; its accomplishme nts will help us to o rientate ou rselves in co ntemporary Slovak lite ra ture a nd they will help u s, in all proba bility, in the future a s well . If the six ties wer e indeed the n e w b eginnin g, what is really m eant b y thi s " n e wness" and al so b y "expe rime nt " in the context of the six ties? To start w ith , the conte xt o f the sixties w as the coll a pse of the d octrine, concept , or m e thod of socialist realism . 2 Of course, socialist realism h ad n o t b ee n re tired b y a n a dminist ra ti ve fi a t ; it h a d b ee n re -defin ed . But the sp ell h ad b een b ro ke n a nd the ch a n ges in theor y we re follo wed b y ch a n ges in p ractice. E ver yon e still p a id lip service to socialist realism but wh a t matte red m ost to p a rt y offi cials, namely the control of lite rature, was gradually slippin g from the ir h a nds, a nd their periodic a ttempts to re-establi sh con trol we re n ot su ccess ful : they h a d le t the genie out of the b o ttle. And so, whil e th e critics still p e nned th e ir tribu te s to su ch model a u th o r s as F ra n t isek H eck o (b . 190 5), P e te r Jile mnick y (b . 1901 ) , a nd Frano Kral' (b . 1903), the new w rite rs th at b egan to ap pear in print w rote in a w ay th a t w as ofte n e ntirely alie n to th ese " cl assics," som e t im es eve n to the exte nt of u sin g th e sociali st realist m od els in a w ay th at parod ied th e o ri ginal. T h e n ewn ess o f th e li teratu re of th e sixties, th e n , li es in breaki ng with th e p ast, o r rath e r with th e im m edi a te past of socialist real ist literat ure of b uildin g a nd co n stru c tin g, o f o p timi sm, of tr a n spare nt sch e m e a nd ideological or phil osophi cal m o n och rome. H owever , w h en we com e to th e "exp e rim e n t ," we fi n d th at m atters are much more complex tha n th at. F irs t o f a ll , at th e b eginnin g of th e decade (an d already in th e seco nd h alf o f th e fifti es), a n y veerin g off th e established model h ad to b e co n sidered a n experiment. For this reason , o n e h as to take "experi men t" SLOVAKIA 155 in our con text quite liberally and broadly as meaning a wide variety of writing, from that which merely joins an already established prose current to that which attempts at importing certain contemporary western literary techniques . Most importantly , we have to understand it as the development of a genuine, new literary voice with its own style, its own original seeing of the world. It would hardly be possible for new, unknown writers simply to appear with their new work and displace the established authors overnight. What happened instead was a transition period when the next literary generation of authors following Hecko , Jil emnicky, Kral', and others - namely Vladimfr Minac (b.1922), Ladislav Mnacko (b.1919), Dominik Tata rko (b.1913), and Peter Karvas (b.1920), among others - abandoned their orthodoxy to such an extent that further experiments along the same lines seemed no longer astonishing. Even here one would like to stress that the authors of the sixties were by no means readily accepted. There was first a struggle. There was very often harsh criticism; and , objectively spea king, such criticism was sometimes quite ju stified. On the whole , however, any criticism had to be fundamentally unfair if we take into consideration the still limited freedom to write as the author pleased. Thus , we witness the sorry spectacle of compromised literature criticized by compromised critics. A good example would be the case ofjaroslava Blazkova's Nylonovy mesiac (Nylon Moon, 1961 ). Jozef Kot attacked it by saying: "I do not know why, but Slovak prose has suddenly discovered ero ticism , and Sagan and others," adding a statement difficult to challenge: " Bratislava will never be a Paris and Slovaks will never be erotomaniacs. " 3 Of course, Kot knows full well why was it that there was no erot icism before. It simply was not allowed. Nor were any modern western authors pe rmitted to serve as model s, before. Kot perceives the change and his reaction is a good, though mild , sign of his bewilderment. Alas, in a very few years, by Kot 's standards, Bratislava was teeming with erotomaniac authors as socialist puritanism fizzl ed out. In fact, the standards used to measure the quality of lite rary production in Slovakia were high. P erhaps too high , and that led to contradictions . Thus , J an Rozner took the young writers Blazkova and Anton H ykisch to task: "We can not call that which is being done by the young prose writers experime ntin g. It is ceaseless searching, learning , testing, but not experimenting" (SP, September 1961 , 17) . In the case 156 SLOVAKIA of Hykisch , he was take n to task for using the inte rnal monologu e or strea m of consciousness technique , and it was pointed out to him that this was not new at all , as it h ad been used by mode rnist authors a long time ago. Again the crit ic pretended to be unaware of the fact that even su ch a basic and harmless technique h ad been very suspect just recently. And Hykisch was reacting to the literature immediately preceding him , even though , pe rhaps unconsciously , he actuall y returned to the interrupted modernist line of Slovak prose. " Modernism " - a word of opprobrium only rece ntly - became th e most desired aim in the ge neral atmosphe re of catching up with the W est. But H ykisch would not stop experimenting. Here is the conclusion of his sho rt novel Nad'a (SP August-Dece mbe r 1963): Who is guilty of the librarian 's d eath? Who ? I ? H e? Nadia , you are a merciful Samaritan, should you try to save people who were hurt ? ... The door to the washroom banged shut. They always bang, someone shouted feebly from the next room. Dreaming. At the other end it started to ring . I started. I began to run, the doors are lea ping a t my side and are running b ehind me, there is ringing, a seco nd alarm clock. A third . A fourth. Simultaneously. Voices, banging , slippers , fee t , the first door, a person . Woma n. I closed m y eyes a nd eve rything around m e vibrated, unknown sounds a nd voices, something securely lived here. I stood for a mome nt in front of our room, I heard Liz . I quickly ente red , Good morning , girls . Hi , Nadia, why a re you h a untin g here? I opened the window, hun g the towel on the bed and started to dress quickly. The girls were still sleepy and watched me in surprise . I hurried . It seem ed to m e that it was late for eve rything . It would not be difficult to prove how Hyki sch 's style differs from the more orthodox styles of th e forties a nd fifti es - the sudde n cha nges of voice, the economy , the dynamism , the palpa ble presence of the furniture of life, the reali a, in short, the mode rn shorthand, telegraphic style is here clearly represe nted. But the experime ntal ch a racter of this novel lies in the implications of the plot , in the introduction of a characte r SLOVAKIA 157 out of favo r with the P arty, a nd the int rodu ctory device of qu ota ti on s from au thors su ch as Campa n ella (his Th e City of the S un ), H. G . W ells (Th e Sh ap e of Thin gs to Com e), qu otation s th at pro m oted qu estionin g, skep ti cism a nd pess imi sm . These qu ota ti on s co m e from Robert, th e m an in di sfavor with wh om adi a, th e hero in e, fall s in love . W e are led to believe th a t R obe rt 's difficulti es ste m from the fact th a t he is a thinker, not a careerist , and also a man of p rinciple. N adi a, a n intellige nt but slightl y fri volou s econ omics student , does n ot measure up to the strictures a nd u tter seriou sn ess of Robert , a libraria n by p ro fession , but a philosoph er b y callin g. Of interest , too, is the sett in g , th e urban se tt in g - Brati slava - which will come to be the set tin g of man y works of the decade. But it is th e city see n throu gh the eyes of a n out sider , N adi a, who com es to Brati slava to study . Th e ambi gu ou s endin g (Robert commits sui cide, but h ove rs b etwee n life an~ death) is also som ethin g new . ot becau se of the a mbi guity , but again fo r su ggestin g (by impli cation) th a t perh aps N adi a was n ot entirely to bl am e for R obert 's sui cide. It woul d not be enti rely in a ppropria te to call R obert a m odern Slovak in carna tion of th e "supe rflu ou s m a n " known to u s from Russian litera ture . The isolated individual , the m a n against the world , against a K afk aesqu e bureau cracy: su ch is th e un co m fo rta bl e situ a tion of the new Slovak literary ch a rac te r of the sixties. In a nothe r urba n writer , J a n J oh a nides, the ch a racte r is isol ated without the h elp of politi cs . R a th er , h e is pressed a nd tried sorely b y the existential choice , by lack of com munication , a nd b y the alien world from which he seem s so woefull y estra n ged . C a mu s a nd Sartre a re the two m ost obviou s m en tors ofj oh a nides, especially the latter, according to Mil a n H amad a (SP , O ctob er 1963 , 134). L ack of co mmunication is the them e of an impressive story entitled Potapaca prit'ahuju pram ene m ora (A Di ve r I s Attracted by O cean Sprin gs). I qu ote from the co nclu sion : Everybody loves hi s wi fe fo r som e m ore or less co ncrete reason , b u t the re a re some who love fo r a less ce rta in , or eve n un ce rtain reason . And th at reaso n could b e the fact that he saw h er, th at they h ave me t a t all , th at sh e too exis ts. It seems tha t I loved Marth a for a sim il a r reason. I saw her, I looked at her w ith these my eyes a n d she wanted me to marry her. And that "more certain " reason fo r whi ch , if I ca n say so, m y love multi pli ed , was her beautiful a r rogan ce. T h a t is 158 SLOVAKIA wha t I would call he r in sisten t d esire to be h appy . Perh a ps she co uld gu ess a t the beginnin g that I could secure her existen ce and would make no claims on her. I call her desire for happiness beautiful a rrogance because she d a red to turn m e into a spring board to aims tha t she thou ght would m a ke h er ha ppy. This a r rogance - of wh a tever kind - I find interestin g; I do n ot judge h er for it. It p roves tha t M a rtha had to be profoundl y unha ppy a nd alone. Little things that I could furnish for her were designed to suggest to he r that this was not the way to ha ppiness. I do not know if she unde rstood . (SP, July 196 1, 111 ) Now the sen sitive n a rrator-hu sb a nd is him self d yin g of cance r , but still goin g a bout hi s tasks, unworried ab out his a pproaching end . Hi s profession is rather prosaic: he is a chef in a resta ura nt . Whe n he find s out a bout his wife ' s unfaithfuln ess, he fail s to ge t a n gry. When he learns a bou t her death of sudden heart failure while drivin g with her love r , he still m a intains his equ animity. Thu s he is almost superna turally calm a nd ra tion al, or em o tion ally defici e nt - a judgem ent th a t is sys tem a tically contradicted by his superior sen sitivity of perception and un d erstandin g . Still , hi s sta nce is suspicious to his fri end s who find him too stran ge for their compa n y . All thi s would b e new and unu su al in Slovak lite rature, but the essenti al experimental feature of J oha nides is his stress on th e private space of the individu al; n ot only his in ne r world tha t he so carefull y sketches, but the ou te r world as well. H owever , it is a highly individu al, private world tha t his cha racte rs see. And for that reaso n th ey are u nabl e to share it wi th an yon e. Con sequ entl y, these wo rlds often clash . Such a cl ash is described by the obj ective n arrator of a title story in J oha nides' s Sukromie (Privacy, 1963). During the fun e ral of a ve ry act ive wo rke r a nd Pa r ty m em ber, the orato r addresses the deceased: I d o n ot know h ow to tha nk you fra nkl y fo r all your effort a nd pe rso nal in volve m en t in our facto ry's cl ub of the R evolutio na ry U nion Move m e nt. You we re a good union m embe r , we deeply honor yo ur wo rk. W e knew yo u , we tru sted you . Bu t d id we really know you ? The wind lifted the red fl ag that covered the coffin, and som eo ne fro m the crowd p assed a n open bottle of soda water SLOVAKIA 15 9 to the cl a rinet pl aye r . H e put it in to th e condu ctor's h a nd. - But w hy did you leave so su dd enl y? The bo ttle of soda water was ta ken by a sm all m a n in a gray sui t w ith a wart ri ght un der hi s eye. H e was holdin g the wife of the deceased in hi s arms, pou r in g the sod a water o n he r face th rou gh the veil , but som e wom a n too k th e bo ttle away from him a nd lifted the ve il . - Why did you leave so sudde nl y? 4 Two activities are in progress simultan eou sly. T he world of the deceased is no m o re; to who m , then , is th e orator a ddressing hi s m ela ncholy m essage? To him self, fo r th e widow h as fa inted , a nd people a re busy ta king care of h er. The commo tio n of the world " out the re" cl ashes w ith the wo rld of the o rator whose speech a nd qu estion s give the scen e an a b su rd a ir a t first ; it will turn out tha t n o on e, n ot eve n his wife, really kn ew the d eceased . Jan J oh a nid es b a ffl ed hi s critics and div id ed them sh a rply into two groups . Fo r the first group , here is Mila n H am ad a: '' The failure of intellect in J ohanides caused the loss of spiritual and artistic tran scendence " (SP , Au gu st 1966 , 9). For the second , Fra nti sek Miko: "The stren gth of J oh a nides ' s style I see m a inly in w h a t I would like to call indep enden ce. It shows itself in the a n alys is, con cretely in the sh a rp , m a tter -offact an alyti cal to ne. This tone was always very rare h e re, a nd the refore always desirable a nd n ew" (SP , D ecember 1966, 15). In this m a tter-of-fact tone a nd in hi s som etim es excess ive a ttention to detail J oh anides was bested by P eter J aros, who brings into Slovak litera ture perh ap s the m ost experim ental features th a t we associa te with the a nti-n ovel or n ou vea u rom an. H e is playing with ti me, "coll apsing" it , d iffu sin g o ur a ttenti o n in paren thetical deta il s that seem to be la rgely irrelevant to the main action , which itself is ve ry difficult to de fin e . H ere is an example from hi s work Vah y (Scales, 1966): (Some movemen ts attract by the ir u nexpected vigorou sness or their unusual character. Ri gh t now a hu ge clou d mu st have fl ow n away a nd uncove red th e settin g su n , for it su ddenl y brightened up .) We move away carefu ll y from the door , hi t somethin g ge ntl y a nd feel behind our b ack the wall ( eve n the sitting man can be seen mo re clearly). Sudde nl y , as if by m iracle, we e n ter the room w he re the man is sitti ng , and we 160 SLOVAKIA stay there even after the sun sets and the twilight turns to darkness. (The room is a spacious one, from the armchair in which the man is sitting, one can see, n ear the glass door, a double chest of brown walnut wood. There is nothing on the rear wall , although be tween the doo r a nd the chest there is sufficie nt space to fit a big elongated vase that would moderate the sudden transition between the chest and the door. )5 Und erstanda bly , we a re dealing here with literature heavily influenced by foreign models; the expe rime ntatio n does not seem to follow a native model, unless we see J a ros as a follower ofjohanides . Even so , there is injohanides's work also a lyricism which is missing fromjaros's work. Lyricism or rather " lyrical prose " is the main accomplishment of perhaps the most talented writer of the new generation, Vincent Sikula. H ere, for example, is the conclusion of Sikula' s story Dlhe tyzdne sjasnymi n ocami pred odletmi st'ahovavych vtakov (Long Weeks with Bright Nights befo re the Flights of Birds). A boy , Rudko , befriends a village idiot , Viktor, who attracts the boy with his ri ch imagination and asks him to join him secretly at night. Outside, th ey observe the m ysteriou s n a ture, crawl in the wet grass, a nd th en Viktor blindfolds the boy: Rudko, maybe I lied to you, h e said. I told you an hour ago that it 's beginning to d awn , but you could have seen that this was not so. Is the ni gh t bright? I took a mirror with m e, maybe I wanted to confuse you with it . I 've thrown it away, a nd you didn't even notice it. T ell m e, Rudko , what do I n eed a mirror fo r? M aybe yo u really are sick a nd maybe yo u feel like slee ping . But how could you slee p when the ni gh t is so bright? I p rom ised to give you a handke rchief, I didn ' t make a parachute out of it , because I would be sorry to see it go . H e told me th a t he would talk to m e un til I fall asleep. H e m entioned thin gs abo ut which he u sed to talk to me all summ er lo n g, that is, th e merry-go-round , the du ck , ... but also the gander , m aybe it will b e a wild gander and it will take off, lift itself off th e gro und, fl y over Koligram, it will avo id the poplars, it will disa ppear over the fi eld s ... SLOVAKIA 161 Rudko, can you still see me? I can't. They found me in the morning with my head in the ditch. On my back, there was a heavy stone that was supposed to kill me. 6 Sikula admits that he is a follower of the outstanding village prose writers of the older generation, Jozef Ciger-Hronsky and Milo Urban, but his arrival on the literary scene with his lyricism was still an experiment under the circumstances. He does not flinch from horror when he shows the destruction of the village by sudden change brought on by war or revolution. But the violence of war has been more strikingly portrayed in the work of Ladislav Tazky, especially in his work Amenmaria: Sam[ dobrf vojaci (Amenmaria: All the Good Soldiers, 1964). H ere we see a conscious departure from the older socialist realist depiction of war, such as the schematic picture of the resistance and the horrors of the uprising against the Germans that we find in Jilemnicky' s Kronika (Chronicle, 1947) , where everything is simple and clear. On the one side the partisans, on the other - Germans. In Tazky we find a difference . The experiment lies in introducing to the reader a hero who is a soldier of the Slovak Army fighting in the Ukraine against the Red Army and on the side of the Germans . Although , to be sure, the narrator is a communist, the difficult period, the ambiguities, the different pulls and demands on soldiers, the hell of war, are all rendered in a striking style that lacks comforting simplicity and bewilders us by its provocative character. What follows is a description of a German attack on a hut harboring deserters: Why do the Germans keep the light on at D aytim e and How Come they don 't Shout " H eil "? What are you doing, soldier-boys? At this time they h ave to be near the hut and the officer is commanding them to hit the snow and crawl towards the bark bunker. Boys , how long will you be playing this game? You've done it once before. Do you remember, we answered you then, and now the hut stays mum , it is waiting for you , so break 162 SLOVAKIA her waist, who will fire into he r warmth smelling of human warmth? Nobody will leave the grave, nobody will a nswer, the dead do not fear death , you are death , only the living are afraid of you, those whose waist is still unbroken (SP, June 1965, 154) . But lest I leave the impression that m ost of the n ew prose of the sixties was so depressing and utterly serious, let me turn to humor. Clearly, the most talented practitioners at the time were Milan Lasica and Julius Satinsky : humorists, satirists, p arodists and performers of their work. But I would like to turn to Milan Zelinka instead, because of the allusive character of Lasica and Satinsky's work . Zelinka's work , from which I will quote, won the competition organized by the prestigious journal Slovenske Pohl'ady in 1968 . The story is a pseudo-historical take-off on folklore and infirmities of the age reminiscent of Alfred Jarry' s Ubu . A kingdom is harrassed by a robber whom no one is able to stop. Finally , after cau sing the death of the king, the robber engages the n ew king in correspondence. H ere then is an exchange of letters from Povest' o strasnom zbojnfkovi Folstynskom a nest'astnom katovi Holcusko vi (The Story about the T errible Robber Folstynsky and the Unfortunate Executio n er Holcuska) . After the capture of the robber , who finds out that he is about to be shown to tourists instead of being executed , the robber fires a letter of protest to the king: D ear Sir, I thought tha t you h ad character , but today I found out otherwise . I a m a nnouncing thereby that I protest again st being put on a show for tourists just because you lack good economists! It is against my con science. I swear that if you force m e to do what I hate with all m y soul , I sh all spit upon the tourists and haran gu e them with u gly words to su ch an effe ct that they will be unable to sleep in our guest h ou ses not only because of the fleas, bu t also b ecause of the horror cau sed b y my tongue . Folstynsky SLOVAKIA 163 The king answered the robber: Dear buddy, I think you are being unfair . Even though I do believe that the postponement of your execution has disappointed you deeply, there's nothing to be done, you'll have to go on living for some time ye t. As for the tourists , don't forget that our country needs money badly . It is partly and mainly your own fault that we find ourselves in a deep economic crisis. You should not forget that . Who was zipping up and down our country causing mischief, but you alone? After all, if I published your opinions in the press, our young people would laugh at you. And you do not want to appear ridiculous to them , do you? Your friend , King Bazulfk P .S . Finally, have no fear . It is not going to be so bad with those tourists. They are generous, I experienced it personally . You ' ll get lots of chewing gum. (SP, March 1968 , 154) . It would be difficult to pretend that anything except broad currents of the variety found in Slovak literature of the sixties were mentioned here. Peter Balgha and Rudolf Slaboda should have been and Vlado Bednar could have been m entioned as well. But rather than piling up a great number of names and titles, it seemed more appropriate to communicate the special flavor of the new prose . Moreover , it is also the special excitem ent that greeted the new experiments, the new works, the new names in the sixties that one would want to evoke here. And that excitem ent was, as is only natural , the property of those who had a good knowledge of the standard , or older socialist realist literature , those who could see how much this new literature differed from the older one. They could see how , quite co nsciously , the new authors began to displace the old rules, the schemata, and above all, the fear. When these were pushed away, the experimenting began . In some cases it was a modest kind of experim ent : the author wanted to see if he could write the way people used to write in the thirties or even twenties. Other writers wanted to bring in forbidde n topics: repressed people, eroticism, foreign philosoph y. Others still concentrated on the style, the form, th e structure of their work. Taken together , the effor ts of youn g Slovak authors (and som e not so you n g) made the decade of the sixties a veritable liter- 164 SLOVAKIA ary revival. That it happened at all is a miracle , despite the ready explanations . One wonders how right Thomas Merton was when he said that "tomorrow the abstract paintings will be on the walls of the Commissars.' ' 8 NOTES ' Czech Literature since 1956: A Symposium , ed . William E . Harkins a nd Paul I. Trensky (New York: Bohemica, 1980). ' Frantisek Vnuk ' ~ Sedemnast' neurodnych rokov (Middletown: Slovak v Amerike , 1965) discusses literary developments after 1956 and into 1962. It is pa rticularly valuable for its description of the infertile period of the reign of socialist realism , as the fertile period of the sixties is mostly outside th e com pass of his work . 3 Jozef Kot , " Ako dalej ," Slovenske pohl'ady, 78 Oanuary 1962), 136-3 7. This journal will hence appear in the text as SP. Translations a re mine . • JanJohanides, Sukromie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1963), p. 118 . ' Peter Jaros , Vahy (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), p. 1011 . 6 Vincent Sikula, Povetrie (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968) , p . 13. 7 Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York : New Directions , 1965), p. 168). Presented in Panel 128, '' Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening, ' ' at the AAASS co nventi on in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Modern Slovak Fiction: The Sixties, a Decade of Experimentation Description An account of the resource Peter Petro Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 153-164 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petro, Peter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/d352d02edfa2548419b221de6f069db8.pdf 8cd13b3a57a7c4417356143198918536 PDF Text Text 76 SLOVAKIA Some Observations on Devotional Literature and Culture: Response D av id P . D a niel In many resp ects the history of Slovakia during the seventeen th century is an orphan of recent Slavic studies. While there are a few noteworthy exceptions , scholars of Slova k history tend to co nce ntrate their work in the medieval era, co mm en cin g w ith the labors of Cyril a nd M eth od , or they focus their a ttentio n on the er a of the n ational revival and the political, social , a nd cultural d evelopm en ts of the ninetee nth a nd twentieth ce nturies. As a result, the hi sto ry of the Slovaks during the seventeenth century h as bee n in adequately examin ed. In light of this situ ation, the studies of Czech and Slovak d evotional lite rature by Ducreux , Vajda, and Sabo are mo st welcome. While M . E . Ducreu x's study of Catholic Czech h ymna ls of the late sixtee nth a nd seventeenth centuries indicates that over o ne-third of the hymns utilized were adapted or taken over intact from Protestant collect io ns, J. Vajda, in a sketch of the life and work of the most noted Lutheran h ymnodi st, Juraj Tranovsky, notes th at his h ymnal , the Cithara Sanctorum (Harp of the Saints) , h ad a significant impact on the d evotio nal life of Catholic as well as Lutheran Slovaks. G. Sabo, on the other hand, turns hi s attention to one of the very popular personal d evotio na l works of the seventeenth ce ntury, the H ortulus Animae Piae (Little Garden of the Pious Soul) , by the Lutheran Daniel Sina pius-Horcicka . Taken together , these essays proffer a n in structive, if primarily a nticip atory, glimpse of the oft-neglected riches of seventeenth ce ntury Slavic lite rature and, it is to be h oped, should gen erate greater interest in the study of this fascinating period of Slovak history. Certainly more ex te n sive in vest igation s of seventee nth- century Slovak hi story are warranted for it was a n era of momentous cha n ge for the peoples of Hun garia Superioris , Upper Hun gary, the territory roughly con gru ent with tha t of m odern-day Slovakia. It was durin g thi s ce ntury that a m ajority of the overwhelmingly Lutheran Slovaks were �SLOV AKIA 77 regained for the faith a nd p ract ice of post-Tridentine C a tholicism b y the Cath olic Coun ter-Refo rm a ti o n . It was durin g this century tha t num erou s, o ft en bl oody conflicts em er ged a s the Habsburgs sought to re-asse r t the ir undispu ted hegem on y ove r all o f Hun gary . But d espite the feroc ity of the rel igiou s a nd poli tical co nflicts o f the era, o r perhaps becau se of them , it w as a ce ntury o f conside ra ble lite rary activity and ri ch in cultu re. A s the intelli ge ntsia, the cl erics a nd teach ers sou ght to reach a nd influen ce the opinio n s a nd allegia n ces o f the Slavic populati o n , a po pul ar ve rn acul a r literature d eveloped . T o be sure, th e C zech Biblictin a or Kralictin a was o ften employed as sort o f a proto -Slovak literary la n gu age. But thi s u se of Czech , albe it in creasingly adapted b y the u se o f Slovaki sm s, se rved both to provide a lexicogra phic foundati on upo n which a mo re p ro per Slovak litera ry la ngu age could be codifi ed du r in g the eigh teenth a nd early ninetee nth ce nturies and to foster intellectu al co ntacts a nd exch a n ges betwee n Slovaks and C zech s. This m eant th at Slovak intellectu als would b e influ en ced b y a nd refl ect the b road er cultu ral and political movem ents of their age. This can be see n w ith pa rticul a r cl a rity in the d evotional literature of the seventee nth ce n tury. It is in works d esigned fo r the u se of the m asses th a t the esse nti al core of the ideology o f a specific group o r ind iv idu al, especially as it perta ins to the particul ar issu es being contested , is clearl y a nd forcefully enuncia ted . At the sa m e time, d evotional liter ature also tend s to codi fy the fo rmal u sage o f a la n gu a ge a nd sta bilize o r , in som e cases, retard its d evelopme n t. Bibles, h ymnbooks, prayerboo ks, catechi sm s, a n d o ther d evotio n al m aterials, therefore, ou ght to be carefull y studied fo r bo th the ir theological a nd the ir cultural or lingui sti c significance. Bu t it is p recisely the fo rm er stud ies th at are lackin g. While ther e have bee n m a n y inves ti gat io n s of the li nguistic as pects o f wo rks produ ced b y Slovaks d urin g the seve nteenth century, the a n alysis o f these works within the b road er co ntex t of Slovak , Slavic, a nd European history has bee n less t ha n a d equ ate. Y et, eve n a cursory examin a tio n of the wo rk s pen ned by Slovaks during thi s ce ntury will indicate tha t they ind eed were aware of a nd pa rticipated in the broad er m ovem en ts of seven tee nth ce ntury cul ture. Writte n durin g the age ge ne rally d eno mina ted b y hi sto ri a n s as Ba roqu e, Slovak a nd Czech d evotio n al wo rks reflect the theological stru ggles, con cern s, a nd emphases of the pe riod . Often w ritte n to edify a nd es pecially to con sole Christi a n s in a wo rld to rn b y �78 SLOVAKIA conflict in whi ch sufferin g had becom e all too fa mili a r , these works a ttempted to build up and confirm individu als in their faith , provide them with spiritual comfort in the face of excru cia ting h a rdships, a nd en coura ge ethical sta ndards of conduct. By examinin g the variou s specific emphases of these works, then , o n e can di scern th e p a rticul ar issu es and problems which were perceived as m ost significant by individual authors. H e nce, they help to identify and elucida te th e ge neral self-pe rceptio n of the age. In additio n , m ore deta iled examin atio n s of seve nteenth-ce ntury literature might also indicate that co mmo nly held histo rical interpretive traditions might have to be aba ndon ed or a t least carefull y reexamined . Tantalizing implications of the study of Du creu x a re first that the traditional view of the decisive decline of a form al, high Slavic langu age and culture in Bohemia a fte r White M ounta in mu st be ab a n doned , and second tha t the process of re-Catholicization of the predominantly P rotesta nt popula tio n mu st be m o re carefull y studied . While no one can igno re or di smiss ou t of ha nd the fac t tha t mu ch d epended on the milita ry support given to the cau se of Counte r-Reformation by the Habsburgs, there seem s to be some eviden ce that the program ofre-conver sion was made easie r b y the simil a rity of wo r ship form s a nd , m o re importantly, the d evotio n al m a terial s employed by C zech U traqui sts and C atholics and by Luthera n s and C a tholics in Slovakia . Even thou gh much more research n eed s to be done to substanti a te thi s h yp othesis, it would a ppear , o n the b as is of the evide nce availa ble, th a t a similarity in the tone, indeed , in som e of the contents, of seventeen th-century devotional m a terials, a ided the p rocess of re-Catholicizati on . It also a ided in the creation of a b roader Slavic " imperial " culture alo ngside the Germanic " imperial " culture of the H ab sburg d ynasty. On the on e ha nd , this repl aced the m edieval L a tin culture a nd community w hich h ad existed prior to the R e form a tion a nd fos tered the process of the pa rticul a riza tion of European sta tes. On the o ther ha nd , unlike that of the Hun garia n s, the Sla vic a nd G erma n cultura l fo rm s in sou th -eastern E urope we re not specifically or exclu sively identifi ed with a sin gle territory or sta te . Thu s, they were m o re acceptable to the H a bsburgs who endeavored to en ge nde r a m on g the peopl es over w hi ch they ruled a loyalty to the ir d y n asty and empire. Durin g the seve nteenth cen tury , the n , Slovak a nd Czech a uthors, often unwittingly, m ay h ave actu all y a ided in the creatio n of tha t very d y n astic system w hich , two ce ntu ries �SLOVAXIA 79 later, they would rend asunder over the question of their language rights and the attempts to actualize politically their own ethnic self-consciousness which had been fostered by seventeenth-century devotional literature. Prese nt ed as co mm entary in Panel 99, "Devotional Literature in Seventeenth Century Slovakia , " a t th e AAASS conve ntion in Washington , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982. � 76 SLOVAKIA Some Observations on Devotional Literature and Culture: Response D av id P . D a niel In many resp ects the history of Slovakia during the seventeen th century is an orphan of recent Slavic studies. While there are a few noteworthy exceptions , scholars of Slova k history tend to co nce ntrate their work in the medieval era, co mm en cin g w ith the labors of Cyril a nd M eth od , or they focus their a ttentio n on the er a of the n ational revival and the political, social , a nd cultural d evelopm en ts of the ninetee nth a nd twentieth ce nturies. As a result, the hi sto ry of the Slovaks during the seventeenth century h as bee n in adequately examin ed. In light of this situ ation, the studies of Czech and Slovak d evotional lite rature by Ducreux , Vajda, and Sabo are mo st welcome. While M . E . Ducreu x's study of Catholic Czech h ymna ls of the late sixtee nth a nd seventeenth centuries indicates that over o ne-third of the hymns utilized were adapted or taken over intact from Protestant collect io ns, J. Vajda, in a sketch of the life and work of the most noted Lutheran h ymnodi st, Juraj Tranovsky, notes th at his h ymnal , the Cithara Sanctorum (Harp of the Saints) , h ad a significant impact on the d evotio nal life of Catholic as well as Lutheran Slovaks. G. Sabo, on the other hand, turns hi s attention to one of the very popular personal d evotio na l works of the seventeenth ce ntury, the H ortulus Animae Piae (Little Garden of the Pious Soul) , by the Lutheran Daniel Sina pius-Horcicka . Taken together , these essays proffer a n in structive, if primarily a nticip atory, glimpse of the oft-neglected riches of seventeenth ce ntury Slavic lite rature and, it is to be h oped, should gen erate greater interest in the study of this fascinating period of Slovak history. Certainly more ex te n sive in vest igation s of seventee nth- century Slovak hi story are warranted for it was a n era of momentous cha n ge for the peoples of Hun garia Superioris , Upper Hun gary, the territory roughly con gru ent with tha t of m odern-day Slovakia. It was durin g thi s ce ntury that a m ajority of the overwhelmingly Lutheran Slovaks were �SLOV AKIA 77 regained for the faith a nd p ract ice of post-Tridentine C a tholicism b y the Cath olic Coun ter-Refo rm a ti o n . It was durin g this century tha t num erou s, o ft en bl oody conflicts em er ged a s the Habsburgs sought to re-asse r t the ir undispu ted hegem on y ove r all o f Hun gary . But d espite the feroc ity of the rel igiou s a nd poli tical co nflicts o f the era, o r perhaps becau se of them , it w as a ce ntury o f conside ra ble lite rary activity and ri ch in cultu re. A s the intelli ge ntsia, the cl erics a nd teach ers sou ght to reach a nd influen ce the opinio n s a nd allegia n ces o f the Slavic populati o n , a po pul ar ve rn acul a r literature d eveloped . T o be sure, th e C zech Biblictin a or Kralictin a was o ften employed as sort o f a proto -Slovak literary la n gu age. But thi s u se of Czech , albe it in creasingly adapted b y the u se o f Slovaki sm s, se rved both to provide a lexicogra phic foundati on upo n which a mo re p ro per Slovak litera ry la ngu age could be codifi ed du r in g the eigh teenth a nd early ninetee nth ce nturies and to foster intellectu al co ntacts a nd exch a n ges betwee n Slovaks and C zech s. This m eant th at Slovak intellectu als would b e influ en ced b y a nd refl ect the b road er cultu ral and political movem ents of their age. This can be see n w ith pa rticul a r cl a rity in the d evotional literature of the seventee nth ce n tury. It is in works d esigned fo r the u se of the m asses th a t the esse nti al core of the ideology o f a specific group o r ind iv idu al, especially as it perta ins to the particul ar issu es being contested , is clearl y a nd forcefully enuncia ted . At the sa m e time, d evotional liter ature also tend s to codi fy the fo rmal u sage o f a la n gu a ge a nd sta bilize o r , in som e cases, retard its d evelopme n t. Bibles, h ymnbooks, prayerboo ks, catechi sm s, a n d o ther d evotio n al m aterials, therefore, ou ght to be carefull y studied fo r bo th the ir theological a nd the ir cultural or lingui sti c significance. Bu t it is p recisely the fo rm er stud ies th at are lackin g. While ther e have bee n m a n y inves ti gat io n s of the li nguistic as pects o f wo rks produ ced b y Slovaks d urin g the seve nteenth century, the a n alysis o f these works within the b road er co ntex t of Slovak , Slavic, a nd European history has bee n less t ha n a d equ ate. Y et, eve n a cursory examin a tio n of the wo rk s pen ned by Slovaks during thi s ce ntury will indicate tha t they ind eed were aware of a nd pa rticipated in the broad er m ovem en ts of seven tee nth ce ntury cul ture. Writte n durin g the age ge ne rally d eno mina ted b y hi sto ri a n s as Ba roqu e, Slovak a nd Czech d evotio n al wo rks reflect the theological stru ggles, con cern s, a nd emphases of the pe riod . Often w ritte n to edify a nd es pecially to con sole Christi a n s in a wo rld to rn b y �78 SLOVAKIA conflict in whi ch sufferin g had becom e all too fa mili a r , these works a ttempted to build up and confirm individu als in their faith , provide them with spiritual comfort in the face of excru cia ting h a rdships, a nd en coura ge ethical sta ndards of conduct. By examinin g the variou s specific emphases of these works, then , o n e can di scern th e p a rticul ar issu es and problems which were perceived as m ost significant by individual authors. H e nce, they help to identify and elucida te th e ge neral self-pe rceptio n of the age. In additio n , m ore deta iled examin atio n s of seve nteenth-ce ntury literature might also indicate that co mmo nly held histo rical interpretive traditions might have to be aba ndon ed or a t least carefull y reexamined . Tantalizing implications of the study of Du creu x a re first that the traditional view of the decisive decline of a form al, high Slavic langu age and culture in Bohemia a fte r White M ounta in mu st be ab a n doned , and second tha t the process of re-Catholicization of the predominantly P rotesta nt popula tio n mu st be m o re carefull y studied . While no one can igno re or di smiss ou t of ha nd the fac t tha t mu ch d epended on the milita ry support given to the cau se of Counte r-Reformation by the Habsburgs, there seem s to be some eviden ce that the program ofre-conver sion was made easie r b y the simil a rity of wo r ship form s a nd , m o re importantly, the d evotio n al m a terial s employed by C zech U traqui sts and C atholics and by Luthera n s and C a tholics in Slovakia . Even thou gh much more research n eed s to be done to substanti a te thi s h yp othesis, it would a ppear , o n the b as is of the evide nce availa ble, th a t a similarity in the tone, indeed , in som e of the contents, of seventeen th-century devotional m a terials, a ided the p rocess of re-Catholicizati on . It also a ided in the creation of a b roader Slavic " imperial " culture alo ngside the Germanic " imperial " culture of the H ab sburg d ynasty. On the on e ha nd , this repl aced the m edieval L a tin culture a nd community w hich h ad existed prior to the R e form a tion a nd fos tered the process of the pa rticul a riza tion of European sta tes. On the o ther ha nd , unlike that of the Hun garia n s, the Sla vic a nd G erma n cultura l fo rm s in sou th -eastern E urope we re not specifically or exclu sively identifi ed with a sin gle territory or sta te . Thu s, they were m o re acceptable to the H a bsburgs who endeavored to en ge nde r a m on g the peopl es over w hi ch they ruled a loyalty to the ir d y n asty and empire. Durin g the seve nteenth cen tury , the n , Slovak a nd Czech a uthors, often unwittingly, m ay h ave actu all y a ided in the creatio n of tha t very d y n astic system w hich , two ce ntu ries �SLOVAXIA 79 later, they would rend asunder over the question of their language rights and the attempts to actualize politically their own ethnic self-consciousness which had been fostered by seventeenth-century devotional literature. Prese nt ed as co mm entary in Panel 99, "Devotional Literature in Seventeenth Century Slovakia , " a t th e AAASS conve ntion in Washington , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 76 SLOVAKIA Some Observations on Devotional Literature and Culture: Response D av id P . D a niel In many resp ects the history of Slovakia during the seventeen th century is an orphan of recent Slavic studies. While there are a few noteworthy exceptions , scholars of Slova k history tend to co nce ntrate their work in the medieval era, co mm en cin g w ith the labors of Cyril a nd M eth od , or they focus their a ttentio n on the er a of the n ational revival and the political, social , a nd cultural d evelopm en ts of the ninetee nth a nd twentieth ce nturies. As a result, the hi sto ry of the Slovaks during the seventeenth century h as bee n in adequately examin ed. In light of this situ ation, the studies of Czech and Slovak d evotional lite rature by Ducreux , Vajda, and Sabo are mo st welcome. While M . E . Ducreu x's study of Catholic Czech h ymna ls of the late sixtee nth a nd seventeenth centuries indicates that over o ne-third of the hymns utilized were adapted or taken over intact from Protestant collect io ns, J. Vajda, in a sketch of the life and work of the most noted Lutheran h ymnodi st, Juraj Tranovsky, notes th at his h ymnal , the Cithara Sanctorum (Harp of the Saints) , h ad a significant impact on the d evotio nal life of Catholic as well as Lutheran Slovaks. G. Sabo, on the other hand, turns hi s attention to one of the very popular personal d evotio na l works of the seventeenth ce ntury, the H ortulus Animae Piae (Little Garden of the Pious Soul) , by the Lutheran Daniel Sina pius-Horcicka . Taken together , these essays proffer a n in structive, if primarily a nticip atory, glimpse of the oft-neglected riches of seventeenth ce ntury Slavic lite rature and, it is to be h oped, should gen erate greater interest in the study of this fascinating period of Slovak history. Certainly more ex te n sive in vest igation s of seventee nth- century Slovak hi story are warranted for it was a n era of momentous cha n ge for the peoples of Hun garia Superioris , Upper Hun gary, the territory roughly con gru ent with tha t of m odern-day Slovakia. It was durin g thi s ce ntury that a m ajority of the overwhelmingly Lutheran Slovaks were SLOV AKIA 77 regained for the faith a nd p ract ice of post-Tridentine C a tholicism b y the Cath olic Coun ter-Refo rm a ti o n . It was durin g this century tha t num erou s, o ft en bl oody conflicts em er ged a s the Habsburgs sought to re-asse r t the ir undispu ted hegem on y ove r all o f Hun gary . But d espite the feroc ity of the rel igiou s a nd poli tical co nflicts o f the era, o r perhaps becau se of them , it w as a ce ntury o f conside ra ble lite rary activity and ri ch in cultu re. A s the intelli ge ntsia, the cl erics a nd teach ers sou ght to reach a nd influen ce the opinio n s a nd allegia n ces o f the Slavic populati o n , a po pul ar ve rn acul a r literature d eveloped . T o be sure, th e C zech Biblictin a or Kralictin a was o ften employed as sort o f a proto -Slovak literary la n gu age. But thi s u se of Czech , albe it in creasingly adapted b y the u se o f Slovaki sm s, se rved both to provide a lexicogra phic foundati on upo n which a mo re p ro per Slovak litera ry la ngu age could be codifi ed du r in g the eigh teenth a nd early ninetee nth ce nturies and to foster intellectu al co ntacts a nd exch a n ges betwee n Slovaks and C zech s. This m eant th at Slovak intellectu als would b e influ en ced b y a nd refl ect the b road er cultu ral and political movem ents of their age. This can be see n w ith pa rticul a r cl a rity in the d evotional literature of the seventee nth ce n tury. It is in works d esigned fo r the u se of the m asses th a t the esse nti al core of the ideology o f a specific group o r ind iv idu al, especially as it perta ins to the particul ar issu es being contested , is clearl y a nd forcefully enuncia ted . At the sa m e time, d evotional liter ature also tend s to codi fy the fo rmal u sage o f a la n gu a ge a nd sta bilize o r , in som e cases, retard its d evelopme n t. Bibles, h ymnbooks, prayerboo ks, catechi sm s, a n d o ther d evotio n al m aterials, therefore, ou ght to be carefull y studied fo r bo th the ir theological a nd the ir cultural or lingui sti c significance. Bu t it is p recisely the fo rm er stud ies th at are lackin g. While ther e have bee n m a n y inves ti gat io n s of the li nguistic as pects o f wo rks produ ced b y Slovaks d urin g the seve nteenth century, the a n alysis o f these works within the b road er co ntex t of Slovak , Slavic, a nd European history has bee n less t ha n a d equ ate. Y et, eve n a cursory examin a tio n of the wo rk s pen ned by Slovaks during thi s ce ntury will indicate tha t they ind eed were aware of a nd pa rticipated in the broad er m ovem en ts of seven tee nth ce ntury cul ture. Writte n durin g the age ge ne rally d eno mina ted b y hi sto ri a n s as Ba roqu e, Slovak a nd Czech d evotio n al wo rks reflect the theological stru ggles, con cern s, a nd emphases of the pe riod . Often w ritte n to edify a nd es pecially to con sole Christi a n s in a wo rld to rn b y 78 SLOVAKIA conflict in whi ch sufferin g had becom e all too fa mili a r , these works a ttempted to build up and confirm individu als in their faith , provide them with spiritual comfort in the face of excru cia ting h a rdships, a nd en coura ge ethical sta ndards of conduct. By examinin g the variou s specific emphases of these works, then , o n e can di scern th e p a rticul ar issu es and problems which were perceived as m ost significant by individual authors. H e nce, they help to identify and elucida te th e ge neral self-pe rceptio n of the age. In additio n , m ore deta iled examin atio n s of seve nteenth-ce ntury literature might also indicate that co mmo nly held histo rical interpretive traditions might have to be aba ndon ed or a t least carefull y reexamined . Tantalizing implications of the study of Du creu x a re first that the traditional view of the decisive decline of a form al, high Slavic langu age and culture in Bohemia a fte r White M ounta in mu st be ab a n doned , and second tha t the process of re-Catholicization of the predominantly P rotesta nt popula tio n mu st be m o re carefull y studied . While no one can igno re or di smiss ou t of ha nd the fac t tha t mu ch d epended on the milita ry support given to the cau se of Counte r-Reformation by the Habsburgs, there seem s to be some eviden ce that the program ofre-conver sion was made easie r b y the simil a rity of wo r ship form s a nd , m o re importantly, the d evotio n al m a terial s employed by C zech U traqui sts and C atholics and by Luthera n s and C a tholics in Slovakia . Even thou gh much more research n eed s to be done to substanti a te thi s h yp othesis, it would a ppear , o n the b as is of the evide nce availa ble, th a t a similarity in the tone, indeed , in som e of the contents, of seventeen th-century devotional m a terials, a ided the p rocess of re-Catholicizati on . It also a ided in the creation of a b roader Slavic " imperial " culture alo ngside the Germanic " imperial " culture of the H ab sburg d ynasty. On the on e ha nd , this repl aced the m edieval L a tin culture a nd community w hich h ad existed prior to the R e form a tion a nd fos tered the process of the pa rticul a riza tion of European sta tes. On the o ther ha nd , unlike that of the Hun garia n s, the Sla vic a nd G erma n cultura l fo rm s in sou th -eastern E urope we re not specifically or exclu sively identifi ed with a sin gle territory or sta te . Thu s, they were m o re acceptable to the H a bsburgs who endeavored to en ge nde r a m on g the peopl es over w hi ch they ruled a loyalty to the ir d y n asty and empire. Durin g the seve nteenth cen tury , the n , Slovak a nd Czech a uthors, often unwittingly, m ay h ave actu all y a ided in the creatio n of tha t very d y n astic system w hich , two ce ntu ries SLOVAXIA 79 later, they would rend asunder over the question of their language rights and the attempts to actualize politically their own ethnic self-consciousness which had been fostered by seventeenth-century devotional literature. Prese nt ed as co mm entary in Panel 99, "Devotional Literature in Seventeenth Century Slovakia , " a t th e AAASS conve ntion in Washington , D.C. on 17 O ctober 1982.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Observations on Devotional Literature and Culture: Response Description An account of the resource David P. Daniel Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 76-79 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniel, David P., 1940-2020 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 SNK https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/9d27e4c968c910c638982af71ec340fe.pdf a82a5dc86909659fac1e351a8a65c7e2 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 51 The Influence of Juraj Tranovsky's Cithara Sanctorum in Slovakia Jaroslav J. Vajda If not a landmark, Juraj Tranovsky's hymnal and prayerbook, Cithara Sanctorum, Pfsne duchovnf stare i nave (The Lyre of the Saints, Spiritual Songs Old and New, 1636), is at least a high point in Slovakia's devotional literature, especially when one includes with it Tranovsky's collection of formal liturgical prayers, Phiala Odoramentorum , Modlitby kfest'anske (A Vial of Fragrances, Christian Prayers , 1635) . Having been reprinted in more than 150 editions at home and abroad since its publication in Levoca in 1636 , the Cithara Sanctorum ranks high in popularity, usage and influence, being probably the most reprinted literary work produced in Slovakia. Our interest is in the place and impact of this book, affectionately known by Tranovsky's Latin name as the Tranoscius, in Slovak devotional literature. The Cithara, like other influential books, is the result of events and forces operating in the 16th and 17th centuries in Central Europe. Juraj Tranovsky was born on March 27, 1592 in the city of Tesfn in Silesia, of Polish parents of the Lutheran faith. 1 His earliest schooling was in a Latin grammar school in Tesfn , from which at the age of 12 he was sent to the German school in Hubin in Lower Lusatia, and from there to a humanist academy in Kolberg, Pomerania, two years later. At the age of 16 he matriculated at the University of Wittenberg, made famous by Luther and his successors. For two years young Tranovsky tutored a family at Trebon castle in southern Bohemia; he taught one year in Prague , and then accepted a position as rector of a school in Holesov, in eastern Moravia. The first traces of his poetic talents appeared in a Latin poem he wrote on the Nativity for St. Nicholas' Church in Prague , at the age of 20. In 1615 he married Anna Polan , with whom he had nine children, five sons and four daughters. Upon his ordina- �52 SLOVAKIA tio n into th e Lutheran mini stry he wa s called to be rector of the school in V alasske M ez irici, n ear H olesov in Moravia. When the local p as tor died , Tra n ovsky was called to take his place, and thu s began hi s 10-year p astor a te in M ezirici . Imm edia tely upo n his assumption of pa ri sh duties , T ran ovsk y embarked on a produ ctive p astoral a nd lite rary career. H e rebuilt the local lite rary socie ty, whi ch also included a choir , wrote a commentary and se ries of se rm o n s o n the Book of R evela tion , and wo rked on a Czech tran sla tion of the Au gsburg Confession of 1530 , a m aj or production which was pu blished in 162 0 . 2 The publication o f T ra n ovsky's tra n sla tion of thi s fo und a ti on al Lutheran symbol coincided with the defeat of the Protesta nts at the Ba ttle of White M ounta in , which effectively ended the free course of P rotestantism in Au stri a. Thou sand s of Luther a n s a nd Bohemi an Brethren fl ed before the wave of victo riou s Catholi c forces ea stward , in to Moravia, then into Slovakia a nd Hun gary, findin g re fu ge for a numbe r of years in central and eastern Slovakia . Amon g those caught in this refugee tide we re Tra novsky , hi s famil y, a nd hi s congregation in M eziri ci. The Lutheran cluster fl ed fro m pl ace to pl ace, u sually seekin g a nd findin g refuge a m o n g Hun ga ri a n Luthe ran n obility and gentry fi ghtin g a rearguard action . In the three years from 162 1 to 1624, Tran ovsky lost three children and was bri efl y imprisoned . F orced to leave M o ravia o n orders of Fe rdin a nd II , T ranovsky fl ed to Bielsko near T esfn , where he found employm ent as court preach er with hi s future p a tro n , Baron J an Szunyogh. T his reprieve la sted two years . In 1627 , with but ten year s of hi s life before him , h e took refu ge fro m furth e r per secutio n in the castles of Buda tfn a nd O rava, wh ere h e also se rved as court preache r for G abriel Illeshazy. Ju st as Luther ' s W artburg refu ge permitted him to transla te the Bible, T ranovsky's castle exil e resulted in th e produ ctio n of a L a tin h ymn collectio n e ntitl ed Odarum sacrarum sive H ym norum . .. libri tres (Three Books of Sac red Odes o r H ymn s, 1629) . By 1632 Tra n ovsky h ad assum ed the pastorate of the church in Liptovsky Sv . Mikul as , whi ch h e se rved until his death five year s la ter. A s if co n sciou s of a n early d emise, Tra novsky wo rked assi du ou sly to fini sh hi s collectio n of fo rm al liturgical p raye rs, the Phiala Odoram entorum , w hi ch a ppeared a year befo re the publi cation of hi s monumental work , the h ymnal Cithara Sanctorum in 1636 , both printed in L evoca. �SLOVAKIA 53 Tranovsky's brief but productive life cam e to an end on M ay 29 , 163 7 at the age of 45, but the results of his work continue to exe rt their influence to this day. Jozef Min arik has pointed out that the Cithara Sanctorum served in the past as a textbook of versification and prosody, and also as a " well spring of na tional consciou sn ess," besides being the '' first step in the creation of national mu sic.'' 3 Its primary impact , however , was and has rem a ined upo n the spiritual life of Slovak Christians. I emphasize Slovak Christians without regard to d enomin ation, for Tranovsky's work was ecumenical in nature and left its mark on Roman Catholic worship life as well. The Cithara was published in Levoca by V avrinec Brewer in 1636 as the answer to a growing need since the battle a t White M ounta in had stopped the production and shipment of C zech hymnals into Slovakia. It and its co mpa nion, the Phiala, were born of necessity . Slovak Lutherans, who comprised some 80 % of the Slovak popula tion a hund red years after the R eform ation ,4 did not have to p rodu ce their own devotional mate rials , since they understood the Czech language and could u se the hymn als of the Bohemian Brethren and C zech Lutheran s, eve n thou gh their theology was not totally in agreem ent with the Hu ssites and Calvinists. In the early R eformati on years , befo re th e edu cation of the laity becam e widespread , the local pastors were in co ntrol of the worship m aterials and u sed loose sheets of pa per to rep roduce the hymns which they considered appropriate for their congregational worship , the hymns being lined out for the congregation by the cantor or choir director. In thi s way a sizable repertory of hymns was developed in local co ngregations, resultin g in m an y ha ndwritten hymn accompanim en t edi tion s, or partitury, as each large Lutheran center p roduced or ad a pted its own . Al so b y this rote system of learnin g, the faithful (prima rily illiterate) acquired a growing devotional treasure, for the hymns were form s of praye r serving the C hri stian s as inspiration , com fo rt , and chall en ge, as did -the P salms of D avid. Those who we re •still illitera te could a m ass a litera ry and d evotional treasu re in a lan gu age they could unders tand , and thus their faith need s were supplied until the Slovak Lutherans could fo rm all y print p rayer books and hymn als of their ow n. T he hym ns we re not u sed alo ne, of cou rse, and we mu st pa use to mention the impo rtance of Luther ' s Sm all Ca techism in the spiritual and devotional life of the Lutheran laity. All children we re required to m emorize this brief exposition of the chief ar ticles of the C hristian faith , �54 SLOVAKIA and it became for many a daily review and anchoring of their faith as they repeated its simple explanations in their morning and evening devotions. In fact, the first printed collections of domestically composed Slovak hymns were appended to translations or reprintings of Luther 's Small Catechism. Thus , the only extant sizeable collection of hymns prior to Tranovsky' s hymnal is that of Daniel Pribis, a contemporary of Tranovsky, who collected and published 116 hymns in 1635, a year before the Cithara appeared. 5 Pribis's hymns did not come out as a separate book, as did Tranovsky's , but as an appendage to a revised translation of Luther's Catechism. This trilogy of books has been the foundation of Lutheran piety since the early years of the Reformation: the Bible , the Catechism, and the hymnal with its prayers. There would have been no such hymnal as the Tranoscius, or later the Catholic hymnal, had it not been for the Reformation and its universal impact on education, worship, and literature; or at least if the Reformation we know had not occurred, there would have had to develop a similar movement toward use of vernacular tongues . But even the Lutheran Reformation did not originate the basic conditions for use of the vernacular in the church and eventually in educational and professional areas. The first step in the eventual production of devotional literature in Slovakia was the introduction of the vernacular among the Slavs in the 9th century. For that major historical contribution, credit must be given to the patron saints of all the Slavs, the Macedonian missionary brothers, Cyril and Methodius, whose invention of the Slavonic alphabet and their translation of the scriptures into a language understandable to the Slavs, as well as their use of the vernacular in the liturgy, were all basic essentials in the ultimate production of vernacular devotional literature . 6 The n ext decisive development was the Hussite reform movement in Bohemia, challenging the dominance of Latin in the Western Church, and capturing the support of the populace by not only appealing to their nationalistic loyalties over against the Roman curia, but by proclaiming the Gospel in the language of the people and giving the faithful hymns to sing in their own tongue . The Reform movement would have died without the subsequent successful Reformation of Martin Luther, who like his Slavic forerunners, insisted on the vernacular in his Deutsche Messe, translated the Scrip- �SLOVAKIA 55 tures into German to make them accessible to the people, and then sang the Reformation into the hearts of the people with his hymns, many of which were set to popular tunes. A century later, Juraj Tranovsky found himself heir of Cyril and Method, Hus, and Luther. He provided the church with devotional literature that answered the needs of the people so well that when the Counter-Reformation set about reclaiming its huge losses, it resorted to the same means . It also used the vernacular and produced a counterpart to the Cithara Sanctorum in the Cantus Catholici, Pisne katholicke latinske a slovenske (Catholic Songs, Latin and Slovak Catholic Songs, 1655) . 7 We can say that the Cantus validated the ecumenical nature of the Cithara and of Pribis's collection by including one-fourth of the hymns in the Cithara and one-third of those in the Pribis collection. The favor was then returned by adding to the Cithara some songs from the Cantus, especially in the edition of 1674, which also carried more native songs of Slovak origin. Finally , the two hymnals had more than a hundred hymns in common. 8 What was the Cithara Sanctorum that made it influential for so many generations of Slovaks, Lutheran and Catholic? It was a product of extraordinary skill and devotion . Tranovsky came well-prepared to the task by both education, native ability, and experience. The quality of his original hymns and translations marks him as a trend-setter and standard-maker for other hymnwriters and compilers of hymnals . His revisions and selections of extant hymns demonstrate his critical ability, and his scholarly approach provides us with the first hymnal that attempts to document the sources of the hymns - except his own , which modesty caused him to offer anonymously in many instances. 9 The very size and quality of the h ymnal advances it decades beyond the normal d evelopment of hymnody. Tranovsky's approach being ecumenical and objective, he included representatives of the earliest church hymnody from the Latin a nd Greek, the contributions of Gregory the Great, the classic h ymns of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and the prayers of a similar common heritage from David through Augustine to Gregory. The 414-hymn Cithara was organized systematically according to the church year and the elements of the " Mass. " Tranovsky suppl ied the church with introits , antiphons, Kyries, Credos , Glorias , and doxologies, as well as hymns for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, �56 SLOVAKIA for co nfession and a bsolution , fo r fest ival s and regular Sunday s of the church year , and fo r variou s spiritu al and temporal need s - in short , an all-purpose, free-s tandin g h ymnal that provided a core of essential worship m aterial s for congregational u se, as contrasted with Pribis's collection of 116 h ymn s designated for u se in schools. In the Cithara Tranovsky drew upon fo ur sources. C omprising onehalf of th e content s, 206 h ymn s are fro m tran sm oravian hymn od y, derived m ostl y from old Czech Lutheran h ymnals by Kunvald sky (1576) and Zavo rka ( 1602). Two-thirds of th ese Tra novsky left almost intact; the rem a ining third he edi ted m ore or less thorou ghly, in som e cases leavin g onl y the openin g line untouched . F rom these sources he also included m elodies. A rich heritage of hi storic Czech K yries and C redos is preserved in th e C ith ara . The second source of h ymns fo r the Cithara was German hymnody . A la rge repertory of class ic R eform ation h ymn s has been saved fo r posteri ty in the C ith ara since they no lon ger a ppear in G erm an hym nals , nor a re they still sun g. The first edition of the Cithara offered 74 tran slati ons of G erm an hymn s, 58 of them by Tranovsky. The third source, dom esti c h ymn od y by Slovak authors in strongly Slovaki zed C zech , was weakl y represented in the C ithara, numberin g only 33. Earlier , Pribis h ad gathered 68 , most of which found their way into later editi on s of the Cith ara . Tranovsky's own contribution to the hymnal was substantial . Some 161 of the 4 14 hymn s have been traced to him , numberin g 93 original composition s, 10 tran slati on s from the L atin , and 58 from the G erm an . This porti on of th e h ymn al alone is large r than m an y h ymn als of th at d ay. Tranovsky regarded hymn s as a fo rm of p rayer . In hi s int rodu ction ot th e Cithara , he said , " H e who sin gs prays twice." T he prima ry purpose of h ymn ody was to glorify G od . ext it had a d idacti c pu r: pose , to establish and nurtu re fa ith . For this reason T ranovsky u sed simple and direct la ngu age and thu s his hymn als were adopted by the people as ex pressions of their fa ith in fa miliar term s, thou gh he employed polished poeti c skill s and a wide variety of forms. T he Phial a Odoramen toru m , the prayer po rtion of Tranovsky's work , provided th e church wi th litu rgical p raye rs as well as prayers th at co uld d oubl e as hom e devotional praye rs, for u se at mornin g and evenin g services and devotions , prayers for u se with the C atechism , fo r regular di vin e services, a nd for festivals of the church years. There were �SLOVAKIA 57 prayers for all so rts and condition s of m en , penitential p salm s, a nd collects. It was a liturgicall y constru cted instrument , refl ectin g the tradition al skeleton of the m ass, as Luther 's M esse did . Th e Phiala served its readers for several editio ns of the Cithara . It was reprinted in 1685 , th en again in the cen ten a ry editio n of 1736 . It was twi ce reprinted in the late 1890's, and in 1898 was tran slated into P olish , but it was replaced in m ost edition s of th e Cith ara by the prayers of K aspa r Neum a nn transla ted fro m the G erm an . In the end , the Phiala p rov ided a m odel for subsequ ent liturgical p rayer books a nd agendas, su ch as H rabovsky's, Krm a n 's, J a kobei's, d own to B raxatori s's. L ater editors of th e Tran osciu s exp a nded the conten ts of th e h ymn al with tra n sla ti o n s of later G erma n h ym nwrite rs, su ch as P a ul G er ha rd , Benj amin Schmolck , and with original hymn s. D efiniti ve edition s were those produ ced by D a ni el Sin a piu s-H o rcicka ( 1684) a nd Sa muel Hru skovic ( 1745), kn own as th e "second Tra n ovsky." H owever , T ran ovsky's influ en ce o n th e church of hi s d ay a nd of subsequ ent generatio ns mu st n ot be rest ri cted to the liturgical and devot ion al resources he provided for the church in the Cithara. His tran sla tion of the Au gsburg C o nfess io n a nd his in sisten ce on doctrin al con fo rmi ty to th e Scriptures a nd the Lutheran Co nfessio n s did as mu ch as a n y oth e r effort to preserve orth od oxy in Slovakia. In thi s respect h e deserved to b e called the " Lu ther of Slovakia." 10 Especiall y hi s C ithara stood as a bulwark of o rthodoxy fo r som e two centuri es again st th e influ en ces of Piet ism and R atio n ali sm whi ch res ul ted in th e p u b lication of the Zpevnfk of 1842 and nu m erou s oth er attempts to d ilu te the doctrin al integrity of Lu theran hymn od y in Slovaki a. C hi efl y two edito rs of the C ith ara, Sa mu el Hru skovic ( 1745) and J an Mocko ( 1895), re-established th e doctrin al norms whi ch had suffered at the h ands of revisio nists of in terve nin g editi o n s.11 As m ent ioned earli er, Tranovsky' s Cith ara was welcomed en thu sias ticall y by Slovak Lu th eran s, a nd its a utho r was adopted as th eir coun trym a n , even th ou gh h e was a P ole by birth a nd li ved m os t of hi s life in Silesia a nd Morav ia. Tranovsky has been faulted for writing in Czech , rather tha n in Slovak . Bu t th at was th e result of th e h istorical co nd itio n s of hi s tim e, a nd h e was sim ply followin g th e practice prevale n t in th e L u theran chu rch , where th e K ralice Bible was the a u thorized ve rsio n of the Luthera n s fo r m a n y years. H oweve r , both P r ibi s's coll ect ion and the Can tus Ca th olici of 1655 were closer to the langu age �58 SLOVAKIA of the people than Tranovsky's Cithara, chiefly because they both adopted many hymns from the folk tradition and were written in a strongly Slovakized Czech. Later editions o f the Cithara incorporated hymns from the Cantus, and subsequ ent editors of the Cithara more and more Slovakized the Czech-language h ymns . Eventually, in this century, Slovak-lan guage suppleme nts were added to the Lutheran h ymnals in Slovakia, and now the entire collection of hymns selected for the newest edition , slated for publication in 1984 , is totally translated into Slovak. In the process of doing so, some of the qualities of the original hymns and tran slations will be lost , just as they are when American and English hymnodists update the King James language of classic English h y mns . Like the Bible, the Tranoscius has continued to exert an influence on Slovak devotional life , congregational a nd private, Lutheran and Catholic. This is shown, for example, in the poet Ivan Krasko 's d escription of his aged mother and h e r piety in his famous poem Vesper dominicae ( 1909) . 12 The Cithara continues to b e a living spiritual force for Slovaks and their descendants. 13 NOTES ' Older biographical sources give April 9, 159 1 as Tranovsky's birthdate , following th e Juli an calendar. According to the Gregorian calendar, the date is March 27, 1592. J an Durovic explains the discrepancy in his Zivotopisjuraja Tranovsk eho (Liptovsky Sv. Mikulas: Tranoscius , 1942), p. 8; see also Jozef Minarik , ed. , Slovenska renesan cna lutn a: Antol6gia zo slovenskej renesancnej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran, 1982), p . 344. ' The Prologus in apocalipsin Divijohannis Apostoli, t.j. Wyklad na zgeweni Swateho J ana Aposstola .. . , thou gh written in 1617 , was not published at the tim e . The manusc ript was tran scribed by M a tej Spratek in 1701 and again by K . Bujok in 1821 ; see Durovic, pp. 89-93 . The Augustana Confessio rursus in Sla vicum versa et m eliorata (The Augsburg C onfession) was published under the C zech title Konfessy Augsspursk a, bud'to W yznanj Wjry swa re ewangelistske .. . in Olomouc, 1620. This is th e di stin cti ve confession of Lutherans since 1530 , to which all churches and pastors mu st subsc ribe as th e tru e and fai thful exposition of doctrin e . 3 M inarik , " Hl'ad ani e pram ei\a zivej vod y ," op . cit ., p . 15 . P eter Brock also emph asizes th at th e Z p evnfk of 1842 helped the Slovaks of the 19th ce ntury keep their na ti on al iden ti ty , in Th e Slovak N ation al Awak ening (Uni vers it y of To ronto Press , 1976) , pp . 76-77 , note 20. 4 David P . D a n iel has an excellent summ ary in En glish of thi s pe riod : " The P rates- �SLOVAKIA 5 ' ' ' ' ' 0 '' " " 59 ta nt R eformati on in Slovak Ethnic Consciousness, " Slovakia, XXVIII ( 1978-79) , 49-65. See also Daniel, The Historiograph y of th e R eformation in Slovakia (No. 10 , Sixtee nth Century Bibliography Seri es, St. Louis: Center for Reform at ion R esearch , 1977 ), 50 pp . D an iel Pribi s, Pisne du ch ovnf, in K atechismus D . H . Luth era z nemeckeho jazyku na slovensk y preloien y od trech superattendencu v roku 16 12 (Levoca, 1634) . For a description , see Minarik, pp. 44-47 and 33 1, who says it is written in " mimoriadne silne slovakizovanymjazykom " (p. 47), i.e. in strongly Slovakized Czech. The word slovensky did not always mean th e Slovak language in the modern sense, though it plainly identified th e people a nd the location. Lutherans have valued the legacy of Cyril and M ethod as much as the R oman Catholics, who regard them as saints . Pavel Safarik, in his definiti ve history of th e Slavs in German in 1823, gives the M acedonian brothers their due, as did J an Kollar , a not her Slovak gia nt , in his schola rl y and poetic works, as well as in all 11 -s tanza h ymns dedica ted to th e memory of Cyril and Method , Pam atajm ei, kfest'ane, No . 32 4 in the Zpevnfk and No . 128 in the Supplement (Pridavok) of the Tran oscius ( 197 1 editions). Ackn owledgm ent of the Saints ' use of the vernacul ar in worship is also mad e in the Latin prolog to th e Catholic hym nal published in 1655. See below and note 7 fo r this Catholic hym nal. Cantus ca th olici was collec ted by the J esu it Benedikt Szolozi ( 1609- 1656) a nd publi shed in Levoca, then reprinted in 1700 in Trnava; see also Mina rik , p. 5 1. H ere too slovenske does not mean the pure Slovak language, thou gh th e Czech is here ve ry strongly Slovakized . Mina rik , p. 51. Therefore schola rs' interpretations and attributions of authorship , whether original or as a translation , do not entirely agree ; e.g. Minarik' s numbers (p. 47) are slightly different from mine given below. D a niel , "Protestant R eformation ," op. cit. , pp. 52-54, has a summ a ry of some of the doctrinal differen ces amo ng Lutherans conce rnin g the Kniha svorn osti (Book of Concord) . The Zpevnfk of 1842, though undertaken with the in tenti on of culling the best hymns from the C ith ara and add ing more hymns from contemporary hymn writers , as well as fillin g in gaps with conce rn s of the 19th ce ntury, aroused the suspi cions a nd resentment of those who found a deliberate toning down of the supernatural, th e miraculous, and otherworldly elements of the C ithara. In many cases·of abbreviated hymns , th e typical 17th ce ntury look heave n wa rd is deleted , the human nat ure of C hrist is stressed above the divin e, and the termino logy of th e J ena University gradua tes replaced that of the ea rli er co nservati ve (and orthodox) Wittenberg schola rs. Some of the Zpevnfk 's positive elements, such as hymns of social conce rn , have been retained in the for m of a suppl ement in the 1971 edition , with some previously om itted classic hymns from the C ith ara . Ivan Krasko, Nox et solitudo (M artin, 1909; rpt. Basn e , M a rtin 1948), pp . 40-41. M y translation into English is give n in An Anthology of Slovak Literature , compiled by Andrew C incura (Ri verside, 19 76), pp . 2 1-22 . Both of my grandmothers were R oman Catholi c, and my mother 's mother , though �60 SLOVAKIA she remained a Catholic all her life, daily used the Cithara for her private devotions and knew ma ny of the hym ns b y heart. In my own pastoral experience, I have tended m a n y a n elderl y Slovak parishioner with little more than a grammar sc hool edu cati on , but whose daily companion , the Tranoscius, had become threadbare from constant use. Also, it was a m oving ex perience on m y last visit to Slova ki a to attend church in Liptovsky Mikulas, where Tranovsky served and died , and to worship with the congregation wh ich dates back to Tra novsky' s tim e. The faithful gathered 15 minutes to a half hour befo re the service began, a nd the members cond ucted an impromptu hymn sing, one beginning a hymn and the others pickin g it up from memory . Th roughout the worship se rvi ces, ma ny did not need to open their hym nals. The nex t evenin g I sat at the table with a pastor and his wife in Bratislava and two laym en in their mid-thirties , beginning the meal with the trad itional mealtime h ymn , and closing the evenin g with a classic h ym n from the first edition of the C ithara . Similar scenes occur among contemporary Slovak Catholics whose hymns remain a livin g part of th eir heritage. Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventee nth Century Slova ki a ," at the AAASS conve nti on in Washington, D .C. on 17 October 1982. � SLOVAKIA 51 The Influence of Juraj Tranovsky's Cithara Sanctorum in Slovakia Jaroslav J. Vajda If not a landmark, Juraj Tranovsky's hymnal and prayerbook, Cithara Sanctorum, Pfsne duchovnf stare i nave (The Lyre of the Saints, Spiritual Songs Old and New, 1636), is at least a high point in Slovakia's devotional literature, especially when one includes with it Tranovsky's collection of formal liturgical prayers, Phiala Odoramentorum , Modlitby kfest'anske (A Vial of Fragrances, Christian Prayers , 1635) . Having been reprinted in more than 150 editions at home and abroad since its publication in Levoca in 1636 , the Cithara Sanctorum ranks high in popularity, usage and influence, being probably the most reprinted literary work produced in Slovakia. Our interest is in the place and impact of this book, affectionately known by Tranovsky's Latin name as the Tranoscius, in Slovak devotional literature. The Cithara, like other influential books, is the result of events and forces operating in the 16th and 17th centuries in Central Europe. Juraj Tranovsky was born on March 27, 1592 in the city of Tesfn in Silesia, of Polish parents of the Lutheran faith. 1 His earliest schooling was in a Latin grammar school in Tesfn , from which at the age of 12 he was sent to the German school in Hubin in Lower Lusatia, and from there to a humanist academy in Kolberg, Pomerania, two years later. At the age of 16 he matriculated at the University of Wittenberg, made famous by Luther and his successors. For two years young Tranovsky tutored a family at Trebon castle in southern Bohemia; he taught one year in Prague , and then accepted a position as rector of a school in Holesov, in eastern Moravia. The first traces of his poetic talents appeared in a Latin poem he wrote on the Nativity for St. Nicholas' Church in Prague , at the age of 20. In 1615 he married Anna Polan , with whom he had nine children, five sons and four daughters. Upon his ordina- �52 SLOVAKIA tio n into th e Lutheran mini stry he wa s called to be rector of the school in V alasske M ez irici, n ear H olesov in Moravia. When the local p as tor died , Tra n ovsky was called to take his place, and thu s began hi s 10-year p astor a te in M ezirici . Imm edia tely upo n his assumption of pa ri sh duties , T ran ovsk y embarked on a produ ctive p astoral a nd lite rary career. H e rebuilt the local lite rary socie ty, whi ch also included a choir , wrote a commentary and se ries of se rm o n s o n the Book of R evela tion , and wo rked on a Czech tran sla tion of the Au gsburg Confession of 1530 , a m aj or production which was pu blished in 162 0 . 2 The publication o f T ra n ovsky's tra n sla tion of thi s fo und a ti on al Lutheran symbol coincided with the defeat of the Protesta nts at the Ba ttle of White M ounta in , which effectively ended the free course of P rotestantism in Au stri a. Thou sand s of Luther a n s a nd Bohemi an Brethren fl ed before the wave of victo riou s Catholi c forces ea stward , in to Moravia, then into Slovakia a nd Hun gary, findin g re fu ge for a numbe r of years in central and eastern Slovakia . Amon g those caught in this refugee tide we re Tra novsky , hi s famil y, a nd hi s congregation in M eziri ci. The Lutheran cluster fl ed fro m pl ace to pl ace, u sually seekin g a nd findin g refuge a m o n g Hun ga ri a n Luthe ran n obility and gentry fi ghtin g a rearguard action . In the three years from 162 1 to 1624, Tran ovsky lost three children and was bri efl y imprisoned . F orced to leave M o ravia o n orders of Fe rdin a nd II , T ranovsky fl ed to Bielsko near T esfn , where he found employm ent as court preach er with hi s future p a tro n , Baron J an Szunyogh. T his reprieve la sted two years . In 1627 , with but ten year s of hi s life before him , h e took refu ge fro m furth e r per secutio n in the castles of Buda tfn a nd O rava, wh ere h e also se rved as court preache r for G abriel Illeshazy. Ju st as Luther ' s W artburg refu ge permitted him to transla te the Bible, T ranovsky's castle exil e resulted in th e produ ctio n of a L a tin h ymn collectio n e ntitl ed Odarum sacrarum sive H ym norum . .. libri tres (Three Books of Sac red Odes o r H ymn s, 1629) . By 1632 Tra n ovsky h ad assum ed the pastorate of the church in Liptovsky Sv . Mikul as , whi ch h e se rved until his death five year s la ter. A s if co n sciou s of a n early d emise, Tra novsky wo rked assi du ou sly to fini sh hi s collectio n of fo rm al liturgical p raye rs, the Phiala Odoram entorum , w hi ch a ppeared a year befo re the publi cation of hi s monumental work , the h ymnal Cithara Sanctorum in 1636 , both printed in L evoca. �SLOVAKIA 53 Tranovsky's brief but productive life cam e to an end on M ay 29 , 163 7 at the age of 45, but the results of his work continue to exe rt their influence to this day. Jozef Min arik has pointed out that the Cithara Sanctorum served in the past as a textbook of versification and prosody, and also as a " well spring of na tional consciou sn ess," besides being the '' first step in the creation of national mu sic.'' 3 Its primary impact , however , was and has rem a ined upo n the spiritual life of Slovak Christians. I emphasize Slovak Christians without regard to d enomin ation, for Tranovsky's work was ecumenical in nature and left its mark on Roman Catholic worship life as well. The Cithara was published in Levoca by V avrinec Brewer in 1636 as the answer to a growing need since the battle a t White M ounta in had stopped the production and shipment of C zech hymnals into Slovakia. It and its co mpa nion, the Phiala, were born of necessity . Slovak Lutherans, who comprised some 80 % of the Slovak popula tion a hund red years after the R eform ation ,4 did not have to p rodu ce their own devotional mate rials , since they understood the Czech language and could u se the hymn als of the Bohemian Brethren and C zech Lutheran s, eve n thou gh their theology was not totally in agreem ent with the Hu ssites and Calvinists. In the early R eformati on years , befo re th e edu cation of the laity becam e widespread , the local pastors were in co ntrol of the worship m aterials and u sed loose sheets of pa per to rep roduce the hymns which they considered appropriate for their congregational worship , the hymns being lined out for the congregation by the cantor or choir director. In thi s way a sizable repertory of hymns was developed in local co ngregations, resultin g in m an y ha ndwritten hymn accompanim en t edi tion s, or partitury, as each large Lutheran center p roduced or ad a pted its own . Al so b y this rote system of learnin g, the faithful (prima rily illiterate) acquired a growing devotional treasure, for the hymns were form s of praye r serving the C hri stian s as inspiration , com fo rt , and chall en ge, as did -the P salms of D avid. Those who we re •still illitera te could a m ass a litera ry and d evotional treasu re in a lan gu age they could unders tand , and thus their faith need s were supplied until the Slovak Lutherans could fo rm all y print p rayer books and hymn als of their ow n. T he hym ns we re not u sed alo ne, of cou rse, and we mu st pa use to mention the impo rtance of Luther ' s Sm all Ca techism in the spiritual and devotional life of the Lutheran laity. All children we re required to m emorize this brief exposition of the chief ar ticles of the C hristian faith , �54 SLOVAKIA and it became for many a daily review and anchoring of their faith as they repeated its simple explanations in their morning and evening devotions. In fact, the first printed collections of domestically composed Slovak hymns were appended to translations or reprintings of Luther 's Small Catechism. Thus , the only extant sizeable collection of hymns prior to Tranovsky' s hymnal is that of Daniel Pribis, a contemporary of Tranovsky, who collected and published 116 hymns in 1635, a year before the Cithara appeared. 5 Pribis's hymns did not come out as a separate book, as did Tranovsky's , but as an appendage to a revised translation of Luther's Catechism. This trilogy of books has been the foundation of Lutheran piety since the early years of the Reformation: the Bible , the Catechism, and the hymnal with its prayers. There would have been no such hymnal as the Tranoscius, or later the Catholic hymnal, had it not been for the Reformation and its universal impact on education, worship, and literature; or at least if the Reformation we know had not occurred, there would have had to develop a similar movement toward use of vernacular tongues . But even the Lutheran Reformation did not originate the basic conditions for use of the vernacular in the church and eventually in educational and professional areas. The first step in the eventual production of devotional literature in Slovakia was the introduction of the vernacular among the Slavs in the 9th century. For that major historical contribution, credit must be given to the patron saints of all the Slavs, the Macedonian missionary brothers, Cyril and Methodius, whose invention of the Slavonic alphabet and their translation of the scriptures into a language understandable to the Slavs, as well as their use of the vernacular in the liturgy, were all basic essentials in the ultimate production of vernacular devotional literature . 6 The n ext decisive development was the Hussite reform movement in Bohemia, challenging the dominance of Latin in the Western Church, and capturing the support of the populace by not only appealing to their nationalistic loyalties over against the Roman curia, but by proclaiming the Gospel in the language of the people and giving the faithful hymns to sing in their own tongue . The Reform movement would have died without the subsequent successful Reformation of Martin Luther, who like his Slavic forerunners, insisted on the vernacular in his Deutsche Messe, translated the Scrip- �SLOVAKIA 55 tures into German to make them accessible to the people, and then sang the Reformation into the hearts of the people with his hymns, many of which were set to popular tunes. A century later, Juraj Tranovsky found himself heir of Cyril and Method, Hus, and Luther. He provided the church with devotional literature that answered the needs of the people so well that when the Counter-Reformation set about reclaiming its huge losses, it resorted to the same means . It also used the vernacular and produced a counterpart to the Cithara Sanctorum in the Cantus Catholici, Pisne katholicke latinske a slovenske (Catholic Songs, Latin and Slovak Catholic Songs, 1655) . 7 We can say that the Cantus validated the ecumenical nature of the Cithara and of Pribis's collection by including one-fourth of the hymns in the Cithara and one-third of those in the Pribis collection. The favor was then returned by adding to the Cithara some songs from the Cantus, especially in the edition of 1674, which also carried more native songs of Slovak origin. Finally , the two hymnals had more than a hundred hymns in common. 8 What was the Cithara Sanctorum that made it influential for so many generations of Slovaks, Lutheran and Catholic? It was a product of extraordinary skill and devotion . Tranovsky came well-prepared to the task by both education, native ability, and experience. The quality of his original hymns and translations marks him as a trend-setter and standard-maker for other hymnwriters and compilers of hymnals . His revisions and selections of extant hymns demonstrate his critical ability, and his scholarly approach provides us with the first hymnal that attempts to document the sources of the hymns - except his own , which modesty caused him to offer anonymously in many instances. 9 The very size and quality of the h ymnal advances it decades beyond the normal d evelopment of hymnody. Tranovsky's approach being ecumenical and objective, he included representatives of the earliest church hymnody from the Latin a nd Greek, the contributions of Gregory the Great, the classic h ymns of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and the prayers of a similar common heritage from David through Augustine to Gregory. The 414-hymn Cithara was organized systematically according to the church year and the elements of the " Mass. " Tranovsky suppl ied the church with introits , antiphons, Kyries, Credos , Glorias , and doxologies, as well as hymns for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, �56 SLOVAKIA for co nfession and a bsolution , fo r fest ival s and regular Sunday s of the church year , and fo r variou s spiritu al and temporal need s - in short , an all-purpose, free-s tandin g h ymnal that provided a core of essential worship m aterial s for congregational u se, as contrasted with Pribis's collection of 116 h ymn s designated for u se in schools. In the Cithara Tranovsky drew upon fo ur sources. C omprising onehalf of th e content s, 206 h ymn s are fro m tran sm oravian hymn od y, derived m ostl y from old Czech Lutheran h ymnals by Kunvald sky (1576) and Zavo rka ( 1602). Two-thirds of th ese Tra novsky left almost intact; the rem a ining third he edi ted m ore or less thorou ghly, in som e cases leavin g onl y the openin g line untouched . F rom these sources he also included m elodies. A rich heritage of hi storic Czech K yries and C redos is preserved in th e C ith ara . The second source of h ymns fo r the Cithara was German hymnody . A la rge repertory of class ic R eform ation h ymn s has been saved fo r posteri ty in the C ith ara since they no lon ger a ppear in G erm an hym nals , nor a re they still sun g. The first edition of the Cithara offered 74 tran slati ons of G erm an hymn s, 58 of them by Tranovsky. The third source, dom esti c h ymn od y by Slovak authors in strongly Slovaki zed C zech , was weakl y represented in the C ithara, numberin g only 33. Earlier , Pribis h ad gathered 68 , most of which found their way into later editi on s of the Cith ara . Tranovsky's own contribution to the hymnal was substantial . Some 161 of the 4 14 hymn s have been traced to him , numberin g 93 original composition s, 10 tran slati on s from the L atin , and 58 from the G erm an . This porti on of th e h ymn al alone is large r than m an y h ymn als of th at d ay. Tranovsky regarded hymn s as a fo rm of p rayer . In hi s int rodu ction ot th e Cithara , he said , " H e who sin gs prays twice." T he prima ry purpose of h ymn ody was to glorify G od . ext it had a d idacti c pu r: pose , to establish and nurtu re fa ith . For this reason T ranovsky u sed simple and direct la ngu age and thu s his hymn als were adopted by the people as ex pressions of their fa ith in fa miliar term s, thou gh he employed polished poeti c skill s and a wide variety of forms. T he Phial a Odoramen toru m , the prayer po rtion of Tranovsky's work , provided th e church wi th litu rgical p raye rs as well as prayers th at co uld d oubl e as hom e devotional praye rs, for u se at mornin g and evenin g services and devotions , prayers for u se with the C atechism , fo r regular di vin e services, a nd for festivals of the church years. There were �SLOVAKIA 57 prayers for all so rts and condition s of m en , penitential p salm s, a nd collects. It was a liturgicall y constru cted instrument , refl ectin g the tradition al skeleton of the m ass, as Luther 's M esse did . Th e Phiala served its readers for several editio ns of the Cithara . It was reprinted in 1685 , th en again in the cen ten a ry editio n of 1736 . It was twi ce reprinted in the late 1890's, and in 1898 was tran slated into P olish , but it was replaced in m ost edition s of th e Cith ara by the prayers of K aspa r Neum a nn transla ted fro m the G erm an . In the end , the Phiala p rov ided a m odel for subsequ ent liturgical p rayer books a nd agendas, su ch as H rabovsky's, Krm a n 's, J a kobei's, d own to B raxatori s's. L ater editors of th e Tran osciu s exp a nded the conten ts of th e h ymn al with tra n sla ti o n s of later G erma n h ym nwrite rs, su ch as P a ul G er ha rd , Benj amin Schmolck , and with original hymn s. D efiniti ve edition s were those produ ced by D a ni el Sin a piu s-H o rcicka ( 1684) a nd Sa muel Hru skovic ( 1745), kn own as th e "second Tra n ovsky." H owever , T ran ovsky's influ en ce o n th e church of hi s d ay a nd of subsequ ent generatio ns mu st n ot be rest ri cted to the liturgical and devot ion al resources he provided for the church in the Cithara. His tran sla tion of the Au gsburg C o nfess io n a nd his in sisten ce on doctrin al con fo rmi ty to th e Scriptures a nd the Lutheran Co nfessio n s did as mu ch as a n y oth e r effort to preserve orth od oxy in Slovakia. In thi s respect h e deserved to b e called the " Lu ther of Slovakia." 10 Especiall y hi s C ithara stood as a bulwark of o rthodoxy fo r som e two centuri es again st th e influ en ces of Piet ism and R atio n ali sm whi ch res ul ted in th e p u b lication of the Zpevnfk of 1842 and nu m erou s oth er attempts to d ilu te the doctrin al integrity of Lu theran hymn od y in Slovaki a. C hi efl y two edito rs of the C ith ara, Sa mu el Hru skovic ( 1745) and J an Mocko ( 1895), re-established th e doctrin al norms whi ch had suffered at the h ands of revisio nists of in terve nin g editi o n s.11 As m ent ioned earli er, Tranovsky' s Cith ara was welcomed en thu sias ticall y by Slovak Lu th eran s, a nd its a utho r was adopted as th eir coun trym a n , even th ou gh h e was a P ole by birth a nd li ved m os t of hi s life in Silesia a nd Morav ia. Tranovsky has been faulted for writing in Czech , rather tha n in Slovak . Bu t th at was th e result of th e h istorical co nd itio n s of hi s tim e, a nd h e was sim ply followin g th e practice prevale n t in th e L u theran chu rch , where th e K ralice Bible was the a u thorized ve rsio n of the Luthera n s fo r m a n y years. H oweve r , both P r ibi s's coll ect ion and the Can tus Ca th olici of 1655 were closer to the langu age �58 SLOVAKIA of the people than Tranovsky's Cithara, chiefly because they both adopted many hymns from the folk tradition and were written in a strongly Slovakized Czech. Later editions o f the Cithara incorporated hymns from the Cantus, and subsequ ent editors of the Cithara more and more Slovakized the Czech-language h ymns . Eventually, in this century, Slovak-lan guage suppleme nts were added to the Lutheran h ymnals in Slovakia, and now the entire collection of hymns selected for the newest edition , slated for publication in 1984 , is totally translated into Slovak. In the process of doing so, some of the qualities of the original hymns and tran slations will be lost , just as they are when American and English hymnodists update the King James language of classic English h y mns . Like the Bible, the Tranoscius has continued to exert an influence on Slovak devotional life , congregational a nd private, Lutheran and Catholic. This is shown, for example, in the poet Ivan Krasko 's d escription of his aged mother and h e r piety in his famous poem Vesper dominicae ( 1909) . 12 The Cithara continues to b e a living spiritual force for Slovaks and their descendants. 13 NOTES ' Older biographical sources give April 9, 159 1 as Tranovsky's birthdate , following th e Juli an calendar. According to the Gregorian calendar, the date is March 27, 1592. J an Durovic explains the discrepancy in his Zivotopisjuraja Tranovsk eho (Liptovsky Sv. Mikulas: Tranoscius , 1942), p. 8; see also Jozef Minarik , ed. , Slovenska renesan cna lutn a: Antol6gia zo slovenskej renesancnej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran, 1982), p . 344. ' The Prologus in apocalipsin Divijohannis Apostoli, t.j. Wyklad na zgeweni Swateho J ana Aposstola .. . , thou gh written in 1617 , was not published at the tim e . The manusc ript was tran scribed by M a tej Spratek in 1701 and again by K . Bujok in 1821 ; see Durovic, pp. 89-93 . The Augustana Confessio rursus in Sla vicum versa et m eliorata (The Augsburg C onfession) was published under the C zech title Konfessy Augsspursk a, bud'to W yznanj Wjry swa re ewangelistske .. . in Olomouc, 1620. This is th e di stin cti ve confession of Lutherans since 1530 , to which all churches and pastors mu st subsc ribe as th e tru e and fai thful exposition of doctrin e . 3 M inarik , " Hl'ad ani e pram ei\a zivej vod y ," op . cit ., p . 15 . P eter Brock also emph asizes th at th e Z p evnfk of 1842 helped the Slovaks of the 19th ce ntury keep their na ti on al iden ti ty , in Th e Slovak N ation al Awak ening (Uni vers it y of To ronto Press , 1976) , pp . 76-77 , note 20. 4 David P . D a n iel has an excellent summ ary in En glish of thi s pe riod : " The P rates- �SLOVAKIA 5 ' ' ' ' ' 0 '' " " 59 ta nt R eformati on in Slovak Ethnic Consciousness, " Slovakia, XXVIII ( 1978-79) , 49-65. See also Daniel, The Historiograph y of th e R eformation in Slovakia (No. 10 , Sixtee nth Century Bibliography Seri es, St. Louis: Center for Reform at ion R esearch , 1977 ), 50 pp . D an iel Pribi s, Pisne du ch ovnf, in K atechismus D . H . Luth era z nemeckeho jazyku na slovensk y preloien y od trech superattendencu v roku 16 12 (Levoca, 1634) . For a description , see Minarik, pp. 44-47 and 33 1, who says it is written in " mimoriadne silne slovakizovanymjazykom " (p. 47), i.e. in strongly Slovakized Czech. The word slovensky did not always mean th e Slovak language in the modern sense, though it plainly identified th e people a nd the location. Lutherans have valued the legacy of Cyril and M ethod as much as the R oman Catholics, who regard them as saints . Pavel Safarik, in his definiti ve history of th e Slavs in German in 1823, gives the M acedonian brothers their due, as did J an Kollar , a not her Slovak gia nt , in his schola rl y and poetic works, as well as in all 11 -s tanza h ymns dedica ted to th e memory of Cyril and Method , Pam atajm ei, kfest'ane, No . 32 4 in the Zpevnfk and No . 128 in the Supplement (Pridavok) of the Tran oscius ( 197 1 editions). Ackn owledgm ent of the Saints ' use of the vernacul ar in worship is also mad e in the Latin prolog to th e Catholic hym nal published in 1655. See below and note 7 fo r this Catholic hym nal. Cantus ca th olici was collec ted by the J esu it Benedikt Szolozi ( 1609- 1656) a nd publi shed in Levoca, then reprinted in 1700 in Trnava; see also Mina rik , p. 5 1. H ere too slovenske does not mean the pure Slovak language, thou gh th e Czech is here ve ry strongly Slovakized . Mina rik , p. 51. Therefore schola rs' interpretations and attributions of authorship , whether original or as a translation , do not entirely agree ; e.g. Minarik' s numbers (p. 47) are slightly different from mine given below. D a niel , "Protestant R eformation ," op. cit. , pp. 52-54, has a summ a ry of some of the doctrinal differen ces amo ng Lutherans conce rnin g the Kniha svorn osti (Book of Concord) . The Zpevnfk of 1842, though undertaken with the in tenti on of culling the best hymns from the C ith ara and add ing more hymns from contemporary hymn writers , as well as fillin g in gaps with conce rn s of the 19th ce ntury, aroused the suspi cions a nd resentment of those who found a deliberate toning down of the supernatural, th e miraculous, and otherworldly elements of the C ithara. In many cases·of abbreviated hymns , th e typical 17th ce ntury look heave n wa rd is deleted , the human nat ure of C hrist is stressed above the divin e, and the termino logy of th e J ena University gradua tes replaced that of the ea rli er co nservati ve (and orthodox) Wittenberg schola rs. Some of the Zpevnfk 's positive elements, such as hymns of social conce rn , have been retained in the for m of a suppl ement in the 1971 edition , with some previously om itted classic hymns from the C ith ara . Ivan Krasko, Nox et solitudo (M artin, 1909; rpt. Basn e , M a rtin 1948), pp . 40-41. M y translation into English is give n in An Anthology of Slovak Literature , compiled by Andrew C incura (Ri verside, 19 76), pp . 2 1-22 . Both of my grandmothers were R oman Catholi c, and my mother 's mother , though �60 SLOVAKIA she remained a Catholic all her life, daily used the Cithara for her private devotions and knew ma ny of the hym ns b y heart. In my own pastoral experience, I have tended m a n y a n elderl y Slovak parishioner with little more than a grammar sc hool edu cati on , but whose daily companion , the Tranoscius, had become threadbare from constant use. Also, it was a m oving ex perience on m y last visit to Slova ki a to attend church in Liptovsky Mikulas, where Tranovsky served and died , and to worship with the congregation wh ich dates back to Tra novsky' s tim e. The faithful gathered 15 minutes to a half hour befo re the service began, a nd the members cond ucted an impromptu hymn sing, one beginning a hymn and the others pickin g it up from memory . Th roughout the worship se rvi ces, ma ny did not need to open their hym nals. The nex t evenin g I sat at the table with a pastor and his wife in Bratislava and two laym en in their mid-thirties , beginning the meal with the trad itional mealtime h ymn , and closing the evenin g with a classic h ym n from the first edition of the C ithara . Similar scenes occur among contemporary Slovak Catholics whose hymns remain a livin g part of th eir heritage. Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventee nth Century Slova ki a ," at the AAASS conve nti on in Washington, D .C. on 17 October 1982. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 51 The Influence of Juraj Tranovsky's Cithara Sanctorum in Slovakia Jaroslav J. Vajda If not a landmark, Juraj Tranovsky's hymnal and prayerbook, Cithara Sanctorum, Pfsne duchovnf stare i nave (The Lyre of the Saints, Spiritual Songs Old and New, 1636), is at least a high point in Slovakia's devotional literature, especially when one includes with it Tranovsky's collection of formal liturgical prayers, Phiala Odoramentorum , Modlitby kfest'anske (A Vial of Fragrances, Christian Prayers , 1635) . Having been reprinted in more than 150 editions at home and abroad since its publication in Levoca in 1636 , the Cithara Sanctorum ranks high in popularity, usage and influence, being probably the most reprinted literary work produced in Slovakia. Our interest is in the place and impact of this book, affectionately known by Tranovsky's Latin name as the Tranoscius, in Slovak devotional literature. The Cithara, like other influential books, is the result of events and forces operating in the 16th and 17th centuries in Central Europe. Juraj Tranovsky was born on March 27, 1592 in the city of Tesfn in Silesia, of Polish parents of the Lutheran faith. 1 His earliest schooling was in a Latin grammar school in Tesfn , from which at the age of 12 he was sent to the German school in Hubin in Lower Lusatia, and from there to a humanist academy in Kolberg, Pomerania, two years later. At the age of 16 he matriculated at the University of Wittenberg, made famous by Luther and his successors. For two years young Tranovsky tutored a family at Trebon castle in southern Bohemia; he taught one year in Prague , and then accepted a position as rector of a school in Holesov, in eastern Moravia. The first traces of his poetic talents appeared in a Latin poem he wrote on the Nativity for St. Nicholas' Church in Prague , at the age of 20. In 1615 he married Anna Polan , with whom he had nine children, five sons and four daughters. Upon his ordina- 52 SLOVAKIA tio n into th e Lutheran mini stry he wa s called to be rector of the school in V alasske M ez irici, n ear H olesov in Moravia. When the local p as tor died , Tra n ovsky was called to take his place, and thu s began hi s 10-year p astor a te in M ezirici . Imm edia tely upo n his assumption of pa ri sh duties , T ran ovsk y embarked on a produ ctive p astoral a nd lite rary career. H e rebuilt the local lite rary socie ty, whi ch also included a choir , wrote a commentary and se ries of se rm o n s o n the Book of R evela tion , and wo rked on a Czech tran sla tion of the Au gsburg Confession of 1530 , a m aj or production which was pu blished in 162 0 . 2 The publication o f T ra n ovsky's tra n sla tion of thi s fo und a ti on al Lutheran symbol coincided with the defeat of the Protesta nts at the Ba ttle of White M ounta in , which effectively ended the free course of P rotestantism in Au stri a. Thou sand s of Luther a n s a nd Bohemi an Brethren fl ed before the wave of victo riou s Catholi c forces ea stward , in to Moravia, then into Slovakia a nd Hun gary, findin g re fu ge for a numbe r of years in central and eastern Slovakia . Amon g those caught in this refugee tide we re Tra novsky , hi s famil y, a nd hi s congregation in M eziri ci. The Lutheran cluster fl ed fro m pl ace to pl ace, u sually seekin g a nd findin g refuge a m o n g Hun ga ri a n Luthe ran n obility and gentry fi ghtin g a rearguard action . In the three years from 162 1 to 1624, Tran ovsky lost three children and was bri efl y imprisoned . F orced to leave M o ravia o n orders of Fe rdin a nd II , T ranovsky fl ed to Bielsko near T esfn , where he found employm ent as court preach er with hi s future p a tro n , Baron J an Szunyogh. T his reprieve la sted two years . In 1627 , with but ten year s of hi s life before him , h e took refu ge fro m furth e r per secutio n in the castles of Buda tfn a nd O rava, wh ere h e also se rved as court preache r for G abriel Illeshazy. Ju st as Luther ' s W artburg refu ge permitted him to transla te the Bible, T ranovsky's castle exil e resulted in th e produ ctio n of a L a tin h ymn collectio n e ntitl ed Odarum sacrarum sive H ym norum . .. libri tres (Three Books of Sac red Odes o r H ymn s, 1629) . By 1632 Tra n ovsky h ad assum ed the pastorate of the church in Liptovsky Sv . Mikul as , whi ch h e se rved until his death five year s la ter. A s if co n sciou s of a n early d emise, Tra novsky wo rked assi du ou sly to fini sh hi s collectio n of fo rm al liturgical p raye rs, the Phiala Odoram entorum , w hi ch a ppeared a year befo re the publi cation of hi s monumental work , the h ymnal Cithara Sanctorum in 1636 , both printed in L evoca. SLOVAKIA 53 Tranovsky's brief but productive life cam e to an end on M ay 29 , 163 7 at the age of 45, but the results of his work continue to exe rt their influence to this day. Jozef Min arik has pointed out that the Cithara Sanctorum served in the past as a textbook of versification and prosody, and also as a " well spring of na tional consciou sn ess," besides being the '' first step in the creation of national mu sic.'' 3 Its primary impact , however , was and has rem a ined upo n the spiritual life of Slovak Christians. I emphasize Slovak Christians without regard to d enomin ation, for Tranovsky's work was ecumenical in nature and left its mark on Roman Catholic worship life as well. The Cithara was published in Levoca by V avrinec Brewer in 1636 as the answer to a growing need since the battle a t White M ounta in had stopped the production and shipment of C zech hymnals into Slovakia. It and its co mpa nion, the Phiala, were born of necessity . Slovak Lutherans, who comprised some 80 % of the Slovak popula tion a hund red years after the R eform ation ,4 did not have to p rodu ce their own devotional mate rials , since they understood the Czech language and could u se the hymn als of the Bohemian Brethren and C zech Lutheran s, eve n thou gh their theology was not totally in agreem ent with the Hu ssites and Calvinists. In the early R eformati on years , befo re th e edu cation of the laity becam e widespread , the local pastors were in co ntrol of the worship m aterials and u sed loose sheets of pa per to rep roduce the hymns which they considered appropriate for their congregational worship , the hymns being lined out for the congregation by the cantor or choir director. In thi s way a sizable repertory of hymns was developed in local co ngregations, resultin g in m an y ha ndwritten hymn accompanim en t edi tion s, or partitury, as each large Lutheran center p roduced or ad a pted its own . Al so b y this rote system of learnin g, the faithful (prima rily illiterate) acquired a growing devotional treasure, for the hymns were form s of praye r serving the C hri stian s as inspiration , com fo rt , and chall en ge, as did -the P salms of D avid. Those who we re •still illitera te could a m ass a litera ry and d evotional treasu re in a lan gu age they could unders tand , and thus their faith need s were supplied until the Slovak Lutherans could fo rm all y print p rayer books and hymn als of their ow n. T he hym ns we re not u sed alo ne, of cou rse, and we mu st pa use to mention the impo rtance of Luther ' s Sm all Ca techism in the spiritual and devotional life of the Lutheran laity. All children we re required to m emorize this brief exposition of the chief ar ticles of the C hristian faith , 54 SLOVAKIA and it became for many a daily review and anchoring of their faith as they repeated its simple explanations in their morning and evening devotions. In fact, the first printed collections of domestically composed Slovak hymns were appended to translations or reprintings of Luther 's Small Catechism. Thus , the only extant sizeable collection of hymns prior to Tranovsky' s hymnal is that of Daniel Pribis, a contemporary of Tranovsky, who collected and published 116 hymns in 1635, a year before the Cithara appeared. 5 Pribis's hymns did not come out as a separate book, as did Tranovsky's , but as an appendage to a revised translation of Luther's Catechism. This trilogy of books has been the foundation of Lutheran piety since the early years of the Reformation: the Bible , the Catechism, and the hymnal with its prayers. There would have been no such hymnal as the Tranoscius, or later the Catholic hymnal, had it not been for the Reformation and its universal impact on education, worship, and literature; or at least if the Reformation we know had not occurred, there would have had to develop a similar movement toward use of vernacular tongues . But even the Lutheran Reformation did not originate the basic conditions for use of the vernacular in the church and eventually in educational and professional areas. The first step in the eventual production of devotional literature in Slovakia was the introduction of the vernacular among the Slavs in the 9th century. For that major historical contribution, credit must be given to the patron saints of all the Slavs, the Macedonian missionary brothers, Cyril and Methodius, whose invention of the Slavonic alphabet and their translation of the scriptures into a language understandable to the Slavs, as well as their use of the vernacular in the liturgy, were all basic essentials in the ultimate production of vernacular devotional literature . 6 The n ext decisive development was the Hussite reform movement in Bohemia, challenging the dominance of Latin in the Western Church, and capturing the support of the populace by not only appealing to their nationalistic loyalties over against the Roman curia, but by proclaiming the Gospel in the language of the people and giving the faithful hymns to sing in their own tongue . The Reform movement would have died without the subsequent successful Reformation of Martin Luther, who like his Slavic forerunners, insisted on the vernacular in his Deutsche Messe, translated the Scrip- SLOVAKIA 55 tures into German to make them accessible to the people, and then sang the Reformation into the hearts of the people with his hymns, many of which were set to popular tunes. A century later, Juraj Tranovsky found himself heir of Cyril and Method, Hus, and Luther. He provided the church with devotional literature that answered the needs of the people so well that when the Counter-Reformation set about reclaiming its huge losses, it resorted to the same means . It also used the vernacular and produced a counterpart to the Cithara Sanctorum in the Cantus Catholici, Pisne katholicke latinske a slovenske (Catholic Songs, Latin and Slovak Catholic Songs, 1655) . 7 We can say that the Cantus validated the ecumenical nature of the Cithara and of Pribis's collection by including one-fourth of the hymns in the Cithara and one-third of those in the Pribis collection. The favor was then returned by adding to the Cithara some songs from the Cantus, especially in the edition of 1674, which also carried more native songs of Slovak origin. Finally , the two hymnals had more than a hundred hymns in common. 8 What was the Cithara Sanctorum that made it influential for so many generations of Slovaks, Lutheran and Catholic? It was a product of extraordinary skill and devotion . Tranovsky came well-prepared to the task by both education, native ability, and experience. The quality of his original hymns and translations marks him as a trend-setter and standard-maker for other hymnwriters and compilers of hymnals . His revisions and selections of extant hymns demonstrate his critical ability, and his scholarly approach provides us with the first hymnal that attempts to document the sources of the hymns - except his own , which modesty caused him to offer anonymously in many instances. 9 The very size and quality of the h ymnal advances it decades beyond the normal d evelopment of hymnody. Tranovsky's approach being ecumenical and objective, he included representatives of the earliest church hymnody from the Latin a nd Greek, the contributions of Gregory the Great, the classic h ymns of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and the prayers of a similar common heritage from David through Augustine to Gregory. The 414-hymn Cithara was organized systematically according to the church year and the elements of the " Mass. " Tranovsky suppl ied the church with introits , antiphons, Kyries, Credos , Glorias , and doxologies, as well as hymns for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, 56 SLOVAKIA for co nfession and a bsolution , fo r fest ival s and regular Sunday s of the church year , and fo r variou s spiritu al and temporal need s - in short , an all-purpose, free-s tandin g h ymnal that provided a core of essential worship m aterial s for congregational u se, as contrasted with Pribis's collection of 116 h ymn s designated for u se in schools. In the Cithara Tranovsky drew upon fo ur sources. C omprising onehalf of th e content s, 206 h ymn s are fro m tran sm oravian hymn od y, derived m ostl y from old Czech Lutheran h ymnals by Kunvald sky (1576) and Zavo rka ( 1602). Two-thirds of th ese Tra novsky left almost intact; the rem a ining third he edi ted m ore or less thorou ghly, in som e cases leavin g onl y the openin g line untouched . F rom these sources he also included m elodies. A rich heritage of hi storic Czech K yries and C redos is preserved in th e C ith ara . The second source of h ymns fo r the Cithara was German hymnody . A la rge repertory of class ic R eform ation h ymn s has been saved fo r posteri ty in the C ith ara since they no lon ger a ppear in G erm an hym nals , nor a re they still sun g. The first edition of the Cithara offered 74 tran slati ons of G erm an hymn s, 58 of them by Tranovsky. The third source, dom esti c h ymn od y by Slovak authors in strongly Slovaki zed C zech , was weakl y represented in the C ithara, numberin g only 33. Earlier , Pribis h ad gathered 68 , most of which found their way into later editi on s of the Cith ara . Tranovsky's own contribution to the hymnal was substantial . Some 161 of the 4 14 hymn s have been traced to him , numberin g 93 original composition s, 10 tran slati on s from the L atin , and 58 from the G erm an . This porti on of th e h ymn al alone is large r than m an y h ymn als of th at d ay. Tranovsky regarded hymn s as a fo rm of p rayer . In hi s int rodu ction ot th e Cithara , he said , " H e who sin gs prays twice." T he prima ry purpose of h ymn ody was to glorify G od . ext it had a d idacti c pu r: pose , to establish and nurtu re fa ith . For this reason T ranovsky u sed simple and direct la ngu age and thu s his hymn als were adopted by the people as ex pressions of their fa ith in fa miliar term s, thou gh he employed polished poeti c skill s and a wide variety of forms. T he Phial a Odoramen toru m , the prayer po rtion of Tranovsky's work , provided th e church wi th litu rgical p raye rs as well as prayers th at co uld d oubl e as hom e devotional praye rs, for u se at mornin g and evenin g services and devotions , prayers for u se with the C atechism , fo r regular di vin e services, a nd for festivals of the church years. There were SLOVAKIA 57 prayers for all so rts and condition s of m en , penitential p salm s, a nd collects. It was a liturgicall y constru cted instrument , refl ectin g the tradition al skeleton of the m ass, as Luther 's M esse did . Th e Phiala served its readers for several editio ns of the Cithara . It was reprinted in 1685 , th en again in the cen ten a ry editio n of 1736 . It was twi ce reprinted in the late 1890's, and in 1898 was tran slated into P olish , but it was replaced in m ost edition s of th e Cith ara by the prayers of K aspa r Neum a nn transla ted fro m the G erm an . In the end , the Phiala p rov ided a m odel for subsequ ent liturgical p rayer books a nd agendas, su ch as H rabovsky's, Krm a n 's, J a kobei's, d own to B raxatori s's. L ater editors of th e Tran osciu s exp a nded the conten ts of th e h ymn al with tra n sla ti o n s of later G erma n h ym nwrite rs, su ch as P a ul G er ha rd , Benj amin Schmolck , and with original hymn s. D efiniti ve edition s were those produ ced by D a ni el Sin a piu s-H o rcicka ( 1684) a nd Sa muel Hru skovic ( 1745), kn own as th e "second Tra n ovsky." H owever , T ran ovsky's influ en ce o n th e church of hi s d ay a nd of subsequ ent generatio ns mu st n ot be rest ri cted to the liturgical and devot ion al resources he provided for the church in the Cithara. His tran sla tion of the Au gsburg C o nfess io n a nd his in sisten ce on doctrin al con fo rmi ty to th e Scriptures a nd the Lutheran Co nfessio n s did as mu ch as a n y oth e r effort to preserve orth od oxy in Slovakia. In thi s respect h e deserved to b e called the " Lu ther of Slovakia." 10 Especiall y hi s C ithara stood as a bulwark of o rthodoxy fo r som e two centuri es again st th e influ en ces of Piet ism and R atio n ali sm whi ch res ul ted in th e p u b lication of the Zpevnfk of 1842 and nu m erou s oth er attempts to d ilu te the doctrin al integrity of Lu theran hymn od y in Slovaki a. C hi efl y two edito rs of the C ith ara, Sa mu el Hru skovic ( 1745) and J an Mocko ( 1895), re-established th e doctrin al norms whi ch had suffered at the h ands of revisio nists of in terve nin g editi o n s.11 As m ent ioned earli er, Tranovsky' s Cith ara was welcomed en thu sias ticall y by Slovak Lu th eran s, a nd its a utho r was adopted as th eir coun trym a n , even th ou gh h e was a P ole by birth a nd li ved m os t of hi s life in Silesia a nd Morav ia. Tranovsky has been faulted for writing in Czech , rather tha n in Slovak . Bu t th at was th e result of th e h istorical co nd itio n s of hi s tim e, a nd h e was sim ply followin g th e practice prevale n t in th e L u theran chu rch , where th e K ralice Bible was the a u thorized ve rsio n of the Luthera n s fo r m a n y years. H oweve r , both P r ibi s's coll ect ion and the Can tus Ca th olici of 1655 were closer to the langu age 58 SLOVAKIA of the people than Tranovsky's Cithara, chiefly because they both adopted many hymns from the folk tradition and were written in a strongly Slovakized Czech. Later editions o f the Cithara incorporated hymns from the Cantus, and subsequ ent editors of the Cithara more and more Slovakized the Czech-language h ymns . Eventually, in this century, Slovak-lan guage suppleme nts were added to the Lutheran h ymnals in Slovakia, and now the entire collection of hymns selected for the newest edition , slated for publication in 1984 , is totally translated into Slovak. In the process of doing so, some of the qualities of the original hymns and tran slations will be lost , just as they are when American and English hymnodists update the King James language of classic English h y mns . Like the Bible, the Tranoscius has continued to exert an influence on Slovak devotional life , congregational a nd private, Lutheran and Catholic. This is shown, for example, in the poet Ivan Krasko 's d escription of his aged mother and h e r piety in his famous poem Vesper dominicae ( 1909) . 12 The Cithara continues to b e a living spiritual force for Slovaks and their descendants. 13 NOTES ' Older biographical sources give April 9, 159 1 as Tranovsky's birthdate , following th e Juli an calendar. According to the Gregorian calendar, the date is March 27, 1592. J an Durovic explains the discrepancy in his Zivotopisjuraja Tranovsk eho (Liptovsky Sv. Mikulas: Tranoscius , 1942), p. 8; see also Jozef Minarik , ed. , Slovenska renesan cna lutn a: Antol6gia zo slovenskej renesancnej poezie (Bratislava: Tatran, 1982), p . 344. ' The Prologus in apocalipsin Divijohannis Apostoli, t.j. Wyklad na zgeweni Swateho J ana Aposstola .. . , thou gh written in 1617 , was not published at the tim e . The manusc ript was tran scribed by M a tej Spratek in 1701 and again by K . Bujok in 1821 ; see Durovic, pp. 89-93 . The Augustana Confessio rursus in Sla vicum versa et m eliorata (The Augsburg C onfession) was published under the C zech title Konfessy Augsspursk a, bud'to W yznanj Wjry swa re ewangelistske .. . in Olomouc, 1620. This is th e di stin cti ve confession of Lutherans since 1530 , to which all churches and pastors mu st subsc ribe as th e tru e and fai thful exposition of doctrin e . 3 M inarik , " Hl'ad ani e pram ei\a zivej vod y ," op . cit ., p . 15 . P eter Brock also emph asizes th at th e Z p evnfk of 1842 helped the Slovaks of the 19th ce ntury keep their na ti on al iden ti ty , in Th e Slovak N ation al Awak ening (Uni vers it y of To ronto Press , 1976) , pp . 76-77 , note 20. 4 David P . D a n iel has an excellent summ ary in En glish of thi s pe riod : " The P rates- SLOVAKIA 5 ' ' ' ' ' 0 '' " " 59 ta nt R eformati on in Slovak Ethnic Consciousness, " Slovakia, XXVIII ( 1978-79) , 49-65. See also Daniel, The Historiograph y of th e R eformation in Slovakia (No. 10 , Sixtee nth Century Bibliography Seri es, St. Louis: Center for Reform at ion R esearch , 1977 ), 50 pp . D an iel Pribi s, Pisne du ch ovnf, in K atechismus D . H . Luth era z nemeckeho jazyku na slovensk y preloien y od trech superattendencu v roku 16 12 (Levoca, 1634) . For a description , see Minarik, pp. 44-47 and 33 1, who says it is written in " mimoriadne silne slovakizovanymjazykom " (p. 47), i.e. in strongly Slovakized Czech. The word slovensky did not always mean th e Slovak language in the modern sense, though it plainly identified th e people a nd the location. Lutherans have valued the legacy of Cyril and M ethod as much as the R oman Catholics, who regard them as saints . Pavel Safarik, in his definiti ve history of th e Slavs in German in 1823, gives the M acedonian brothers their due, as did J an Kollar , a not her Slovak gia nt , in his schola rl y and poetic works, as well as in all 11 -s tanza h ymns dedica ted to th e memory of Cyril and Method , Pam atajm ei, kfest'ane, No . 32 4 in the Zpevnfk and No . 128 in the Supplement (Pridavok) of the Tran oscius ( 197 1 editions). Ackn owledgm ent of the Saints ' use of the vernacul ar in worship is also mad e in the Latin prolog to th e Catholic hym nal published in 1655. See below and note 7 fo r this Catholic hym nal. Cantus ca th olici was collec ted by the J esu it Benedikt Szolozi ( 1609- 1656) a nd publi shed in Levoca, then reprinted in 1700 in Trnava; see also Mina rik , p. 5 1. H ere too slovenske does not mean the pure Slovak language, thou gh th e Czech is here ve ry strongly Slovakized . Mina rik , p. 51. Therefore schola rs' interpretations and attributions of authorship , whether original or as a translation , do not entirely agree ; e.g. Minarik' s numbers (p. 47) are slightly different from mine given below. D a niel , "Protestant R eformation ," op. cit. , pp. 52-54, has a summ a ry of some of the doctrinal differen ces amo ng Lutherans conce rnin g the Kniha svorn osti (Book of Concord) . The Zpevnfk of 1842, though undertaken with the in tenti on of culling the best hymns from the C ith ara and add ing more hymns from contemporary hymn writers , as well as fillin g in gaps with conce rn s of the 19th ce ntury, aroused the suspi cions a nd resentment of those who found a deliberate toning down of the supernatural, th e miraculous, and otherworldly elements of the C ithara. In many cases·of abbreviated hymns , th e typical 17th ce ntury look heave n wa rd is deleted , the human nat ure of C hrist is stressed above the divin e, and the termino logy of th e J ena University gradua tes replaced that of the ea rli er co nservati ve (and orthodox) Wittenberg schola rs. Some of the Zpevnfk 's positive elements, such as hymns of social conce rn , have been retained in the for m of a suppl ement in the 1971 edition , with some previously om itted classic hymns from the C ith ara . Ivan Krasko, Nox et solitudo (M artin, 1909; rpt. Basn e , M a rtin 1948), pp . 40-41. M y translation into English is give n in An Anthology of Slovak Literature , compiled by Andrew C incura (Ri verside, 19 76), pp . 2 1-22 . Both of my grandmothers were R oman Catholi c, and my mother 's mother , though 60 SLOVAKIA she remained a Catholic all her life, daily used the Cithara for her private devotions and knew ma ny of the hym ns b y heart. In my own pastoral experience, I have tended m a n y a n elderl y Slovak parishioner with little more than a grammar sc hool edu cati on , but whose daily companion , the Tranoscius, had become threadbare from constant use. Also, it was a m oving ex perience on m y last visit to Slova ki a to attend church in Liptovsky Mikulas, where Tranovsky served and died , and to worship with the congregation wh ich dates back to Tra novsky' s tim e. The faithful gathered 15 minutes to a half hour befo re the service began, a nd the members cond ucted an impromptu hymn sing, one beginning a hymn and the others pickin g it up from memory . Th roughout the worship se rvi ces, ma ny did not need to open their hym nals. The nex t evenin g I sat at the table with a pastor and his wife in Bratislava and two laym en in their mid-thirties , beginning the meal with the trad itional mealtime h ymn , and closing the evenin g with a classic h ym n from the first edition of the C ithara . Similar scenes occur among contemporary Slovak Catholics whose hymns remain a livin g part of th eir heritage. Presented in Panel 99, " Devotional Literature in Seventee nth Century Slova ki a ," at the AAASS conve nti on in Washington, D .C. on 17 October 1982.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Influence of Juraj Tranovský's Cithara Sanctorum in Slovakia Description An account of the resource Jaroslav J. Vajda Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 51-60 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vajda, Jaroslav J., 1919-2008 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 SNK https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/6f50096647bd83ac201a87921054fd17.pdf 072cbb36f515d5c2bab1ba9c2a65b086 PDF Text Text SLOVAKIA 165 The Lyrical Prose of Vincent Sikula Peter Petro Of the three outstanding Slovak literary movements - romanticism, surrealism, and lyrical prose - only the last one is still with us, though echoes of the Romantic school can be found in both surrealist poetry and lyrical prose. It is not really surprising that the world knows little about Slovak romanticism; other romantic schools in more influential European literatures easily overshadow this late bloomer. As for surrealist poetry, though some information about it, together with a few translations, appeared recently, 1 they cannot communicate more than a flavor of the movement that would doubtless be more known had it not flourished during the war, when communication with the rest of the world was lessened. After the war, the movement was officially banned. Thus we are left with lyrical prose. Lyrical prose is sometimes identified with expressionism, but since the examples of expressionism offered by handbooks include Joyce ' s Finnegans Wake and Kafka's Trial, it seems there is a need to differentiate expressionism from lyrical prose, inasmuch as the works of Jozef Cfger Hronsky, Milo Urban, and Vincent Sikula - the major Slovak practitioners of this genre - have very little in common indeed with Joyce and Kafka . The difference would lie in the quintessential role that the village plays in the work of these Slovak authors . This is not merely a question of thematics: urban writers like Joyce and Kafka versus the Slovaks who write about the village. The difference lies rather in the world of the Slovak village and in the world view that the village inspires as the repository of traditional life long extinct in the more advanced western Europe . I think this was understood very clearly by J.C. Hronsky , when he said: " The Slovak village, despite all its simplicity, has its depth , and it is a more mysterious depth than anyone would guess judging by a superficial look. " i The village is closer to God than the city. N eed one say that thi s realization is by no means unique, that the traditional life has always been connected in literature with the country, that in fact we are dealing with an ancient topos found in the earliest �166 SLOVAKIA literature ? What is then the specificity of Slovak lyrical prose? Perhaps a brief look at the work of Vincent Sikula, the contemporary representative of the genre, might offer us the answer. Vincent Sikula, born in 1936 , is fully aware that representing the school of lyrical prose, and following such giants as Hronsky and Urban , placed him in an enviable , though necessarily responsible position. But he is a worthy disciple . Moreover, he does not lack a certain flair for self-promotion, so very important for an author from a little known literature. He even managed to provoke some interest in his biography , when he alluded, somewhat mysteriously , to his years spent in a monastery. This would explain, at least partially, his abiding interest in and constant reference to the Church . Thus, he puzzles and even infuriates those of his critics who are dependent on the official Marxist pseudo-religion and, consequently, hate Catholicism. This is not to say that he is clearly a religious author: we look in vain for the mysticism , that , for example , is such a prominent feature of Hronsky's prose . 3 This puzzlement is visible in the variety of critical responses to Sikula' s work that Pavol Stevcek divided into three groups : the critics who are enthusiastic about Sikula (Vincent Sabfk, Julius Noge, Ivan Sulfk) ; those with doubts about the author ' s method (Vladimir Mirnic, Bretislav Truhlar, Jan Stevcek); and those radically opposed to Sikula (as is Daniel Okali). ◄ It should be pointed out in all fairness that being opposed by Daniel Okali is highly desirable , since he suffers from a chronic case of Zhdanovism and is suspicious of anything that bears an unmistakable sign of originality. It seems that Sikula takes for granted the accomplishments of Hronsky and Urban, and does not try to duplicate their efforts. Rather, Sikula uses their work as a secure base on which to build his often precarious narrative structures that, as was the case with Hronsky, depend so heavily on the dialogue, and also on the lyricism of the first person narrator . Hronsky found out that "in the distant villages, far away from civilization, below gigantic forests, and under the huge cupola of the heavens, the world is peaceful, awesome, and silent. And this silence is the expression of a great divinity. Disturbances are always pitifully small and engineered by us , men . That is what I sensed out there, in the mountains .. . ' ' 5 However, Sikula ' s village is not so far away from civilization , as was Hronsky's. The fact that Sikula writes about the western Slovakian �SLOVAKIA 167 villages that are close to the c1t1es is perhaps a sign of encroaching modernization: his villagers have a lot of contact with the city and know more than Hronsky's. At the same time, Sikula preserves their natural, traditional frame of mind as if forgetting, or perhaps purposefully ignoring, their loss of innocence and their new-found knowledge . Thus, one of Sikula's early stories opens with a whimsical introduction where the narrator's loneliness is accentuated by the apparent emptiness of the village over which echoes the narrator's loud call: I shout across the village, and nobody answers . Only the road about which people sing meanders ahead of me like a girl ' s braid . I am shouting. When a man walks along the road, he often has to call out to the man walking ahead of him . Who could it be? Who could it be, walking ahead of me? If it is a man , he will have a match, if a girl, I shall see her home. It does not become one to walk alone, whether someone walks ahead of me or behind me. 6 In reading Sikula' s lyrical narration we are struck again and again by the apparent non sequiturs that somehow manage to coalesce into a meaningful narrative at the end of a particular section or story. This is even more striking in Sikula's dialogue, which throws light on how one and the same incident is perceived in two villages, recreating the peasant language: - Do you know they caught a spy in Brusky? - Nonsense! - They really did. - What ' s his name? - Mucka . - Mucka? - Come on! - I know a Mucka. - Me too . - Me too. - Me too. - Mucka worked for Ringos, didn't he? - Yes, for Ringos. - He worked for everyone! - Mucka must be an old man now . �SLOVAKIA 168 - He is . Who would have thought that about him, tell me! Mucka? A spy? You must be kidding! They say he had a gang too, would you believe that! He sent a note to Ringos . No kidding! Really! To Ringos? Mucka . A note? He sold the lumber. Lumber? A saw. To Ringos? You're kidding! They've got him. They don't. 7 In the village Brusky itself, the same event is discussed as a rumor about a shooting at Ringos' s farm. - Who was shooting? Ringos? -No . - And the police? - What would they do with him? - It was like this: Ringos's cow was bloated because he let her feed on fresh clover. - Ringos does not even own a cow. - Ringos? - Well, he does not. - Then you don't know him . - He used to own cows. - He used to. - Ringos founded a cooperative in Ostrica. - His cow was bloated and so he went to have a look at her at night. - He does not have a cow. As soon as he founded the co-op, he got rid of everything. - Good idea. �SLOVAKIA 169 - You're all so stupid! - Who told you? - He did . - Maybe he was dreaming. - How could he have been dreaming, if he walked along the courtyard and watched the cow? - He is all upset. - He had a stroke . - A heart attack! - Ringos? - Futka. - Then what are you babbling about? - Who knows if he had a stroke, when they found him in the vineyard? - Have they called the doctor? - They have. - What did he say? - Nothing. - A heart attack! - But they say that Mucka sent a note to somebody. - To Belus . - To Ringos . - To Futka. - I don't know what you're talking about. - He sent it to Futka. - To Belus . And so on. Where is the truth of the matter, of any matter? In Sikula, the truth does emerge at the end of the story, novel, or trilogy, but it is available only to the narrator and the reader following the sum total of experiences, hints , possibilities and events that are, as in the examples of Sikula's dialogue, open to doubts. Thus, Sikula often trivializes and relativizes events, leading us to the conclusion that they are not really important to him , suggesting, perhaps , that they should not be important to us either. He is much more interested in the lyrical quality of his narrative. And this would mean, in Sikula's case, the re-invention of the child's innocence, naivety, and simplicity. It would mean adopting a consciously nostalgic approach, presenting the world as seen through the eyes of a child , even when the narrator is obviously mature. Sikula's dialogues �170 SLOVAKIA are conversations overheard by a child who hears the sounds, understands the words , and yet lacks enough experience to enter fully into the significance of the overheard communication . Not so the reader. Consequently, we witness a tension between the world that, so to speak, does not make sense to the narrator, and the same world accessible to the reader. Reading Sikula means adjusting ourselves to both levels. For some, such adjustment is difficult, as it is for the critics who have doubts about Sikula. For others still, adjustment is out of the question. Daniel Okali cannot bear to see the mythologized Slovak National Uprising of 1944 distorted, as he would have it, by a child-like lyrical narrator. The legend of the Uprising has to be preserved. There must only be one official version, nothing more . To lyricize, that is to say, to relativize and trivialize this legend is a sacrilege to Okali. But this is exactly what Sikula has done with his trilogy Majstri (The Craftsmen, 1976), Muskat (The Geranium, 1977), and Vilma (1979) . Okali misses in the trilogy the expression of the '' historic-social dimension of Slovak fascism, the complex historic and artistic truth, its ideational-aesthetic presentation in its dialectic contradictions and nakedness.' ' 9 It is not easy to satisfy Okali. But Sikula seemed untouched by Okali's attack that came before the appearance of the last volume of the trilogy, Vilma. On the contrary, he dared to issue a new challenge to the likes of Okali, refusing to accept the official explanation of history as finite . Everything must be available to the lyrical narrator , everything can be endowed with new content, everything should be open for lyrical transformation. As he says in Vilma: Friends , history is written by the people! But of course! And who writes the books? If only the historians reminded us of it again! If only they reminded us of it more often! Historical fact is a bag which has to be filled! Who said that? I don't remember. Even so, historical fact is a bag that has to be filled and that's that! One has to save, save the bag! Even the bag, my friends! 10 And on the opening page of Vilma, Sikula, as if to underscore his contempt for dogmatic criticism , continues unruffied with his lyrical narrator: Oftentimes I don't even know why some people are angry with me. Maybe I do know, but I don't always admit it. People don't like to admit they have faults. I 'm like that too. �SLOVAKIA 171 M aybe I do m ake a mistake now and then, and maybe more than one. But who is without faults ? You tell me! When I look a t you som etimes, it seems to me that you are looking at m e too . But ifl turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e. Let's say I am still a little boy. For a short time I have even served as an altar boy . I know by heart the confiteor and suscipiat. But ifl put on the white shirt and robe which went so nicely with a white, red , or violet collar - and I used to be so proud, not realizing that I looked like an angel with tussled hair, at least I see myself like that now , although today I could hardly join my hands and piously lower m y eyes, and even if I could - as soon as I would appear in a clean and freshly ironed robe in front of the altar, no matter how pious m y expression , I guess the priest would get scared and the once sinful and now already devout little old ladies who never miss a single mass would perhaps run out of the church. You better not consider me an altar boy any more! But even so, I am still a little boy. W e have to play this little theatrical to the end. 11 Again the disjointed style with its seemingly irrelevant insertions and naive parenthetical comments , again the evocation of childhood . Once the reader accepts su ch a narrator , he has to put up with his point of view, that is , with the other level of the narrative introduced by the third paragraph: ''When I look at you sometimes, it seems to me that you are lookin g at me too. But if I turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e.'' Of course, this only seems irrelevant: the reader soon finds out that the statement is d esigned to make a tran siti on to the lyrical narrative and to a nchor it in the psychology characterized by a childlike wonder and circum scribed by the world of the vill age. T o a citified modern man , the villager is like a child. Sikula accepts this premise and peoples his works with childlike peasants, eccentrics , and even weird characters who all communicate naturally and easily with the lyrical n arrator. P erhaps the n arrator does not understand them , the same as he does not understand the events of the Upri sing that angered Okali . But he does convey to u s their essential quality , essential in the sense that it is raw, unprocessed , and reported �172 SLOVAKIA with the kind of objectivity accessible to a child or a villager who both perceive the world on a level that may seem superficial to a modem man, but which does not lack its depth, as Hronsky reminded us. When the peasants argue about what really happened in Brusky, when they try to find out whether Mucka is a spy, or whether Ringos suffered a stroke or a heart attack, the truth of the matter takes second place to the new happening that looms larger, namely to the conversation itself. The conversation is an event happening in the now immediately accessible to a peasant. It is something that he understands , it is the very stuff of life. The rumors about Mucka and Ringos belong to a bewitched circle outside their reach and control and are as unimportant to them as the past is to a child . It may be objected that Sikula distorts his peasants and gives us a false picture of the village, particularly if we bear in mind that he is writing about the western Slovakian village that, one has to stress, has never been isolated the way villages were (and some still are) in the upper Hron area, or in the Orava region. The answer to this is that he does distort , but that this very distortion is the main charm of his work . And Sikula is not alone. He is a part of a very wide movement indeed, a movement that includes the Russian derevenshchiki, or village writers, and many authors in other Slavic literatures. The movement, it seems, is Slavic literature's reaction to the modem uprootedness that followed the Second World War. The West has experienced uprootedness as well, but it was a process that started long ago and went on for centuries . Not so in the Slavic countries. A good case could be made to show how the sudden changes occasioned by the two wars, and eve n more by the coming of social engineering on a gigantic scale coupled with a war on traditional life with its faults and great virtues, led to the loss of values, bemoaned so often in the W est and East, and to the emptiness that. this nostalgic literary movement tries to fill. This wider perspective might help us to situate Vincent Sikula's work within the native Slovak literary tradition of lyrical prose, but also in the emerging trends appearing elsewhere in the Slavic literary world, wherein the village reappears forcefully in the guise of the national conscience, of the very soul of the nation, despite the sad fact that the traditional village and all that it implies has in the meantime been modernized and no longer exists. Thus, Sikula does not go wrong when he places the action of his �SLOVAKIA 17 3 work in villages that are so close to the cities. We may assume that they are modernized or citified to an extent that should make the planners and social engineers who would like to erase the difference between the village and the city feel proud. He does not go wrong , because it is not so much the village as the village m entality that he would like to preserve in his work. Sikula's village is no lon ger the mysterious site cut off from the corrupting influences of the city, a lost domain preserved and embedded in the crystal of fi ction , as it is in Hronsky . It survives in Sikula's work in the village m entality which he sees as a precious remnant of the traditional life , as a tonic against the ailment of modern uprootedness, and finally as the lyrical soul of a child in abiding wonderment, illuminating a world that has lost its soul. NOTES ' See my " Slovak Surrealist Poetry : The M ovement and Its Rediscove ry," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. XX , No . 2 Gune 1978), pp . 237-244, a nd "Slovak Surrealist P arty," Prism Intern ational , Vol. XV , N os. 2 and 3 (Summer- Fall 1976), pp. 146-164 . ' Quoted in Alexander M atuska, J. C . Hronsky, rpt. in Osobnosti (Bratislava : Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 435. ' Matuska, p. 448. • Pavo! Stevcek , Contemporary Slovak Literature, transl. Olga H orska (Bratislava: Obzor, 1980), p. 89 . ' Quoted in M a tu ska, p. 435. ' Vincent Sikula , " T ancuj ," in Maino si postavim bungalow (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1964), p. 49 . 7 V . Sikul a, Povetrie (Brat islava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), pp. 169- 170. 'Ibid. , pp . 170-17 1. 9 Stevcek, p . 89. 10 V. Sikula , Vilma (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1979), p. 172. " Ibid ., p. 7. Presented in Panel 65, " The Vi llage in Slovak Li te rature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asilomar, Cali fornia on 21 September 1981. �� SLOVAKIA 165 The Lyrical Prose of Vincent Sikula Peter Petro Of the three outstanding Slovak literary movements - romanticism, surrealism, and lyrical prose - only the last one is still with us, though echoes of the Romantic school can be found in both surrealist poetry and lyrical prose. It is not really surprising that the world knows little about Slovak romanticism; other romantic schools in more influential European literatures easily overshadow this late bloomer. As for surrealist poetry, though some information about it, together with a few translations, appeared recently, 1 they cannot communicate more than a flavor of the movement that would doubtless be more known had it not flourished during the war, when communication with the rest of the world was lessened. After the war, the movement was officially banned. Thus we are left with lyrical prose. Lyrical prose is sometimes identified with expressionism, but since the examples of expressionism offered by handbooks include Joyce ' s Finnegans Wake and Kafka's Trial, it seems there is a need to differentiate expressionism from lyrical prose, inasmuch as the works of Jozef Cfger Hronsky, Milo Urban, and Vincent Sikula - the major Slovak practitioners of this genre - have very little in common indeed with Joyce and Kafka . The difference would lie in the quintessential role that the village plays in the work of these Slovak authors . This is not merely a question of thematics: urban writers like Joyce and Kafka versus the Slovaks who write about the village. The difference lies rather in the world of the Slovak village and in the world view that the village inspires as the repository of traditional life long extinct in the more advanced western Europe . I think this was understood very clearly by J.C. Hronsky , when he said: " The Slovak village, despite all its simplicity, has its depth , and it is a more mysterious depth than anyone would guess judging by a superficial look. " i The village is closer to God than the city. N eed one say that thi s realization is by no means unique, that the traditional life has always been connected in literature with the country, that in fact we are dealing with an ancient topos found in the earliest �166 SLOVAKIA literature ? What is then the specificity of Slovak lyrical prose? Perhaps a brief look at the work of Vincent Sikula, the contemporary representative of the genre, might offer us the answer. Vincent Sikula, born in 1936 , is fully aware that representing the school of lyrical prose, and following such giants as Hronsky and Urban , placed him in an enviable , though necessarily responsible position. But he is a worthy disciple . Moreover, he does not lack a certain flair for self-promotion, so very important for an author from a little known literature. He even managed to provoke some interest in his biography , when he alluded, somewhat mysteriously , to his years spent in a monastery. This would explain, at least partially, his abiding interest in and constant reference to the Church . Thus, he puzzles and even infuriates those of his critics who are dependent on the official Marxist pseudo-religion and, consequently, hate Catholicism. This is not to say that he is clearly a religious author: we look in vain for the mysticism , that , for example , is such a prominent feature of Hronsky's prose . 3 This puzzlement is visible in the variety of critical responses to Sikula' s work that Pavol Stevcek divided into three groups : the critics who are enthusiastic about Sikula (Vincent Sabfk, Julius Noge, Ivan Sulfk) ; those with doubts about the author ' s method (Vladimir Mirnic, Bretislav Truhlar, Jan Stevcek); and those radically opposed to Sikula (as is Daniel Okali). ◄ It should be pointed out in all fairness that being opposed by Daniel Okali is highly desirable , since he suffers from a chronic case of Zhdanovism and is suspicious of anything that bears an unmistakable sign of originality. It seems that Sikula takes for granted the accomplishments of Hronsky and Urban, and does not try to duplicate their efforts. Rather, Sikula uses their work as a secure base on which to build his often precarious narrative structures that, as was the case with Hronsky, depend so heavily on the dialogue, and also on the lyricism of the first person narrator . Hronsky found out that "in the distant villages, far away from civilization, below gigantic forests, and under the huge cupola of the heavens, the world is peaceful, awesome, and silent. And this silence is the expression of a great divinity. Disturbances are always pitifully small and engineered by us , men . That is what I sensed out there, in the mountains .. . ' ' 5 However, Sikula ' s village is not so far away from civilization , as was Hronsky's. The fact that Sikula writes about the western Slovakian �SLOVAKIA 167 villages that are close to the c1t1es is perhaps a sign of encroaching modernization: his villagers have a lot of contact with the city and know more than Hronsky's. At the same time, Sikula preserves their natural, traditional frame of mind as if forgetting, or perhaps purposefully ignoring, their loss of innocence and their new-found knowledge . Thus, one of Sikula's early stories opens with a whimsical introduction where the narrator's loneliness is accentuated by the apparent emptiness of the village over which echoes the narrator's loud call: I shout across the village, and nobody answers . Only the road about which people sing meanders ahead of me like a girl ' s braid . I am shouting. When a man walks along the road, he often has to call out to the man walking ahead of him . Who could it be? Who could it be, walking ahead of me? If it is a man , he will have a match, if a girl, I shall see her home. It does not become one to walk alone, whether someone walks ahead of me or behind me. 6 In reading Sikula' s lyrical narration we are struck again and again by the apparent non sequiturs that somehow manage to coalesce into a meaningful narrative at the end of a particular section or story. This is even more striking in Sikula's dialogue, which throws light on how one and the same incident is perceived in two villages, recreating the peasant language: - Do you know they caught a spy in Brusky? - Nonsense! - They really did. - What ' s his name? - Mucka . - Mucka? - Come on! - I know a Mucka. - Me too . - Me too. - Me too. - Mucka worked for Ringos, didn't he? - Yes, for Ringos. - He worked for everyone! - Mucka must be an old man now . �SLOVAKIA 168 - He is . Who would have thought that about him, tell me! Mucka? A spy? You must be kidding! They say he had a gang too, would you believe that! He sent a note to Ringos . No kidding! Really! To Ringos? Mucka . A note? He sold the lumber. Lumber? A saw. To Ringos? You're kidding! They've got him. They don't. 7 In the village Brusky itself, the same event is discussed as a rumor about a shooting at Ringos' s farm. - Who was shooting? Ringos? -No . - And the police? - What would they do with him? - It was like this: Ringos's cow was bloated because he let her feed on fresh clover. - Ringos does not even own a cow. - Ringos? - Well, he does not. - Then you don't know him . - He used to own cows. - He used to. - Ringos founded a cooperative in Ostrica. - His cow was bloated and so he went to have a look at her at night. - He does not have a cow. As soon as he founded the co-op, he got rid of everything. - Good idea. �SLOVAKIA 169 - You're all so stupid! - Who told you? - He did . - Maybe he was dreaming. - How could he have been dreaming, if he walked along the courtyard and watched the cow? - He is all upset. - He had a stroke . - A heart attack! - Ringos? - Futka. - Then what are you babbling about? - Who knows if he had a stroke, when they found him in the vineyard? - Have they called the doctor? - They have. - What did he say? - Nothing. - A heart attack! - But they say that Mucka sent a note to somebody. - To Belus . - To Ringos . - To Futka. - I don't know what you're talking about. - He sent it to Futka. - To Belus . And so on. Where is the truth of the matter, of any matter? In Sikula, the truth does emerge at the end of the story, novel, or trilogy, but it is available only to the narrator and the reader following the sum total of experiences, hints , possibilities and events that are, as in the examples of Sikula's dialogue, open to doubts. Thus, Sikula often trivializes and relativizes events, leading us to the conclusion that they are not really important to him , suggesting, perhaps , that they should not be important to us either. He is much more interested in the lyrical quality of his narrative. And this would mean, in Sikula's case, the re-invention of the child's innocence, naivety, and simplicity. It would mean adopting a consciously nostalgic approach, presenting the world as seen through the eyes of a child , even when the narrator is obviously mature. Sikula's dialogues �170 SLOVAKIA are conversations overheard by a child who hears the sounds, understands the words , and yet lacks enough experience to enter fully into the significance of the overheard communication . Not so the reader. Consequently, we witness a tension between the world that, so to speak, does not make sense to the narrator, and the same world accessible to the reader. Reading Sikula means adjusting ourselves to both levels. For some, such adjustment is difficult, as it is for the critics who have doubts about Sikula. For others still, adjustment is out of the question. Daniel Okali cannot bear to see the mythologized Slovak National Uprising of 1944 distorted, as he would have it, by a child-like lyrical narrator. The legend of the Uprising has to be preserved. There must only be one official version, nothing more . To lyricize, that is to say, to relativize and trivialize this legend is a sacrilege to Okali. But this is exactly what Sikula has done with his trilogy Majstri (The Craftsmen, 1976), Muskat (The Geranium, 1977), and Vilma (1979) . Okali misses in the trilogy the expression of the '' historic-social dimension of Slovak fascism, the complex historic and artistic truth, its ideational-aesthetic presentation in its dialectic contradictions and nakedness.' ' 9 It is not easy to satisfy Okali. But Sikula seemed untouched by Okali's attack that came before the appearance of the last volume of the trilogy, Vilma. On the contrary, he dared to issue a new challenge to the likes of Okali, refusing to accept the official explanation of history as finite . Everything must be available to the lyrical narrator , everything can be endowed with new content, everything should be open for lyrical transformation. As he says in Vilma: Friends , history is written by the people! But of course! And who writes the books? If only the historians reminded us of it again! If only they reminded us of it more often! Historical fact is a bag which has to be filled! Who said that? I don't remember. Even so, historical fact is a bag that has to be filled and that's that! One has to save, save the bag! Even the bag, my friends! 10 And on the opening page of Vilma, Sikula, as if to underscore his contempt for dogmatic criticism , continues unruffied with his lyrical narrator: Oftentimes I don't even know why some people are angry with me. Maybe I do know, but I don't always admit it. People don't like to admit they have faults. I 'm like that too. �SLOVAKIA 171 M aybe I do m ake a mistake now and then, and maybe more than one. But who is without faults ? You tell me! When I look a t you som etimes, it seems to me that you are looking at m e too . But ifl turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e. Let's say I am still a little boy. For a short time I have even served as an altar boy . I know by heart the confiteor and suscipiat. But ifl put on the white shirt and robe which went so nicely with a white, red , or violet collar - and I used to be so proud, not realizing that I looked like an angel with tussled hair, at least I see myself like that now , although today I could hardly join my hands and piously lower m y eyes, and even if I could - as soon as I would appear in a clean and freshly ironed robe in front of the altar, no matter how pious m y expression , I guess the priest would get scared and the once sinful and now already devout little old ladies who never miss a single mass would perhaps run out of the church. You better not consider me an altar boy any more! But even so, I am still a little boy. W e have to play this little theatrical to the end. 11 Again the disjointed style with its seemingly irrelevant insertions and naive parenthetical comments , again the evocation of childhood . Once the reader accepts su ch a narrator , he has to put up with his point of view, that is , with the other level of the narrative introduced by the third paragraph: ''When I look at you sometimes, it seems to me that you are lookin g at me too. But if I turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e.'' Of course, this only seems irrelevant: the reader soon finds out that the statement is d esigned to make a tran siti on to the lyrical narrative and to a nchor it in the psychology characterized by a childlike wonder and circum scribed by the world of the vill age. T o a citified modern man , the villager is like a child. Sikula accepts this premise and peoples his works with childlike peasants, eccentrics , and even weird characters who all communicate naturally and easily with the lyrical n arrator. P erhaps the n arrator does not understand them , the same as he does not understand the events of the Upri sing that angered Okali . But he does convey to u s their essential quality , essential in the sense that it is raw, unprocessed , and reported �172 SLOVAKIA with the kind of objectivity accessible to a child or a villager who both perceive the world on a level that may seem superficial to a modem man, but which does not lack its depth, as Hronsky reminded us. When the peasants argue about what really happened in Brusky, when they try to find out whether Mucka is a spy, or whether Ringos suffered a stroke or a heart attack, the truth of the matter takes second place to the new happening that looms larger, namely to the conversation itself. The conversation is an event happening in the now immediately accessible to a peasant. It is something that he understands , it is the very stuff of life. The rumors about Mucka and Ringos belong to a bewitched circle outside their reach and control and are as unimportant to them as the past is to a child . It may be objected that Sikula distorts his peasants and gives us a false picture of the village, particularly if we bear in mind that he is writing about the western Slovakian village that, one has to stress, has never been isolated the way villages were (and some still are) in the upper Hron area, or in the Orava region. The answer to this is that he does distort , but that this very distortion is the main charm of his work . And Sikula is not alone. He is a part of a very wide movement indeed, a movement that includes the Russian derevenshchiki, or village writers, and many authors in other Slavic literatures. The movement, it seems, is Slavic literature's reaction to the modem uprootedness that followed the Second World War. The West has experienced uprootedness as well, but it was a process that started long ago and went on for centuries . Not so in the Slavic countries. A good case could be made to show how the sudden changes occasioned by the two wars, and eve n more by the coming of social engineering on a gigantic scale coupled with a war on traditional life with its faults and great virtues, led to the loss of values, bemoaned so often in the W est and East, and to the emptiness that. this nostalgic literary movement tries to fill. This wider perspective might help us to situate Vincent Sikula's work within the native Slovak literary tradition of lyrical prose, but also in the emerging trends appearing elsewhere in the Slavic literary world, wherein the village reappears forcefully in the guise of the national conscience, of the very soul of the nation, despite the sad fact that the traditional village and all that it implies has in the meantime been modernized and no longer exists. Thus, Sikula does not go wrong when he places the action of his �SLOVAKIA 17 3 work in villages that are so close to the cities. We may assume that they are modernized or citified to an extent that should make the planners and social engineers who would like to erase the difference between the village and the city feel proud. He does not go wrong , because it is not so much the village as the village m entality that he would like to preserve in his work. Sikula's village is no lon ger the mysterious site cut off from the corrupting influences of the city, a lost domain preserved and embedded in the crystal of fi ction , as it is in Hronsky . It survives in Sikula's work in the village m entality which he sees as a precious remnant of the traditional life , as a tonic against the ailment of modern uprootedness, and finally as the lyrical soul of a child in abiding wonderment, illuminating a world that has lost its soul. NOTES ' See my " Slovak Surrealist Poetry : The M ovement and Its Rediscove ry," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. XX , No . 2 Gune 1978), pp . 237-244, a nd "Slovak Surrealist P arty," Prism Intern ational , Vol. XV , N os. 2 and 3 (Summer- Fall 1976), pp. 146-164 . ' Quoted in Alexander M atuska, J. C . Hronsky, rpt. in Osobnosti (Bratislava : Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 435. ' Matuska, p. 448. • Pavo! Stevcek , Contemporary Slovak Literature, transl. Olga H orska (Bratislava: Obzor, 1980), p. 89 . ' Quoted in M a tu ska, p. 435. ' Vincent Sikula , " T ancuj ," in Maino si postavim bungalow (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1964), p. 49 . 7 V . Sikul a, Povetrie (Brat islava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), pp. 169- 170. 'Ibid. , pp . 170-17 1. 9 Stevcek, p . 89. 10 V. Sikula , Vilma (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1979), p. 172. " Ibid ., p. 7. Presented in Panel 65, " The Vi llage in Slovak Li te rature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asilomar, Cali fornia on 21 September 1981. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SLOVAKIA 165 The Lyrical Prose of Vincent Sikula Peter Petro Of the three outstanding Slovak literary movements - romanticism, surrealism, and lyrical prose - only the last one is still with us, though echoes of the Romantic school can be found in both surrealist poetry and lyrical prose. It is not really surprising that the world knows little about Slovak romanticism; other romantic schools in more influential European literatures easily overshadow this late bloomer. As for surrealist poetry, though some information about it, together with a few translations, appeared recently, 1 they cannot communicate more than a flavor of the movement that would doubtless be more known had it not flourished during the war, when communication with the rest of the world was lessened. After the war, the movement was officially banned. Thus we are left with lyrical prose. Lyrical prose is sometimes identified with expressionism, but since the examples of expressionism offered by handbooks include Joyce ' s Finnegans Wake and Kafka's Trial, it seems there is a need to differentiate expressionism from lyrical prose, inasmuch as the works of Jozef Cfger Hronsky, Milo Urban, and Vincent Sikula - the major Slovak practitioners of this genre - have very little in common indeed with Joyce and Kafka . The difference would lie in the quintessential role that the village plays in the work of these Slovak authors . This is not merely a question of thematics: urban writers like Joyce and Kafka versus the Slovaks who write about the village. The difference lies rather in the world of the Slovak village and in the world view that the village inspires as the repository of traditional life long extinct in the more advanced western Europe . I think this was understood very clearly by J.C. Hronsky , when he said: " The Slovak village, despite all its simplicity, has its depth , and it is a more mysterious depth than anyone would guess judging by a superficial look. " i The village is closer to God than the city. N eed one say that thi s realization is by no means unique, that the traditional life has always been connected in literature with the country, that in fact we are dealing with an ancient topos found in the earliest 166 SLOVAKIA literature ? What is then the specificity of Slovak lyrical prose? Perhaps a brief look at the work of Vincent Sikula, the contemporary representative of the genre, might offer us the answer. Vincent Sikula, born in 1936 , is fully aware that representing the school of lyrical prose, and following such giants as Hronsky and Urban , placed him in an enviable , though necessarily responsible position. But he is a worthy disciple . Moreover, he does not lack a certain flair for self-promotion, so very important for an author from a little known literature. He even managed to provoke some interest in his biography , when he alluded, somewhat mysteriously , to his years spent in a monastery. This would explain, at least partially, his abiding interest in and constant reference to the Church . Thus, he puzzles and even infuriates those of his critics who are dependent on the official Marxist pseudo-religion and, consequently, hate Catholicism. This is not to say that he is clearly a religious author: we look in vain for the mysticism , that , for example , is such a prominent feature of Hronsky's prose . 3 This puzzlement is visible in the variety of critical responses to Sikula' s work that Pavol Stevcek divided into three groups : the critics who are enthusiastic about Sikula (Vincent Sabfk, Julius Noge, Ivan Sulfk) ; those with doubts about the author ' s method (Vladimir Mirnic, Bretislav Truhlar, Jan Stevcek); and those radically opposed to Sikula (as is Daniel Okali). ◄ It should be pointed out in all fairness that being opposed by Daniel Okali is highly desirable , since he suffers from a chronic case of Zhdanovism and is suspicious of anything that bears an unmistakable sign of originality. It seems that Sikula takes for granted the accomplishments of Hronsky and Urban, and does not try to duplicate their efforts. Rather, Sikula uses their work as a secure base on which to build his often precarious narrative structures that, as was the case with Hronsky, depend so heavily on the dialogue, and also on the lyricism of the first person narrator . Hronsky found out that "in the distant villages, far away from civilization, below gigantic forests, and under the huge cupola of the heavens, the world is peaceful, awesome, and silent. And this silence is the expression of a great divinity. Disturbances are always pitifully small and engineered by us , men . That is what I sensed out there, in the mountains .. . ' ' 5 However, Sikula ' s village is not so far away from civilization , as was Hronsky's. The fact that Sikula writes about the western Slovakian SLOVAKIA 167 villages that are close to the c1t1es is perhaps a sign of encroaching modernization: his villagers have a lot of contact with the city and know more than Hronsky's. At the same time, Sikula preserves their natural, traditional frame of mind as if forgetting, or perhaps purposefully ignoring, their loss of innocence and their new-found knowledge . Thus, one of Sikula's early stories opens with a whimsical introduction where the narrator's loneliness is accentuated by the apparent emptiness of the village over which echoes the narrator's loud call: I shout across the village, and nobody answers . Only the road about which people sing meanders ahead of me like a girl ' s braid . I am shouting. When a man walks along the road, he often has to call out to the man walking ahead of him . Who could it be? Who could it be, walking ahead of me? If it is a man , he will have a match, if a girl, I shall see her home. It does not become one to walk alone, whether someone walks ahead of me or behind me. 6 In reading Sikula' s lyrical narration we are struck again and again by the apparent non sequiturs that somehow manage to coalesce into a meaningful narrative at the end of a particular section or story. This is even more striking in Sikula's dialogue, which throws light on how one and the same incident is perceived in two villages, recreating the peasant language: - Do you know they caught a spy in Brusky? - Nonsense! - They really did. - What ' s his name? - Mucka . - Mucka? - Come on! - I know a Mucka. - Me too . - Me too. - Me too. - Mucka worked for Ringos, didn't he? - Yes, for Ringos. - He worked for everyone! - Mucka must be an old man now . SLOVAKIA 168 - He is . Who would have thought that about him, tell me! Mucka? A spy? You must be kidding! They say he had a gang too, would you believe that! He sent a note to Ringos . No kidding! Really! To Ringos? Mucka . A note? He sold the lumber. Lumber? A saw. To Ringos? You're kidding! They've got him. They don't. 7 In the village Brusky itself, the same event is discussed as a rumor about a shooting at Ringos' s farm. - Who was shooting? Ringos? -No . - And the police? - What would they do with him? - It was like this: Ringos's cow was bloated because he let her feed on fresh clover. - Ringos does not even own a cow. - Ringos? - Well, he does not. - Then you don't know him . - He used to own cows. - He used to. - Ringos founded a cooperative in Ostrica. - His cow was bloated and so he went to have a look at her at night. - He does not have a cow. As soon as he founded the co-op, he got rid of everything. - Good idea. SLOVAKIA 169 - You're all so stupid! - Who told you? - He did . - Maybe he was dreaming. - How could he have been dreaming, if he walked along the courtyard and watched the cow? - He is all upset. - He had a stroke . - A heart attack! - Ringos? - Futka. - Then what are you babbling about? - Who knows if he had a stroke, when they found him in the vineyard? - Have they called the doctor? - They have. - What did he say? - Nothing. - A heart attack! - But they say that Mucka sent a note to somebody. - To Belus . - To Ringos . - To Futka. - I don't know what you're talking about. - He sent it to Futka. - To Belus . And so on. Where is the truth of the matter, of any matter? In Sikula, the truth does emerge at the end of the story, novel, or trilogy, but it is available only to the narrator and the reader following the sum total of experiences, hints , possibilities and events that are, as in the examples of Sikula's dialogue, open to doubts. Thus, Sikula often trivializes and relativizes events, leading us to the conclusion that they are not really important to him , suggesting, perhaps , that they should not be important to us either. He is much more interested in the lyrical quality of his narrative. And this would mean, in Sikula's case, the re-invention of the child's innocence, naivety, and simplicity. It would mean adopting a consciously nostalgic approach, presenting the world as seen through the eyes of a child , even when the narrator is obviously mature. Sikula's dialogues 170 SLOVAKIA are conversations overheard by a child who hears the sounds, understands the words , and yet lacks enough experience to enter fully into the significance of the overheard communication . Not so the reader. Consequently, we witness a tension between the world that, so to speak, does not make sense to the narrator, and the same world accessible to the reader. Reading Sikula means adjusting ourselves to both levels. For some, such adjustment is difficult, as it is for the critics who have doubts about Sikula. For others still, adjustment is out of the question. Daniel Okali cannot bear to see the mythologized Slovak National Uprising of 1944 distorted, as he would have it, by a child-like lyrical narrator. The legend of the Uprising has to be preserved. There must only be one official version, nothing more . To lyricize, that is to say, to relativize and trivialize this legend is a sacrilege to Okali. But this is exactly what Sikula has done with his trilogy Majstri (The Craftsmen, 1976), Muskat (The Geranium, 1977), and Vilma (1979) . Okali misses in the trilogy the expression of the '' historic-social dimension of Slovak fascism, the complex historic and artistic truth, its ideational-aesthetic presentation in its dialectic contradictions and nakedness.' ' 9 It is not easy to satisfy Okali. But Sikula seemed untouched by Okali's attack that came before the appearance of the last volume of the trilogy, Vilma. On the contrary, he dared to issue a new challenge to the likes of Okali, refusing to accept the official explanation of history as finite . Everything must be available to the lyrical narrator , everything can be endowed with new content, everything should be open for lyrical transformation. As he says in Vilma: Friends , history is written by the people! But of course! And who writes the books? If only the historians reminded us of it again! If only they reminded us of it more often! Historical fact is a bag which has to be filled! Who said that? I don't remember. Even so, historical fact is a bag that has to be filled and that's that! One has to save, save the bag! Even the bag, my friends! 10 And on the opening page of Vilma, Sikula, as if to underscore his contempt for dogmatic criticism , continues unruffied with his lyrical narrator: Oftentimes I don't even know why some people are angry with me. Maybe I do know, but I don't always admit it. People don't like to admit they have faults. I 'm like that too. SLOVAKIA 171 M aybe I do m ake a mistake now and then, and maybe more than one. But who is without faults ? You tell me! When I look a t you som etimes, it seems to me that you are looking at m e too . But ifl turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e. Let's say I am still a little boy. For a short time I have even served as an altar boy . I know by heart the confiteor and suscipiat. But ifl put on the white shirt and robe which went so nicely with a white, red , or violet collar - and I used to be so proud, not realizing that I looked like an angel with tussled hair, at least I see myself like that now , although today I could hardly join my hands and piously lower m y eyes, and even if I could - as soon as I would appear in a clean and freshly ironed robe in front of the altar, no matter how pious m y expression , I guess the priest would get scared and the once sinful and now already devout little old ladies who never miss a single mass would perhaps run out of the church. You better not consider me an altar boy any more! But even so, I am still a little boy. W e have to play this little theatrical to the end. 11 Again the disjointed style with its seemingly irrelevant insertions and naive parenthetical comments , again the evocation of childhood . Once the reader accepts su ch a narrator , he has to put up with his point of view, that is , with the other level of the narrative introduced by the third paragraph: ''When I look at you sometimes, it seems to me that you are lookin g at me too. But if I turn away and look elsewhere, I can think that you too stopped looking at m e.'' Of course, this only seems irrelevant: the reader soon finds out that the statement is d esigned to make a tran siti on to the lyrical narrative and to a nchor it in the psychology characterized by a childlike wonder and circum scribed by the world of the vill age. T o a citified modern man , the villager is like a child. Sikula accepts this premise and peoples his works with childlike peasants, eccentrics , and even weird characters who all communicate naturally and easily with the lyrical n arrator. P erhaps the n arrator does not understand them , the same as he does not understand the events of the Upri sing that angered Okali . But he does convey to u s their essential quality , essential in the sense that it is raw, unprocessed , and reported 172 SLOVAKIA with the kind of objectivity accessible to a child or a villager who both perceive the world on a level that may seem superficial to a modem man, but which does not lack its depth, as Hronsky reminded us. When the peasants argue about what really happened in Brusky, when they try to find out whether Mucka is a spy, or whether Ringos suffered a stroke or a heart attack, the truth of the matter takes second place to the new happening that looms larger, namely to the conversation itself. The conversation is an event happening in the now immediately accessible to a peasant. It is something that he understands , it is the very stuff of life. The rumors about Mucka and Ringos belong to a bewitched circle outside their reach and control and are as unimportant to them as the past is to a child . It may be objected that Sikula distorts his peasants and gives us a false picture of the village, particularly if we bear in mind that he is writing about the western Slovakian village that, one has to stress, has never been isolated the way villages were (and some still are) in the upper Hron area, or in the Orava region. The answer to this is that he does distort , but that this very distortion is the main charm of his work . And Sikula is not alone. He is a part of a very wide movement indeed, a movement that includes the Russian derevenshchiki, or village writers, and many authors in other Slavic literatures. The movement, it seems, is Slavic literature's reaction to the modem uprootedness that followed the Second World War. The West has experienced uprootedness as well, but it was a process that started long ago and went on for centuries . Not so in the Slavic countries. A good case could be made to show how the sudden changes occasioned by the two wars, and eve n more by the coming of social engineering on a gigantic scale coupled with a war on traditional life with its faults and great virtues, led to the loss of values, bemoaned so often in the W est and East, and to the emptiness that. this nostalgic literary movement tries to fill. This wider perspective might help us to situate Vincent Sikula's work within the native Slovak literary tradition of lyrical prose, but also in the emerging trends appearing elsewhere in the Slavic literary world, wherein the village reappears forcefully in the guise of the national conscience, of the very soul of the nation, despite the sad fact that the traditional village and all that it implies has in the meantime been modernized and no longer exists. Thus, Sikula does not go wrong when he places the action of his SLOVAKIA 17 3 work in villages that are so close to the cities. We may assume that they are modernized or citified to an extent that should make the planners and social engineers who would like to erase the difference between the village and the city feel proud. He does not go wrong , because it is not so much the village as the village m entality that he would like to preserve in his work. Sikula's village is no lon ger the mysterious site cut off from the corrupting influences of the city, a lost domain preserved and embedded in the crystal of fi ction , as it is in Hronsky . It survives in Sikula's work in the village m entality which he sees as a precious remnant of the traditional life , as a tonic against the ailment of modern uprootedness, and finally as the lyrical soul of a child in abiding wonderment, illuminating a world that has lost its soul. NOTES ' See my " Slovak Surrealist Poetry : The M ovement and Its Rediscove ry," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. XX , No . 2 Gune 1978), pp . 237-244, a nd "Slovak Surrealist P arty," Prism Intern ational , Vol. XV , N os. 2 and 3 (Summer- Fall 1976), pp. 146-164 . ' Quoted in Alexander M atuska, J. C . Hronsky, rpt. in Osobnosti (Bratislava : Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 435. ' Matuska, p. 448. • Pavo! Stevcek , Contemporary Slovak Literature, transl. Olga H orska (Bratislava: Obzor, 1980), p. 89 . ' Quoted in M a tu ska, p. 435. ' Vincent Sikula , " T ancuj ," in Maino si postavim bungalow (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1964), p. 49 . 7 V . Sikul a, Povetrie (Brat islava: Slovensky Spisovatel', 1968), pp. 169- 170. 'Ibid. , pp . 170-17 1. 9 Stevcek, p . 89. 10 V. Sikula , Vilma (Bratislava: Slovensky Spisovatel' , 1979), p. 172. " Ibid ., p. 7. Presented in Panel 65, " The Vi llage in Slovak Li te rature," at the AAASS conventi on in Asilomar, Cali fornia on 21 September 1981.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Lyrical Prose of Vincent Šikula Description An account of the resource Peter Petro Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 165-173 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petro, Peter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/63368ebaa2d773b9a3c2b7630775e8f8.pdf 98018628eb3c119083d7cff21b39a0ee PDF Text Text 100 SLOVAKIA The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J.R.R. Tolkien's ''Eucatastrophe'' in the Realistic Stories of Martin Kukucfn Norm a L. Rudinsky Although Martin Kukucfn is primarily and consciously a realistic author, there are noticeable remnants of the fairytale tradition in hi s short stories about Slovak village life. This is not surprising as fairytales were still very popular amon g the Slovak public that Kuku cfn wanted to reach in 1880-1900 ; Slovak folk literature in general and fairytales in particular remained an active part of Slovak cultural life and were universally very popular mu ch later than in most other European countries. The unu su ally long-lastin g oral tradition and the scarcity of written literature in Slovak until the 18th century made the Slovaks cling to their fairytales as vital evidence of their ancient n ational existence, since this folk literature had not been a ppropriated by the ruling M agyar or G erm an cultures, nor eve n by the Czech culture of Bohem ia and M oravia . This is the atmosphere in which Slovak literary realism began , and, of course, prose village realism essentially began with Kuku cfn. It a ppears that , co nsciously a nd probably unco nsciously, Kuku cfn kept some of the fairytale elements that were famili ar and "natural" to the co mmon readers he wanted to reach, even though he did not picture the knights , princesses, and witches of traditional tales, but instead the farme r , the hired hand , and the mayor of the real Slovak vi ll age in 1880-1894 . Num erous elem ents of folklore, superstition, and tradition al folk cu stoms have been cited in Kuku cfn's early stories.' Besides these in cidental similarities to folk literature, many of Kukucfn's central plots suggest the fairytale in one critical respect : they usually have a happy ending. This similarity is Kuku cfn 's m ost important rela tion to the fairytale tradition of hi s tim e, and the only relation that I shall �SLOVAKIA 101 take up here . Kuku cfn 's usu al happy ending may come suddenly and without mu ch prepa rat ion , a nd ce rtainl y it is not typical for a realist a uthor. In fact, his forced ha ppy endings are a puzzle in Kukucfn ' s work and co nstitute a problem for the criti c to expl ain. I rej ec t the idea that he was too ca reless or un skillful to write otherwise, or that he was simply following the tradition of his time, as he was too innovative for that. I think Kukucfn chose to e nd his stories this way , so the question is why did he force a happy e nding from materi al tha t could more naturall y be sad ? Th e result so m e times see ms sentimental, but it is not the sentim e ntalism of Thom as Hardy or Charles Dicke ns, who "milk" a sad sce ne . Kuku cfn neve r milks a sad scene. In fact, he has few such scenes, or he ends them hap pily after all. M a ny critics have commented upon this fact: Kuku cfn seldom shows a characte r suffering very long; he kills off ve ry few characters; he never shows evil triumphing; he seldom shows a merely moral victory in an o therw ise defeated characte r. Although there are a few except ions and some of hi s most ironic stories are ambivalent, Kukucfn , as Alexander Matuska has said, "sees evil but doesn't point a finge r at it. " 1 For this reaso n , I think, Kukucfn was for a long tim e regarded as o nl y a comi c writer, despite the fact tha t his themes a re often ve ry serious. The hap py e ndin g in Kuku cfn's work has b een analyzed by the pe rceptive Bra tislava critic O skar Cepan partly in Freudian terms of in fa ntil e repression of co nflict ing motives: " Kukucfn 'represses' confli ct ing motives a nd 'transfers' them to the infantile-archaic environment of the 'famil y nest.' " 3 Not being a Freudian I think Cepan's expl a na tion cove rs onl y part of the ground , a nd I am instead inclin ed to ex plain Kuku cfn ' s h appy endin gs in te rm s of his conscious beliefs as well as the unconscious desire for ha rmony and peace which Cepan writes of. The cleares t and most obvious belief of Kuku cfn , of cou rse, was his C hri stian faith . Particularly the critics Stanislav M eciar and Cyril Potocek have em phasized the C hri stia n them es of Kukucfn 's work , ranging from early sto ri es su ch as Dve cesty, Vianocne oblatky, a nd Zo stupna na stupen to th e last no vels, es pecially Mat' vola. 4 So, the seco nd part of my thesis here is that Kukucfn's fairytale-like happy ending , besides reflecting the then-curre nt Slovak interest in fairytales, also refl ects Kuku cfn 's ow n Christian optimism. To expla in a nd su pport this thesis , I should like to use the co n cept �102 SLOVAKIA of "eucatastrophe " that was developed by the English author J .R.R . Tolkien, the leading 20th-century creator of medieval fairytales , in his Andrew Lang lecture and essay '' On Fairy-stories .' ' For T olkien , much of the appeal of fairytal es lies in the Escape they provide, and he defends such escapism not as the "Flight of the D eserter " but as the "Escape of the Prisoner ,'' or the consolation of escaping imaginatively from the inev itable pains and evils of life. 5 The greatest consolation in fairytales is that of the Happy Ending, for which Tolkien made up the word "eucatastrophe": "the good catastrophe , the sudden joyous 'turn' " of the plot in contrast to the " dyscatastroph e of sorrow and failure." The eucatastrophe, Tolkien says, "denies universal final defeat " and is the "evangelium" (pp. 85-86). The religiou s suggestion of this word "evangelium" is made explicit when Tolkien says the joy of the happy ending can " be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth '' of human life; the Eucatastrophe of a story is like the R esurrection in Christian history, and the R esurrection of Christ is the eucatastrophe of real life (p. 88). This is , very briefly, the theory of fairytales that governed Tolkien 's creation of his famous books Th e Hobbit and The Lord of th e Rings . The ''Consolation '' of a happy ending was apparently needed personally by Tolkien , whose fervent Catholicism was strongly tinged by Jansenism with its scrupulosity and depression. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter cites Tolkien's unpublished diary as evidence that he " was capable of bouts of profound despair , " 6 and says he " took an almost tragic view of himself as a weak man - which was another cause of his deep troughs of pessimism . '' 7 There is no indication of J ansenism in Kukucfn 's Christianity , during either his Lu theran or his R om an Catholic period ; in fact, the Jansenist heresy seems to have been more of a French, Irish, and English phenomenon than a Slavic one. But there is ample evidence that Kuku cfn too suffered a t times from severe depression. A s Stefan Krcmery wrote of him , The objectivity of Kuku cfn ' s art is deliberate . H e penetrated with th at sight of his into things and people so that he would not fall into th at internal sadness of his. H e lau ghed so that he would not weep .. . . There are things in life that just cannot be explained . Such are the roots of Kuku cfn ' s pessim ism . Did it com e from his feeling of sadness as a transplanted plant? Did it com e intellectually from hi s study? Philosophically , �SLOVAKIA 103 Dostoevsky and T olstoy reached most deeply into his soul. But his pessimism , even in its origins, has the stamp of the pessimism of great souls. It colors them as the dark side of their heroism . 8 Scarcely recognized by the reading public of Kukucfn 's time , this underlying pessimism and almost inadvertent sadness are more easily recognizable today . As Oskar Cepan says, Kukucfn 's ' realism ' today shows itself from a different side, and appears in a different light. It has unexpected lines . . . . More and more, we are today intrigued by his ' hidden planes,' his difficult-to-understand subtext, especially his risky balance on the ceaselessly vibrating metonymic border between epic assurance and dramatic doubt. Kukucfn's objectivity and mild humor conceal within themselves also the tinge of an indefinable and fleeting nostalgia, which is close to the most tragic chord known then to Slovak literature. 9 Thus, Kukucfn too , like Tolkien , may have personally needed the solace and consolation of the happy ending in his own creative life . '' Eu catastrophe,'' however, is not just a matter of personal need and satisfaction . Tolkien refers also to the social value of su ch consolation in the modern world of pollution , alienation , wars, depressions, and totalitarian power , in addition to the eternal evils : But there are also other and more profound "escapisms" that have always appeared in fairy-tale and legend . There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion machine . There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow , injustice , death . And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape. (p. 83) For Kukucfn, this social benefit in the fictional representation of ultim ate divine justice was probably even more important than it was for Tolkien , because Kukucfn ' s fiction was consciously didactic , as Tolkien's was not. In fact, almos t all of Slavic literary realism was didactic and se rved extra-literary functions not found in other literatu re because of the historical conditions of its origin . 10 In the Slovak students' club in Prague , called " D etvan," there were several arguments about the mean- �104 SLOVAKI A ing of realism and the rela tive valu e o f th e Ru ssia n a nd th e Fren ch schools. Kukucfn preferred the Ru ssia n reali sts becau se of th eir edu ca tional effect in a backwa rd society. 11 Criti cs agree th a t Kuku cfn delibera tely wrote about the Slovak v ill a ge for the Slovak vill age r in the speech o f the Slovak vill a ge r. 11 H e wrote for the purpose of raising the consciousness of the d owntrodden Slovak p easant , as he him self later explained in rejecting th e hope of El ena Mar6thy- Soltesova ( expressed in her novel Prati pnidu ) th a t the Slovak gentry wo uld fin ally resist Magyarization and begin to w a ke the Slovak comm o ne rs from '' their dream of self-forge tfuln ess.'' T o accomplish thi s awakenin g, the writer should combat the p assivity a nd d espair th a t ch aracte ri zed mu ch o f Slovak public life at thi s tim e - just afte r the M a ti ca slovenska and the three Slovak high school s were closed . 13 Th e re we re even fa mines in Orava at this time , whi ch Kuku cfn d escribed in Czech a rticles whose fund a ppeals w ere d esign ed to stin g the M agyar a uth orities into a id fo r the a rea . 14 C ertainly these we re compelling rea son s fo r Kuku cfn 's quiet but d efinite didacti c purpose eve n in his early hum o rou s ta les . In summary , then , I believe there were probably three forces pushin g Kukucfn to m a ke a ha ppy endin g for his sto ri es wh ere o ne mi ght expect a sadder outcome: 1) The living tradition o f the fair ytal e in the Slovak vill age of hi s tim e; 2) Kukucfn's own Christia n optimism and hi s "smile ove r hi s tears ' ' ; 3) His d ete rmination to chee r a nd en courage the d ow n trodden villager for whom h e wrote . P erh aps Kukucfn hon estl y could n ot bear to show sadn ess, fa ilure , a nd inju stice in hi s fi ction when these ev il s we re so comm on in the Slovak life of thi s tim e. N ow I should like to support these ideas with several example stories about Slovak village life, all of th em a mong Kuku cfn 's m os t celebra ted a nd ce rtainl y amon g his fin est stories. 15 First R ysava jalovica (The M o ttled H eife r , V ol. II ) is a n out- a nd out com ed y, a nd ver y su ccessful - no one would ask fo r a sad e ndin g to it! H ere the happy outcome is compl etely in keepin g w ith th e comi c plot a nd style; th e goodna tured drunk a rd Ada m Krt is a ch a rmin g caricature a nd th e pl o t is a n all ego ry so th a t K rt 's sudden reform a nd �SLOVAKIA 105 co nsequent wealth are e mine ntl y suitable to the sto ry. Krt is a classic und erdog hero - sm all , ridiculed , but cl ever in hi s ow n way; his trips to th e fair a nd then to find the lost heifer are a qu est from which h e re turn s victorious to everyone's a m azem ent. The subsidiary anecdotes , a bout the m ayo r 's troubles with the broken ha nd on the town cl ock , the feud betwee n Krt a nd hi s neighbor Trnka over a n a nn y goat a nd a rooster, a nd the d og with its head cau ght in a churn , are pure farce a nd their tone su pports the comic victory of Krt. No wonde r it was Kukucfn 's most popular story, a nd people asked for " m ore about Krt. " 16 The second exampl e, Neprebuden y (Vol. II ) is equally su ccessful , but in the oppos ite way . The titl e Neprebuden y m eans "The Unawakened" in th e m ascu lin e sin gul a r , a nd by writing of a youn g m a n who is m entall y retarded Kuku cfn in vokes the tradition of the " h oly idiot." Thi s sto ry is unique amo n g his work in b ein g trul y tragic , a nd each of th e characte rs is scarred by th e goose herd 's di scove ry of th e dece ption pract iced upon him b y the vill age bell e and h er fami ly, the n hi s subseque n t d eath in the fire that end s the wedd in g feast. Th e re is forebodin g irony throughout the story in the pun on the words husar as "gooseherd " a nd husar as "cavalryman," and this foreshadowin g is fulfill ed when the hu sar is killed tryin g to save a me re goose a nd her goslin gs in a burnin g barn. The story is really an anti-fairytale in which Kukucfn explicitly rejec ts the co nve ntion al roman ce. The gooseherd dream s of a princess in a cas tl e , the n awake ns to the teas ing of th e vill age b elle who am uses he rself by lettin g him think she will marry him . Thi s contrast between fa iryla nd a nd real life is d eveloped throu ghout the story . Neprebudeny is the closest of Kuku cfn 's stori es to th e French naturali sm of, fo r ex a mpl e , Em il e Zola , a nd it may have been a n ex perime nt on Kuku cfn 's pa rt , to imi tate Zola . If it was a n ex pe rim ent , it was on e Kuku cfn did not care to repeat , a nd late r (in 1925) he wrote to a fri end th a t he saw " no thin g spec ial" in Nepreb udeny. 17 An othe r trul y tragic story is Drotarove Vian oce (The Tinker ' s C hri st m as, Vol. III) , whi ch dramatizes a n incid e nt in the M agyar government 's actual campaign to assign Slovak children to M agyar far m fam ili es in southern Hun gary, chan gin g their names a nd preventin g their , return to Slovak a reas. T heo re ti call y all we re orph a ns, but not in realit y, a nd thi s story shows a fami ly 's failure to find their so n . H oweve r , Kuku cfn published this sto ry onl y in C zech in Bohemi a; thu s it was n ot one of hi s stories fo r th e ge neral Slovak read e r , in pa rt because it wou ld �106 SLOVAKIA have been dangerou s to print it in Hungary . Also, it was not included in his collected works published in the new Czechoslovakia. Several important stories have ironic, even ambivalent endings , such as K ed' bacik z Chochol'ova umrie (When M y Uncle from Chocholov Passes Away , Vol. IV) , which shows the co rruptive influence of an impoverished gentleman's great expectations of inheritance . Also , some stories have well-worked out happy endings to a spiritual conflict, such as an old woman's effort to understand and accept the fact that her neighbor ' s only son reached manhood and a happy wedding while her own only son had died as a young man , in D ve cesty (Two paths, Vol. V) . Another example is seen in the attempt of a young school-teacher to comprehend his vocation as willing servant to the com munity but not subservient to any individual , when he was expected to bake the traditional wafers for the whole village, in Vianocn e oblatky (Christmas Wafers, Vol. IV) . The story Zo stupna n a stupen (Going Down Step by Step, Vol. V) also shows a spiritual victory but it is only briefl y narrated , not dramatized , and the man 's happiness in poverty is only asserted, not presented . These effective happy endings , howeve r , are uncommon . The story that best illustrates my point that Kukucfn chose to force a happy ending where he could more naturally have had a sadder end, is Dies irae ... (The Day of Wrath , Vol. V) . It is a very successful story , which Bratislava critic Julius N oge calls one of the fin est in Slovak literature . 18 Dies irae is the account of a cholera epidemic, yet not one of the main characters dies. It is also the account of a spendthrift mayor who has abandoned his first love when she was expecti n g hi s child in order to marry someone else for m oney, yet he is punished only in his own view of himself. It is also the account of a miserly father whose selfishness drives out both his sons before he loses his fortune to thieves and cheating partners, yet he is able to win back one and perhaps both of his sons . The two characters, the mayor and the miser , reverberate with irony, and Kukuci'.n makes clear their moral imperfections , yet at the end he allows them all to live happily ever after. The abandoned woman loses her bitterness and her desire for revenge when she sees the mayor 's chagrin (it is not true humility), and the youn g lovers are not separated by cholera, nor by the miserly father . The last se ntence is " Now finally at the richtar's house there was peace, both the external kind and , above all, the peace that no one can take away" (p. 37 1). �SLOVAK IA 107 The story su cceed s, but I think it would have been even more moving if it h ad not end ed so well. A clear contrast to Kukucfn 's optimism is seen in the work ofBozena Slancfkova, p seudony m Timrava (1867-1951), whose long story T apa.kovci (The Tapak C la n , 1914) shows a family ' s stubborn, unimaginative adh eren ce to repressive old customs and its ill-tempered resista nce to the effort of a young bride to revamp the household. There is very little liberating humor a nd there is a much grimmer irony than Kukucfn 's iro n y would have been in the " h appy " ending whereby the bride gets a new house and the rest of the Tapak clan can stay contentedly crowded together in the old hom estead . 19 Several factors must have caused this difference between Kukucfn and Timrava . One would be the development o f their personalities, of course, but also there ar e philosophic contrasts. For example, the so-called " Tolstoyan " emphasis in Kukucfn' s Christianity is not present in Timrava ; in fact, Christian themes are less noticeable in Tim rava's work, and incipient fem inist themes are prese nt. But the sh ift in satiric to n e also com es from the historical development of' 'critical' ' realism out of classical realism , and, I believe , from the d ecreased popularity of fairytal es and other folk literary forms as the Slovak edu cat ional level rose and industrialization spread during the 20th ce ntury. Kukucfn was o b v iously aware of hi s tenden cy to gloss over some of the problems of real life becau se he wrote of it in a story published the year before Dies irae. In Po d eviatich rokoch (Afte r Nine Years, Vol. V), he has o ne of his roman ti c h ero ines return a nd accuse him ( as the a uthor) of a bandoning h er after the wedding b y n ot writing a nother story about the con fli cts that occu r within marriage. But Kukucfn allows himself to a n swer his heroin e with the easy excu se that read ers like romantic plots a bout young love, n ot domestic conflicts; thus, h e does not actuall y face the problem . H owever, later ( 1903) h e may have tried to work ou t this proble m in his novel D om v strani ( House on the Hillside) , which is about exactl y that same subj ect : the conflicts that would come if the wealthy landow ner 's so n Niko were to marry the simple peasant 's daughte r K at ica, since they are un suited b y their diffe rent upbringing and edu cation as well as by their different dispositions. 10 The novel is not a C inderella story, because Kukucfn is clearly on the n on-romantic side of class distin ctions and g ives no fairytal e endin g to this novel. It is worth noting , h owever, that even in this novel Kuku cfn does not ac- �SLOVAKIA tually show domestic conflicts resulting from an unsuita ble m arriage, because he prevents the marriage from occurring. With Dom v strani, howeve r , I am out of stories into novels, and Kukucfn was no longer writing in the fairytale tradition . Kukucfn wrote little of the origins of his work , saying only that he had learned to write from hearing and admiring the speech of the Slovak villagers in J asenova. 21 As he nowhere gave his theory of lite rature, it is only psychological speculation that his interior motiva tion was similar to Tolkien 's. Also, there can be no question of influence between Kukucfn and Tolkien, because of diffe rences in time and in language . Nor was Tolkien's specifically Christian theory offairytales anticipated in Slovak discussions of "fantasticke rozpravky," to my knowl edge. Y et the similarity is not really surprising with two writers whose Christian world view is impressed throughout their work. Tolkien's conce ption offairytales is a variation of the classic aesthetic theory that literature represents the underlying reality of huma n life, with or without the "realistic" detail of the surface phenom en a . Unfortunately, this same theory also covers the desire of many third-rate writers, including both the melodramatist and the socialist realist, to directly illustrate a clear moral ideal by rewarding goodness and punishing evil ; so whenever the didactic desire to teach and to reform becomes stronger than the artistic d esire to reveal and to express, a weakened literary effect b ecom es apparent. In some of Kukucfn 's stories, the result (as already stated), is a more or less sudden wrenching of a potential " dyscatastrophe " into a ''eucatastrophe.'' The ultimate cause of this wrench , b es ides whatever internal motivat ion lay in Kukucfn ' s creative personality, probably has to b e seen in the very h a rsh social and political structures of late 19th century Hungary. These unju st conditions stimulated a nd even forced Kukucfn to picture realistically (for the first tim e in Slovak prose) the life of the common villager, but they also stimulated a nd forced him to soften his realism with a hap p y e nding. In this way , he would not overwhelm the downtrodde n villagers ( or the dishearten ed Slovak intellectuals) with a full picture of the ir truly discouragin g lot but would instead encourage them and awaken them from their "drama of self-forge tfulness." Thus , we see 1) another illustration of the ge neral truth that literature results from the conjuncture of a particular writer with the intell ectual co nditions and the social audience of his time, a nd 2) a nothe r example of the fact that earlier Slovak culture mu st be a n a - �SLOVAKIA 109 lyzed a nd evaluated in relation to the severe limitation s impressed upo n it b y the hi sto rical conditions of Hungary . D espite the weak e ndings o f many of Kuku cfn 's stories, h e achieved a striking synthesis of both "seeing the evil " and expressin g his d eliberate Christian optimism; hi s synthesis remains as witness to a very difficult ye t promising p e riod in Slovak literar y history. It should also serve as a re minder that wherever fairytales a re a serious part o f a culture, they must also be take n seriou sly b y literary crit ics . In fac t , fairytales may h ave played a hidde n a nd unu su al role in Slovak lite r a ture simply b ecau se of the historical conditions r eferred to already. For example, Alexander M atuska su ggests that the m odern noveli st J ozef Ciger H ronsky was influ enced b y fairytales with " their natural and also unn atural a tmosph e re, their shifting border between the real a nd th e the unreal. " 11 Under this influence, Hronsky d evelop ed his unique blend of observation and realism with poe try and lyricism - a realism which stops beside d e tail but d oes n ot stop at detail, a realism to which n eithe r the miraculous nor the grotesque is foreign; and a poetry which magically fascinates u s b y its everyday subj ect and pull s u s toward deeper ideas, to the meaning of ex isten ce. 13 Probably the greatest noveli st in Slovak , Hron sk y is at o n ce one o f the most Slovak of writers and one of the m ost worldly and cosmopolitan in technique a nd style. It is ironic a nd revealing of the histo rical sp ecifics of Slovak literature that fairytales were apparently a mong the forces that led Hronsky to th e techniques that relate his work to European n atu ralism, expressio nism , a nd surrealism , to P rou st, J oyce, K a fka, and M usi l. 14 Su ch a force cannot be neglected in any p eriod. NOTES For exam ple. V iera Gasparfkova , "Prvky l'udovej kultury V Kuku cfnovej drobnej pr6ze , '' in Martin Kukucfn v kritike a spomien k ach: Sbornfk (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel's tvo Kras nej Li teratury , 1957) , pp. 360-404. This book reprints a t least major parts of most known criti cism a nd recollections of Kuku cfn up to the time of its printing; hereafter Sbornfk. ' Alex ander M a tuska, " Doslov," in Sbornfk, p. 921. All translation s from Slovak are min e. ' O skar C epan, Kuku cfnove epick e istoty (Brati slava: Tatran , 1972), pp. 267 -68. I �110 SLOVAKIA • Stanislav Meciar, Kuku cfn i ivy, 2 vols. (B uenos Aires, 1958 and 1960); Cy ril J. Potocek, M artin Kuku cfn: A Link between Two Worlds (Passaic, N .J .: Slovak Catholic Sokol, 1943). William E. Harkins has perceptively summ ari zed Kuku cin's "expressive symbol of the truth tha t m an li ves under G od's judgment, and that he would d o well therefore to li ve justly," "Foreword," Seven Slovak Stories by Martin Kuku cfn , trans . and edited by Norma Leigh Rudi nsky (R ome: Slovak Institute, 1980) , p . ix . For a full a nd rich treatment of this idea, see G. J. Sabo, " Kuku cfn 's Village Stories and Shuksin 's 'Snowball Berry-R ed,' "Slovakia, XXX (1982-83), this issue. 5 J .R .R . T olkien , " On Fairy-stories," in T he Tolkien R eader (New York : Ballantine Books, 1966), p . 79. Further references a re give n in the tex t . • Humph rey Carpenter,J.R .R . Tolkien (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd ., 1977), p. 3 1. 7 Carpen ter, p. 129 . ' Stefan Krcmery, Stopiit'desiat rokov slovenskej literatury (M artin 1943), II , 50, quoted here from Cepan , Epick e istoty, p. 24 and 253-54. ' Cepan, Epick e istoty, p . 19 . 0 ' Dmitrij Cizevskij , Comparative History of Slavic Literatures, trans. Richa rd Noel P orter and M artin P . Rice, ed. Serge A . Zenkovsky (Baltimore: Vanderbilt U ni versity Press, 197 1), pp. 164-75. " Milos Tomcik, " Z problem a tiky Kukucin ovej tvorby v Prazskom obdobi ," in S bornfk , pp . 167 -68; see also selections from the " D etva n " minutes in M a rtin Kuku cin , Dielo: Z avaine skusen osti (Bratislava: Tatran , 1971), XX , 512-14, 525-26, and 54 1-42. " C epa n , Epicke istoty, pp . 24-26 , and Cepan , " Literarno-hi storicke poznamky, " in Martin Kukucin, Dielo: R ozpravky (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury , 1957) , I , 326. " Kukucin , " Niekol'ko myslienok o romane Eleny M ar6th y-Soltesovej: Prati prudu ," in Dielo: Zavaine skusenosti, p . 400 . Further evidence of Kuku cfn 's belief in the village as the carrier of the na ti onal tradition is in my a rticl e " Preliminary Notes on Martin Kuku cin 's Criticism of Americanized Slovaks and His Opposition to the Slovak Gentry ," Slovak Studies, XVIII ( I 978), 153-67. 14 M a rtin Kuku cin , " O hladu v oravskej stolici," " Bra ti'im pod T a trami ," and " Hlad na Orave," in Dielo: Zavain e skusenosti , pp . 379-89. 15 The stori es a re in Volumes I-V of Dielo and are cited furth er in the tex t. Onl y eight of Kuku cin 's stories have been transla ted into Engl ish: R egruti by P aul Seiver in An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature (London, 1929) and Obecne trampoty, Dedin sk y j armok, Z tepleho hniezda , R ysavajalovica, Neprebudeny, Na obecnom salasi, and Dies irae by Norma L. Rudin sky in Seven Slovak Stories of M artin Kuku cfn , op . cit . 16 Jozef Skultety , " M a rtin Kuku cin ( 17 /V .1860 - 17/V . 1920) ," in Sbornfk , p . 623 . 17 Letter to J an Cadra, in Dielo: Listy priatel'om a znam ym (Bratislava: Tatran , 1974), XXI , 202) . 18 Julius Noge, Martin Kuku cfn: Tradicionalista a novator , V ol. I (Bra tislava: V yd avatel'stvo Slovenskej Akadem ie Vied, 1962), p . 1982. �SLOVAKIA 111 " Bozena Slancikova , "Tapakovci , " Timrava, 2 vols. (Martin: Tatran, 1975), II, 413-50. 0 ' Dielo: Dom v strani (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury, 1961 ), Vol. IX. " "Odpoved' na anketu casopisu Stfedni skola," in Dielo: Zavazne skusenosti, pp. 457-58; see also his remarks on learning the best and richest Slovak from the dialects: "najkrajsou cestou k studiumu gramatikovi je studovat' dialekty, " in the minutes of the "Detvan" meetings, ibid., p. 548 . " Alexander Matuska,J.C. Hronsky (Bratislava, 1970) rpt. in Osobnosti (Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 458. " Matuska, p . 459. " Matuska, p. 458. Presented in Panel 128, "Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS convention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980. � 100 SLOVAKIA The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J.R.R. Tolkien's ''Eucatastrophe'' in the Realistic Stories of Martin Kukucfn Norm a L. Rudinsky Although Martin Kukucfn is primarily and consciously a realistic author, there are noticeable remnants of the fairytale tradition in hi s short stories about Slovak village life. This is not surprising as fairytales were still very popular amon g the Slovak public that Kuku cfn wanted to reach in 1880-1900 ; Slovak folk literature in general and fairytales in particular remained an active part of Slovak cultural life and were universally very popular mu ch later than in most other European countries. The unu su ally long-lastin g oral tradition and the scarcity of written literature in Slovak until the 18th century made the Slovaks cling to their fairytales as vital evidence of their ancient n ational existence, since this folk literature had not been a ppropriated by the ruling M agyar or G erm an cultures, nor eve n by the Czech culture of Bohem ia and M oravia . This is the atmosphere in which Slovak literary realism began , and, of course, prose village realism essentially began with Kuku cfn. It a ppears that , co nsciously a nd probably unco nsciously, Kuku cfn kept some of the fairytale elements that were famili ar and "natural" to the co mmon readers he wanted to reach, even though he did not picture the knights , princesses, and witches of traditional tales, but instead the farme r , the hired hand , and the mayor of the real Slovak vi ll age in 1880-1894 . Num erous elem ents of folklore, superstition, and tradition al folk cu stoms have been cited in Kuku cfn's early stories.' Besides these in cidental similarities to folk literature, many of Kukucfn's central plots suggest the fairytale in one critical respect : they usually have a happy ending. This similarity is Kuku cfn 's m ost important rela tion to the fairytale tradition of hi s tim e, and the only relation that I shall �SLOVAKIA 101 take up here . Kuku cfn 's usu al happy ending may come suddenly and without mu ch prepa rat ion , a nd ce rtainl y it is not typical for a realist a uthor. In fact, his forced ha ppy endings are a puzzle in Kukucfn ' s work and co nstitute a problem for the criti c to expl ain. I rej ec t the idea that he was too ca reless or un skillful to write otherwise, or that he was simply following the tradition of his time, as he was too innovative for that. I think Kukucfn chose to e nd his stories this way , so the question is why did he force a happy e nding from materi al tha t could more naturall y be sad ? Th e result so m e times see ms sentimental, but it is not the sentim e ntalism of Thom as Hardy or Charles Dicke ns, who "milk" a sad sce ne . Kuku cfn neve r milks a sad scene. In fact, he has few such scenes, or he ends them hap pily after all. M a ny critics have commented upon this fact: Kuku cfn seldom shows a characte r suffering very long; he kills off ve ry few characters; he never shows evil triumphing; he seldom shows a merely moral victory in an o therw ise defeated characte r. Although there are a few except ions and some of hi s most ironic stories are ambivalent, Kukucfn , as Alexander Matuska has said, "sees evil but doesn't point a finge r at it. " 1 For this reaso n , I think, Kukucfn was for a long tim e regarded as o nl y a comi c writer, despite the fact tha t his themes a re often ve ry serious. The hap py e ndin g in Kuku cfn's work has b een analyzed by the pe rceptive Bra tislava critic O skar Cepan partly in Freudian terms of in fa ntil e repression of co nflict ing motives: " Kukucfn 'represses' confli ct ing motives a nd 'transfers' them to the infantile-archaic environment of the 'famil y nest.' " 3 Not being a Freudian I think Cepan's expl a na tion cove rs onl y part of the ground , a nd I am instead inclin ed to ex plain Kuku cfn ' s h appy endin gs in te rm s of his conscious beliefs as well as the unconscious desire for ha rmony and peace which Cepan writes of. The cleares t and most obvious belief of Kuku cfn , of cou rse, was his C hri stian faith . Particularly the critics Stanislav M eciar and Cyril Potocek have em phasized the C hri stia n them es of Kukucfn 's work , ranging from early sto ri es su ch as Dve cesty, Vianocne oblatky, a nd Zo stupna na stupen to th e last no vels, es pecially Mat' vola. 4 So, the seco nd part of my thesis here is that Kukucfn's fairytale-like happy ending , besides reflecting the then-curre nt Slovak interest in fairytales, also refl ects Kuku cfn 's ow n Christian optimism. To expla in a nd su pport this thesis , I should like to use the co n cept �102 SLOVAKIA of "eucatastrophe " that was developed by the English author J .R.R . Tolkien, the leading 20th-century creator of medieval fairytales , in his Andrew Lang lecture and essay '' On Fairy-stories .' ' For T olkien , much of the appeal of fairytal es lies in the Escape they provide, and he defends such escapism not as the "Flight of the D eserter " but as the "Escape of the Prisoner ,'' or the consolation of escaping imaginatively from the inev itable pains and evils of life. 5 The greatest consolation in fairytales is that of the Happy Ending, for which Tolkien made up the word "eucatastrophe": "the good catastrophe , the sudden joyous 'turn' " of the plot in contrast to the " dyscatastroph e of sorrow and failure." The eucatastrophe, Tolkien says, "denies universal final defeat " and is the "evangelium" (pp. 85-86). The religiou s suggestion of this word "evangelium" is made explicit when Tolkien says the joy of the happy ending can " be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth '' of human life; the Eucatastrophe of a story is like the R esurrection in Christian history, and the R esurrection of Christ is the eucatastrophe of real life (p. 88). This is , very briefly, the theory of fairytales that governed Tolkien 's creation of his famous books Th e Hobbit and The Lord of th e Rings . The ''Consolation '' of a happy ending was apparently needed personally by Tolkien , whose fervent Catholicism was strongly tinged by Jansenism with its scrupulosity and depression. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter cites Tolkien's unpublished diary as evidence that he " was capable of bouts of profound despair , " 6 and says he " took an almost tragic view of himself as a weak man - which was another cause of his deep troughs of pessimism . '' 7 There is no indication of J ansenism in Kukucfn 's Christianity , during either his Lu theran or his R om an Catholic period ; in fact, the Jansenist heresy seems to have been more of a French, Irish, and English phenomenon than a Slavic one. But there is ample evidence that Kuku cfn too suffered a t times from severe depression. A s Stefan Krcmery wrote of him , The objectivity of Kuku cfn ' s art is deliberate . H e penetrated with th at sight of his into things and people so that he would not fall into th at internal sadness of his. H e lau ghed so that he would not weep .. . . There are things in life that just cannot be explained . Such are the roots of Kuku cfn ' s pessim ism . Did it com e from his feeling of sadness as a transplanted plant? Did it com e intellectually from hi s study? Philosophically , �SLOVAKIA 103 Dostoevsky and T olstoy reached most deeply into his soul. But his pessimism , even in its origins, has the stamp of the pessimism of great souls. It colors them as the dark side of their heroism . 8 Scarcely recognized by the reading public of Kukucfn 's time , this underlying pessimism and almost inadvertent sadness are more easily recognizable today . As Oskar Cepan says, Kukucfn 's ' realism ' today shows itself from a different side, and appears in a different light. It has unexpected lines . . . . More and more, we are today intrigued by his ' hidden planes,' his difficult-to-understand subtext, especially his risky balance on the ceaselessly vibrating metonymic border between epic assurance and dramatic doubt. Kukucfn's objectivity and mild humor conceal within themselves also the tinge of an indefinable and fleeting nostalgia, which is close to the most tragic chord known then to Slovak literature. 9 Thus, Kukucfn too , like Tolkien , may have personally needed the solace and consolation of the happy ending in his own creative life . '' Eu catastrophe,'' however, is not just a matter of personal need and satisfaction . Tolkien refers also to the social value of su ch consolation in the modern world of pollution , alienation , wars, depressions, and totalitarian power , in addition to the eternal evils : But there are also other and more profound "escapisms" that have always appeared in fairy-tale and legend . There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion machine . There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow , injustice , death . And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape. (p. 83) For Kukucfn, this social benefit in the fictional representation of ultim ate divine justice was probably even more important than it was for Tolkien , because Kukucfn ' s fiction was consciously didactic , as Tolkien's was not. In fact, almos t all of Slavic literary realism was didactic and se rved extra-literary functions not found in other literatu re because of the historical conditions of its origin . 10 In the Slovak students' club in Prague , called " D etvan," there were several arguments about the mean- �104 SLOVAKI A ing of realism and the rela tive valu e o f th e Ru ssia n a nd th e Fren ch schools. Kukucfn preferred the Ru ssia n reali sts becau se of th eir edu ca tional effect in a backwa rd society. 11 Criti cs agree th a t Kuku cfn delibera tely wrote about the Slovak v ill a ge for the Slovak vill age r in the speech o f the Slovak vill a ge r. 11 H e wrote for the purpose of raising the consciousness of the d owntrodden Slovak p easant , as he him self later explained in rejecting th e hope of El ena Mar6thy- Soltesova ( expressed in her novel Prati pnidu ) th a t the Slovak gentry wo uld fin ally resist Magyarization and begin to w a ke the Slovak comm o ne rs from '' their dream of self-forge tfuln ess.'' T o accomplish thi s awakenin g, the writer should combat the p assivity a nd d espair th a t ch aracte ri zed mu ch o f Slovak public life at thi s tim e - just afte r the M a ti ca slovenska and the three Slovak high school s were closed . 13 Th e re we re even fa mines in Orava at this time , whi ch Kuku cfn d escribed in Czech a rticles whose fund a ppeals w ere d esign ed to stin g the M agyar a uth orities into a id fo r the a rea . 14 C ertainly these we re compelling rea son s fo r Kuku cfn 's quiet but d efinite didacti c purpose eve n in his early hum o rou s ta les . In summary , then , I believe there were probably three forces pushin g Kukucfn to m a ke a ha ppy endin g for his sto ri es wh ere o ne mi ght expect a sadder outcome: 1) The living tradition o f the fair ytal e in the Slovak vill age of hi s tim e; 2) Kukucfn's own Christia n optimism and hi s "smile ove r hi s tears ' ' ; 3) His d ete rmination to chee r a nd en courage the d ow n trodden villager for whom h e wrote . P erh aps Kukucfn hon estl y could n ot bear to show sadn ess, fa ilure , a nd inju stice in hi s fi ction when these ev il s we re so comm on in the Slovak life of thi s tim e. N ow I should like to support these ideas with several example stories about Slovak village life, all of th em a mong Kuku cfn 's m os t celebra ted a nd ce rtainl y amon g his fin est stories. 15 First R ysava jalovica (The M o ttled H eife r , V ol. II ) is a n out- a nd out com ed y, a nd ver y su ccessful - no one would ask fo r a sad e ndin g to it! H ere the happy outcome is compl etely in keepin g w ith th e comi c plot a nd style; th e goodna tured drunk a rd Ada m Krt is a ch a rmin g caricature a nd th e pl o t is a n all ego ry so th a t K rt 's sudden reform a nd �SLOVAKIA 105 co nsequent wealth are e mine ntl y suitable to the sto ry. Krt is a classic und erdog hero - sm all , ridiculed , but cl ever in hi s ow n way; his trips to th e fair a nd then to find the lost heifer are a qu est from which h e re turn s victorious to everyone's a m azem ent. The subsidiary anecdotes , a bout the m ayo r 's troubles with the broken ha nd on the town cl ock , the feud betwee n Krt a nd hi s neighbor Trnka over a n a nn y goat a nd a rooster, a nd the d og with its head cau ght in a churn , are pure farce a nd their tone su pports the comic victory of Krt. No wonde r it was Kukucfn 's most popular story, a nd people asked for " m ore about Krt. " 16 The second exampl e, Neprebuden y (Vol. II ) is equally su ccessful , but in the oppos ite way . The titl e Neprebuden y m eans "The Unawakened" in th e m ascu lin e sin gul a r , a nd by writing of a youn g m a n who is m entall y retarded Kuku cfn in vokes the tradition of the " h oly idiot." Thi s sto ry is unique amo n g his work in b ein g trul y tragic , a nd each of th e characte rs is scarred by th e goose herd 's di scove ry of th e dece ption pract iced upon him b y the vill age bell e and h er fami ly, the n hi s subseque n t d eath in the fire that end s the wedd in g feast. Th e re is forebodin g irony throughout the story in the pun on the words husar as "gooseherd " a nd husar as "cavalryman," and this foreshadowin g is fulfill ed when the hu sar is killed tryin g to save a me re goose a nd her goslin gs in a burnin g barn. The story is really an anti-fairytale in which Kukucfn explicitly rejec ts the co nve ntion al roman ce. The gooseherd dream s of a princess in a cas tl e , the n awake ns to the teas ing of th e vill age b elle who am uses he rself by lettin g him think she will marry him . Thi s contrast between fa iryla nd a nd real life is d eveloped throu ghout the story . Neprebudeny is the closest of Kuku cfn 's stori es to th e French naturali sm of, fo r ex a mpl e , Em il e Zola , a nd it may have been a n ex perime nt on Kuku cfn 's pa rt , to imi tate Zola . If it was a n ex pe rim ent , it was on e Kuku cfn did not care to repeat , a nd late r (in 1925) he wrote to a fri end th a t he saw " no thin g spec ial" in Nepreb udeny. 17 An othe r trul y tragic story is Drotarove Vian oce (The Tinker ' s C hri st m as, Vol. III) , whi ch dramatizes a n incid e nt in the M agyar government 's actual campaign to assign Slovak children to M agyar far m fam ili es in southern Hun gary, chan gin g their names a nd preventin g their , return to Slovak a reas. T heo re ti call y all we re orph a ns, but not in realit y, a nd thi s story shows a fami ly 's failure to find their so n . H oweve r , Kuku cfn published this sto ry onl y in C zech in Bohemi a; thu s it was n ot one of hi s stories fo r th e ge neral Slovak read e r , in pa rt because it wou ld �106 SLOVAKIA have been dangerou s to print it in Hungary . Also, it was not included in his collected works published in the new Czechoslovakia. Several important stories have ironic, even ambivalent endings , such as K ed' bacik z Chochol'ova umrie (When M y Uncle from Chocholov Passes Away , Vol. IV) , which shows the co rruptive influence of an impoverished gentleman's great expectations of inheritance . Also , some stories have well-worked out happy endings to a spiritual conflict, such as an old woman's effort to understand and accept the fact that her neighbor ' s only son reached manhood and a happy wedding while her own only son had died as a young man , in D ve cesty (Two paths, Vol. V) . Another example is seen in the attempt of a young school-teacher to comprehend his vocation as willing servant to the com munity but not subservient to any individual , when he was expected to bake the traditional wafers for the whole village, in Vianocn e oblatky (Christmas Wafers, Vol. IV) . The story Zo stupna n a stupen (Going Down Step by Step, Vol. V) also shows a spiritual victory but it is only briefl y narrated , not dramatized , and the man 's happiness in poverty is only asserted, not presented . These effective happy endings , howeve r , are uncommon . The story that best illustrates my point that Kukucfn chose to force a happy ending where he could more naturally have had a sadder end, is Dies irae ... (The Day of Wrath , Vol. V) . It is a very successful story , which Bratislava critic Julius N oge calls one of the fin est in Slovak literature . 18 Dies irae is the account of a cholera epidemic, yet not one of the main characters dies. It is also the account of a spendthrift mayor who has abandoned his first love when she was expecti n g hi s child in order to marry someone else for m oney, yet he is punished only in his own view of himself. It is also the account of a miserly father whose selfishness drives out both his sons before he loses his fortune to thieves and cheating partners, yet he is able to win back one and perhaps both of his sons . The two characters, the mayor and the miser , reverberate with irony, and Kukuci'.n makes clear their moral imperfections , yet at the end he allows them all to live happily ever after. The abandoned woman loses her bitterness and her desire for revenge when she sees the mayor 's chagrin (it is not true humility), and the youn g lovers are not separated by cholera, nor by the miserly father . The last se ntence is " Now finally at the richtar's house there was peace, both the external kind and , above all, the peace that no one can take away" (p. 37 1). �SLOVAK IA 107 The story su cceed s, but I think it would have been even more moving if it h ad not end ed so well. A clear contrast to Kukucfn 's optimism is seen in the work ofBozena Slancfkova, p seudony m Timrava (1867-1951), whose long story T apa.kovci (The Tapak C la n , 1914) shows a family ' s stubborn, unimaginative adh eren ce to repressive old customs and its ill-tempered resista nce to the effort of a young bride to revamp the household. There is very little liberating humor a nd there is a much grimmer irony than Kukucfn 's iro n y would have been in the " h appy " ending whereby the bride gets a new house and the rest of the Tapak clan can stay contentedly crowded together in the old hom estead . 19 Several factors must have caused this difference between Kukucfn and Timrava . One would be the development o f their personalities, of course, but also there ar e philosophic contrasts. For example, the so-called " Tolstoyan " emphasis in Kukucfn' s Christianity is not present in Timrava ; in fact, Christian themes are less noticeable in Tim rava's work, and incipient fem inist themes are prese nt. But the sh ift in satiric to n e also com es from the historical development of' 'critical' ' realism out of classical realism , and, I believe , from the d ecreased popularity of fairytal es and other folk literary forms as the Slovak edu cat ional level rose and industrialization spread during the 20th ce ntury. Kukucfn was o b v iously aware of hi s tenden cy to gloss over some of the problems of real life becau se he wrote of it in a story published the year before Dies irae. In Po d eviatich rokoch (Afte r Nine Years, Vol. V), he has o ne of his roman ti c h ero ines return a nd accuse him ( as the a uthor) of a bandoning h er after the wedding b y n ot writing a nother story about the con fli cts that occu r within marriage. But Kukucfn allows himself to a n swer his heroin e with the easy excu se that read ers like romantic plots a bout young love, n ot domestic conflicts; thus, h e does not actuall y face the problem . H owever, later ( 1903) h e may have tried to work ou t this proble m in his novel D om v strani ( House on the Hillside) , which is about exactl y that same subj ect : the conflicts that would come if the wealthy landow ner 's so n Niko were to marry the simple peasant 's daughte r K at ica, since they are un suited b y their diffe rent upbringing and edu cation as well as by their different dispositions. 10 The novel is not a C inderella story, because Kukucfn is clearly on the n on-romantic side of class distin ctions and g ives no fairytal e endin g to this novel. It is worth noting , h owever, that even in this novel Kuku cfn does not ac- �SLOVAKIA tually show domestic conflicts resulting from an unsuita ble m arriage, because he prevents the marriage from occurring. With Dom v strani, howeve r , I am out of stories into novels, and Kukucfn was no longer writing in the fairytale tradition . Kukucfn wrote little of the origins of his work , saying only that he had learned to write from hearing and admiring the speech of the Slovak villagers in J asenova. 21 As he nowhere gave his theory of lite rature, it is only psychological speculation that his interior motiva tion was similar to Tolkien 's. Also, there can be no question of influence between Kukucfn and Tolkien, because of diffe rences in time and in language . Nor was Tolkien's specifically Christian theory offairytales anticipated in Slovak discussions of "fantasticke rozpravky," to my knowl edge. Y et the similarity is not really surprising with two writers whose Christian world view is impressed throughout their work. Tolkien's conce ption offairytales is a variation of the classic aesthetic theory that literature represents the underlying reality of huma n life, with or without the "realistic" detail of the surface phenom en a . Unfortunately, this same theory also covers the desire of many third-rate writers, including both the melodramatist and the socialist realist, to directly illustrate a clear moral ideal by rewarding goodness and punishing evil ; so whenever the didactic desire to teach and to reform becomes stronger than the artistic d esire to reveal and to express, a weakened literary effect b ecom es apparent. In some of Kukucfn 's stories, the result (as already stated), is a more or less sudden wrenching of a potential " dyscatastrophe " into a ''eucatastrophe.'' The ultimate cause of this wrench , b es ides whatever internal motivat ion lay in Kukucfn ' s creative personality, probably has to b e seen in the very h a rsh social and political structures of late 19th century Hungary. These unju st conditions stimulated a nd even forced Kukucfn to picture realistically (for the first tim e in Slovak prose) the life of the common villager, but they also stimulated a nd forced him to soften his realism with a hap p y e nding. In this way , he would not overwhelm the downtrodde n villagers ( or the dishearten ed Slovak intellectuals) with a full picture of the ir truly discouragin g lot but would instead encourage them and awaken them from their "drama of self-forge tfulness." Thus , we see 1) another illustration of the ge neral truth that literature results from the conjuncture of a particular writer with the intell ectual co nditions and the social audience of his time, a nd 2) a nothe r example of the fact that earlier Slovak culture mu st be a n a - �SLOVAKIA 109 lyzed a nd evaluated in relation to the severe limitation s impressed upo n it b y the hi sto rical conditions of Hungary . D espite the weak e ndings o f many of Kuku cfn 's stories, h e achieved a striking synthesis of both "seeing the evil " and expressin g his d eliberate Christian optimism; hi s synthesis remains as witness to a very difficult ye t promising p e riod in Slovak literar y history. It should also serve as a re minder that wherever fairytales a re a serious part o f a culture, they must also be take n seriou sly b y literary crit ics . In fac t , fairytales may h ave played a hidde n a nd unu su al role in Slovak lite r a ture simply b ecau se of the historical conditions r eferred to already. For example, Alexander M atuska su ggests that the m odern noveli st J ozef Ciger H ronsky was influ enced b y fairytales with " their natural and also unn atural a tmosph e re, their shifting border between the real a nd th e the unreal. " 11 Under this influence, Hronsky d evelop ed his unique blend of observation and realism with poe try and lyricism - a realism which stops beside d e tail but d oes n ot stop at detail, a realism to which n eithe r the miraculous nor the grotesque is foreign; and a poetry which magically fascinates u s b y its everyday subj ect and pull s u s toward deeper ideas, to the meaning of ex isten ce. 13 Probably the greatest noveli st in Slovak , Hron sk y is at o n ce one o f the most Slovak of writers and one of the m ost worldly and cosmopolitan in technique a nd style. It is ironic a nd revealing of the histo rical sp ecifics of Slovak literature that fairytales were apparently a mong the forces that led Hronsky to th e techniques that relate his work to European n atu ralism, expressio nism , a nd surrealism , to P rou st, J oyce, K a fka, and M usi l. 14 Su ch a force cannot be neglected in any p eriod. NOTES For exam ple. V iera Gasparfkova , "Prvky l'udovej kultury V Kuku cfnovej drobnej pr6ze , '' in Martin Kukucfn v kritike a spomien k ach: Sbornfk (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel's tvo Kras nej Li teratury , 1957) , pp. 360-404. This book reprints a t least major parts of most known criti cism a nd recollections of Kuku cfn up to the time of its printing; hereafter Sbornfk. ' Alex ander M a tuska, " Doslov," in Sbornfk, p. 921. All translation s from Slovak are min e. ' O skar C epan, Kuku cfnove epick e istoty (Brati slava: Tatran , 1972), pp. 267 -68. I �110 SLOVAKIA • Stanislav Meciar, Kuku cfn i ivy, 2 vols. (B uenos Aires, 1958 and 1960); Cy ril J. Potocek, M artin Kuku cfn: A Link between Two Worlds (Passaic, N .J .: Slovak Catholic Sokol, 1943). William E. Harkins has perceptively summ ari zed Kuku cin's "expressive symbol of the truth tha t m an li ves under G od's judgment, and that he would d o well therefore to li ve justly," "Foreword," Seven Slovak Stories by Martin Kuku cfn , trans . and edited by Norma Leigh Rudi nsky (R ome: Slovak Institute, 1980) , p . ix . For a full a nd rich treatment of this idea, see G. J. Sabo, " Kuku cfn 's Village Stories and Shuksin 's 'Snowball Berry-R ed,' "Slovakia, XXX (1982-83), this issue. 5 J .R .R . T olkien , " On Fairy-stories," in T he Tolkien R eader (New York : Ballantine Books, 1966), p . 79. Further references a re give n in the tex t . • Humph rey Carpenter,J.R .R . Tolkien (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd ., 1977), p. 3 1. 7 Carpen ter, p. 129 . ' Stefan Krcmery, Stopiit'desiat rokov slovenskej literatury (M artin 1943), II , 50, quoted here from Cepan , Epick e istoty, p. 24 and 253-54. ' Cepan, Epick e istoty, p . 19 . 0 ' Dmitrij Cizevskij , Comparative History of Slavic Literatures, trans. Richa rd Noel P orter and M artin P . Rice, ed. Serge A . Zenkovsky (Baltimore: Vanderbilt U ni versity Press, 197 1), pp. 164-75. " Milos Tomcik, " Z problem a tiky Kukucin ovej tvorby v Prazskom obdobi ," in S bornfk , pp . 167 -68; see also selections from the " D etva n " minutes in M a rtin Kuku cin , Dielo: Z avaine skusen osti (Bratislava: Tatran , 1971), XX , 512-14, 525-26, and 54 1-42. " C epa n , Epicke istoty, pp . 24-26 , and Cepan , " Literarno-hi storicke poznamky, " in Martin Kukucin, Dielo: R ozpravky (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury , 1957) , I , 326. " Kukucin , " Niekol'ko myslienok o romane Eleny M ar6th y-Soltesovej: Prati prudu ," in Dielo: Zavaine skusenosti, p . 400 . Further evidence of Kuku cfn 's belief in the village as the carrier of the na ti onal tradition is in my a rticl e " Preliminary Notes on Martin Kuku cin 's Criticism of Americanized Slovaks and His Opposition to the Slovak Gentry ," Slovak Studies, XVIII ( I 978), 153-67. 14 M a rtin Kuku cin , " O hladu v oravskej stolici," " Bra ti'im pod T a trami ," and " Hlad na Orave," in Dielo: Zavain e skusenosti , pp . 379-89. 15 The stori es a re in Volumes I-V of Dielo and are cited furth er in the tex t. Onl y eight of Kuku cin 's stories have been transla ted into Engl ish: R egruti by P aul Seiver in An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature (London, 1929) and Obecne trampoty, Dedin sk y j armok, Z tepleho hniezda , R ysavajalovica, Neprebudeny, Na obecnom salasi, and Dies irae by Norma L. Rudin sky in Seven Slovak Stories of M artin Kuku cfn , op . cit . 16 Jozef Skultety , " M a rtin Kuku cin ( 17 /V .1860 - 17/V . 1920) ," in Sbornfk , p . 623 . 17 Letter to J an Cadra, in Dielo: Listy priatel'om a znam ym (Bratislava: Tatran , 1974), XXI , 202) . 18 Julius Noge, Martin Kuku cfn: Tradicionalista a novator , V ol. I (Bra tislava: V yd avatel'stvo Slovenskej Akadem ie Vied, 1962), p . 1982. �SLOVAKIA 111 " Bozena Slancikova , "Tapakovci , " Timrava, 2 vols. (Martin: Tatran, 1975), II, 413-50. 0 ' Dielo: Dom v strani (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury, 1961 ), Vol. IX. " "Odpoved' na anketu casopisu Stfedni skola," in Dielo: Zavazne skusenosti, pp. 457-58; see also his remarks on learning the best and richest Slovak from the dialects: "najkrajsou cestou k studiumu gramatikovi je studovat' dialekty, " in the minutes of the "Detvan" meetings, ibid., p. 548 . " Alexander Matuska,J.C. Hronsky (Bratislava, 1970) rpt. in Osobnosti (Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 458. " Matuska, p . 459. " Matuska, p. 458. Presented in Panel 128, "Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS convention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 100 SLOVAKIA The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J.R.R. Tolkien's ''Eucatastrophe'' in the Realistic Stories of Martin Kukucfn Norm a L. Rudinsky Although Martin Kukucfn is primarily and consciously a realistic author, there are noticeable remnants of the fairytale tradition in hi s short stories about Slovak village life. This is not surprising as fairytales were still very popular amon g the Slovak public that Kuku cfn wanted to reach in 1880-1900 ; Slovak folk literature in general and fairytales in particular remained an active part of Slovak cultural life and were universally very popular mu ch later than in most other European countries. The unu su ally long-lastin g oral tradition and the scarcity of written literature in Slovak until the 18th century made the Slovaks cling to their fairytales as vital evidence of their ancient n ational existence, since this folk literature had not been a ppropriated by the ruling M agyar or G erm an cultures, nor eve n by the Czech culture of Bohem ia and M oravia . This is the atmosphere in which Slovak literary realism began , and, of course, prose village realism essentially began with Kuku cfn. It a ppears that , co nsciously a nd probably unco nsciously, Kuku cfn kept some of the fairytale elements that were famili ar and "natural" to the co mmon readers he wanted to reach, even though he did not picture the knights , princesses, and witches of traditional tales, but instead the farme r , the hired hand , and the mayor of the real Slovak vi ll age in 1880-1894 . Num erous elem ents of folklore, superstition, and tradition al folk cu stoms have been cited in Kuku cfn's early stories.' Besides these in cidental similarities to folk literature, many of Kukucfn's central plots suggest the fairytale in one critical respect : they usually have a happy ending. This similarity is Kuku cfn 's m ost important rela tion to the fairytale tradition of hi s tim e, and the only relation that I shall SLOVAKIA 101 take up here . Kuku cfn 's usu al happy ending may come suddenly and without mu ch prepa rat ion , a nd ce rtainl y it is not typical for a realist a uthor. In fact, his forced ha ppy endings are a puzzle in Kukucfn ' s work and co nstitute a problem for the criti c to expl ain. I rej ec t the idea that he was too ca reless or un skillful to write otherwise, or that he was simply following the tradition of his time, as he was too innovative for that. I think Kukucfn chose to e nd his stories this way , so the question is why did he force a happy e nding from materi al tha t could more naturall y be sad ? Th e result so m e times see ms sentimental, but it is not the sentim e ntalism of Thom as Hardy or Charles Dicke ns, who "milk" a sad sce ne . Kuku cfn neve r milks a sad scene. In fact, he has few such scenes, or he ends them hap pily after all. M a ny critics have commented upon this fact: Kuku cfn seldom shows a characte r suffering very long; he kills off ve ry few characters; he never shows evil triumphing; he seldom shows a merely moral victory in an o therw ise defeated characte r. Although there are a few except ions and some of hi s most ironic stories are ambivalent, Kukucfn , as Alexander Matuska has said, "sees evil but doesn't point a finge r at it. " 1 For this reaso n , I think, Kukucfn was for a long tim e regarded as o nl y a comi c writer, despite the fact tha t his themes a re often ve ry serious. The hap py e ndin g in Kuku cfn's work has b een analyzed by the pe rceptive Bra tislava critic O skar Cepan partly in Freudian terms of in fa ntil e repression of co nflict ing motives: " Kukucfn 'represses' confli ct ing motives a nd 'transfers' them to the infantile-archaic environment of the 'famil y nest.' " 3 Not being a Freudian I think Cepan's expl a na tion cove rs onl y part of the ground , a nd I am instead inclin ed to ex plain Kuku cfn ' s h appy endin gs in te rm s of his conscious beliefs as well as the unconscious desire for ha rmony and peace which Cepan writes of. The cleares t and most obvious belief of Kuku cfn , of cou rse, was his C hri stian faith . Particularly the critics Stanislav M eciar and Cyril Potocek have em phasized the C hri stia n them es of Kukucfn 's work , ranging from early sto ri es su ch as Dve cesty, Vianocne oblatky, a nd Zo stupna na stupen to th e last no vels, es pecially Mat' vola. 4 So, the seco nd part of my thesis here is that Kukucfn's fairytale-like happy ending , besides reflecting the then-curre nt Slovak interest in fairytales, also refl ects Kuku cfn 's ow n Christian optimism. To expla in a nd su pport this thesis , I should like to use the co n cept 102 SLOVAKIA of "eucatastrophe " that was developed by the English author J .R.R . Tolkien, the leading 20th-century creator of medieval fairytales , in his Andrew Lang lecture and essay '' On Fairy-stories .' ' For T olkien , much of the appeal of fairytal es lies in the Escape they provide, and he defends such escapism not as the "Flight of the D eserter " but as the "Escape of the Prisoner ,'' or the consolation of escaping imaginatively from the inev itable pains and evils of life. 5 The greatest consolation in fairytales is that of the Happy Ending, for which Tolkien made up the word "eucatastrophe": "the good catastrophe , the sudden joyous 'turn' " of the plot in contrast to the " dyscatastroph e of sorrow and failure." The eucatastrophe, Tolkien says, "denies universal final defeat " and is the "evangelium" (pp. 85-86). The religiou s suggestion of this word "evangelium" is made explicit when Tolkien says the joy of the happy ending can " be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth '' of human life; the Eucatastrophe of a story is like the R esurrection in Christian history, and the R esurrection of Christ is the eucatastrophe of real life (p. 88). This is , very briefly, the theory of fairytales that governed Tolkien 's creation of his famous books Th e Hobbit and The Lord of th e Rings . The ''Consolation '' of a happy ending was apparently needed personally by Tolkien , whose fervent Catholicism was strongly tinged by Jansenism with its scrupulosity and depression. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter cites Tolkien's unpublished diary as evidence that he " was capable of bouts of profound despair , " 6 and says he " took an almost tragic view of himself as a weak man - which was another cause of his deep troughs of pessimism . '' 7 There is no indication of J ansenism in Kukucfn 's Christianity , during either his Lu theran or his R om an Catholic period ; in fact, the Jansenist heresy seems to have been more of a French, Irish, and English phenomenon than a Slavic one. But there is ample evidence that Kuku cfn too suffered a t times from severe depression. A s Stefan Krcmery wrote of him , The objectivity of Kuku cfn ' s art is deliberate . H e penetrated with th at sight of his into things and people so that he would not fall into th at internal sadness of his. H e lau ghed so that he would not weep .. . . There are things in life that just cannot be explained . Such are the roots of Kuku cfn ' s pessim ism . Did it com e from his feeling of sadness as a transplanted plant? Did it com e intellectually from hi s study? Philosophically , SLOVAKIA 103 Dostoevsky and T olstoy reached most deeply into his soul. But his pessimism , even in its origins, has the stamp of the pessimism of great souls. It colors them as the dark side of their heroism . 8 Scarcely recognized by the reading public of Kukucfn 's time , this underlying pessimism and almost inadvertent sadness are more easily recognizable today . As Oskar Cepan says, Kukucfn 's ' realism ' today shows itself from a different side, and appears in a different light. It has unexpected lines . . . . More and more, we are today intrigued by his ' hidden planes,' his difficult-to-understand subtext, especially his risky balance on the ceaselessly vibrating metonymic border between epic assurance and dramatic doubt. Kukucfn's objectivity and mild humor conceal within themselves also the tinge of an indefinable and fleeting nostalgia, which is close to the most tragic chord known then to Slovak literature. 9 Thus, Kukucfn too , like Tolkien , may have personally needed the solace and consolation of the happy ending in his own creative life . '' Eu catastrophe,'' however, is not just a matter of personal need and satisfaction . Tolkien refers also to the social value of su ch consolation in the modern world of pollution , alienation , wars, depressions, and totalitarian power , in addition to the eternal evils : But there are also other and more profound "escapisms" that have always appeared in fairy-tale and legend . There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion machine . There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow , injustice , death . And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape. (p. 83) For Kukucfn, this social benefit in the fictional representation of ultim ate divine justice was probably even more important than it was for Tolkien , because Kukucfn ' s fiction was consciously didactic , as Tolkien's was not. In fact, almos t all of Slavic literary realism was didactic and se rved extra-literary functions not found in other literatu re because of the historical conditions of its origin . 10 In the Slovak students' club in Prague , called " D etvan," there were several arguments about the mean- 104 SLOVAKI A ing of realism and the rela tive valu e o f th e Ru ssia n a nd th e Fren ch schools. Kukucfn preferred the Ru ssia n reali sts becau se of th eir edu ca tional effect in a backwa rd society. 11 Criti cs agree th a t Kuku cfn delibera tely wrote about the Slovak v ill a ge for the Slovak vill age r in the speech o f the Slovak vill a ge r. 11 H e wrote for the purpose of raising the consciousness of the d owntrodden Slovak p easant , as he him self later explained in rejecting th e hope of El ena Mar6thy- Soltesova ( expressed in her novel Prati pnidu ) th a t the Slovak gentry wo uld fin ally resist Magyarization and begin to w a ke the Slovak comm o ne rs from '' their dream of self-forge tfuln ess.'' T o accomplish thi s awakenin g, the writer should combat the p assivity a nd d espair th a t ch aracte ri zed mu ch o f Slovak public life at thi s tim e - just afte r the M a ti ca slovenska and the three Slovak high school s were closed . 13 Th e re we re even fa mines in Orava at this time , whi ch Kuku cfn d escribed in Czech a rticles whose fund a ppeals w ere d esign ed to stin g the M agyar a uth orities into a id fo r the a rea . 14 C ertainly these we re compelling rea son s fo r Kuku cfn 's quiet but d efinite didacti c purpose eve n in his early hum o rou s ta les . In summary , then , I believe there were probably three forces pushin g Kukucfn to m a ke a ha ppy endin g for his sto ri es wh ere o ne mi ght expect a sadder outcome: 1) The living tradition o f the fair ytal e in the Slovak vill age of hi s tim e; 2) Kukucfn's own Christia n optimism and hi s "smile ove r hi s tears ' ' ; 3) His d ete rmination to chee r a nd en courage the d ow n trodden villager for whom h e wrote . P erh aps Kukucfn hon estl y could n ot bear to show sadn ess, fa ilure , a nd inju stice in hi s fi ction when these ev il s we re so comm on in the Slovak life of thi s tim e. N ow I should like to support these ideas with several example stories about Slovak village life, all of th em a mong Kuku cfn 's m os t celebra ted a nd ce rtainl y amon g his fin est stories. 15 First R ysava jalovica (The M o ttled H eife r , V ol. II ) is a n out- a nd out com ed y, a nd ver y su ccessful - no one would ask fo r a sad e ndin g to it! H ere the happy outcome is compl etely in keepin g w ith th e comi c plot a nd style; th e goodna tured drunk a rd Ada m Krt is a ch a rmin g caricature a nd th e pl o t is a n all ego ry so th a t K rt 's sudden reform a nd SLOVAKIA 105 co nsequent wealth are e mine ntl y suitable to the sto ry. Krt is a classic und erdog hero - sm all , ridiculed , but cl ever in hi s ow n way; his trips to th e fair a nd then to find the lost heifer are a qu est from which h e re turn s victorious to everyone's a m azem ent. The subsidiary anecdotes , a bout the m ayo r 's troubles with the broken ha nd on the town cl ock , the feud betwee n Krt a nd hi s neighbor Trnka over a n a nn y goat a nd a rooster, a nd the d og with its head cau ght in a churn , are pure farce a nd their tone su pports the comic victory of Krt. No wonde r it was Kukucfn 's most popular story, a nd people asked for " m ore about Krt. " 16 The second exampl e, Neprebuden y (Vol. II ) is equally su ccessful , but in the oppos ite way . The titl e Neprebuden y m eans "The Unawakened" in th e m ascu lin e sin gul a r , a nd by writing of a youn g m a n who is m entall y retarded Kuku cfn in vokes the tradition of the " h oly idiot." Thi s sto ry is unique amo n g his work in b ein g trul y tragic , a nd each of th e characte rs is scarred by th e goose herd 's di scove ry of th e dece ption pract iced upon him b y the vill age bell e and h er fami ly, the n hi s subseque n t d eath in the fire that end s the wedd in g feast. Th e re is forebodin g irony throughout the story in the pun on the words husar as "gooseherd " a nd husar as "cavalryman," and this foreshadowin g is fulfill ed when the hu sar is killed tryin g to save a me re goose a nd her goslin gs in a burnin g barn. The story is really an anti-fairytale in which Kukucfn explicitly rejec ts the co nve ntion al roman ce. The gooseherd dream s of a princess in a cas tl e , the n awake ns to the teas ing of th e vill age b elle who am uses he rself by lettin g him think she will marry him . Thi s contrast between fa iryla nd a nd real life is d eveloped throu ghout the story . Neprebudeny is the closest of Kuku cfn 's stori es to th e French naturali sm of, fo r ex a mpl e , Em il e Zola , a nd it may have been a n ex perime nt on Kuku cfn 's pa rt , to imi tate Zola . If it was a n ex pe rim ent , it was on e Kuku cfn did not care to repeat , a nd late r (in 1925) he wrote to a fri end th a t he saw " no thin g spec ial" in Nepreb udeny. 17 An othe r trul y tragic story is Drotarove Vian oce (The Tinker ' s C hri st m as, Vol. III) , whi ch dramatizes a n incid e nt in the M agyar government 's actual campaign to assign Slovak children to M agyar far m fam ili es in southern Hun gary, chan gin g their names a nd preventin g their , return to Slovak a reas. T heo re ti call y all we re orph a ns, but not in realit y, a nd thi s story shows a fami ly 's failure to find their so n . H oweve r , Kuku cfn published this sto ry onl y in C zech in Bohemi a; thu s it was n ot one of hi s stories fo r th e ge neral Slovak read e r , in pa rt because it wou ld 106 SLOVAKIA have been dangerou s to print it in Hungary . Also, it was not included in his collected works published in the new Czechoslovakia. Several important stories have ironic, even ambivalent endings , such as K ed' bacik z Chochol'ova umrie (When M y Uncle from Chocholov Passes Away , Vol. IV) , which shows the co rruptive influence of an impoverished gentleman's great expectations of inheritance . Also , some stories have well-worked out happy endings to a spiritual conflict, such as an old woman's effort to understand and accept the fact that her neighbor ' s only son reached manhood and a happy wedding while her own only son had died as a young man , in D ve cesty (Two paths, Vol. V) . Another example is seen in the attempt of a young school-teacher to comprehend his vocation as willing servant to the com munity but not subservient to any individual , when he was expected to bake the traditional wafers for the whole village, in Vianocn e oblatky (Christmas Wafers, Vol. IV) . The story Zo stupna n a stupen (Going Down Step by Step, Vol. V) also shows a spiritual victory but it is only briefl y narrated , not dramatized , and the man 's happiness in poverty is only asserted, not presented . These effective happy endings , howeve r , are uncommon . The story that best illustrates my point that Kukucfn chose to force a happy ending where he could more naturally have had a sadder end, is Dies irae ... (The Day of Wrath , Vol. V) . It is a very successful story , which Bratislava critic Julius N oge calls one of the fin est in Slovak literature . 18 Dies irae is the account of a cholera epidemic, yet not one of the main characters dies. It is also the account of a spendthrift mayor who has abandoned his first love when she was expecti n g hi s child in order to marry someone else for m oney, yet he is punished only in his own view of himself. It is also the account of a miserly father whose selfishness drives out both his sons before he loses his fortune to thieves and cheating partners, yet he is able to win back one and perhaps both of his sons . The two characters, the mayor and the miser , reverberate with irony, and Kukuci'.n makes clear their moral imperfections , yet at the end he allows them all to live happily ever after. The abandoned woman loses her bitterness and her desire for revenge when she sees the mayor 's chagrin (it is not true humility), and the youn g lovers are not separated by cholera, nor by the miserly father . The last se ntence is " Now finally at the richtar's house there was peace, both the external kind and , above all, the peace that no one can take away" (p. 37 1). SLOVAK IA 107 The story su cceed s, but I think it would have been even more moving if it h ad not end ed so well. A clear contrast to Kukucfn 's optimism is seen in the work ofBozena Slancfkova, p seudony m Timrava (1867-1951), whose long story T apa.kovci (The Tapak C la n , 1914) shows a family ' s stubborn, unimaginative adh eren ce to repressive old customs and its ill-tempered resista nce to the effort of a young bride to revamp the household. There is very little liberating humor a nd there is a much grimmer irony than Kukucfn 's iro n y would have been in the " h appy " ending whereby the bride gets a new house and the rest of the Tapak clan can stay contentedly crowded together in the old hom estead . 19 Several factors must have caused this difference between Kukucfn and Timrava . One would be the development o f their personalities, of course, but also there ar e philosophic contrasts. For example, the so-called " Tolstoyan " emphasis in Kukucfn' s Christianity is not present in Timrava ; in fact, Christian themes are less noticeable in Tim rava's work, and incipient fem inist themes are prese nt. But the sh ift in satiric to n e also com es from the historical development of' 'critical' ' realism out of classical realism , and, I believe , from the d ecreased popularity of fairytal es and other folk literary forms as the Slovak edu cat ional level rose and industrialization spread during the 20th ce ntury. Kukucfn was o b v iously aware of hi s tenden cy to gloss over some of the problems of real life becau se he wrote of it in a story published the year before Dies irae. In Po d eviatich rokoch (Afte r Nine Years, Vol. V), he has o ne of his roman ti c h ero ines return a nd accuse him ( as the a uthor) of a bandoning h er after the wedding b y n ot writing a nother story about the con fli cts that occu r within marriage. But Kukucfn allows himself to a n swer his heroin e with the easy excu se that read ers like romantic plots a bout young love, n ot domestic conflicts; thus, h e does not actuall y face the problem . H owever, later ( 1903) h e may have tried to work ou t this proble m in his novel D om v strani ( House on the Hillside) , which is about exactl y that same subj ect : the conflicts that would come if the wealthy landow ner 's so n Niko were to marry the simple peasant 's daughte r K at ica, since they are un suited b y their diffe rent upbringing and edu cation as well as by their different dispositions. 10 The novel is not a C inderella story, because Kukucfn is clearly on the n on-romantic side of class distin ctions and g ives no fairytal e endin g to this novel. It is worth noting , h owever, that even in this novel Kuku cfn does not ac- SLOVAKIA tually show domestic conflicts resulting from an unsuita ble m arriage, because he prevents the marriage from occurring. With Dom v strani, howeve r , I am out of stories into novels, and Kukucfn was no longer writing in the fairytale tradition . Kukucfn wrote little of the origins of his work , saying only that he had learned to write from hearing and admiring the speech of the Slovak villagers in J asenova. 21 As he nowhere gave his theory of lite rature, it is only psychological speculation that his interior motiva tion was similar to Tolkien 's. Also, there can be no question of influence between Kukucfn and Tolkien, because of diffe rences in time and in language . Nor was Tolkien's specifically Christian theory offairytales anticipated in Slovak discussions of "fantasticke rozpravky," to my knowl edge. Y et the similarity is not really surprising with two writers whose Christian world view is impressed throughout their work. Tolkien's conce ption offairytales is a variation of the classic aesthetic theory that literature represents the underlying reality of huma n life, with or without the "realistic" detail of the surface phenom en a . Unfortunately, this same theory also covers the desire of many third-rate writers, including both the melodramatist and the socialist realist, to directly illustrate a clear moral ideal by rewarding goodness and punishing evil ; so whenever the didactic desire to teach and to reform becomes stronger than the artistic d esire to reveal and to express, a weakened literary effect b ecom es apparent. In some of Kukucfn 's stories, the result (as already stated), is a more or less sudden wrenching of a potential " dyscatastrophe " into a ''eucatastrophe.'' The ultimate cause of this wrench , b es ides whatever internal motivat ion lay in Kukucfn ' s creative personality, probably has to b e seen in the very h a rsh social and political structures of late 19th century Hungary. These unju st conditions stimulated a nd even forced Kukucfn to picture realistically (for the first tim e in Slovak prose) the life of the common villager, but they also stimulated a nd forced him to soften his realism with a hap p y e nding. In this way , he would not overwhelm the downtrodde n villagers ( or the dishearten ed Slovak intellectuals) with a full picture of the ir truly discouragin g lot but would instead encourage them and awaken them from their "drama of self-forge tfulness." Thus , we see 1) another illustration of the ge neral truth that literature results from the conjuncture of a particular writer with the intell ectual co nditions and the social audience of his time, a nd 2) a nothe r example of the fact that earlier Slovak culture mu st be a n a - SLOVAKIA 109 lyzed a nd evaluated in relation to the severe limitation s impressed upo n it b y the hi sto rical conditions of Hungary . D espite the weak e ndings o f many of Kuku cfn 's stories, h e achieved a striking synthesis of both "seeing the evil " and expressin g his d eliberate Christian optimism; hi s synthesis remains as witness to a very difficult ye t promising p e riod in Slovak literar y history. It should also serve as a re minder that wherever fairytales a re a serious part o f a culture, they must also be take n seriou sly b y literary crit ics . In fac t , fairytales may h ave played a hidde n a nd unu su al role in Slovak lite r a ture simply b ecau se of the historical conditions r eferred to already. For example, Alexander M atuska su ggests that the m odern noveli st J ozef Ciger H ronsky was influ enced b y fairytales with " their natural and also unn atural a tmosph e re, their shifting border between the real a nd th e the unreal. " 11 Under this influence, Hronsky d evelop ed his unique blend of observation and realism with poe try and lyricism - a realism which stops beside d e tail but d oes n ot stop at detail, a realism to which n eithe r the miraculous nor the grotesque is foreign; and a poetry which magically fascinates u s b y its everyday subj ect and pull s u s toward deeper ideas, to the meaning of ex isten ce. 13 Probably the greatest noveli st in Slovak , Hron sk y is at o n ce one o f the most Slovak of writers and one of the m ost worldly and cosmopolitan in technique a nd style. It is ironic a nd revealing of the histo rical sp ecifics of Slovak literature that fairytales were apparently a mong the forces that led Hronsky to th e techniques that relate his work to European n atu ralism, expressio nism , a nd surrealism , to P rou st, J oyce, K a fka, and M usi l. 14 Su ch a force cannot be neglected in any p eriod. NOTES For exam ple. V iera Gasparfkova , "Prvky l'udovej kultury V Kuku cfnovej drobnej pr6ze , '' in Martin Kukucfn v kritike a spomien k ach: Sbornfk (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel's tvo Kras nej Li teratury , 1957) , pp. 360-404. This book reprints a t least major parts of most known criti cism a nd recollections of Kuku cfn up to the time of its printing; hereafter Sbornfk. ' Alex ander M a tuska, " Doslov," in Sbornfk, p. 921. All translation s from Slovak are min e. ' O skar C epan, Kuku cfnove epick e istoty (Brati slava: Tatran , 1972), pp. 267 -68. I 110 SLOVAKIA • Stanislav Meciar, Kuku cfn i ivy, 2 vols. (B uenos Aires, 1958 and 1960); Cy ril J. Potocek, M artin Kuku cfn: A Link between Two Worlds (Passaic, N .J .: Slovak Catholic Sokol, 1943). William E. Harkins has perceptively summ ari zed Kuku cin's "expressive symbol of the truth tha t m an li ves under G od's judgment, and that he would d o well therefore to li ve justly," "Foreword," Seven Slovak Stories by Martin Kuku cfn , trans . and edited by Norma Leigh Rudi nsky (R ome: Slovak Institute, 1980) , p . ix . For a full a nd rich treatment of this idea, see G. J. Sabo, " Kuku cfn 's Village Stories and Shuksin 's 'Snowball Berry-R ed,' "Slovakia, XXX (1982-83), this issue. 5 J .R .R . T olkien , " On Fairy-stories," in T he Tolkien R eader (New York : Ballantine Books, 1966), p . 79. Further references a re give n in the tex t . • Humph rey Carpenter,J.R .R . Tolkien (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd ., 1977), p. 3 1. 7 Carpen ter, p. 129 . ' Stefan Krcmery, Stopiit'desiat rokov slovenskej literatury (M artin 1943), II , 50, quoted here from Cepan , Epick e istoty, p. 24 and 253-54. ' Cepan, Epick e istoty, p . 19 . 0 ' Dmitrij Cizevskij , Comparative History of Slavic Literatures, trans. Richa rd Noel P orter and M artin P . Rice, ed. Serge A . Zenkovsky (Baltimore: Vanderbilt U ni versity Press, 197 1), pp. 164-75. " Milos Tomcik, " Z problem a tiky Kukucin ovej tvorby v Prazskom obdobi ," in S bornfk , pp . 167 -68; see also selections from the " D etva n " minutes in M a rtin Kuku cin , Dielo: Z avaine skusen osti (Bratislava: Tatran , 1971), XX , 512-14, 525-26, and 54 1-42. " C epa n , Epicke istoty, pp . 24-26 , and Cepan , " Literarno-hi storicke poznamky, " in Martin Kukucin, Dielo: R ozpravky (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury , 1957) , I , 326. " Kukucin , " Niekol'ko myslienok o romane Eleny M ar6th y-Soltesovej: Prati prudu ," in Dielo: Zavaine skusenosti, p . 400 . Further evidence of Kuku cfn 's belief in the village as the carrier of the na ti onal tradition is in my a rticl e " Preliminary Notes on Martin Kuku cin 's Criticism of Americanized Slovaks and His Opposition to the Slovak Gentry ," Slovak Studies, XVIII ( I 978), 153-67. 14 M a rtin Kuku cin , " O hladu v oravskej stolici," " Bra ti'im pod T a trami ," and " Hlad na Orave," in Dielo: Zavain e skusenosti , pp . 379-89. 15 The stori es a re in Volumes I-V of Dielo and are cited furth er in the tex t. Onl y eight of Kuku cin 's stories have been transla ted into Engl ish: R egruti by P aul Seiver in An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature (London, 1929) and Obecne trampoty, Dedin sk y j armok, Z tepleho hniezda , R ysavajalovica, Neprebudeny, Na obecnom salasi, and Dies irae by Norma L. Rudin sky in Seven Slovak Stories of M artin Kuku cfn , op . cit . 16 Jozef Skultety , " M a rtin Kuku cin ( 17 /V .1860 - 17/V . 1920) ," in Sbornfk , p . 623 . 17 Letter to J an Cadra, in Dielo: Listy priatel'om a znam ym (Bratislava: Tatran , 1974), XXI , 202) . 18 Julius Noge, Martin Kuku cfn: Tradicionalista a novator , V ol. I (Bra tislava: V yd avatel'stvo Slovenskej Akadem ie Vied, 1962), p . 1982. SLOVAKIA 111 " Bozena Slancikova , "Tapakovci , " Timrava, 2 vols. (Martin: Tatran, 1975), II, 413-50. 0 ' Dielo: Dom v strani (Bratislava: Slovenske Vydavatel'stvo Krasnej Literatury, 1961 ), Vol. IX. " "Odpoved' na anketu casopisu Stfedni skola," in Dielo: Zavazne skusenosti, pp. 457-58; see also his remarks on learning the best and richest Slovak from the dialects: "najkrajsou cestou k studiumu gramatikovi je studovat' dialekty, " in the minutes of the "Detvan" meetings, ibid., p. 548 . " Alexander Matuska,J.C. Hronsky (Bratislava, 1970) rpt. in Osobnosti (Slovensky Spisovatel', 1973), p. 458. " Matuska, p . 459. " Matuska, p. 458. Presented in Panel 128, "Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS convention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Slovak Fairytale Tradition and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Eucatastrophe" in the Realistic Stories of Martin Kukučín Description An account of the resource Norma L. Rudinsky Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 100-111 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rudinsky, Norma Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/26765bd5010a2a7822479dc74800ceae.pdf 11edbc7e2cceb27a544c1ea73479a25c PDF Text Text 12 SLOVAKIA Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Kucekova The following categories of Slovak folklore represent some of its oldest forms. Lyrical genres, such as m agical formul ae or incantations , ceremonial calendar poetry , and ceremonial fa mily poetry, a re of ritual and ceremonial character. The sample selections introduced in this pa per were taken from a comprehensive modern collection of Slovak folkl ore entitled Slovensky folk16r: Chrestomatia, and edited b y the foremost authority on the subj ect, the late Andrej Melichercfk . 1 Melichercfk based hi s anthology on Pavo! Dobsinsky' s publications , as well a s on other collections of Slovak folklore, for example those edited by Jozef I:. . Holuby, Jan Kollar and Jirf Polfvka . 2 The folklori c material collected by Dobsinsky and others is rendered in the dialect of the region from which it originated. MAGICAL FORMULAE Magical fo rmulae a re incantations associated with ritu als. These non-narrative forms are very ancient and are closely related to ce rem onial calendar poetry. M agical formulae were u sually connec ted with special rites and performed on spec ific occasions and/or holidays . They were often perform ed by semiprofessional m en and women (" wi se m en " and " wise wom en ") who were well versed in m agic. There are two types of incantations: tho se which were supposed to bring a desired effect( " sympathethic magic" ), and those which were supposed to preve nt undes irable and ha rmful effects (" preve ntive magic" ). Incantations we re u sed to brin g a hu sba nd , m ake one fall in love, prevent and cure illness , increase the yield of the fi elds, and also bring illness or bad lu ck upon a n enem y . Some incan tations were chanted primarily by girls or young women. " Puddle, Puddle," " Will ow, Willow," and " And You , Elm ," are typical examples of love incantations. Once m arried , a bride would chant an incanta tion " I Sow the Seed " and wish for good lu ck and prosperity . �SLOVAKIA 13 Magical formulae are rhythmical and based on syntactic parallelisms ; they rely extensively on various euphonic and semantic devices. Due to the fact that magical formulae are so closely associated with magic, their ritual form remains unchanged throughout the centuries . Magical incantations contain many pre-Christian elements, upon which a new layer of C hri st ian symbols has been added . Love Incantations This love incantation shows water as a powerful source of magic. T aken from fords at midnight , water was believed to attract lovers and help a girl get married . While bathing, girls chanted the following incantation: Puddle , puddle,' get me a husband! Above the bridge, below the bridge, let him go nowhere but to our house! Above th e footbrid ge, below th e footbr idge, don 't let him rest but in ou r house 1 I 'm not pouring away, I 'm pouring in: bachelors , wid owers, merchants, fiddlers, even those small boys I call after me, after my body , aft er my clothes , after my heels, a ft er this hou se of ours. Not by my power do I say this, but I say it by the divine power, from J es us Christ till m idn ight. And help me in this God th e Father, the Son , a nd the H oly Ghost!' H oly Trini ty , help me reach hap piness and get married. 1 Kaluza, kalu za, daj muza 1 Vyse mosta, ni ze mosta, aby nemal nikde miesta len u nas! Vyse lavky, ni ze lavky, aby nem al nikd e stavky len u nas 1 Neod lievam, ale prilievam: mladencov, vdovcov, kupcov , aj hudcov , aj tych malickych chlapcov za sebou volam, za mym telom , za m ymi satami, za mym i patami, za tym nasfm domom . J a to nehovorfm ze svej moc1, lez to hovorfm z bozskej m oci, od pana J ezisa Kri sta do pol noci. A k tomu mi dopomahaj Boh otec , Boh sy n , Boh du ch svaty! Svata troj ica , bud mi dobra pomocnica k vse tkemu dobremu, k stavu manzelskemu! p. 54 �14 SLOVAKIA On the eve of St. George ' s Day (April 24) , young girls made wreaths from different kinds of flowers and boughs. Later, wreaths were tossed into the air. It was believed that the girl whose wreath was caught on a tree branch would get married within a year. To attract a beloved, girls would make wreaths from nine different boughs and chant the following incantation: 2 A ty vaz - ty ho vaz, a ty hrab - se m ho hrab , a ty kJen - se m ho zen , a ty svfb - se m ho sib, a ty sip - ty ho stfp , a ty tfn - sem ho hrn , a ty dub - ty ho l'ub , a ty bez - za nim bez, a ty lieska - za nim vri es kaj ! And you, elm - you bind him , and you, hornbeam - rake him here, and you , maple - drive him here, and you , red dogwood - whip him here, and you , wild rose - you prick him, and you , thorn bush - push him here , and you , oak - you love him , and you , lilac - run aft er him , a nd you , hazel, - yell aft er him p . 57 Bridal Incantation A woman married into her husband's family . As soon as the bride entered her husband's house after the wedding, she would scatter flaxs6ed, millet and poppy seed in the yard for good luck , while chanting the following: 2 I sow the seed , to succeed with all my breed ; I sow millet, for others to beg m y fav or; I sow poppy seed , for this to last foreve r. Sejem se m eno, ab y sa mi viedl o vsetko ple meno; sej em proso, aby sa mi vse tci prosili ; sej em m ak, aby bolo vzdycky tak . p . 61 Incantation by the Willow To make sure that they would grow beautiful long hair, young girls would comb their hair under a willow on Good Friday at dawn. While combing their hair, they wished for a good husband . Willow, willow , ge t m e a m an , red as a rose , white as a fl ower, a nd good as honey. ' Vfba, vfb a , d aj mi mu za, ce rve neho a ko ru za a bieleho a ko kve t, a dobreho ako med . p . 62 �SLOVAKIA 15 CEREMONIAL CALENDAR POETRY Ceremonial calendar poetry celebrates different festivals of the year. The original calendar festivals coincided with the solstices and equinoxes. Calendar poetry contains many pre-Christian mythological elements which have been intertwined with and sometimes replaced by Christia n elements. In the calendar poetry of Slovakia a nd other Slavic countries which have been under Catholic influence, Christian features pred ominate. The traditions connected with calendar poetry are still being practi ced in some Slovak villages , particularly around holidays such as Christmas, New Year ' s and Easter. The classification of calendar poetry corresponds to the agricultural cycles, and all four seasons of the year are represented. In the poetry , three seasons are associated with the cultivation of the soil, while the last one is concerned with the harvest itself. The poetry is full of incantations and magical formulae meant to secure a good harvest and placate nature , which was often thought of as hostile. In the pre-Christian era the peasants turned for h elp to their gods and during Christian times to the numerous Christian saints. They would ask for good and prosperous years , abundant harvest, a nd good health and happy family life. Along with incantations and magical formulae, calendar poetry also contains chants , recitations , songs, riddles, and prognostications . In this poetry each season has its own characteristic customs . The winte r solstice cycle , beginning in November , is best represented. Its poetry is of a prophetic nature, and touche s on both family life and the prosperity of the homestead. The most important days of the season were the last 12 before Christmas since they represented the 12 months of the year; these days were used to judge what the weather would be like for the w hole next year. Children went caroling from hou se to house, a nd it was important that they b e healthy for if they were, they would bring good health to the fa rm ers ' fa milies as well . Moreover, the living room h a d to be cleaned a nd whitewashed in eve ry house to preve nt any kind of illn ess from ente rin g. Numerous C hri stmas customs were practiced o n C hristmas Eve . Basicall y , they were meant to express the farmer ' s thanksgiv in g for good crops in the preceding season, a nd to h elp assure a nd predict a good harvest in the forthcoming year. The latter kind were u su ally connected wit h magic . There we re rules of condu ct which were st ri ctl y followed �16 SLOVAKIA on Christmas Eve. For example, one could not light the house unless the Christmas Eve dinner - the biggest meal of the year - was already set on the table. The numerous courses of the meal had to follow acertain sequence . Christmas carolers were offered food and drink , and the boys were also given money. Many of the Christmas carols have a joking tone - besides bringing best wishes they expressly ask for a reward as in ''I Am a Very Small Boy,'' or ''I'm Just a Little Boy .' ' Sometimes they would ask expressly for money as in the carol "We Have Brought You Some News . '' New Year's wishes were also humorous in tone and expressed the good mood which prevailed in every household on that day . It was believed that if one felt happy on New Year's Day , he or she would be happy during the coming year. One song jokingly suggests that the farmer's stove burn out from too much cooking and baking: "I wish you in this/ coming New Year / that a side of your oven / may fall out." Carols for the eve of the Three Magi combine religious and secular motifs. Thus, in " Lord , Grant Us a Merry Evening," best wishes are expressed for everyone in the house, including the servants. Immediately after come Epiphany motifs, dealing with the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Three Kings. The Epiphany carol is concluded with a rather anticlimatic ending: the old man (probably the patriarch of the house) is not at home and has gone hunting. Very often , the boys were masked as the Three Kings, Joseph and Mary, and would perform a co medy based on the ancient legend . The Christmas ceremonial cycle ended with the Three Kings motif. Thematically, then , Slovak ceremonial calendar poetry focuses upon the four cycles of the year and the agricultural tradition con nected with them . It also contains the themes of love and fertility, and elements of ancestor worship, which are not treated here. From the formal point of view, calendar poetry is characte rized by symm etric bipartite verse and the frequent use of asso nance . Pre-Christmas Period The winter cycle of calendar poetry begins with St. Thomas's Day (December 21 ) , the shortest day of the year. Small boys walked around the village with a piece of steel, wishing farmers good lu ck in the next farming year : �SLOVAKIA 17 I have b rought you a piece of steel' so th a t you would not fall out of bed. Have as m a n y calves on yo ur farm as there a re spoons on your shelf. Have as man y oxen in your stable as there are logs in your shed. Let your girls have as many suito rs as there are dishes on your rack. May yo ur lads own as many hafts' as there are hearths in you r house. May as man y youn g men wear feathers in their caps• as you have number of dau ght ers. Have as m a ny more ears of corn in you r backyard as there are pictures on your walls. I ask onl y as many kreuzers' 0 as there are mirrors here. I wish you a good morning 1 Doniesou som vam ocele, aby ste nevypadli z postele. Kol'ko mate za ramom lyz iciek, tol'ko mate vo dvore teliciek; kol'ko mate na sope kolov, tol'ko mate V mastali volov; kol'ko mate za ramom tanierov , tol'ko maju vase dievky frajero v ; kol'ko mate vo vasom dome ohnisk, tol'ko maju vas i parobci porisk ; kol'ko zije vasich deer, tol'ko maju mladenci pier ; kol'ko ma te na stene obrazov , tol'ko raz vo vasom humne kl asov; kol'ko mate tuna zrkadov, !en tol'ko mi dajte krajciarov. Dobro rano vinsujem 1 p. 70 Christmastime Many Christmas carols and son gs are connected with the Christm as season. Both children and ad ults went from house to hou se caroling M erry C hristmas. For their service they expected som e reward. Many of these carols are joking in character, as is evident from the following carols: �18 SLOVAKIA I a m a very sm all boy. M y fa th er has se nt me to you , to ge t so methin g from you , but m ake it qui ck, for m y stomach rumbl es. J a som chl apec ve l'mi m aly, mn a moj otec k vam poslali, zeby ste mi dafo dali , ale chytro , lebo m i uz v bru chu svitlo. p. 70 2 I ' m ju st a little boy. I'm askin g fo r my sm all bag : a pi ece of cake a nd piece o f pie. T omorrow , I ' ll b rin g yo u a bird . If th at see m s too little, I will brin g you so me pork ; and if tha t 's not enough , I 'll b ri ng yo u a cat's ta il. J a so m maly, nevelicky, pyta m se be do ka psicky: kus kola.ca, kus kabaca, d onesiem vam zajtra vtaca. Ak sa vam to ma.lo vid f, d onesiem vam porfov iny; ak je vam to ni e dost', d onesiem va m z m acky chvost. p . 71 3 W e have b rought you so me news, we have come to you r feas t . The Saviour desce nded from H eave n , and we ca me to be your gues ts. A jug of wine is on th e table , and we are under your farm yard window, but you don ' t offer us a n y win e, nor do you have an y brand y th a t we ca n trea t ourselves to, and sing you songs eve n ni ce r . W e don ' t want your past ry, we' ll crac k a few nu ts.'' H ey, we a re not little ki ds , wh o get j ust a kreu ze r apiece. If yo u don ' t give us twe n ty we wo n ' t co me on New Yea r's Day. D oni esli sm e vam novinu , prisli sm e k vam na hos tinu , Sos tupi l Spasti el' z vysosti . M y sm e prisli k va m za hos ti . Krcah s vfn om j e na stole, m y sme pod oblokom v dvore , a nam vina nedavate, palenky ti ez ni c nem a te, co b y sme sa castu va]i a vam krajsie zaspievali . O pekance va m nechcem e, oriesky si poklcieme. A my sme ni e chl a pci m ali, ze by Ste nam krajc iar d ali. Ak na m dvads ia tnik ned a te, na Novy rok nas nema te. p. 71 New Year's Wish es Early in th e m ornin g on New Year's D ay, m en a nd youn g boys went from house to hou se, w ishin g lo ts of lu ck, p rosperity , a nd good h ealth to everyon e in the house . M ost of th eir w ishes foc u sed upon su ccessfu l fa rmin g a nd m a n age m e n t. I wish you in th is coming New Year, V in sujem vam V tento nas tavajuc i nov y rok , �SLOVAKIA that a side of your ove n may fall out , " that your wife may get pregna nt this year! Give us foo d and drink and stay well! 19 aby va m vypadol z pece bok, aby vam bola vasa gazdin a na te nto rok samod ruh a 1 Vypit', zajest' na m d ajte, a dob re sa tu m aj te 1 p . 78 2 l wish you plenty of hemp , bu shels of beets, a whole bin of blossoms, and a ba rnful of children' Vinsujem va m moc konopi, mecu repy , zacinok puckov, plevienec deti 1 p. 79 3 This l wish to all'' with vigo r and joy : to peasants, bags for their shoulders ; to shep herd s, porridge; to cows, good pasture; to pigs, lots of mast to make them fat. Vinsujem smele vse tk ym vese le : sedliakom vrece, pine na piece; pastiero m kase a kravam pase; svi niam zaludu, ze tu cne budu . p . 79 The Three Magi On the eve of Epiphany, children went from house to house, singing carols in which the Epiphany motifs were interspersed with such commonplace motifs as farming and the farmer's eve ryday activity. Lord, grant us a merry eve ning ," to the farmer, first of all! And then to th e farmwife, and then to all the se rvants! The Three M agi a rri ve from the East, wo rshippin g this fam il y. Do not worship this fa mil y but worship only the beloved Lo rd! " And you , bright star, go before us, Lord , Jesus C hri st, grant us a good ni ght! And you , Joseph , I say to you , do not leave the Virgin M ary 1 D on ' t you kn ow who is going to be bo rn ? The Virgin M ary is to bear a so n . There is a red rose on your table , �SLOVAKIA 20 let you r daught er marry a handsome man 1 There is a tu li p atop your table , yo ur son is ge ttin g read y to see his love. There is a handso me fe llow in this house , perhaps he ' d give us six kreu ze rs for a wrea th . God wi ll give him a lovely wife , whether it ' s Anna o r Susanna. The old man is not at home , he went out hunting . D aj nam Boh vecer diz vesely, najprv panu hospodarov i I A poto m aj tej hospod ince, po hospodin ce vseckej cel'adce 1 ldu tri a krali od vychod u , kl a naju sa tomut o rod u. Nekla naj te sa tom uto rod u , len sa kl a najte mil emu Bohu! A ty, j as na hviezd a, predchadzaj nas, pane J ezu Kri ste, dob ru noc nam d as 1 A ty , J ozefe, j a mlu vim tebe, neopust'aj pann y M a rie ! Nevid, co sa m a na sve t narod it'? M a panna Maria sy na porodit'. Na vaso m stole ce rve na ru za, daj vasej panenk e sva rn eho mu za 1 Na vaso m stole tulipan stoji, vas m lad enecek se k fraj erce strojL J est V tomto dome sva rn y ml adenec, azda nam on d a ses tak na veniec. D a jemu Panboh svarnu zenu , Annu alebo Zu za nu . Sta reho pana doma neni, isli oni po pol'uvanL pp. 79-80 Carnival Season Th e post-Chri stmas period does not present as m a n y cerem onies as th e C hri stmas season. The tim e of fasiangy (carni val season) was ch aracte rized b y a m asked procession which was to secure a good harvest. Th e carniv al processio n h ad mu sical accompaniment , u su all y a n accordi on . Most en gaged couples were also married during carnival season , sin ce there w as rela tively plenty of time for elaborate weddi n g celebration s, w hi ch las ted for several d ays. At the e nd of th e carnival seaso n , young m e n in ce re monial m asks we nt from ho u se to ho u se, collecting eggs, bacon , a nd m o ney. They �SLOVAKIA 21 would sing humorous songs, such as " Shrovetide, P entecost. . m which they would ask for a piece of bacon . From these donations they would arrange a feast for the youth of the entire village. The main course was bacon and eggs, while the money paid for the music . Shrovetide, P entecos t, and Easter pass by, 16 he who has no fur coat , feels cold . I have none, I have none, I ' m shakin g all over, give me some bacon " to fill my belly . H ere I got nothin g, over there something, maybe. They killed a m osqu ito , a nd got some bacon . There up the chimney," a tom cat sits on the bacon , go chase him away and cut me a piece; if you cut me too sm all a piece, you will cut your fin gers. Give to the teacher " a piece as big as a d oo r , to me , a piece as big as a goose. Fasangy, Turice, V el'ka noc byva, kto nem a kozucha, zima mu byva. Ja nemam, ja nem a m , !en sa tak tras im , daj te mi slaninky, nech sa popasim . Tuto mi nedali , tuto mi d aj u, K om a ra zabili , slaninku m aj u . A ta m hore na komin e, sedi kocur na sla nin e, h ybajte ho zohn at' a mne ku s odrezat', az mi mal y odrezete, svoje prsty poreze te. R echtorovi j ako dve re a mn e ku s - ako hus 1 pp . 82-83 Easter The spring custom s include taking out Morena (the goddess of dea th in the p agan Slavic traditio n) , ta king out the old m a n (dedko - possibly a m ale equivalent of Moren a), and welcoming in the n ew summe r . However , the sprin g ce remonial cycle is cente red prim a rily around Easter , the most important religious holiday of the season . Easte r customs still co nta in m a ny pre -Christia n ele m e nts, which have been prese rved up to the 20th century . For example, on Good Friday a t d awn, girls would chant incantations while ba thing, wishing for a hu sba nd (see " Pud- �22 SLOVAKIA dle, Puddle" in the preceding section). On Easter Monday, groups of ten to fifteen men and boys went from house to house, wishing the womenfolk a Happy Easter. It was a part of the tradition that they flogged women's legs with a birch switch and doused their heads with fresh water. This proced ure had a symbolic purifying function . If a young man was courting a particular young woman, he was expected to visit her house , thus showing his interest and affection. Then, the girl would reward her favorite suitor with the most lavishly decorated Easter egg. Besides the eggs, everybody would also receive drinks, food, sweets, and little boys would get money. Easter, Easter, will it come soon? which lad will pour water over me] Pour the water , pour the water, on my hair and head , but do spare my nice new skirt. Vel'ka noc , Vel'ka noc, kedyze uz bude? ktoryze ma suhaj oblievati prfde? Oblievaj, oblievaj, vlasy aj hlavicku , ale mi zasanuj tu novu suknicku. p . 93 Pentecost marked the beginning of the summer cycle. Many traditions were centered around the summer solstice and St. John's Eve CTune 24). On that day, love incantations were chanted and the future was foretold . Also, magic was practiced against witches whose power was believed very strong on that day. The later part of the summer season is poorer in folklore because of increased work in the fields . Harvest The autum cycle begins with the harvest season . During the harvest season, songs were sung in the fields, or on the way home after a day 's work. Thematically , they are associated with the work itself, love between two young people ("We Reaped Here") , or the feast following the work ("Master, Make Ready for a Feast "). Some of these songs are joking in tone . The songs sung around the harvest wreath reflect old Slovak customs . After the harvest, a procession of harvesters would walk from the fields to the house of the farmer who had hired them . Led by a young man who was carrying a colorful flag and a young woman wearing a wreath made of wild flowers , they would sing songs and some- �SLOVAKIA 23 times play music ("For Which Girl Shall We Weave a Wreath Today?"). In these songs, the peasants expressed their joy and happiness over a rich harvest. They also expressed their hope for the same bounty for the years to come. Harves t time offers a whole series of songs connected with this important agricultural season. They may refer to the work itself, or love between a young girl and a young man from the same village, or else the rest during the break or at the end of the day . W e reaped here , we reaped the re , in the valley, in th e valley, and the birdie, mottled birdie keeps singing, kee ps singin g. Kde sm e zali , tu sme fali , na doline , na doline , a ten vtacik, jarabacik pres pevuje , prespevuje. As the birdie , mottled birdie goes around th e tree , a rou nd the tree , so does m y d ea r, m y beloved go around me, around me . J ak ten vtacik, jarabacik okolo pna , okolo pna , tak moj mil y, najmilejsf okolo mna , okolo mn a. We reaped here , we reaped th ere, behind a path , behind a path , whoever will be our master, our clerk, our clerk? Kde sme zali , tu sme fali, za chonnfkom , za chonnfkom , ktoze bude nas fm panom , ura nnfkom , ura nnfkom ? p . 99 2 Master, make read y for a feas t, for a feast , we ' ve don e all the work for you . Master , prepa re the repast , th e repas t , a twelve- pound roas t. Add to it pints of wine , pints of wine, and a roasted capon. H otuj , pa ne , oldomas, oldomas , zrob ili sme , kd e co mas. H otuj , pa ne , veceru , vece ru, d vanas t' funtov pecenu . Este k tom u pint vfna, pint vfna, peceneho kapuna . p. 100 Around the h arvest wreath might be sung the foll owing song: 3 For which girl shall we weave a wreath today? For th e one chose n by the handsom es t young ma n . Wh o shall we let ca rry th e fl ag tod ay ? The one who hands hi s ri ght ha nd to her . T hat Ond1·is Slavik a nd Anna Bl ahej , �SLOVAKIA 24 they would make a nice couple would Lord grant it. Masters, our masters , open the gates, we bring you a gift - a nice pair of reapers. Harvesters back from the fields , cover the tables, the mapl e tables with linen tabl e-cloths. Ktorejze dnes, ktorej uvijeme veniec~ Tej, ktoru vyberie najkrajsi mladenec . Komuze dnes , komu dame niest' zastavu? Tomu , co jej poda svoju rucku pravu. Ten Ondris Slavike, ta Anna Blaheje, to by bou pekny par, keby im Panboh dau! Pani nasi, pani, otvarajte brany, nesieme vam darik, zencov pekny parik. Idu zenci z roli, prestierajte stoly, stoly javorove, obrusy kmentove. p. 100 CEREMONIAL FAMILY FOLKLORE Ceremonial family folklore focuses primarily on the most important events in an individual's life: birth, marriage and death . While only songs are discussed here (they are the most common form), the Slovak ceremonial family tradition is expressed in poems, proverbs, sayings, riddles, and short dramatic performances as well. Christening Songs In the distant past , the birth of a child was accompanied by rituals and many magic practices . Such practices, it was believed, would protect the mother and her child, and would also secure health and happiness for the child as he or she matured. These magic practices gradually developed into joyful, social celebrations to welcome the new member of the family . 10 Thematically, the christening songs are directly connected with the child's birth and prospects. They frequently mention the responsibilities and problems connected with his or her upbringing, and wish the child a happy life, prosperity, and even a good spouse. Some songs stress the importance attached to having male offspring: '' And if you my wife,/would have a boy ... " If the child is a girl, the song may wish her beauty, or possibly stress the importance of chastity or industrious- �25 SLOVAKIA ness: " Freedom and chastity prevail everywhere, / whichever girl has them , let her guard them .'' Other songs may express the abruptly felt loss of freedom experienced by the young parents , especially the new mother: '' ... m y freedom is crying in the cradle.'' M any songs are j okin g in tone and form the less serious part of the christening ceremony in Slovak villages . H ere, for example, the new parents tease each other a bout their responsibility for rocking the baby: '' Rock him , m y dear . .. I'm his mother.'' And here again, the m other m ockin gly compares her situation with that of the carefree life of unm arried m en and women: " I used to have a good time , ... m y maiden name/ is blotted out," or " As the maiden s d ance . . . while I , poor thing , / rock a baby ." Slovak christening songs usually have the following rhyme pattern : aa-bb-cc-dd. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. Man y songs use assonance and employ colloquial express10ns . J ano , J ano, mily Jano! Donesu ti chl apca rano. K ed donesu , budem mati , vychova ho moja mati. A ked puojdem dolinami , vychovam ho malina mi , a ked puojdem sfrym svetom vychovam ho bielym kvetom . J ohn, John dear J ohn" They will bring you a boy tomorrow. Wh en they bring him, I'll keep him ," my mother wi ll raise him . And when I go down the valleys, I will raise him on raspberri es, and when I go in the wide world , I will raise him on white flo wers. p. 143 2 If you , m y wife," would have a boy, I would hire a wet nurse , a chef, a cook, a caretaker , and a house keeper. K eby si ty, zena moja , chlapca mal a, drzau by ti dojku , kuchara , kucharku, i safa ra i safarku. p. 144 3 Freedom and chastity prevail everyw here," whichever girl has th em, let her guard them . I would have protected mine, but it is too late. my freedom is crying in th e cradle. Sloboda, poctivost', ta vsade panuj e, kt ore j u di evca ma, nech si ju va ruje. I ja bych si moju , uz je ponecase, uz moja slobod a V belcove m i place. p . 144 �26 SLOVAKIA 4 As the maidens dance," they whirl around in circles, while I, poor thing, rock a baby. J a k tie panny tancuju, do kola sa zvrcuju, a ja neboz ia tko kolfsem diet'at ko. Rock him, my d ea r husband , he is such a lovely boy. Rock him yourself, you are his mother . Kolfbaj ho moj mily, vsak je synak spanily. Kolfbaj si sama, vsak si mu ty mama. I would be a fool to rock him by myself, You surely are his father just as I 'm his mother. Bola by ja blazon kolfba ti sama, vsak si mu ty otec jako i ja mama . I used to have a good time when luck served me, sitting by the window, with a handsome young man . Byvalo mi, byvalo, ked' mi stestia sluzilo, sedajfcej v okne, s mladeneckom pekne. I used to sit with him , now I am married to him , m y maiden name was blotted out. Sedala som, sedala, u z sem ho i dostala, me panenske jmeno bolo vymazano. pp. 144-45 Wedding Songs Of the three areas of ceremonial family folklore discussed here, the wedding ceremony offers the greatest variety of folklore material. This is because in Slovakia the wedding ceremonies of most villages and towns contained traditions that were peculiar to that particular locale . There were often specific differences between the ceremonies of neighboring villages even within a relatively small geographic area. 16 The entire ritual consisted of three parts: the period before the wedding during which a wedding contract was m ade between the future inlaws; the wedding ceremo ny itself, and the feast after the young couple had retired. The wedding actually began when the wedding guests gathered and the bride and groom left for the ceremony in the church. The first five selections under the headin g "Wedding Songs" are examples of what the wedding party might sing along the way. After the ceremony the bride and groom as well as the guests would arrive at the bride groom's h ouse , where the festivities would take place . The feast was and still is the culmination of the whole wedding. The structure of the entire wedding ceremon y was originally quite �SLOVAKIA 27 rigid . There were dan ces, ceremonial speeches, dramatic speeches and acts, as well as songs. All proceeded according to a traditionally fixed pattern . 1 7 Today, the songs themselves are no longer a part of the ceremony, and while many of the other forms remain (such as dances and speeches) the rigid , traditional patterns are no longer followed . Thematically, the bride is the focus of the often-lyrical and teasing ceremonial songs. Her beauty , upbringing, future as a married woman, and her character are all described in these songs: "Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter''; ''Mother, mother, you may be proud . . . '' The most frequently mentioned virtues on the bride's part are modesty , diligence , obedience, and chastity. Some of the songs, especially those following the taking of the wreath and placing of the bonnet on the bride's head (when she symbolically becomes a woman), are permeated with laments: ''I lost my headdress . .. I like wearing it.'' Other songs picture the bride taking leave of her parents, relatives and friends: thanking her parents for her upbringing, expressing her sorrow about leaving them, and sometimes also expressing apprehension about her future with the bridgegroom' s family. Wedding songs and speeches employ rhymed verse, often of the following pattern : aa-bb-cc. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. As in christening songs, wedding songs also employ assonance. Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter , we will take her from you even if you hide her. Should you lock her behind four locks, we sure will get her with fin e words. Mamicka , mamicka, peknu dceru mate, m y vam ju vezmeme , co ju aj schovate . Co by ste ju zamkli aj styrma zamka mi , my ju dostaneme peknymi slova mi. p. 151 2 G et married , ge t ma rried , m y love, well will you learn what tyranny is. Get m arried , get m arri ed, my love , a birch switch awaits you behind th e door. V ydaj sa !en, vydaj , frajeruock a rn oj a, sak sa ve ru dozvies , aka je to zvola. V ydaj sa !en , vyd aj, fraj eruocka moj a, caka t'a za dve rmi ta b rezova hola. p. 151 �28 SLOVAKIA 3 I kept it a sec ret, a secret, but I won't anymore, mother, ge t the feath erbeds" read y, I ' m ge ttin g m ar ried. Thank you , mother , thank you, d ea r , for taking care of me wh ile I was a child . T aj ila som , taji la, uz tajit' nebudem , chystaj , m am ka, perin y, vydavat' sa budem . Dakujem va m , mamicka, dakujem va m sta ra, co ste vy mna chovali , kym so m bola mala . p . 152 4 M ot he r, mot her, you may be proud th at yo ur girl 's gettin g married still chaste. Chaste , she's getting ma rri ed to a you ng man , they both will be wearing a rosemary wreat h .'" Mamicka, mamicka , pekn a vasa chvala , ze sa vafa d ieuka poct iva vydava. Poctiva vyd ava, be ri e ju ml ade nec, budu mat' obidva z rozmarinu ve ni ec. p . 152 5 Whateve r yo u give me, oh, eternal Lord , just don ' t give me a n old hag with children . An old hag rumbl es like a ba rrel of bee r a nd a young girl ' s jumpy like a squirrel. I ' II give the old hag a fl a tca ke 10 to chew on, and th e yo ung gi rl a pair of boots to jump in . Co mi das, to das, pa ne boze vecny, !en ze mi nedavaj staru babu s det'mi. A ta stara dud le, ako z piva bocka a ta mlada skace a ko veve ru ocka. D am starej Osucha , aby ho fova la , ml ad ej na cizmicky, aby si skaka la. p. 152 On the way back from the church , the weddin g party sings songs like the following: 6 Now you a re ours, Ann ie, now you are ours, we a re tak in g you home from the wedd ing. They paid a lotll for your wedd ing, we have tied your hands with a stole . 1 ' Uz si ty, An icka, uz si teraz nasa, uz t'a my ved ieme domov ze sobasa . Od tvojho sobasa tvrdy toliar dali, uz sme tvoje rucky stolou poviazali. p . 153 �SLOVAKIA 29 7 Jaj , co si plakala, ked t'a sobasili? Var si si m ys lela l'ubit' sa s inymi ? A ja som sa bala tej tvojej materi, ked' ona ma jazyk zo samej oceli . Oh , why did you cry at your wedding? Maybe you thought of loving others? No, I was afraid of your moth er , becau se she has a tongue of steel. p. 154 During the wedding feast the bridgegroom and bride may sing to each other: 8 Bridegroom: Welcome, d ear little dove," half of my heart 1 I'm fl ying from bu sh to bush to see your cheeks. As soon as my heart spotted you, it looked back with joy , m y wish was fulfill ed. I want to ask you , Molly , are you willing to m a rry m e? will your fat her let you go? do you want to be my wife? Vitaj, mila holubicka, muojho srdca polovicka 1 Lietam od kricka do kricka, abych videl tvoje licka . J ak t'a moje srdce zrelo , od radosti zas pozrelo , podl'a vuoli sa mi stalo. Chcem sa, Marka, t'a p ytati, m as ty vuolu za mna iti , ci t'a otec chce pu stiti , ci chces mojou zenou byti? p. 161 Bride: You can't find fault with me, yo u can do as you please. Wh y should I spare myself, 34 when I like to see you. You can profit from m e Wh a t ca n I d o? I can tear old shirts to rags , throw wood into the stove, in the kitchen I have good luck, I can cook cabbage wit hout lard, and you wi ll li ck your fingers. l can make scrambled eggs , as my fat her knows . You , m y fat her , tell them what a special di sh it is 135 Nieto na mne ziadna chyba , mozes robit', co ti treba. Co by lutovala seba, ked' ja rada vidim teba . Zo mn a m ozes osoh vziati, co zo mn a moze vystati? Viem starie kosele driapat', dreva do peci nam eta t', aj v ku chyni sa mi stescf, mozem navar it' kapusty bez mas ti , oblfzes prsty. Viem spravit' praze ni cu z vaj ec. o com vie svadobny otec. T y pan svadobny otec povedz , aka je to obzvlastna vec 1 p. 161 The bonneting of the bride had its own special songs . 36 �SLOVAKIA 30 9 I lost m y headdress," m y green wreath, " the best m an" fo und it , a ha ndso me yo ung m an . H ey, bes t m an , best ma n , I beg of you , give me bac k that headb and , I like wearing it. If you like wearing that head ba nd so mu ch , surely you ' d ask the best man more ni cely . Stratila som partu, zeleny ve ni ec, nasiel mi ju dru zba, sva rny ml adenec. H ej , dru zba, hej, dru zba, pekn e t'a prosfm , d ajze mi tu partu , rad a ju nosfm 1 K eby si ty pa rtu rada nosila, ve ru by si druzbu krajsie prosila . p . 163 10 The bell s of r.upca' 0 have a ve ry ni ce rin g," 1 Annie , they ' ll kn ock off yo u r head ba nd . They will kn ock it off with nin e bells, so you won ' t go out with oth er yo un g men . So you won't go out , just love your husband , th e handso me J ohnn y, who is d evo ted to you . Tie lupcian ske zvo ny vel'mi pekne zvo ni a, u z tebe, Ani cka, tvoju pa rtu zro ma . Zronia ti ju , zronia deviatimi zvo ncf, abys nechodil a s cudzfmi mladencf. Abys nechodil a, mu za si l'ubila , Janfcka svarnyho, tebe oddan yho. p . 163 Wailing Over the Dead The practice of wailing over the dead form ed a n integral p a rt of the fun e ral ceremony , a nd according to the Muran Articles of the Protestant Church from 1585 , wailing had been widely practiced in Slovakia.42 The lam ents were performed by semi-professional wailers , usually by older women , who wailed a t the funeral for a fe e. Some times , the laments were perform ed by rela tives. The laments over the d ead were generally improvi sed on the spur of the moment , with the hired person attempting to express lyrically the dee p sorrow felt by the relatives and friends of the deceased. They also m e ntioned the good traits of the deceased, the progress of hi s or her illn ess (as in " Oh , My D ear Child "), and would dram atize the actual d emise of the deceased , portraying him as he took leave of hi s fa mily, relatives, and friends. The laments over the d ead are st ru ctured differentl y from other folklore genres . Since they h ad to be open for improvisa tions , they are �SLOVAKIA 31 free in form. They usuall y do not have regular stanzas or rhyme. Assonance predominates over rhym e and they are sung as melodic recitations. Laments can be characterized not only b y the lack of formal structure, but also by a certain degree of looseness and incoherency, possibly utilized to stress the depth of sorrow felt by the relatives and friends . This looseness is demonstra ted in the poem "George , George" in which the last two stanzas are only vaguely related to the theme of the first two stanzas. Oh , my dear child , beloved Angel," what shall I do without you , my dear souJ? My hea rt was bleeding while you were suffering, you looked at me, I couldn ' t help. Your fath er was walking stunned in the yard , walkin g aimlessly, not saying a word . You chattered to me your sweet words th e wh ole day, you dear innocent ch ild , a nd when you r father came home from th e fi elds, you smiled so that he would take you in his arms , and th ere was no end to your talking, and your father took d elight in you, hi s treasure. Ach, moj e drah uo diet'a, anjel premileny, cuo pocnem bez teba, moj a draha dusa, srdce mi zatislo, ked si sa trapilo, hl'adelo si na mna, nemohla som pomuoct'. Otec ti po dvore omrace ny chodiu , nikde miesta nemau, slov ka nepovedau. Stebotalo si mi slad uskymi recmi cely den, ty draha nevinnost ' premila , a ked otec z pol'a do domu sa vratiu, usmi evalo si sa, kym t'a k sebe nevzau, a n ebolo recom tvojim dlh o konec , a otec sa tesiu v tebe drahy poklad. p. 164 2 George, George, yo ur godfather ca me ," for yo u to plow hi s fi elds. You a re through with plowing since the Lord called you. Juro , Juro , km otor prise!, aby si mu orat' isol. A ty si uz dooral , ked' t'a panboh povolal. Ycs te rd ay you ate three sa usages," a nd a lot of bread. 46 Today you lie on th e bier, like a hog on a ca rt . Y ce ra si zjel tri jelita , aj chl eba z polk yky zita. Dnes uz lezis na marach ako bravec na karach. �32 SLOVAKIA M y dea r go lde n m oustache" would be fit fo r strin gs, my ve r y d ear ha ir , would be good fo r ropes. M oje m ile, zlate fuzy, boli ze by na mot u zy, moj e premile vlasy boli by na povrazy. Wh en he bega n to play hi s bagpipe: " tati -lat i, ta ti-l a ti ," he go t a farth ering" to bu y spices, he dropped it behind his shirt. K ed si pocal gajdovati : ta ti -lati , ta ti-l ati , ma! turak na koreni a, vsy pal ho do zahreni a. p . 165 NOTES ' Andrej M elichercfk , ed. , Slo vensky Folkl6r: Chrestomatia (Bra tislava: Slove nska Akademi a Vied, 1959) . ' J ozef r. . Holuby, Folklore studi es published ma inl y in Slovenske Pohl'ad y between 1883 a nd 1897; Jan Kolla r , N arodnie spievanky, I-II (Bra ti slava, 1953); Jii'i Polivka, Supis slo ven skych rozpravok I-V (Turciansky Svaty M artin , 1923 -1932). ' The fo lkloric ma teri al collected by Dobsinsky a nd oth ers is re ndered in th e dialec t o f the region fro m which it origina ted . The page reference to M elichercfk is give n in th e tex t a ft er th e Slovak ori ginal. ' " Puddle, Puddle ." In the Slova k, this love inca nta ti on has an irregul a r rhym e (aabbb-c-ddd-c-ee-fff- e-g-hh-g- iii -j- k-ll -m m) whi ch was sac rificed in th e tra nsla ti on fo r the sake of accuracy. • Although th e magical for mulae are pagan in origin , they contain refe rences to C hristi a nit y. ' Lit. · " H oly T rinity,/be a good helpe r to me/ to eve rythin g good,/ to the state of m a trimon y" (II. 26-29). 6 The colors refer to the body: red or pink cheeks were considered a sign of good health , a nd a white co m plex ion was much valued by both men and women, partl y as a sign of class di stin ction . O nly feuda l lords and wealth y merchants who di d not have to work in th e fi elds could afford to have white skin a ll year aro un d. " H oney " is a traditi onal refe rence to good te mper . 7 " I have brought you a piece of steel. . " With the exce ption of the wishes in the las t lin e, the Slova k poe m co nsis ts of rh ym in g co upl ets. All bu t 11 . 1 and 2 a re revised in order to con vey a prope r word order in English . Steel (iron) was co ns idered p ro tect ion aga ins t evil and fa iries in Europe (Maria Tymocz ko). ' H a ft is a ha nd le of a hoe, ax, scyt he, and oth er ag ricultu ral tools. H ere the number of hafts represen ts the far mer 's pros perity. 9 A typical orname n t a mong young marri ed village me n . Wh en give n by a you ng unm a r ried women, th e feather was co nside red a sign of affect ion. '° K re u ze r (o r kreutzer) was a small cop per coin in Aust ri a and Ge rmany, the 100th part of th e fl orin . It was so called because th e coin had th e fi gu re of a cross on it. A penny wou ld be probabl y the closest co n temporary eq ui valent to the kreuzer. " Wal nu ts and hazlenu ts were trad itionally eaten at C hristmas tim e after the ma in meal. �SLOVAKIA 33 " " I wi sh you in thi s/comin g New Yea r " : This is a very popular N ew Year 's wish . The unu su al wi sh , " that a side of your oven/ m ay fa ll out" (11 .3 -4) probably ha s the same conn otat ion as th e En gli sh '' break a leg!'' It also sugges ts a wi sh of prosperity to the farm er , i.e., th a t hi s oven m ay be fill ed to burstin g, or ove rh eated with con stant cooki ng a nd baking. " Fo rmall y, thi s poe m is arran ged in rh ymin g coupl ets but asson an ce plays a m o re impo rtant role . " This carol is loosely a rra nged in rh yming couplets. Again, the assonance a nd the rhym e take precedence ove r m eanin g, and thi s ex plains why such seemingly unrela ted them es as th e Three Kings, the Star of Bethlehem , J oseph and M a ry o n the one hand, and the rose, th e tulip on the ta ble, and the old man's huntin g expedition on th e other ha nd , fo und their place in thi s carol. The carol is a mi xture of religious and secular m otifs. " C hildren , dressed as the Three Magi, arrive a t a farmh ou se and sing. Yet they mu st no t sin g a bout the fa rm er ' s fa mil y, but the H oly Famil y of the Na tivity. 16 ' ' Sh rovetide, Pentecos t, and Easter ... '' This j okin g carnival song is ar ranged in rh ym in g coupl ets. 11 Fatback bacon (usual ly with no lean m eat) was a staple diet , often a snack, fo r village peo ple. It was ofte n eaten with baked potatoes a nd _onio ns, o r j ust plain bread . 18 Fa tback baco n u sed to be sm oked (cured ) in th e chimn ey. 19 The teac her , alo ng with the p riest a nd th e m ayo r , was amon g th e m ost prominent peo ple in th e vill age. 0 ' S loven sko: l', ud - II. cast', ed s. Boze na Filova et al. (B ra ti slava: O bzo r , 1975). " In the Slovak o ri ginal, thi s son g has a regula r rh yme pat tern: aa-b b-cc-dd . The first two lines ad d ress th e m a in speaker . " J oh n" is appa ren tl y a youn g fath er whose wife d ied in childbirth . T he fat her says that he will kee p his so n , but the boy ' s grandmoth er will have to bring him up . Them a ticall y, the so ng expresses conce rn fo r th e boy ' s upbringin g. In the seco nd stan za , the speake r ind icates that he m ay have to leave hi s nat ive vill age, probably in search of wo rk . T hi s was a co mm on prac ti ce among im poverished village rs. " Lit .: " I 'll have. " In 11. 3 an d 4 coll oqui al form s of the ve rb " to have " and the nou n " m other" have bee n used. The forms a re iden tical: mati , wh ich fac il itates th e rh ym e and keeps th e sam e num ber of syll a bles in each line. There a re eight sylla bles in each line, and th e standa rd m o nosy lla bic word m at' wo uld have redu ced th e syll a bles dow n to seven in 11 .3 a nd 4 . " The origin al son g uses assonance ra ther th an rh ym e. A fat her-to-be is th e speaker in this so ng . H alf-jokin g , he stresses the importance of a male offspring. H e p rom ises to pa m pe r hi s wife if she bears him a son . " The original so ng uses asson a nce . T he speaker , proba bly an un wed m o th er, po nders her fat e a nd talks a bout social conve nti on s. " W ith th e excepti o n of stanza 3, the so ng has a near regul a r rh ym e: aa-bb-cc-dd-e -fg- f-hh- ii -jj- kk. T he speaker in th is so.ig is the ba by 's moth er who regrets th e loss of her freedo m as a mother and/or a wife . It is not qu ite clear from the context wheth er she is m a rri ed o r no t. I n either case, it was not proper of her to joi n the ca refree d a nce of unm arri ed m en a nd wome n . �34 6 SLOVAKIA Slovensko: E,ud, p. 1057. " Melichercfk , p. 26 " A featherbed is a strong cloth con tainer thi ckly filled with goose feathers and down and used as a bed cover in lieu of blankets. Featherbeds were a part of the bride's dowry, which also included pillows, sheets, towels, cloths, etc . The dowry was collected throughout the years practically after the day the girl was born . Goose down and stripped feathers were collected ever y year from the fami ly's fl ock of geese and stashed in a special bag for each d aughter in the family. The wealthier the bride , the higher the pile of featherbeds and pillows atop her bed . " A rosemary wreath was a decoration used on such occasions as weddings and funerals . H ere it is a symbol of chastity. 0 ' A fl atcake (osuch ) is a simple, flat cake, usually round. It is baked from bread dough , which is sometimes mixed with a different type of fl our or else potatoes. " Lit .: "They paid a hard thaler for your wedding ," obviously meaning the dowry. Thaler (also taler) was a large silver coin u sed in various German states and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was worth 30 silver groschen, worth about 3s. sterling . The word "dollar" is derived from " th aler." " R efe rring to the priest's vestments durin g the wedding ce remony, the stole is a long, decorated strip of cloth worn like a scarf by officiating clergymen of various chu rches. 33 In the Slovak original, each line consists of eight syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aaaa-bbb-cccc. " The meaning is not quite clear here. It probably indicates the bride's submission to the groom . 35 In this poem, each line consists of eight syllables . The rh yme pattern is: aaaa-bb-ccbbb-dddd. 36 Bonneting of the bride is the culmination of the wedding ceremony. The bride becomes a married woman when her wreath is replaced by a bonnet. 31 Headband or headdress is a wreath decorated with colorful ribbons, worn by un married women and brides. Married women wore bonnets or scarves. 38 Each line in this song consists of eleven syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-cc. 39 It was customary that the best man led the bride to the wedding and took off her wreath or headband. H e led the bride down the aisle, whereas the bridesmaid led the bridegroom down the aisle. He was referred to as the " leading " best man and wore a sword to distinguish himself from other best men who wore sticks decorated with scarves . '° Cupca is a town in Central Slovakia, where many local customs and traditions have been preserved. 41 Each line in this song consists of twelve syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-c-d. " Melichercfk, p . 142. 43 This lame ntation has a sporadic rhyme pattern: a-b-c-d-ee-f-g-ee- h-i. The lines consist of 12 to 13 syllables. 44 The poem has the following rhym e pattern: aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff-gg-hh . The lines consist of seven to eight syllables. 45 Pork sausage in natural casing. It is made of rice or grits combined with ground meat , liver, blood and spices. The sausages were usu all y made in winter or early ' �SLOVAKIA 35 spring when the fatt ened pigs were slaughtered . " '' ... a lot of bread.'' This is a free translation due to the discrepancy in the printed word indicating the amount of rye from which the bread was made . The original version of this song, titled, " W a iling over a D ead Husband" (Sbomik slovenskych n arodnych piesnf, povestf, prfslovf, porekadiel, hadok, hier, obycajov a povier [A Collection of Slovak Folk Songs, Riddles, Games, Customs, and Superstitions], II , (Turciansky Sva ty Martin : Matica slovenska, 18741) spells the wordpolkyly, which would mean half a kilo. On the other hand , Melichercik's edition lists the word polkyky (fem. gen. sg. ), which was an old , popula r measure in Slovak villages . The word k yky is of Ukrainian ori gin (a Ukrainian word for a scarf worn by village women, "babushka" type). ·since scales were a luxury item in the past, the amount of rye from which a loaf of bread was m ade was m easured in the scarf. Pol means half, i.e., the bread was made from half the amount measured by the scarf. 47 The poem , somewhat joking in character, shows the improvising character of funeral recitations. The stanzas wander from one subject to another, touching some memories of the dead man that may o r may not be relevant for the occasion of the funeral, but they are important in the eyes of the wailer. " " Farthing" is a free translation, indicating that the coin was small. In the Slovak original , turak was a small coin , worth one and a half groschen . It was used in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation , " Slovak Folklore : An Anthology, " at the Un iversity of M assachuset ts in Amh erst , 1982. I th ank especially Professors Sarah N. Lawall a nd Zdenek Salzmann . Presented in part in P anel 128 , " Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS co nvention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980 , and in Panel 65 , "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 2 1 September 1981. � 12 SLOVAKIA Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Kucekova The following categories of Slovak folklore represent some of its oldest forms. Lyrical genres, such as m agical formul ae or incantations , ceremonial calendar poetry , and ceremonial fa mily poetry, a re of ritual and ceremonial character. The sample selections introduced in this pa per were taken from a comprehensive modern collection of Slovak folkl ore entitled Slovensky folk16r: Chrestomatia, and edited b y the foremost authority on the subj ect, the late Andrej Melichercfk . 1 Melichercfk based hi s anthology on Pavo! Dobsinsky' s publications , as well a s on other collections of Slovak folklore, for example those edited by Jozef I:. . Holuby, Jan Kollar and Jirf Polfvka . 2 The folklori c material collected by Dobsinsky and others is rendered in the dialect of the region from which it originated. MAGICAL FORMULAE Magical fo rmulae a re incantations associated with ritu als. These non-narrative forms are very ancient and are closely related to ce rem onial calendar poetry. M agical formulae were u sually connec ted with special rites and performed on spec ific occasions and/or holidays . They were often perform ed by semiprofessional m en and women (" wi se m en " and " wise wom en ") who were well versed in m agic. There are two types of incantations: tho se which were supposed to bring a desired effect( " sympathethic magic" ), and those which were supposed to preve nt undes irable and ha rmful effects (" preve ntive magic" ). Incantations we re u sed to brin g a hu sba nd , m ake one fall in love, prevent and cure illness , increase the yield of the fi elds, and also bring illness or bad lu ck upon a n enem y . Some incan tations were chanted primarily by girls or young women. " Puddle, Puddle," " Will ow, Willow," and " And You , Elm ," are typical examples of love incantations. Once m arried , a bride would chant an incanta tion " I Sow the Seed " and wish for good lu ck and prosperity . �SLOVAKIA 13 Magical formulae are rhythmical and based on syntactic parallelisms ; they rely extensively on various euphonic and semantic devices. Due to the fact that magical formulae are so closely associated with magic, their ritual form remains unchanged throughout the centuries . Magical incantations contain many pre-Christian elements, upon which a new layer of C hri st ian symbols has been added . Love Incantations This love incantation shows water as a powerful source of magic. T aken from fords at midnight , water was believed to attract lovers and help a girl get married . While bathing, girls chanted the following incantation: Puddle , puddle,' get me a husband! Above the bridge, below the bridge, let him go nowhere but to our house! Above th e footbrid ge, below th e footbr idge, don 't let him rest but in ou r house 1 I 'm not pouring away, I 'm pouring in: bachelors , wid owers, merchants, fiddlers, even those small boys I call after me, after my body , aft er my clothes , after my heels, a ft er this hou se of ours. Not by my power do I say this, but I say it by the divine power, from J es us Christ till m idn ight. And help me in this God th e Father, the Son , a nd the H oly Ghost!' H oly Trini ty , help me reach hap piness and get married. 1 Kaluza, kalu za, daj muza 1 Vyse mosta, ni ze mosta, aby nemal nikde miesta len u nas! Vyse lavky, ni ze lavky, aby nem al nikd e stavky len u nas 1 Neod lievam, ale prilievam: mladencov, vdovcov, kupcov , aj hudcov , aj tych malickych chlapcov za sebou volam, za mym telom , za m ymi satami, za mym i patami, za tym nasfm domom . J a to nehovorfm ze svej moc1, lez to hovorfm z bozskej m oci, od pana J ezisa Kri sta do pol noci. A k tomu mi dopomahaj Boh otec , Boh sy n , Boh du ch svaty! Svata troj ica , bud mi dobra pomocnica k vse tkemu dobremu, k stavu manzelskemu! p. 54 �14 SLOVAKIA On the eve of St. George ' s Day (April 24) , young girls made wreaths from different kinds of flowers and boughs. Later, wreaths were tossed into the air. It was believed that the girl whose wreath was caught on a tree branch would get married within a year. To attract a beloved, girls would make wreaths from nine different boughs and chant the following incantation: 2 A ty vaz - ty ho vaz, a ty hrab - se m ho hrab , a ty kJen - se m ho zen , a ty svfb - se m ho sib, a ty sip - ty ho stfp , a ty tfn - sem ho hrn , a ty dub - ty ho l'ub , a ty bez - za nim bez, a ty lieska - za nim vri es kaj ! And you, elm - you bind him , and you, hornbeam - rake him here, and you , maple - drive him here, and you , red dogwood - whip him here, and you , wild rose - you prick him, and you , thorn bush - push him here , and you , oak - you love him , and you , lilac - run aft er him , a nd you , hazel, - yell aft er him p . 57 Bridal Incantation A woman married into her husband's family . As soon as the bride entered her husband's house after the wedding, she would scatter flaxs6ed, millet and poppy seed in the yard for good luck , while chanting the following: 2 I sow the seed , to succeed with all my breed ; I sow millet, for others to beg m y fav or; I sow poppy seed , for this to last foreve r. Sejem se m eno, ab y sa mi viedl o vsetko ple meno; sej em proso, aby sa mi vse tci prosili ; sej em m ak, aby bolo vzdycky tak . p . 61 Incantation by the Willow To make sure that they would grow beautiful long hair, young girls would comb their hair under a willow on Good Friday at dawn. While combing their hair, they wished for a good husband . Willow, willow , ge t m e a m an , red as a rose , white as a fl ower, a nd good as honey. ' Vfba, vfb a , d aj mi mu za, ce rve neho a ko ru za a bieleho a ko kve t, a dobreho ako med . p . 62 �SLOVAKIA 15 CEREMONIAL CALENDAR POETRY Ceremonial calendar poetry celebrates different festivals of the year. The original calendar festivals coincided with the solstices and equinoxes. Calendar poetry contains many pre-Christian mythological elements which have been intertwined with and sometimes replaced by Christia n elements. In the calendar poetry of Slovakia a nd other Slavic countries which have been under Catholic influence, Christian features pred ominate. The traditions connected with calendar poetry are still being practi ced in some Slovak villages , particularly around holidays such as Christmas, New Year ' s and Easter. The classification of calendar poetry corresponds to the agricultural cycles, and all four seasons of the year are represented. In the poetry , three seasons are associated with the cultivation of the soil, while the last one is concerned with the harvest itself. The poetry is full of incantations and magical formulae meant to secure a good harvest and placate nature , which was often thought of as hostile. In the pre-Christian era the peasants turned for h elp to their gods and during Christian times to the numerous Christian saints. They would ask for good and prosperous years , abundant harvest, a nd good health and happy family life. Along with incantations and magical formulae, calendar poetry also contains chants , recitations , songs, riddles, and prognostications . In this poetry each season has its own characteristic customs . The winte r solstice cycle , beginning in November , is best represented. Its poetry is of a prophetic nature, and touche s on both family life and the prosperity of the homestead. The most important days of the season were the last 12 before Christmas since they represented the 12 months of the year; these days were used to judge what the weather would be like for the w hole next year. Children went caroling from hou se to house, a nd it was important that they b e healthy for if they were, they would bring good health to the fa rm ers ' fa milies as well . Moreover, the living room h a d to be cleaned a nd whitewashed in eve ry house to preve nt any kind of illn ess from ente rin g. Numerous C hri stmas customs were practiced o n C hristmas Eve . Basicall y , they were meant to express the farmer ' s thanksgiv in g for good crops in the preceding season, a nd to h elp assure a nd predict a good harvest in the forthcoming year. The latter kind were u su ally connected wit h magic . There we re rules of condu ct which were st ri ctl y followed �16 SLOVAKIA on Christmas Eve. For example, one could not light the house unless the Christmas Eve dinner - the biggest meal of the year - was already set on the table. The numerous courses of the meal had to follow acertain sequence . Christmas carolers were offered food and drink , and the boys were also given money. Many of the Christmas carols have a joking tone - besides bringing best wishes they expressly ask for a reward as in ''I Am a Very Small Boy,'' or ''I'm Just a Little Boy .' ' Sometimes they would ask expressly for money as in the carol "We Have Brought You Some News . '' New Year's wishes were also humorous in tone and expressed the good mood which prevailed in every household on that day . It was believed that if one felt happy on New Year's Day , he or she would be happy during the coming year. One song jokingly suggests that the farmer's stove burn out from too much cooking and baking: "I wish you in this/ coming New Year / that a side of your oven / may fall out." Carols for the eve of the Three Magi combine religious and secular motifs. Thus, in " Lord , Grant Us a Merry Evening," best wishes are expressed for everyone in the house, including the servants. Immediately after come Epiphany motifs, dealing with the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Three Kings. The Epiphany carol is concluded with a rather anticlimatic ending: the old man (probably the patriarch of the house) is not at home and has gone hunting. Very often , the boys were masked as the Three Kings, Joseph and Mary, and would perform a co medy based on the ancient legend . The Christmas ceremonial cycle ended with the Three Kings motif. Thematically, then , Slovak ceremonial calendar poetry focuses upon the four cycles of the year and the agricultural tradition con nected with them . It also contains the themes of love and fertility, and elements of ancestor worship, which are not treated here. From the formal point of view, calendar poetry is characte rized by symm etric bipartite verse and the frequent use of asso nance . Pre-Christmas Period The winter cycle of calendar poetry begins with St. Thomas's Day (December 21 ) , the shortest day of the year. Small boys walked around the village with a piece of steel, wishing farmers good lu ck in the next farming year : �SLOVAKIA 17 I have b rought you a piece of steel' so th a t you would not fall out of bed. Have as m a n y calves on yo ur farm as there a re spoons on your shelf. Have as man y oxen in your stable as there are logs in your shed. Let your girls have as many suito rs as there are dishes on your rack. May yo ur lads own as many hafts' as there are hearths in you r house. May as man y youn g men wear feathers in their caps• as you have number of dau ght ers. Have as m a ny more ears of corn in you r backyard as there are pictures on your walls. I ask onl y as many kreuzers' 0 as there are mirrors here. I wish you a good morning 1 Doniesou som vam ocele, aby ste nevypadli z postele. Kol'ko mate za ramom lyz iciek, tol'ko mate vo dvore teliciek; kol'ko mate na sope kolov, tol'ko mate V mastali volov; kol'ko mate za ramom tanierov , tol'ko maju vase dievky frajero v ; kol'ko mate vo vasom dome ohnisk, tol'ko maju vas i parobci porisk ; kol'ko zije vasich deer, tol'ko maju mladenci pier ; kol'ko ma te na stene obrazov , tol'ko raz vo vasom humne kl asov; kol'ko mate tuna zrkadov, !en tol'ko mi dajte krajciarov. Dobro rano vinsujem 1 p. 70 Christmastime Many Christmas carols and son gs are connected with the Christm as season. Both children and ad ults went from house to hou se caroling M erry C hristmas. For their service they expected som e reward. Many of these carols are joking in character, as is evident from the following carols: �18 SLOVAKIA I a m a very sm all boy. M y fa th er has se nt me to you , to ge t so methin g from you , but m ake it qui ck, for m y stomach rumbl es. J a som chl apec ve l'mi m aly, mn a moj otec k vam poslali, zeby ste mi dafo dali , ale chytro , lebo m i uz v bru chu svitlo. p. 70 2 I ' m ju st a little boy. I'm askin g fo r my sm all bag : a pi ece of cake a nd piece o f pie. T omorrow , I ' ll b rin g yo u a bird . If th at see m s too little, I will brin g you so me pork ; and if tha t 's not enough , I 'll b ri ng yo u a cat's ta il. J a so m maly, nevelicky, pyta m se be do ka psicky: kus kola.ca, kus kabaca, d onesiem vam zajtra vtaca. Ak sa vam to ma.lo vid f, d onesiem vam porfov iny; ak je vam to ni e dost', d onesiem va m z m acky chvost. p . 71 3 W e have b rought you so me news, we have come to you r feas t . The Saviour desce nded from H eave n , and we ca me to be your gues ts. A jug of wine is on th e table , and we are under your farm yard window, but you don ' t offer us a n y win e, nor do you have an y brand y th a t we ca n trea t ourselves to, and sing you songs eve n ni ce r . W e don ' t want your past ry, we' ll crac k a few nu ts.'' H ey, we a re not little ki ds , wh o get j ust a kreu ze r apiece. If yo u don ' t give us twe n ty we wo n ' t co me on New Yea r's Day. D oni esli sm e vam novinu , prisli sm e k vam na hos tinu , Sos tupi l Spasti el' z vysosti . M y sm e prisli k va m za hos ti . Krcah s vfn om j e na stole, m y sme pod oblokom v dvore , a nam vina nedavate, palenky ti ez ni c nem a te, co b y sme sa castu va]i a vam krajsie zaspievali . O pekance va m nechcem e, oriesky si poklcieme. A my sme ni e chl a pci m ali, ze by Ste nam krajc iar d ali. Ak na m dvads ia tnik ned a te, na Novy rok nas nema te. p. 71 New Year's Wish es Early in th e m ornin g on New Year's D ay, m en a nd youn g boys went from house to hou se, w ishin g lo ts of lu ck, p rosperity , a nd good h ealth to everyon e in the house . M ost of th eir w ishes foc u sed upon su ccessfu l fa rmin g a nd m a n age m e n t. I wish you in th is coming New Year, V in sujem vam V tento nas tavajuc i nov y rok , �SLOVAKIA that a side of your ove n may fall out , " that your wife may get pregna nt this year! Give us foo d and drink and stay well! 19 aby va m vypadol z pece bok, aby vam bola vasa gazdin a na te nto rok samod ruh a 1 Vypit', zajest' na m d ajte, a dob re sa tu m aj te 1 p . 78 2 l wish you plenty of hemp , bu shels of beets, a whole bin of blossoms, and a ba rnful of children' Vinsujem va m moc konopi, mecu repy , zacinok puckov, plevienec deti 1 p. 79 3 This l wish to all'' with vigo r and joy : to peasants, bags for their shoulders ; to shep herd s, porridge; to cows, good pasture; to pigs, lots of mast to make them fat. Vinsujem smele vse tk ym vese le : sedliakom vrece, pine na piece; pastiero m kase a kravam pase; svi niam zaludu, ze tu cne budu . p . 79 The Three Magi On the eve of Epiphany, children went from house to house, singing carols in which the Epiphany motifs were interspersed with such commonplace motifs as farming and the farmer's eve ryday activity. Lord, grant us a merry eve ning ," to the farmer, first of all! And then to th e farmwife, and then to all the se rvants! The Three M agi a rri ve from the East, wo rshippin g this fam il y. Do not worship this fa mil y but worship only the beloved Lo rd! " And you , bright star, go before us, Lord , Jesus C hri st, grant us a good ni ght! And you , Joseph , I say to you , do not leave the Virgin M ary 1 D on ' t you kn ow who is going to be bo rn ? The Virgin M ary is to bear a so n . There is a red rose on your table , �SLOVAKIA 20 let you r daught er marry a handsome man 1 There is a tu li p atop your table , yo ur son is ge ttin g read y to see his love. There is a handso me fe llow in this house , perhaps he ' d give us six kreu ze rs for a wrea th . God wi ll give him a lovely wife , whether it ' s Anna o r Susanna. The old man is not at home , he went out hunting . D aj nam Boh vecer diz vesely, najprv panu hospodarov i I A poto m aj tej hospod ince, po hospodin ce vseckej cel'adce 1 ldu tri a krali od vychod u , kl a naju sa tomut o rod u. Nekla naj te sa tom uto rod u , len sa kl a najte mil emu Bohu! A ty, j as na hviezd a, predchadzaj nas, pane J ezu Kri ste, dob ru noc nam d as 1 A ty , J ozefe, j a mlu vim tebe, neopust'aj pann y M a rie ! Nevid, co sa m a na sve t narod it'? M a panna Maria sy na porodit'. Na vaso m stole ce rve na ru za, daj vasej panenk e sva rn eho mu za 1 Na vaso m stole tulipan stoji, vas m lad enecek se k fraj erce strojL J est V tomto dome sva rn y ml adenec, azda nam on d a ses tak na veniec. D a jemu Panboh svarnu zenu , Annu alebo Zu za nu . Sta reho pana doma neni, isli oni po pol'uvanL pp. 79-80 Carnival Season Th e post-Chri stmas period does not present as m a n y cerem onies as th e C hri stmas season. The tim e of fasiangy (carni val season) was ch aracte rized b y a m asked procession which was to secure a good harvest. Th e carniv al processio n h ad mu sical accompaniment , u su all y a n accordi on . Most en gaged couples were also married during carnival season , sin ce there w as rela tively plenty of time for elaborate weddi n g celebration s, w hi ch las ted for several d ays. At the e nd of th e carnival seaso n , young m e n in ce re monial m asks we nt from ho u se to ho u se, collecting eggs, bacon , a nd m o ney. They �SLOVAKIA 21 would sing humorous songs, such as " Shrovetide, P entecost. . m which they would ask for a piece of bacon . From these donations they would arrange a feast for the youth of the entire village. The main course was bacon and eggs, while the money paid for the music . Shrovetide, P entecos t, and Easter pass by, 16 he who has no fur coat , feels cold . I have none, I have none, I ' m shakin g all over, give me some bacon " to fill my belly . H ere I got nothin g, over there something, maybe. They killed a m osqu ito , a nd got some bacon . There up the chimney," a tom cat sits on the bacon , go chase him away and cut me a piece; if you cut me too sm all a piece, you will cut your fin gers. Give to the teacher " a piece as big as a d oo r , to me , a piece as big as a goose. Fasangy, Turice, V el'ka noc byva, kto nem a kozucha, zima mu byva. Ja nemam, ja nem a m , !en sa tak tras im , daj te mi slaninky, nech sa popasim . Tuto mi nedali , tuto mi d aj u, K om a ra zabili , slaninku m aj u . A ta m hore na komin e, sedi kocur na sla nin e, h ybajte ho zohn at' a mne ku s odrezat', az mi mal y odrezete, svoje prsty poreze te. R echtorovi j ako dve re a mn e ku s - ako hus 1 pp . 82-83 Easter The spring custom s include taking out Morena (the goddess of dea th in the p agan Slavic traditio n) , ta king out the old m a n (dedko - possibly a m ale equivalent of Moren a), and welcoming in the n ew summe r . However , the sprin g ce remonial cycle is cente red prim a rily around Easter , the most important religious holiday of the season . Easte r customs still co nta in m a ny pre -Christia n ele m e nts, which have been prese rved up to the 20th century . For example, on Good Friday a t d awn, girls would chant incantations while ba thing, wishing for a hu sba nd (see " Pud- �22 SLOVAKIA dle, Puddle" in the preceding section). On Easter Monday, groups of ten to fifteen men and boys went from house to house, wishing the womenfolk a Happy Easter. It was a part of the tradition that they flogged women's legs with a birch switch and doused their heads with fresh water. This proced ure had a symbolic purifying function . If a young man was courting a particular young woman, he was expected to visit her house , thus showing his interest and affection. Then, the girl would reward her favorite suitor with the most lavishly decorated Easter egg. Besides the eggs, everybody would also receive drinks, food, sweets, and little boys would get money. Easter, Easter, will it come soon? which lad will pour water over me] Pour the water , pour the water, on my hair and head , but do spare my nice new skirt. Vel'ka noc , Vel'ka noc, kedyze uz bude? ktoryze ma suhaj oblievati prfde? Oblievaj, oblievaj, vlasy aj hlavicku , ale mi zasanuj tu novu suknicku. p . 93 Pentecost marked the beginning of the summer cycle. Many traditions were centered around the summer solstice and St. John's Eve CTune 24). On that day, love incantations were chanted and the future was foretold . Also, magic was practiced against witches whose power was believed very strong on that day. The later part of the summer season is poorer in folklore because of increased work in the fields . Harvest The autum cycle begins with the harvest season . During the harvest season, songs were sung in the fields, or on the way home after a day 's work. Thematically , they are associated with the work itself, love between two young people ("We Reaped Here") , or the feast following the work ("Master, Make Ready for a Feast "). Some of these songs are joking in tone . The songs sung around the harvest wreath reflect old Slovak customs . After the harvest, a procession of harvesters would walk from the fields to the house of the farmer who had hired them . Led by a young man who was carrying a colorful flag and a young woman wearing a wreath made of wild flowers , they would sing songs and some- �SLOVAKIA 23 times play music ("For Which Girl Shall We Weave a Wreath Today?"). In these songs, the peasants expressed their joy and happiness over a rich harvest. They also expressed their hope for the same bounty for the years to come. Harves t time offers a whole series of songs connected with this important agricultural season. They may refer to the work itself, or love between a young girl and a young man from the same village, or else the rest during the break or at the end of the day . W e reaped here , we reaped the re , in the valley, in th e valley, and the birdie, mottled birdie keeps singing, kee ps singin g. Kde sm e zali , tu sme fali , na doline , na doline , a ten vtacik, jarabacik pres pevuje , prespevuje. As the birdie , mottled birdie goes around th e tree , a rou nd the tree , so does m y d ea r, m y beloved go around me, around me . J ak ten vtacik, jarabacik okolo pna , okolo pna , tak moj mil y, najmilejsf okolo mna , okolo mn a. We reaped here , we reaped th ere, behind a path , behind a path , whoever will be our master, our clerk, our clerk? Kde sme zali , tu sme fali, za chonnfkom , za chonnfkom , ktoze bude nas fm panom , ura nnfkom , ura nnfkom ? p . 99 2 Master, make read y for a feas t, for a feast , we ' ve don e all the work for you . Master , prepa re the repast , th e repas t , a twelve- pound roas t. Add to it pints of wine , pints of wine, and a roasted capon. H otuj , pa ne , oldomas, oldomas , zrob ili sme , kd e co mas. H otuj , pa ne , veceru , vece ru, d vanas t' funtov pecenu . Este k tom u pint vfna, pint vfna, peceneho kapuna . p. 100 Around the h arvest wreath might be sung the foll owing song: 3 For which girl shall we weave a wreath today? For th e one chose n by the handsom es t young ma n . Wh o shall we let ca rry th e fl ag tod ay ? The one who hands hi s ri ght ha nd to her . T hat Ond1·is Slavik a nd Anna Bl ahej , �SLOVAKIA 24 they would make a nice couple would Lord grant it. Masters, our masters , open the gates, we bring you a gift - a nice pair of reapers. Harvesters back from the fields , cover the tables, the mapl e tables with linen tabl e-cloths. Ktorejze dnes, ktorej uvijeme veniec~ Tej, ktoru vyberie najkrajsi mladenec . Komuze dnes , komu dame niest' zastavu? Tomu , co jej poda svoju rucku pravu. Ten Ondris Slavike, ta Anna Blaheje, to by bou pekny par, keby im Panboh dau! Pani nasi, pani, otvarajte brany, nesieme vam darik, zencov pekny parik. Idu zenci z roli, prestierajte stoly, stoly javorove, obrusy kmentove. p. 100 CEREMONIAL FAMILY FOLKLORE Ceremonial family folklore focuses primarily on the most important events in an individual's life: birth, marriage and death . While only songs are discussed here (they are the most common form), the Slovak ceremonial family tradition is expressed in poems, proverbs, sayings, riddles, and short dramatic performances as well. Christening Songs In the distant past , the birth of a child was accompanied by rituals and many magic practices . Such practices, it was believed, would protect the mother and her child, and would also secure health and happiness for the child as he or she matured. These magic practices gradually developed into joyful, social celebrations to welcome the new member of the family . 10 Thematically, the christening songs are directly connected with the child's birth and prospects. They frequently mention the responsibilities and problems connected with his or her upbringing, and wish the child a happy life, prosperity, and even a good spouse. Some songs stress the importance attached to having male offspring: '' And if you my wife,/would have a boy ... " If the child is a girl, the song may wish her beauty, or possibly stress the importance of chastity or industrious- �25 SLOVAKIA ness: " Freedom and chastity prevail everywhere, / whichever girl has them , let her guard them .'' Other songs may express the abruptly felt loss of freedom experienced by the young parents , especially the new mother: '' ... m y freedom is crying in the cradle.'' M any songs are j okin g in tone and form the less serious part of the christening ceremony in Slovak villages . H ere, for example, the new parents tease each other a bout their responsibility for rocking the baby: '' Rock him , m y dear . .. I'm his mother.'' And here again, the m other m ockin gly compares her situation with that of the carefree life of unm arried m en and women: " I used to have a good time , ... m y maiden name/ is blotted out," or " As the maiden s d ance . . . while I , poor thing , / rock a baby ." Slovak christening songs usually have the following rhyme pattern : aa-bb-cc-dd. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. Man y songs use assonance and employ colloquial express10ns . J ano , J ano, mily Jano! Donesu ti chl apca rano. K ed donesu , budem mati , vychova ho moja mati. A ked puojdem dolinami , vychovam ho malina mi , a ked puojdem sfrym svetom vychovam ho bielym kvetom . J ohn, John dear J ohn" They will bring you a boy tomorrow. Wh en they bring him, I'll keep him ," my mother wi ll raise him . And when I go down the valleys, I will raise him on raspberri es, and when I go in the wide world , I will raise him on white flo wers. p. 143 2 If you , m y wife," would have a boy, I would hire a wet nurse , a chef, a cook, a caretaker , and a house keeper. K eby si ty, zena moja , chlapca mal a, drzau by ti dojku , kuchara , kucharku, i safa ra i safarku. p. 144 3 Freedom and chastity prevail everyw here," whichever girl has th em, let her guard them . I would have protected mine, but it is too late. my freedom is crying in th e cradle. Sloboda, poctivost', ta vsade panuj e, kt ore j u di evca ma, nech si ju va ruje. I ja bych si moju , uz je ponecase, uz moja slobod a V belcove m i place. p . 144 �26 SLOVAKIA 4 As the maidens dance," they whirl around in circles, while I, poor thing, rock a baby. J a k tie panny tancuju, do kola sa zvrcuju, a ja neboz ia tko kolfsem diet'at ko. Rock him, my d ea r husband , he is such a lovely boy. Rock him yourself, you are his mother . Kolfbaj ho moj mily, vsak je synak spanily. Kolfbaj si sama, vsak si mu ty mama. I would be a fool to rock him by myself, You surely are his father just as I 'm his mother. Bola by ja blazon kolfba ti sama, vsak si mu ty otec jako i ja mama . I used to have a good time when luck served me, sitting by the window, with a handsome young man . Byvalo mi, byvalo, ked' mi stestia sluzilo, sedajfcej v okne, s mladeneckom pekne. I used to sit with him , now I am married to him , m y maiden name was blotted out. Sedala som, sedala, u z sem ho i dostala, me panenske jmeno bolo vymazano. pp. 144-45 Wedding Songs Of the three areas of ceremonial family folklore discussed here, the wedding ceremony offers the greatest variety of folklore material. This is because in Slovakia the wedding ceremonies of most villages and towns contained traditions that were peculiar to that particular locale . There were often specific differences between the ceremonies of neighboring villages even within a relatively small geographic area. 16 The entire ritual consisted of three parts: the period before the wedding during which a wedding contract was m ade between the future inlaws; the wedding ceremo ny itself, and the feast after the young couple had retired. The wedding actually began when the wedding guests gathered and the bride and groom left for the ceremony in the church. The first five selections under the headin g "Wedding Songs" are examples of what the wedding party might sing along the way. After the ceremony the bride and groom as well as the guests would arrive at the bride groom's h ouse , where the festivities would take place . The feast was and still is the culmination of the whole wedding. The structure of the entire wedding ceremon y was originally quite �SLOVAKIA 27 rigid . There were dan ces, ceremonial speeches, dramatic speeches and acts, as well as songs. All proceeded according to a traditionally fixed pattern . 1 7 Today, the songs themselves are no longer a part of the ceremony, and while many of the other forms remain (such as dances and speeches) the rigid , traditional patterns are no longer followed . Thematically, the bride is the focus of the often-lyrical and teasing ceremonial songs. Her beauty , upbringing, future as a married woman, and her character are all described in these songs: "Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter''; ''Mother, mother, you may be proud . . . '' The most frequently mentioned virtues on the bride's part are modesty , diligence , obedience, and chastity. Some of the songs, especially those following the taking of the wreath and placing of the bonnet on the bride's head (when she symbolically becomes a woman), are permeated with laments: ''I lost my headdress . .. I like wearing it.'' Other songs picture the bride taking leave of her parents, relatives and friends: thanking her parents for her upbringing, expressing her sorrow about leaving them, and sometimes also expressing apprehension about her future with the bridgegroom' s family. Wedding songs and speeches employ rhymed verse, often of the following pattern : aa-bb-cc. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. As in christening songs, wedding songs also employ assonance. Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter , we will take her from you even if you hide her. Should you lock her behind four locks, we sure will get her with fin e words. Mamicka , mamicka, peknu dceru mate, m y vam ju vezmeme , co ju aj schovate . Co by ste ju zamkli aj styrma zamka mi , my ju dostaneme peknymi slova mi. p. 151 2 G et married , ge t ma rried , m y love, well will you learn what tyranny is. Get m arried , get m arri ed, my love , a birch switch awaits you behind th e door. V ydaj sa !en, vydaj , frajeruock a rn oj a, sak sa ve ru dozvies , aka je to zvola. V ydaj sa !en , vyd aj, fraj eruocka moj a, caka t'a za dve rmi ta b rezova hola. p. 151 �28 SLOVAKIA 3 I kept it a sec ret, a secret, but I won't anymore, mother, ge t the feath erbeds" read y, I ' m ge ttin g m ar ried. Thank you , mother , thank you, d ea r , for taking care of me wh ile I was a child . T aj ila som , taji la, uz tajit' nebudem , chystaj , m am ka, perin y, vydavat' sa budem . Dakujem va m , mamicka, dakujem va m sta ra, co ste vy mna chovali , kym so m bola mala . p . 152 4 M ot he r, mot her, you may be proud th at yo ur girl 's gettin g married still chaste. Chaste , she's getting ma rri ed to a you ng man , they both will be wearing a rosemary wreat h .'" Mamicka, mamicka , pekn a vasa chvala , ze sa vafa d ieuka poct iva vydava. Poctiva vyd ava, be ri e ju ml ade nec, budu mat' obidva z rozmarinu ve ni ec. p . 152 5 Whateve r yo u give me, oh, eternal Lord , just don ' t give me a n old hag with children . An old hag rumbl es like a ba rrel of bee r a nd a young girl ' s jumpy like a squirrel. I ' II give the old hag a fl a tca ke 10 to chew on, and th e yo ung gi rl a pair of boots to jump in . Co mi das, to das, pa ne boze vecny, !en ze mi nedavaj staru babu s det'mi. A ta stara dud le, ako z piva bocka a ta mlada skace a ko veve ru ocka. D am starej Osucha , aby ho fova la , ml ad ej na cizmicky, aby si skaka la. p. 152 On the way back from the church , the weddin g party sings songs like the following: 6 Now you a re ours, Ann ie, now you are ours, we a re tak in g you home from the wedd ing. They paid a lotll for your wedd ing, we have tied your hands with a stole . 1 ' Uz si ty, An icka, uz si teraz nasa, uz t'a my ved ieme domov ze sobasa . Od tvojho sobasa tvrdy toliar dali, uz sme tvoje rucky stolou poviazali. p . 153 �SLOVAKIA 29 7 Jaj , co si plakala, ked t'a sobasili? Var si si m ys lela l'ubit' sa s inymi ? A ja som sa bala tej tvojej materi, ked' ona ma jazyk zo samej oceli . Oh , why did you cry at your wedding? Maybe you thought of loving others? No, I was afraid of your moth er , becau se she has a tongue of steel. p. 154 During the wedding feast the bridgegroom and bride may sing to each other: 8 Bridegroom: Welcome, d ear little dove," half of my heart 1 I'm fl ying from bu sh to bush to see your cheeks. As soon as my heart spotted you, it looked back with joy , m y wish was fulfill ed. I want to ask you , Molly , are you willing to m a rry m e? will your fat her let you go? do you want to be my wife? Vitaj, mila holubicka, muojho srdca polovicka 1 Lietam od kricka do kricka, abych videl tvoje licka . J ak t'a moje srdce zrelo , od radosti zas pozrelo , podl'a vuoli sa mi stalo. Chcem sa, Marka, t'a p ytati, m as ty vuolu za mna iti , ci t'a otec chce pu stiti , ci chces mojou zenou byti? p. 161 Bride: You can't find fault with me, yo u can do as you please. Wh y should I spare myself, 34 when I like to see you. You can profit from m e Wh a t ca n I d o? I can tear old shirts to rags , throw wood into the stove, in the kitchen I have good luck, I can cook cabbage wit hout lard, and you wi ll li ck your fingers. l can make scrambled eggs , as my fat her knows . You , m y fat her , tell them what a special di sh it is 135 Nieto na mne ziadna chyba , mozes robit', co ti treba. Co by lutovala seba, ked' ja rada vidim teba . Zo mn a m ozes osoh vziati, co zo mn a moze vystati? Viem starie kosele driapat', dreva do peci nam eta t', aj v ku chyni sa mi stescf, mozem navar it' kapusty bez mas ti , oblfzes prsty. Viem spravit' praze ni cu z vaj ec. o com vie svadobny otec. T y pan svadobny otec povedz , aka je to obzvlastna vec 1 p. 161 The bonneting of the bride had its own special songs . 36 �SLOVAKIA 30 9 I lost m y headdress," m y green wreath, " the best m an" fo und it , a ha ndso me yo ung m an . H ey, bes t m an , best ma n , I beg of you , give me bac k that headb and , I like wearing it. If you like wearing that head ba nd so mu ch , surely you ' d ask the best man more ni cely . Stratila som partu, zeleny ve ni ec, nasiel mi ju dru zba, sva rny ml adenec. H ej , dru zba, hej, dru zba, pekn e t'a prosfm , d ajze mi tu partu , rad a ju nosfm 1 K eby si ty pa rtu rada nosila, ve ru by si druzbu krajsie prosila . p . 163 10 The bell s of r.upca' 0 have a ve ry ni ce rin g," 1 Annie , they ' ll kn ock off yo u r head ba nd . They will kn ock it off with nin e bells, so you won ' t go out with oth er yo un g men . So you won't go out , just love your husband , th e handso me J ohnn y, who is d evo ted to you . Tie lupcian ske zvo ny vel'mi pekne zvo ni a, u z tebe, Ani cka, tvoju pa rtu zro ma . Zronia ti ju , zronia deviatimi zvo ncf, abys nechodil a s cudzfmi mladencf. Abys nechodil a, mu za si l'ubila , Janfcka svarnyho, tebe oddan yho. p . 163 Wailing Over the Dead The practice of wailing over the dead form ed a n integral p a rt of the fun e ral ceremony , a nd according to the Muran Articles of the Protestant Church from 1585 , wailing had been widely practiced in Slovakia.42 The lam ents were performed by semi-professional wailers , usually by older women , who wailed a t the funeral for a fe e. Some times , the laments were perform ed by rela tives. The laments over the d ead were generally improvi sed on the spur of the moment , with the hired person attempting to express lyrically the dee p sorrow felt by the relatives and friends of the deceased. They also m e ntioned the good traits of the deceased, the progress of hi s or her illn ess (as in " Oh , My D ear Child "), and would dram atize the actual d emise of the deceased , portraying him as he took leave of hi s fa mily, relatives, and friends. The laments over the d ead are st ru ctured differentl y from other folklore genres . Since they h ad to be open for improvisa tions , they are �SLOVAKIA 31 free in form. They usuall y do not have regular stanzas or rhyme. Assonance predominates over rhym e and they are sung as melodic recitations. Laments can be characterized not only b y the lack of formal structure, but also by a certain degree of looseness and incoherency, possibly utilized to stress the depth of sorrow felt by the relatives and friends . This looseness is demonstra ted in the poem "George , George" in which the last two stanzas are only vaguely related to the theme of the first two stanzas. Oh , my dear child , beloved Angel," what shall I do without you , my dear souJ? My hea rt was bleeding while you were suffering, you looked at me, I couldn ' t help. Your fath er was walking stunned in the yard , walkin g aimlessly, not saying a word . You chattered to me your sweet words th e wh ole day, you dear innocent ch ild , a nd when you r father came home from th e fi elds, you smiled so that he would take you in his arms , and th ere was no end to your talking, and your father took d elight in you, hi s treasure. Ach, moj e drah uo diet'a, anjel premileny, cuo pocnem bez teba, moj a draha dusa, srdce mi zatislo, ked si sa trapilo, hl'adelo si na mna, nemohla som pomuoct'. Otec ti po dvore omrace ny chodiu , nikde miesta nemau, slov ka nepovedau. Stebotalo si mi slad uskymi recmi cely den, ty draha nevinnost ' premila , a ked otec z pol'a do domu sa vratiu, usmi evalo si sa, kym t'a k sebe nevzau, a n ebolo recom tvojim dlh o konec , a otec sa tesiu v tebe drahy poklad. p. 164 2 George, George, yo ur godfather ca me ," for yo u to plow hi s fi elds. You a re through with plowing since the Lord called you. Juro , Juro , km otor prise!, aby si mu orat' isol. A ty si uz dooral , ked' t'a panboh povolal. Ycs te rd ay you ate three sa usages," a nd a lot of bread. 46 Today you lie on th e bier, like a hog on a ca rt . Y ce ra si zjel tri jelita , aj chl eba z polk yky zita. Dnes uz lezis na marach ako bravec na karach. �32 SLOVAKIA M y dea r go lde n m oustache" would be fit fo r strin gs, my ve r y d ear ha ir , would be good fo r ropes. M oje m ile, zlate fuzy, boli ze by na mot u zy, moj e premile vlasy boli by na povrazy. Wh en he bega n to play hi s bagpipe: " tati -lat i, ta ti-l a ti ," he go t a farth ering" to bu y spices, he dropped it behind his shirt. K ed si pocal gajdovati : ta ti -lati , ta ti-l ati , ma! turak na koreni a, vsy pal ho do zahreni a. p . 165 NOTES ' Andrej M elichercfk , ed. , Slo vensky Folkl6r: Chrestomatia (Bra tislava: Slove nska Akademi a Vied, 1959) . ' J ozef r. . Holuby, Folklore studi es published ma inl y in Slovenske Pohl'ad y between 1883 a nd 1897; Jan Kolla r , N arodnie spievanky, I-II (Bra ti slava, 1953); Jii'i Polivka, Supis slo ven skych rozpravok I-V (Turciansky Svaty M artin , 1923 -1932). ' The fo lkloric ma teri al collected by Dobsinsky a nd oth ers is re ndered in th e dialec t o f the region fro m which it origina ted . The page reference to M elichercfk is give n in th e tex t a ft er th e Slovak ori ginal. ' " Puddle, Puddle ." In the Slova k, this love inca nta ti on has an irregul a r rhym e (aabbb-c-ddd-c-ee-fff- e-g-hh-g- iii -j- k-ll -m m) whi ch was sac rificed in th e tra nsla ti on fo r the sake of accuracy. • Although th e magical for mulae are pagan in origin , they contain refe rences to C hristi a nit y. ' Lit. · " H oly T rinity,/be a good helpe r to me/ to eve rythin g good,/ to the state of m a trimon y" (II. 26-29). 6 The colors refer to the body: red or pink cheeks were considered a sign of good health , a nd a white co m plex ion was much valued by both men and women, partl y as a sign of class di stin ction . O nly feuda l lords and wealth y merchants who di d not have to work in th e fi elds could afford to have white skin a ll year aro un d. " H oney " is a traditi onal refe rence to good te mper . 7 " I have brought you a piece of steel. . " With the exce ption of the wishes in the las t lin e, the Slova k poe m co nsis ts of rh ym in g co upl ets. All bu t 11 . 1 and 2 a re revised in order to con vey a prope r word order in English . Steel (iron) was co ns idered p ro tect ion aga ins t evil and fa iries in Europe (Maria Tymocz ko). ' H a ft is a ha nd le of a hoe, ax, scyt he, and oth er ag ricultu ral tools. H ere the number of hafts represen ts the far mer 's pros perity. 9 A typical orname n t a mong young marri ed village me n . Wh en give n by a you ng unm a r ried women, th e feather was co nside red a sign of affect ion. '° K re u ze r (o r kreutzer) was a small cop per coin in Aust ri a and Ge rmany, the 100th part of th e fl orin . It was so called because th e coin had th e fi gu re of a cross on it. A penny wou ld be probabl y the closest co n temporary eq ui valent to the kreuzer. " Wal nu ts and hazlenu ts were trad itionally eaten at C hristmas tim e after the ma in meal. �SLOVAKIA 33 " " I wi sh you in thi s/comin g New Yea r " : This is a very popular N ew Year 's wish . The unu su al wi sh , " that a side of your oven/ m ay fa ll out" (11 .3 -4) probably ha s the same conn otat ion as th e En gli sh '' break a leg!'' It also sugges ts a wi sh of prosperity to the farm er , i.e., th a t hi s oven m ay be fill ed to burstin g, or ove rh eated with con stant cooki ng a nd baking. " Fo rmall y, thi s poe m is arran ged in rh ymin g coupl ets but asson an ce plays a m o re impo rtant role . " This carol is loosely a rra nged in rh yming couplets. Again, the assonance a nd the rhym e take precedence ove r m eanin g, and thi s ex plains why such seemingly unrela ted them es as th e Three Kings, the Star of Bethlehem , J oseph and M a ry o n the one hand, and the rose, th e tulip on the ta ble, and the old man's huntin g expedition on th e other ha nd , fo und their place in thi s carol. The carol is a mi xture of religious and secular m otifs. " C hildren , dressed as the Three Magi, arrive a t a farmh ou se and sing. Yet they mu st no t sin g a bout the fa rm er ' s fa mil y, but the H oly Famil y of the Na tivity. 16 ' ' Sh rovetide, Pentecos t, and Easter ... '' This j okin g carnival song is ar ranged in rh ym in g coupl ets. 11 Fatback bacon (usual ly with no lean m eat) was a staple diet , often a snack, fo r village peo ple. It was ofte n eaten with baked potatoes a nd _onio ns, o r j ust plain bread . 18 Fa tback baco n u sed to be sm oked (cured ) in th e chimn ey. 19 The teac her , alo ng with the p riest a nd th e m ayo r , was amon g th e m ost prominent peo ple in th e vill age. 0 ' S loven sko: l', ud - II. cast', ed s. Boze na Filova et al. (B ra ti slava: O bzo r , 1975). " In the Slovak o ri ginal, thi s son g has a regula r rh yme pat tern: aa-b b-cc-dd . The first two lines ad d ress th e m a in speaker . " J oh n" is appa ren tl y a youn g fath er whose wife d ied in childbirth . T he fat her says that he will kee p his so n , but the boy ' s grandmoth er will have to bring him up . Them a ticall y, the so ng expresses conce rn fo r th e boy ' s upbringin g. In the seco nd stan za , the speake r ind icates that he m ay have to leave hi s nat ive vill age, probably in search of wo rk . T hi s was a co mm on prac ti ce among im poverished village rs. " Lit .: " I 'll have. " In 11. 3 an d 4 coll oqui al form s of the ve rb " to have " and the nou n " m other" have bee n used. The forms a re iden tical: mati , wh ich fac il itates th e rh ym e and keeps th e sam e num ber of syll a bles in each line. There a re eight sylla bles in each line, and th e standa rd m o nosy lla bic word m at' wo uld have redu ced th e syll a bles dow n to seven in 11 .3 a nd 4 . " The origin al son g uses assonance ra ther th an rh ym e. A fat her-to-be is th e speaker in this so ng . H alf-jokin g , he stresses the importance of a male offspring. H e p rom ises to pa m pe r hi s wife if she bears him a son . " The original so ng uses asson a nce . T he speaker , proba bly an un wed m o th er, po nders her fat e a nd talks a bout social conve nti on s. " W ith th e excepti o n of stanza 3, the so ng has a near regul a r rh ym e: aa-bb-cc-dd-e -fg- f-hh- ii -jj- kk. T he speaker in th is so.ig is the ba by 's moth er who regrets th e loss of her freedo m as a mother and/or a wife . It is not qu ite clear from the context wheth er she is m a rri ed o r no t. I n either case, it was not proper of her to joi n the ca refree d a nce of unm arri ed m en a nd wome n . �34 6 SLOVAKIA Slovensko: E,ud, p. 1057. " Melichercfk , p. 26 " A featherbed is a strong cloth con tainer thi ckly filled with goose feathers and down and used as a bed cover in lieu of blankets. Featherbeds were a part of the bride's dowry, which also included pillows, sheets, towels, cloths, etc . The dowry was collected throughout the years practically after the day the girl was born . Goose down and stripped feathers were collected ever y year from the fami ly's fl ock of geese and stashed in a special bag for each d aughter in the family. The wealthier the bride , the higher the pile of featherbeds and pillows atop her bed . " A rosemary wreath was a decoration used on such occasions as weddings and funerals . H ere it is a symbol of chastity. 0 ' A fl atcake (osuch ) is a simple, flat cake, usually round. It is baked from bread dough , which is sometimes mixed with a different type of fl our or else potatoes. " Lit .: "They paid a hard thaler for your wedding ," obviously meaning the dowry. Thaler (also taler) was a large silver coin u sed in various German states and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was worth 30 silver groschen, worth about 3s. sterling . The word "dollar" is derived from " th aler." " R efe rring to the priest's vestments durin g the wedding ce remony, the stole is a long, decorated strip of cloth worn like a scarf by officiating clergymen of various chu rches. 33 In the Slovak original, each line consists of eight syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aaaa-bbb-cccc. " The meaning is not quite clear here. It probably indicates the bride's submission to the groom . 35 In this poem, each line consists of eight syllables . The rh yme pattern is: aaaa-bb-ccbbb-dddd. 36 Bonneting of the bride is the culmination of the wedding ceremony. The bride becomes a married woman when her wreath is replaced by a bonnet. 31 Headband or headdress is a wreath decorated with colorful ribbons, worn by un married women and brides. Married women wore bonnets or scarves. 38 Each line in this song consists of eleven syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-cc. 39 It was customary that the best man led the bride to the wedding and took off her wreath or headband. H e led the bride down the aisle, whereas the bridesmaid led the bridegroom down the aisle. He was referred to as the " leading " best man and wore a sword to distinguish himself from other best men who wore sticks decorated with scarves . '° Cupca is a town in Central Slovakia, where many local customs and traditions have been preserved. 41 Each line in this song consists of twelve syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-c-d. " Melichercfk, p . 142. 43 This lame ntation has a sporadic rhyme pattern: a-b-c-d-ee-f-g-ee- h-i. The lines consist of 12 to 13 syllables. 44 The poem has the following rhym e pattern: aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff-gg-hh . The lines consist of seven to eight syllables. 45 Pork sausage in natural casing. It is made of rice or grits combined with ground meat , liver, blood and spices. The sausages were usu all y made in winter or early ' �SLOVAKIA 35 spring when the fatt ened pigs were slaughtered . " '' ... a lot of bread.'' This is a free translation due to the discrepancy in the printed word indicating the amount of rye from which the bread was made . The original version of this song, titled, " W a iling over a D ead Husband" (Sbomik slovenskych n arodnych piesnf, povestf, prfslovf, porekadiel, hadok, hier, obycajov a povier [A Collection of Slovak Folk Songs, Riddles, Games, Customs, and Superstitions], II , (Turciansky Sva ty Martin : Matica slovenska, 18741) spells the wordpolkyly, which would mean half a kilo. On the other hand , Melichercik's edition lists the word polkyky (fem. gen. sg. ), which was an old , popula r measure in Slovak villages . The word k yky is of Ukrainian ori gin (a Ukrainian word for a scarf worn by village women, "babushka" type). ·since scales were a luxury item in the past, the amount of rye from which a loaf of bread was m ade was m easured in the scarf. Pol means half, i.e., the bread was made from half the amount measured by the scarf. 47 The poem , somewhat joking in character, shows the improvising character of funeral recitations. The stanzas wander from one subject to another, touching some memories of the dead man that may o r may not be relevant for the occasion of the funeral, but they are important in the eyes of the wailer. " " Farthing" is a free translation, indicating that the coin was small. In the Slovak original , turak was a small coin , worth one and a half groschen . It was used in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation , " Slovak Folklore : An Anthology, " at the Un iversity of M assachuset ts in Amh erst , 1982. I th ank especially Professors Sarah N. Lawall a nd Zdenek Salzmann . Presented in part in P anel 128 , " Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS co nvention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980 , and in Panel 65 , "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 2 1 September 1981. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 12 SLOVAKIA Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Eva Susan Kucekova The following categories of Slovak folklore represent some of its oldest forms. Lyrical genres, such as m agical formul ae or incantations , ceremonial calendar poetry , and ceremonial fa mily poetry, a re of ritual and ceremonial character. The sample selections introduced in this pa per were taken from a comprehensive modern collection of Slovak folkl ore entitled Slovensky folk16r: Chrestomatia, and edited b y the foremost authority on the subj ect, the late Andrej Melichercfk . 1 Melichercfk based hi s anthology on Pavo! Dobsinsky' s publications , as well a s on other collections of Slovak folklore, for example those edited by Jozef I:. . Holuby, Jan Kollar and Jirf Polfvka . 2 The folklori c material collected by Dobsinsky and others is rendered in the dialect of the region from which it originated. MAGICAL FORMULAE Magical fo rmulae a re incantations associated with ritu als. These non-narrative forms are very ancient and are closely related to ce rem onial calendar poetry. M agical formulae were u sually connec ted with special rites and performed on spec ific occasions and/or holidays . They were often perform ed by semiprofessional m en and women (" wi se m en " and " wise wom en ") who were well versed in m agic. There are two types of incantations: tho se which were supposed to bring a desired effect( " sympathethic magic" ), and those which were supposed to preve nt undes irable and ha rmful effects (" preve ntive magic" ). Incantations we re u sed to brin g a hu sba nd , m ake one fall in love, prevent and cure illness , increase the yield of the fi elds, and also bring illness or bad lu ck upon a n enem y . Some incan tations were chanted primarily by girls or young women. " Puddle, Puddle," " Will ow, Willow," and " And You , Elm ," are typical examples of love incantations. Once m arried , a bride would chant an incanta tion " I Sow the Seed " and wish for good lu ck and prosperity . SLOVAKIA 13 Magical formulae are rhythmical and based on syntactic parallelisms ; they rely extensively on various euphonic and semantic devices. Due to the fact that magical formulae are so closely associated with magic, their ritual form remains unchanged throughout the centuries . Magical incantations contain many pre-Christian elements, upon which a new layer of C hri st ian symbols has been added . Love Incantations This love incantation shows water as a powerful source of magic. T aken from fords at midnight , water was believed to attract lovers and help a girl get married . While bathing, girls chanted the following incantation: Puddle , puddle,' get me a husband! Above the bridge, below the bridge, let him go nowhere but to our house! Above th e footbrid ge, below th e footbr idge, don 't let him rest but in ou r house 1 I 'm not pouring away, I 'm pouring in: bachelors , wid owers, merchants, fiddlers, even those small boys I call after me, after my body , aft er my clothes , after my heels, a ft er this hou se of ours. Not by my power do I say this, but I say it by the divine power, from J es us Christ till m idn ight. And help me in this God th e Father, the Son , a nd the H oly Ghost!' H oly Trini ty , help me reach hap piness and get married. 1 Kaluza, kalu za, daj muza 1 Vyse mosta, ni ze mosta, aby nemal nikde miesta len u nas! Vyse lavky, ni ze lavky, aby nem al nikd e stavky len u nas 1 Neod lievam, ale prilievam: mladencov, vdovcov, kupcov , aj hudcov , aj tych malickych chlapcov za sebou volam, za mym telom , za m ymi satami, za mym i patami, za tym nasfm domom . J a to nehovorfm ze svej moc1, lez to hovorfm z bozskej m oci, od pana J ezisa Kri sta do pol noci. A k tomu mi dopomahaj Boh otec , Boh sy n , Boh du ch svaty! Svata troj ica , bud mi dobra pomocnica k vse tkemu dobremu, k stavu manzelskemu! p. 54 14 SLOVAKIA On the eve of St. George ' s Day (April 24) , young girls made wreaths from different kinds of flowers and boughs. Later, wreaths were tossed into the air. It was believed that the girl whose wreath was caught on a tree branch would get married within a year. To attract a beloved, girls would make wreaths from nine different boughs and chant the following incantation: 2 A ty vaz - ty ho vaz, a ty hrab - se m ho hrab , a ty kJen - se m ho zen , a ty svfb - se m ho sib, a ty sip - ty ho stfp , a ty tfn - sem ho hrn , a ty dub - ty ho l'ub , a ty bez - za nim bez, a ty lieska - za nim vri es kaj ! And you, elm - you bind him , and you, hornbeam - rake him here, and you , maple - drive him here, and you , red dogwood - whip him here, and you , wild rose - you prick him, and you , thorn bush - push him here , and you , oak - you love him , and you , lilac - run aft er him , a nd you , hazel, - yell aft er him p . 57 Bridal Incantation A woman married into her husband's family . As soon as the bride entered her husband's house after the wedding, she would scatter flaxs6ed, millet and poppy seed in the yard for good luck , while chanting the following: 2 I sow the seed , to succeed with all my breed ; I sow millet, for others to beg m y fav or; I sow poppy seed , for this to last foreve r. Sejem se m eno, ab y sa mi viedl o vsetko ple meno; sej em proso, aby sa mi vse tci prosili ; sej em m ak, aby bolo vzdycky tak . p . 61 Incantation by the Willow To make sure that they would grow beautiful long hair, young girls would comb their hair under a willow on Good Friday at dawn. While combing their hair, they wished for a good husband . Willow, willow , ge t m e a m an , red as a rose , white as a fl ower, a nd good as honey. ' Vfba, vfb a , d aj mi mu za, ce rve neho a ko ru za a bieleho a ko kve t, a dobreho ako med . p . 62 SLOVAKIA 15 CEREMONIAL CALENDAR POETRY Ceremonial calendar poetry celebrates different festivals of the year. The original calendar festivals coincided with the solstices and equinoxes. Calendar poetry contains many pre-Christian mythological elements which have been intertwined with and sometimes replaced by Christia n elements. In the calendar poetry of Slovakia a nd other Slavic countries which have been under Catholic influence, Christian features pred ominate. The traditions connected with calendar poetry are still being practi ced in some Slovak villages , particularly around holidays such as Christmas, New Year ' s and Easter. The classification of calendar poetry corresponds to the agricultural cycles, and all four seasons of the year are represented. In the poetry , three seasons are associated with the cultivation of the soil, while the last one is concerned with the harvest itself. The poetry is full of incantations and magical formulae meant to secure a good harvest and placate nature , which was often thought of as hostile. In the pre-Christian era the peasants turned for h elp to their gods and during Christian times to the numerous Christian saints. They would ask for good and prosperous years , abundant harvest, a nd good health and happy family life. Along with incantations and magical formulae, calendar poetry also contains chants , recitations , songs, riddles, and prognostications . In this poetry each season has its own characteristic customs . The winte r solstice cycle , beginning in November , is best represented. Its poetry is of a prophetic nature, and touche s on both family life and the prosperity of the homestead. The most important days of the season were the last 12 before Christmas since they represented the 12 months of the year; these days were used to judge what the weather would be like for the w hole next year. Children went caroling from hou se to house, a nd it was important that they b e healthy for if they were, they would bring good health to the fa rm ers ' fa milies as well . Moreover, the living room h a d to be cleaned a nd whitewashed in eve ry house to preve nt any kind of illn ess from ente rin g. Numerous C hri stmas customs were practiced o n C hristmas Eve . Basicall y , they were meant to express the farmer ' s thanksgiv in g for good crops in the preceding season, a nd to h elp assure a nd predict a good harvest in the forthcoming year. The latter kind were u su ally connected wit h magic . There we re rules of condu ct which were st ri ctl y followed 16 SLOVAKIA on Christmas Eve. For example, one could not light the house unless the Christmas Eve dinner - the biggest meal of the year - was already set on the table. The numerous courses of the meal had to follow acertain sequence . Christmas carolers were offered food and drink , and the boys were also given money. Many of the Christmas carols have a joking tone - besides bringing best wishes they expressly ask for a reward as in ''I Am a Very Small Boy,'' or ''I'm Just a Little Boy .' ' Sometimes they would ask expressly for money as in the carol "We Have Brought You Some News . '' New Year's wishes were also humorous in tone and expressed the good mood which prevailed in every household on that day . It was believed that if one felt happy on New Year's Day , he or she would be happy during the coming year. One song jokingly suggests that the farmer's stove burn out from too much cooking and baking: "I wish you in this/ coming New Year / that a side of your oven / may fall out." Carols for the eve of the Three Magi combine religious and secular motifs. Thus, in " Lord , Grant Us a Merry Evening," best wishes are expressed for everyone in the house, including the servants. Immediately after come Epiphany motifs, dealing with the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Three Kings. The Epiphany carol is concluded with a rather anticlimatic ending: the old man (probably the patriarch of the house) is not at home and has gone hunting. Very often , the boys were masked as the Three Kings, Joseph and Mary, and would perform a co medy based on the ancient legend . The Christmas ceremonial cycle ended with the Three Kings motif. Thematically, then , Slovak ceremonial calendar poetry focuses upon the four cycles of the year and the agricultural tradition con nected with them . It also contains the themes of love and fertility, and elements of ancestor worship, which are not treated here. From the formal point of view, calendar poetry is characte rized by symm etric bipartite verse and the frequent use of asso nance . Pre-Christmas Period The winter cycle of calendar poetry begins with St. Thomas's Day (December 21 ) , the shortest day of the year. Small boys walked around the village with a piece of steel, wishing farmers good lu ck in the next farming year : SLOVAKIA 17 I have b rought you a piece of steel' so th a t you would not fall out of bed. Have as m a n y calves on yo ur farm as there a re spoons on your shelf. Have as man y oxen in your stable as there are logs in your shed. Let your girls have as many suito rs as there are dishes on your rack. May yo ur lads own as many hafts' as there are hearths in you r house. May as man y youn g men wear feathers in their caps• as you have number of dau ght ers. Have as m a ny more ears of corn in you r backyard as there are pictures on your walls. I ask onl y as many kreuzers' 0 as there are mirrors here. I wish you a good morning 1 Doniesou som vam ocele, aby ste nevypadli z postele. Kol'ko mate za ramom lyz iciek, tol'ko mate vo dvore teliciek; kol'ko mate na sope kolov, tol'ko mate V mastali volov; kol'ko mate za ramom tanierov , tol'ko maju vase dievky frajero v ; kol'ko mate vo vasom dome ohnisk, tol'ko maju vas i parobci porisk ; kol'ko zije vasich deer, tol'ko maju mladenci pier ; kol'ko ma te na stene obrazov , tol'ko raz vo vasom humne kl asov; kol'ko mate tuna zrkadov, !en tol'ko mi dajte krajciarov. Dobro rano vinsujem 1 p. 70 Christmastime Many Christmas carols and son gs are connected with the Christm as season. Both children and ad ults went from house to hou se caroling M erry C hristmas. For their service they expected som e reward. Many of these carols are joking in character, as is evident from the following carols: 18 SLOVAKIA I a m a very sm all boy. M y fa th er has se nt me to you , to ge t so methin g from you , but m ake it qui ck, for m y stomach rumbl es. J a som chl apec ve l'mi m aly, mn a moj otec k vam poslali, zeby ste mi dafo dali , ale chytro , lebo m i uz v bru chu svitlo. p. 70 2 I ' m ju st a little boy. I'm askin g fo r my sm all bag : a pi ece of cake a nd piece o f pie. T omorrow , I ' ll b rin g yo u a bird . If th at see m s too little, I will brin g you so me pork ; and if tha t 's not enough , I 'll b ri ng yo u a cat's ta il. J a so m maly, nevelicky, pyta m se be do ka psicky: kus kola.ca, kus kabaca, d onesiem vam zajtra vtaca. Ak sa vam to ma.lo vid f, d onesiem vam porfov iny; ak je vam to ni e dost', d onesiem va m z m acky chvost. p . 71 3 W e have b rought you so me news, we have come to you r feas t . The Saviour desce nded from H eave n , and we ca me to be your gues ts. A jug of wine is on th e table , and we are under your farm yard window, but you don ' t offer us a n y win e, nor do you have an y brand y th a t we ca n trea t ourselves to, and sing you songs eve n ni ce r . W e don ' t want your past ry, we' ll crac k a few nu ts.'' H ey, we a re not little ki ds , wh o get j ust a kreu ze r apiece. If yo u don ' t give us twe n ty we wo n ' t co me on New Yea r's Day. D oni esli sm e vam novinu , prisli sm e k vam na hos tinu , Sos tupi l Spasti el' z vysosti . M y sm e prisli k va m za hos ti . Krcah s vfn om j e na stole, m y sme pod oblokom v dvore , a nam vina nedavate, palenky ti ez ni c nem a te, co b y sme sa castu va]i a vam krajsie zaspievali . O pekance va m nechcem e, oriesky si poklcieme. A my sme ni e chl a pci m ali, ze by Ste nam krajc iar d ali. Ak na m dvads ia tnik ned a te, na Novy rok nas nema te. p. 71 New Year's Wish es Early in th e m ornin g on New Year's D ay, m en a nd youn g boys went from house to hou se, w ishin g lo ts of lu ck, p rosperity , a nd good h ealth to everyon e in the house . M ost of th eir w ishes foc u sed upon su ccessfu l fa rmin g a nd m a n age m e n t. I wish you in th is coming New Year, V in sujem vam V tento nas tavajuc i nov y rok , SLOVAKIA that a side of your ove n may fall out , " that your wife may get pregna nt this year! Give us foo d and drink and stay well! 19 aby va m vypadol z pece bok, aby vam bola vasa gazdin a na te nto rok samod ruh a 1 Vypit', zajest' na m d ajte, a dob re sa tu m aj te 1 p . 78 2 l wish you plenty of hemp , bu shels of beets, a whole bin of blossoms, and a ba rnful of children' Vinsujem va m moc konopi, mecu repy , zacinok puckov, plevienec deti 1 p. 79 3 This l wish to all'' with vigo r and joy : to peasants, bags for their shoulders ; to shep herd s, porridge; to cows, good pasture; to pigs, lots of mast to make them fat. Vinsujem smele vse tk ym vese le : sedliakom vrece, pine na piece; pastiero m kase a kravam pase; svi niam zaludu, ze tu cne budu . p . 79 The Three Magi On the eve of Epiphany, children went from house to house, singing carols in which the Epiphany motifs were interspersed with such commonplace motifs as farming and the farmer's eve ryday activity. Lord, grant us a merry eve ning ," to the farmer, first of all! And then to th e farmwife, and then to all the se rvants! The Three M agi a rri ve from the East, wo rshippin g this fam il y. Do not worship this fa mil y but worship only the beloved Lo rd! " And you , bright star, go before us, Lord , Jesus C hri st, grant us a good ni ght! And you , Joseph , I say to you , do not leave the Virgin M ary 1 D on ' t you kn ow who is going to be bo rn ? The Virgin M ary is to bear a so n . There is a red rose on your table , SLOVAKIA 20 let you r daught er marry a handsome man 1 There is a tu li p atop your table , yo ur son is ge ttin g read y to see his love. There is a handso me fe llow in this house , perhaps he ' d give us six kreu ze rs for a wrea th . God wi ll give him a lovely wife , whether it ' s Anna o r Susanna. The old man is not at home , he went out hunting . D aj nam Boh vecer diz vesely, najprv panu hospodarov i I A poto m aj tej hospod ince, po hospodin ce vseckej cel'adce 1 ldu tri a krali od vychod u , kl a naju sa tomut o rod u. Nekla naj te sa tom uto rod u , len sa kl a najte mil emu Bohu! A ty, j as na hviezd a, predchadzaj nas, pane J ezu Kri ste, dob ru noc nam d as 1 A ty , J ozefe, j a mlu vim tebe, neopust'aj pann y M a rie ! Nevid, co sa m a na sve t narod it'? M a panna Maria sy na porodit'. Na vaso m stole ce rve na ru za, daj vasej panenk e sva rn eho mu za 1 Na vaso m stole tulipan stoji, vas m lad enecek se k fraj erce strojL J est V tomto dome sva rn y ml adenec, azda nam on d a ses tak na veniec. D a jemu Panboh svarnu zenu , Annu alebo Zu za nu . Sta reho pana doma neni, isli oni po pol'uvanL pp. 79-80 Carnival Season Th e post-Chri stmas period does not present as m a n y cerem onies as th e C hri stmas season. The tim e of fasiangy (carni val season) was ch aracte rized b y a m asked procession which was to secure a good harvest. Th e carniv al processio n h ad mu sical accompaniment , u su all y a n accordi on . Most en gaged couples were also married during carnival season , sin ce there w as rela tively plenty of time for elaborate weddi n g celebration s, w hi ch las ted for several d ays. At the e nd of th e carnival seaso n , young m e n in ce re monial m asks we nt from ho u se to ho u se, collecting eggs, bacon , a nd m o ney. They SLOVAKIA 21 would sing humorous songs, such as " Shrovetide, P entecost. . m which they would ask for a piece of bacon . From these donations they would arrange a feast for the youth of the entire village. The main course was bacon and eggs, while the money paid for the music . Shrovetide, P entecos t, and Easter pass by, 16 he who has no fur coat , feels cold . I have none, I have none, I ' m shakin g all over, give me some bacon " to fill my belly . H ere I got nothin g, over there something, maybe. They killed a m osqu ito , a nd got some bacon . There up the chimney," a tom cat sits on the bacon , go chase him away and cut me a piece; if you cut me too sm all a piece, you will cut your fin gers. Give to the teacher " a piece as big as a d oo r , to me , a piece as big as a goose. Fasangy, Turice, V el'ka noc byva, kto nem a kozucha, zima mu byva. Ja nemam, ja nem a m , !en sa tak tras im , daj te mi slaninky, nech sa popasim . Tuto mi nedali , tuto mi d aj u, K om a ra zabili , slaninku m aj u . A ta m hore na komin e, sedi kocur na sla nin e, h ybajte ho zohn at' a mne ku s odrezat', az mi mal y odrezete, svoje prsty poreze te. R echtorovi j ako dve re a mn e ku s - ako hus 1 pp . 82-83 Easter The spring custom s include taking out Morena (the goddess of dea th in the p agan Slavic traditio n) , ta king out the old m a n (dedko - possibly a m ale equivalent of Moren a), and welcoming in the n ew summe r . However , the sprin g ce remonial cycle is cente red prim a rily around Easter , the most important religious holiday of the season . Easte r customs still co nta in m a ny pre -Christia n ele m e nts, which have been prese rved up to the 20th century . For example, on Good Friday a t d awn, girls would chant incantations while ba thing, wishing for a hu sba nd (see " Pud- 22 SLOVAKIA dle, Puddle" in the preceding section). On Easter Monday, groups of ten to fifteen men and boys went from house to house, wishing the womenfolk a Happy Easter. It was a part of the tradition that they flogged women's legs with a birch switch and doused their heads with fresh water. This proced ure had a symbolic purifying function . If a young man was courting a particular young woman, he was expected to visit her house , thus showing his interest and affection. Then, the girl would reward her favorite suitor with the most lavishly decorated Easter egg. Besides the eggs, everybody would also receive drinks, food, sweets, and little boys would get money. Easter, Easter, will it come soon? which lad will pour water over me] Pour the water , pour the water, on my hair and head , but do spare my nice new skirt. Vel'ka noc , Vel'ka noc, kedyze uz bude? ktoryze ma suhaj oblievati prfde? Oblievaj, oblievaj, vlasy aj hlavicku , ale mi zasanuj tu novu suknicku. p . 93 Pentecost marked the beginning of the summer cycle. Many traditions were centered around the summer solstice and St. John's Eve CTune 24). On that day, love incantations were chanted and the future was foretold . Also, magic was practiced against witches whose power was believed very strong on that day. The later part of the summer season is poorer in folklore because of increased work in the fields . Harvest The autum cycle begins with the harvest season . During the harvest season, songs were sung in the fields, or on the way home after a day 's work. Thematically , they are associated with the work itself, love between two young people ("We Reaped Here") , or the feast following the work ("Master, Make Ready for a Feast "). Some of these songs are joking in tone . The songs sung around the harvest wreath reflect old Slovak customs . After the harvest, a procession of harvesters would walk from the fields to the house of the farmer who had hired them . Led by a young man who was carrying a colorful flag and a young woman wearing a wreath made of wild flowers , they would sing songs and some- SLOVAKIA 23 times play music ("For Which Girl Shall We Weave a Wreath Today?"). In these songs, the peasants expressed their joy and happiness over a rich harvest. They also expressed their hope for the same bounty for the years to come. Harves t time offers a whole series of songs connected with this important agricultural season. They may refer to the work itself, or love between a young girl and a young man from the same village, or else the rest during the break or at the end of the day . W e reaped here , we reaped the re , in the valley, in th e valley, and the birdie, mottled birdie keeps singing, kee ps singin g. Kde sm e zali , tu sme fali , na doline , na doline , a ten vtacik, jarabacik pres pevuje , prespevuje. As the birdie , mottled birdie goes around th e tree , a rou nd the tree , so does m y d ea r, m y beloved go around me, around me . J ak ten vtacik, jarabacik okolo pna , okolo pna , tak moj mil y, najmilejsf okolo mna , okolo mn a. We reaped here , we reaped th ere, behind a path , behind a path , whoever will be our master, our clerk, our clerk? Kde sme zali , tu sme fali, za chonnfkom , za chonnfkom , ktoze bude nas fm panom , ura nnfkom , ura nnfkom ? p . 99 2 Master, make read y for a feas t, for a feast , we ' ve don e all the work for you . Master , prepa re the repast , th e repas t , a twelve- pound roas t. Add to it pints of wine , pints of wine, and a roasted capon. H otuj , pa ne , oldomas, oldomas , zrob ili sme , kd e co mas. H otuj , pa ne , veceru , vece ru, d vanas t' funtov pecenu . Este k tom u pint vfna, pint vfna, peceneho kapuna . p. 100 Around the h arvest wreath might be sung the foll owing song: 3 For which girl shall we weave a wreath today? For th e one chose n by the handsom es t young ma n . Wh o shall we let ca rry th e fl ag tod ay ? The one who hands hi s ri ght ha nd to her . T hat Ond1·is Slavik a nd Anna Bl ahej , SLOVAKIA 24 they would make a nice couple would Lord grant it. Masters, our masters , open the gates, we bring you a gift - a nice pair of reapers. Harvesters back from the fields , cover the tables, the mapl e tables with linen tabl e-cloths. Ktorejze dnes, ktorej uvijeme veniec~ Tej, ktoru vyberie najkrajsi mladenec . Komuze dnes , komu dame niest' zastavu? Tomu , co jej poda svoju rucku pravu. Ten Ondris Slavike, ta Anna Blaheje, to by bou pekny par, keby im Panboh dau! Pani nasi, pani, otvarajte brany, nesieme vam darik, zencov pekny parik. Idu zenci z roli, prestierajte stoly, stoly javorove, obrusy kmentove. p. 100 CEREMONIAL FAMILY FOLKLORE Ceremonial family folklore focuses primarily on the most important events in an individual's life: birth, marriage and death . While only songs are discussed here (they are the most common form), the Slovak ceremonial family tradition is expressed in poems, proverbs, sayings, riddles, and short dramatic performances as well. Christening Songs In the distant past , the birth of a child was accompanied by rituals and many magic practices . Such practices, it was believed, would protect the mother and her child, and would also secure health and happiness for the child as he or she matured. These magic practices gradually developed into joyful, social celebrations to welcome the new member of the family . 10 Thematically, the christening songs are directly connected with the child's birth and prospects. They frequently mention the responsibilities and problems connected with his or her upbringing, and wish the child a happy life, prosperity, and even a good spouse. Some songs stress the importance attached to having male offspring: '' And if you my wife,/would have a boy ... " If the child is a girl, the song may wish her beauty, or possibly stress the importance of chastity or industrious- 25 SLOVAKIA ness: " Freedom and chastity prevail everywhere, / whichever girl has them , let her guard them .'' Other songs may express the abruptly felt loss of freedom experienced by the young parents , especially the new mother: '' ... m y freedom is crying in the cradle.'' M any songs are j okin g in tone and form the less serious part of the christening ceremony in Slovak villages . H ere, for example, the new parents tease each other a bout their responsibility for rocking the baby: '' Rock him , m y dear . .. I'm his mother.'' And here again, the m other m ockin gly compares her situation with that of the carefree life of unm arried m en and women: " I used to have a good time , ... m y maiden name/ is blotted out," or " As the maiden s d ance . . . while I , poor thing , / rock a baby ." Slovak christening songs usually have the following rhyme pattern : aa-bb-cc-dd. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. Man y songs use assonance and employ colloquial express10ns . J ano , J ano, mily Jano! Donesu ti chl apca rano. K ed donesu , budem mati , vychova ho moja mati. A ked puojdem dolinami , vychovam ho malina mi , a ked puojdem sfrym svetom vychovam ho bielym kvetom . J ohn, John dear J ohn" They will bring you a boy tomorrow. Wh en they bring him, I'll keep him ," my mother wi ll raise him . And when I go down the valleys, I will raise him on raspberri es, and when I go in the wide world , I will raise him on white flo wers. p. 143 2 If you , m y wife," would have a boy, I would hire a wet nurse , a chef, a cook, a caretaker , and a house keeper. K eby si ty, zena moja , chlapca mal a, drzau by ti dojku , kuchara , kucharku, i safa ra i safarku. p. 144 3 Freedom and chastity prevail everyw here," whichever girl has th em, let her guard them . I would have protected mine, but it is too late. my freedom is crying in th e cradle. Sloboda, poctivost', ta vsade panuj e, kt ore j u di evca ma, nech si ju va ruje. I ja bych si moju , uz je ponecase, uz moja slobod a V belcove m i place. p . 144 26 SLOVAKIA 4 As the maidens dance," they whirl around in circles, while I, poor thing, rock a baby. J a k tie panny tancuju, do kola sa zvrcuju, a ja neboz ia tko kolfsem diet'at ko. Rock him, my d ea r husband , he is such a lovely boy. Rock him yourself, you are his mother . Kolfbaj ho moj mily, vsak je synak spanily. Kolfbaj si sama, vsak si mu ty mama. I would be a fool to rock him by myself, You surely are his father just as I 'm his mother. Bola by ja blazon kolfba ti sama, vsak si mu ty otec jako i ja mama . I used to have a good time when luck served me, sitting by the window, with a handsome young man . Byvalo mi, byvalo, ked' mi stestia sluzilo, sedajfcej v okne, s mladeneckom pekne. I used to sit with him , now I am married to him , m y maiden name was blotted out. Sedala som, sedala, u z sem ho i dostala, me panenske jmeno bolo vymazano. pp. 144-45 Wedding Songs Of the three areas of ceremonial family folklore discussed here, the wedding ceremony offers the greatest variety of folklore material. This is because in Slovakia the wedding ceremonies of most villages and towns contained traditions that were peculiar to that particular locale . There were often specific differences between the ceremonies of neighboring villages even within a relatively small geographic area. 16 The entire ritual consisted of three parts: the period before the wedding during which a wedding contract was m ade between the future inlaws; the wedding ceremo ny itself, and the feast after the young couple had retired. The wedding actually began when the wedding guests gathered and the bride and groom left for the ceremony in the church. The first five selections under the headin g "Wedding Songs" are examples of what the wedding party might sing along the way. After the ceremony the bride and groom as well as the guests would arrive at the bride groom's h ouse , where the festivities would take place . The feast was and still is the culmination of the whole wedding. The structure of the entire wedding ceremon y was originally quite SLOVAKIA 27 rigid . There were dan ces, ceremonial speeches, dramatic speeches and acts, as well as songs. All proceeded according to a traditionally fixed pattern . 1 7 Today, the songs themselves are no longer a part of the ceremony, and while many of the other forms remain (such as dances and speeches) the rigid , traditional patterns are no longer followed . Thematically, the bride is the focus of the often-lyrical and teasing ceremonial songs. Her beauty , upbringing, future as a married woman, and her character are all described in these songs: "Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter''; ''Mother, mother, you may be proud . . . '' The most frequently mentioned virtues on the bride's part are modesty , diligence , obedience, and chastity. Some of the songs, especially those following the taking of the wreath and placing of the bonnet on the bride's head (when she symbolically becomes a woman), are permeated with laments: ''I lost my headdress . .. I like wearing it.'' Other songs picture the bride taking leave of her parents, relatives and friends: thanking her parents for her upbringing, expressing her sorrow about leaving them, and sometimes also expressing apprehension about her future with the bridgegroom' s family. Wedding songs and speeches employ rhymed verse, often of the following pattern : aa-bb-cc. The number of syllables is usually the same in each line. As in christening songs, wedding songs also employ assonance. Mother, mother, you have a lovely daughter , we will take her from you even if you hide her. Should you lock her behind four locks, we sure will get her with fin e words. Mamicka , mamicka, peknu dceru mate, m y vam ju vezmeme , co ju aj schovate . Co by ste ju zamkli aj styrma zamka mi , my ju dostaneme peknymi slova mi. p. 151 2 G et married , ge t ma rried , m y love, well will you learn what tyranny is. Get m arried , get m arri ed, my love , a birch switch awaits you behind th e door. V ydaj sa !en, vydaj , frajeruock a rn oj a, sak sa ve ru dozvies , aka je to zvola. V ydaj sa !en , vyd aj, fraj eruocka moj a, caka t'a za dve rmi ta b rezova hola. p. 151 28 SLOVAKIA 3 I kept it a sec ret, a secret, but I won't anymore, mother, ge t the feath erbeds" read y, I ' m ge ttin g m ar ried. Thank you , mother , thank you, d ea r , for taking care of me wh ile I was a child . T aj ila som , taji la, uz tajit' nebudem , chystaj , m am ka, perin y, vydavat' sa budem . Dakujem va m , mamicka, dakujem va m sta ra, co ste vy mna chovali , kym so m bola mala . p . 152 4 M ot he r, mot her, you may be proud th at yo ur girl 's gettin g married still chaste. Chaste , she's getting ma rri ed to a you ng man , they both will be wearing a rosemary wreat h .'" Mamicka, mamicka , pekn a vasa chvala , ze sa vafa d ieuka poct iva vydava. Poctiva vyd ava, be ri e ju ml ade nec, budu mat' obidva z rozmarinu ve ni ec. p . 152 5 Whateve r yo u give me, oh, eternal Lord , just don ' t give me a n old hag with children . An old hag rumbl es like a ba rrel of bee r a nd a young girl ' s jumpy like a squirrel. I ' II give the old hag a fl a tca ke 10 to chew on, and th e yo ung gi rl a pair of boots to jump in . Co mi das, to das, pa ne boze vecny, !en ze mi nedavaj staru babu s det'mi. A ta stara dud le, ako z piva bocka a ta mlada skace a ko veve ru ocka. D am starej Osucha , aby ho fova la , ml ad ej na cizmicky, aby si skaka la. p. 152 On the way back from the church , the weddin g party sings songs like the following: 6 Now you a re ours, Ann ie, now you are ours, we a re tak in g you home from the wedd ing. They paid a lotll for your wedd ing, we have tied your hands with a stole . 1 ' Uz si ty, An icka, uz si teraz nasa, uz t'a my ved ieme domov ze sobasa . Od tvojho sobasa tvrdy toliar dali, uz sme tvoje rucky stolou poviazali. p . 153 SLOVAKIA 29 7 Jaj , co si plakala, ked t'a sobasili? Var si si m ys lela l'ubit' sa s inymi ? A ja som sa bala tej tvojej materi, ked' ona ma jazyk zo samej oceli . Oh , why did you cry at your wedding? Maybe you thought of loving others? No, I was afraid of your moth er , becau se she has a tongue of steel. p. 154 During the wedding feast the bridgegroom and bride may sing to each other: 8 Bridegroom: Welcome, d ear little dove," half of my heart 1 I'm fl ying from bu sh to bush to see your cheeks. As soon as my heart spotted you, it looked back with joy , m y wish was fulfill ed. I want to ask you , Molly , are you willing to m a rry m e? will your fat her let you go? do you want to be my wife? Vitaj, mila holubicka, muojho srdca polovicka 1 Lietam od kricka do kricka, abych videl tvoje licka . J ak t'a moje srdce zrelo , od radosti zas pozrelo , podl'a vuoli sa mi stalo. Chcem sa, Marka, t'a p ytati, m as ty vuolu za mna iti , ci t'a otec chce pu stiti , ci chces mojou zenou byti? p. 161 Bride: You can't find fault with me, yo u can do as you please. Wh y should I spare myself, 34 when I like to see you. You can profit from m e Wh a t ca n I d o? I can tear old shirts to rags , throw wood into the stove, in the kitchen I have good luck, I can cook cabbage wit hout lard, and you wi ll li ck your fingers. l can make scrambled eggs , as my fat her knows . You , m y fat her , tell them what a special di sh it is 135 Nieto na mne ziadna chyba , mozes robit', co ti treba. Co by lutovala seba, ked' ja rada vidim teba . Zo mn a m ozes osoh vziati, co zo mn a moze vystati? Viem starie kosele driapat', dreva do peci nam eta t', aj v ku chyni sa mi stescf, mozem navar it' kapusty bez mas ti , oblfzes prsty. Viem spravit' praze ni cu z vaj ec. o com vie svadobny otec. T y pan svadobny otec povedz , aka je to obzvlastna vec 1 p. 161 The bonneting of the bride had its own special songs . 36 SLOVAKIA 30 9 I lost m y headdress," m y green wreath, " the best m an" fo und it , a ha ndso me yo ung m an . H ey, bes t m an , best ma n , I beg of you , give me bac k that headb and , I like wearing it. If you like wearing that head ba nd so mu ch , surely you ' d ask the best man more ni cely . Stratila som partu, zeleny ve ni ec, nasiel mi ju dru zba, sva rny ml adenec. H ej , dru zba, hej, dru zba, pekn e t'a prosfm , d ajze mi tu partu , rad a ju nosfm 1 K eby si ty pa rtu rada nosila, ve ru by si druzbu krajsie prosila . p . 163 10 The bell s of r.upca' 0 have a ve ry ni ce rin g," 1 Annie , they ' ll kn ock off yo u r head ba nd . They will kn ock it off with nin e bells, so you won ' t go out with oth er yo un g men . So you won't go out , just love your husband , th e handso me J ohnn y, who is d evo ted to you . Tie lupcian ske zvo ny vel'mi pekne zvo ni a, u z tebe, Ani cka, tvoju pa rtu zro ma . Zronia ti ju , zronia deviatimi zvo ncf, abys nechodil a s cudzfmi mladencf. Abys nechodil a, mu za si l'ubila , Janfcka svarnyho, tebe oddan yho. p . 163 Wailing Over the Dead The practice of wailing over the dead form ed a n integral p a rt of the fun e ral ceremony , a nd according to the Muran Articles of the Protestant Church from 1585 , wailing had been widely practiced in Slovakia.42 The lam ents were performed by semi-professional wailers , usually by older women , who wailed a t the funeral for a fe e. Some times , the laments were perform ed by rela tives. The laments over the d ead were generally improvi sed on the spur of the moment , with the hired person attempting to express lyrically the dee p sorrow felt by the relatives and friends of the deceased. They also m e ntioned the good traits of the deceased, the progress of hi s or her illn ess (as in " Oh , My D ear Child "), and would dram atize the actual d emise of the deceased , portraying him as he took leave of hi s fa mily, relatives, and friends. The laments over the d ead are st ru ctured differentl y from other folklore genres . Since they h ad to be open for improvisa tions , they are SLOVAKIA 31 free in form. They usuall y do not have regular stanzas or rhyme. Assonance predominates over rhym e and they are sung as melodic recitations. Laments can be characterized not only b y the lack of formal structure, but also by a certain degree of looseness and incoherency, possibly utilized to stress the depth of sorrow felt by the relatives and friends . This looseness is demonstra ted in the poem "George , George" in which the last two stanzas are only vaguely related to the theme of the first two stanzas. Oh , my dear child , beloved Angel," what shall I do without you , my dear souJ? My hea rt was bleeding while you were suffering, you looked at me, I couldn ' t help. Your fath er was walking stunned in the yard , walkin g aimlessly, not saying a word . You chattered to me your sweet words th e wh ole day, you dear innocent ch ild , a nd when you r father came home from th e fi elds, you smiled so that he would take you in his arms , and th ere was no end to your talking, and your father took d elight in you, hi s treasure. Ach, moj e drah uo diet'a, anjel premileny, cuo pocnem bez teba, moj a draha dusa, srdce mi zatislo, ked si sa trapilo, hl'adelo si na mna, nemohla som pomuoct'. Otec ti po dvore omrace ny chodiu , nikde miesta nemau, slov ka nepovedau. Stebotalo si mi slad uskymi recmi cely den, ty draha nevinnost ' premila , a ked otec z pol'a do domu sa vratiu, usmi evalo si sa, kym t'a k sebe nevzau, a n ebolo recom tvojim dlh o konec , a otec sa tesiu v tebe drahy poklad. p. 164 2 George, George, yo ur godfather ca me ," for yo u to plow hi s fi elds. You a re through with plowing since the Lord called you. Juro , Juro , km otor prise!, aby si mu orat' isol. A ty si uz dooral , ked' t'a panboh povolal. Ycs te rd ay you ate three sa usages," a nd a lot of bread. 46 Today you lie on th e bier, like a hog on a ca rt . Y ce ra si zjel tri jelita , aj chl eba z polk yky zita. Dnes uz lezis na marach ako bravec na karach. 32 SLOVAKIA M y dea r go lde n m oustache" would be fit fo r strin gs, my ve r y d ear ha ir , would be good fo r ropes. M oje m ile, zlate fuzy, boli ze by na mot u zy, moj e premile vlasy boli by na povrazy. Wh en he bega n to play hi s bagpipe: " tati -lat i, ta ti-l a ti ," he go t a farth ering" to bu y spices, he dropped it behind his shirt. K ed si pocal gajdovati : ta ti -lati , ta ti-l ati , ma! turak na koreni a, vsy pal ho do zahreni a. p . 165 NOTES ' Andrej M elichercfk , ed. , Slo vensky Folkl6r: Chrestomatia (Bra tislava: Slove nska Akademi a Vied, 1959) . ' J ozef r. . Holuby, Folklore studi es published ma inl y in Slovenske Pohl'ad y between 1883 a nd 1897; Jan Kolla r , N arodnie spievanky, I-II (Bra ti slava, 1953); Jii'i Polivka, Supis slo ven skych rozpravok I-V (Turciansky Svaty M artin , 1923 -1932). ' The fo lkloric ma teri al collected by Dobsinsky a nd oth ers is re ndered in th e dialec t o f the region fro m which it origina ted . The page reference to M elichercfk is give n in th e tex t a ft er th e Slovak ori ginal. ' " Puddle, Puddle ." In the Slova k, this love inca nta ti on has an irregul a r rhym e (aabbb-c-ddd-c-ee-fff- e-g-hh-g- iii -j- k-ll -m m) whi ch was sac rificed in th e tra nsla ti on fo r the sake of accuracy. • Although th e magical for mulae are pagan in origin , they contain refe rences to C hristi a nit y. ' Lit. · " H oly T rinity,/be a good helpe r to me/ to eve rythin g good,/ to the state of m a trimon y" (II. 26-29). 6 The colors refer to the body: red or pink cheeks were considered a sign of good health , a nd a white co m plex ion was much valued by both men and women, partl y as a sign of class di stin ction . O nly feuda l lords and wealth y merchants who di d not have to work in th e fi elds could afford to have white skin a ll year aro un d. " H oney " is a traditi onal refe rence to good te mper . 7 " I have brought you a piece of steel. . " With the exce ption of the wishes in the las t lin e, the Slova k poe m co nsis ts of rh ym in g co upl ets. All bu t 11 . 1 and 2 a re revised in order to con vey a prope r word order in English . Steel (iron) was co ns idered p ro tect ion aga ins t evil and fa iries in Europe (Maria Tymocz ko). ' H a ft is a ha nd le of a hoe, ax, scyt he, and oth er ag ricultu ral tools. H ere the number of hafts represen ts the far mer 's pros perity. 9 A typical orname n t a mong young marri ed village me n . Wh en give n by a you ng unm a r ried women, th e feather was co nside red a sign of affect ion. '° K re u ze r (o r kreutzer) was a small cop per coin in Aust ri a and Ge rmany, the 100th part of th e fl orin . It was so called because th e coin had th e fi gu re of a cross on it. A penny wou ld be probabl y the closest co n temporary eq ui valent to the kreuzer. " Wal nu ts and hazlenu ts were trad itionally eaten at C hristmas tim e after the ma in meal. SLOVAKIA 33 " " I wi sh you in thi s/comin g New Yea r " : This is a very popular N ew Year 's wish . The unu su al wi sh , " that a side of your oven/ m ay fa ll out" (11 .3 -4) probably ha s the same conn otat ion as th e En gli sh '' break a leg!'' It also sugges ts a wi sh of prosperity to the farm er , i.e., th a t hi s oven m ay be fill ed to burstin g, or ove rh eated with con stant cooki ng a nd baking. " Fo rmall y, thi s poe m is arran ged in rh ymin g coupl ets but asson an ce plays a m o re impo rtant role . " This carol is loosely a rra nged in rh yming couplets. Again, the assonance a nd the rhym e take precedence ove r m eanin g, and thi s ex plains why such seemingly unrela ted them es as th e Three Kings, the Star of Bethlehem , J oseph and M a ry o n the one hand, and the rose, th e tulip on the ta ble, and the old man's huntin g expedition on th e other ha nd , fo und their place in thi s carol. The carol is a mi xture of religious and secular m otifs. " C hildren , dressed as the Three Magi, arrive a t a farmh ou se and sing. Yet they mu st no t sin g a bout the fa rm er ' s fa mil y, but the H oly Famil y of the Na tivity. 16 ' ' Sh rovetide, Pentecos t, and Easter ... '' This j okin g carnival song is ar ranged in rh ym in g coupl ets. 11 Fatback bacon (usual ly with no lean m eat) was a staple diet , often a snack, fo r village peo ple. It was ofte n eaten with baked potatoes a nd _onio ns, o r j ust plain bread . 18 Fa tback baco n u sed to be sm oked (cured ) in th e chimn ey. 19 The teac her , alo ng with the p riest a nd th e m ayo r , was amon g th e m ost prominent peo ple in th e vill age. 0 ' S loven sko: l', ud - II. cast', ed s. Boze na Filova et al. (B ra ti slava: O bzo r , 1975). " In the Slovak o ri ginal, thi s son g has a regula r rh yme pat tern: aa-b b-cc-dd . The first two lines ad d ress th e m a in speaker . " J oh n" is appa ren tl y a youn g fath er whose wife d ied in childbirth . T he fat her says that he will kee p his so n , but the boy ' s grandmoth er will have to bring him up . Them a ticall y, the so ng expresses conce rn fo r th e boy ' s upbringin g. In the seco nd stan za , the speake r ind icates that he m ay have to leave hi s nat ive vill age, probably in search of wo rk . T hi s was a co mm on prac ti ce among im poverished village rs. " Lit .: " I 'll have. " In 11. 3 an d 4 coll oqui al form s of the ve rb " to have " and the nou n " m other" have bee n used. The forms a re iden tical: mati , wh ich fac il itates th e rh ym e and keeps th e sam e num ber of syll a bles in each line. There a re eight sylla bles in each line, and th e standa rd m o nosy lla bic word m at' wo uld have redu ced th e syll a bles dow n to seven in 11 .3 a nd 4 . " The origin al son g uses assonance ra ther th an rh ym e. A fat her-to-be is th e speaker in this so ng . H alf-jokin g , he stresses the importance of a male offspring. H e p rom ises to pa m pe r hi s wife if she bears him a son . " The original so ng uses asson a nce . T he speaker , proba bly an un wed m o th er, po nders her fat e a nd talks a bout social conve nti on s. " W ith th e excepti o n of stanza 3, the so ng has a near regul a r rh ym e: aa-bb-cc-dd-e -fg- f-hh- ii -jj- kk. T he speaker in th is so.ig is the ba by 's moth er who regrets th e loss of her freedo m as a mother and/or a wife . It is not qu ite clear from the context wheth er she is m a rri ed o r no t. I n either case, it was not proper of her to joi n the ca refree d a nce of unm arri ed m en a nd wome n . 34 6 SLOVAKIA Slovensko: E,ud, p. 1057. " Melichercfk , p. 26 " A featherbed is a strong cloth con tainer thi ckly filled with goose feathers and down and used as a bed cover in lieu of blankets. Featherbeds were a part of the bride's dowry, which also included pillows, sheets, towels, cloths, etc . The dowry was collected throughout the years practically after the day the girl was born . Goose down and stripped feathers were collected ever y year from the fami ly's fl ock of geese and stashed in a special bag for each d aughter in the family. The wealthier the bride , the higher the pile of featherbeds and pillows atop her bed . " A rosemary wreath was a decoration used on such occasions as weddings and funerals . H ere it is a symbol of chastity. 0 ' A fl atcake (osuch ) is a simple, flat cake, usually round. It is baked from bread dough , which is sometimes mixed with a different type of fl our or else potatoes. " Lit .: "They paid a hard thaler for your wedding ," obviously meaning the dowry. Thaler (also taler) was a large silver coin u sed in various German states and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was worth 30 silver groschen, worth about 3s. sterling . The word "dollar" is derived from " th aler." " R efe rring to the priest's vestments durin g the wedding ce remony, the stole is a long, decorated strip of cloth worn like a scarf by officiating clergymen of various chu rches. 33 In the Slovak original, each line consists of eight syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aaaa-bbb-cccc. " The meaning is not quite clear here. It probably indicates the bride's submission to the groom . 35 In this poem, each line consists of eight syllables . The rh yme pattern is: aaaa-bb-ccbbb-dddd. 36 Bonneting of the bride is the culmination of the wedding ceremony. The bride becomes a married woman when her wreath is replaced by a bonnet. 31 Headband or headdress is a wreath decorated with colorful ribbons, worn by un married women and brides. Married women wore bonnets or scarves. 38 Each line in this song consists of eleven syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-cc. 39 It was customary that the best man led the bride to the wedding and took off her wreath or headband. H e led the bride down the aisle, whereas the bridesmaid led the bridegroom down the aisle. He was referred to as the " leading " best man and wore a sword to distinguish himself from other best men who wore sticks decorated with scarves . '° Cupca is a town in Central Slovakia, where many local customs and traditions have been preserved. 41 Each line in this song consists of twelve syllables. The rhyme pattern is: aa-bb-c-d. " Melichercfk, p . 142. 43 This lame ntation has a sporadic rhyme pattern: a-b-c-d-ee-f-g-ee- h-i. The lines consist of 12 to 13 syllables. 44 The poem has the following rhym e pattern: aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff-gg-hh . The lines consist of seven to eight syllables. 45 Pork sausage in natural casing. It is made of rice or grits combined with ground meat , liver, blood and spices. The sausages were usu all y made in winter or early ' SLOVAKIA 35 spring when the fatt ened pigs were slaughtered . " '' ... a lot of bread.'' This is a free translation due to the discrepancy in the printed word indicating the amount of rye from which the bread was made . The original version of this song, titled, " W a iling over a D ead Husband" (Sbomik slovenskych n arodnych piesnf, povestf, prfslovf, porekadiel, hadok, hier, obycajov a povier [A Collection of Slovak Folk Songs, Riddles, Games, Customs, and Superstitions], II , (Turciansky Sva ty Martin : Matica slovenska, 18741) spells the wordpolkyly, which would mean half a kilo. On the other hand , Melichercik's edition lists the word polkyky (fem. gen. sg. ), which was an old , popula r measure in Slovak villages . The word k yky is of Ukrainian ori gin (a Ukrainian word for a scarf worn by village women, "babushka" type). ·since scales were a luxury item in the past, the amount of rye from which a loaf of bread was m ade was m easured in the scarf. Pol means half, i.e., the bread was made from half the amount measured by the scarf. 47 The poem , somewhat joking in character, shows the improvising character of funeral recitations. The stanzas wander from one subject to another, touching some memories of the dead man that may o r may not be relevant for the occasion of the funeral, but they are important in the eyes of the wailer. " " Farthing" is a free translation, indicating that the coin was small. In the Slovak original , turak was a small coin , worth one and a half groschen . It was used in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation , " Slovak Folklore : An Anthology, " at the Un iversity of M assachuset ts in Amh erst , 1982. I th ank especially Professors Sarah N. Lawall a nd Zdenek Salzmann . Presented in part in P anel 128 , " Slovak Literature as a Mirror of the National Awakening ," at the AAASS co nvention in Philadelphia on 8 November 1980 , and in Panel 65 , "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asiloma r , California on 2 1 September 1981.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Three Kinds of Slovak Folk Literature Description An account of the resource Eva Susan Kucekova Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 12-35 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kucekova, Eva Susan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 name https://slovakia.wordsofpassage.net/files/original/5f1697592b297d8afb0e81d218226c76.pdf d8bdc781fc0df688e5c586e5835f96fb PDF Text Text 92 SLOVAKIA Vajansky and Turgenev Willia m E. H a rkin s It h as bee n said th a t literature feeds on lite rature m o re tha n it d oes on life, b y which it is m eant th a t a writer finds it m o re diffi cult to work directl y from life a nd tran sla te living expe rience directly into verbal a rt. Whe n o ne's source s a re them selves wo rd s a nd verb al fo rms, no act of tra n sla tion is required. The new " intertex tu al " approach to the semiotic stud y of literature wo uld seem to co nfirm this t ruth. It is a truism of Slovak literary history tha t the writer Svetozar Hurba n V aj a nsky was stro n gly influ en ced b y Ru ssian literature, a nd in parti cul a r b y Turgen ev. 1 Hurba n V aj a n sky st ands in th at nin eteen th- century Slovak ideological traditio n which turned its back on the W est , a nd specifically on the C zechs, a nd sou ght instead to find a n ideological base in Ru ss ian cul ture a nd Ru ssia n lite rature . T hi s pa per is inte nded to explore the questio n o f the exte nt o f Hurba n V aj a n sky's d epe nde nce o n Turge nev a nd to ve ntu re a n expla n a tio n of why Turge nev's le gacy was a suita ble bas is for V aj a n sky's w ritin gs . I will analyze V ajan sky' s most famous and probably his greatest novel , Su ch a. ratolest'(T he Dry B ranch , 1884) , as well as several o f his co untry sketches from the collectio n N a Basna.rovom kopci a ine crty (On Basnarov Hill a nd Other Sketche s, 1880-1 883) . At first sight it would seem that Tu rge nev wo uld h ave had ve ry little to o ffer the Slovak writer. V aj a n sk y was a n aggressive , d etermined a nd zealou s fi ghte r in the Slovak n atio n al cau se, him self witho u t hesita tio n a nd w ithout the intellectu al rese rvatio n s so typi cal of Tu rge nev's heroes. The them e o f n at io na lism is weak in Ru ss ia n Lite ra ture , pa rtl y becau se write rs did not iden ti fy th em selves with the R ussia n tsarist regim e, pa rtly b ecau se Ru ssia n n a tion a lism and na tio nal independence co uld be taken for gr a nted . T he sam e thing is tru e, of co urse, for En gli sh , Ame rican , o r Fre nch liter a ture, in which na tio na li st a nd p atriotic the m es a re no rmally weak , a nd in which a nti-na tion alist w riters are even kn ow n (Celine , M a ile r , etc.). Bu t in Ru ssia n li terature th e them e of natio n alism is alm os t pathologicall y weaken ed ; the reaso ns fo r this pheno m eno n mu st be sou gh t in Ru ssia 's unique spiritual and id eological develop ment . The a mbivalence of Turgenev's heroes would likewise seem �SLOVAKIA 93 to offer little to Vajansky, who was in part see kin g to create p rototyp es for n a tional lead ership. Th e search for a lead e r is a Turge n evan the me , o f course, but in Turgenev would-be lead er after lead e r goes d own to d efeat: Rudin , L avreckij , ln sarov , Bazarov, Nezdanov. I will return to these points presently , but first let us look at Vajansky ' s n ovel, Sucha ratolest'. The h ero of the novel is Stani slav Rudopol'sky, the la ndless heir of a n ancient n oble family o f la ndowne rs . Stanislav's father, impoverished, h ad turned from the ancient noble ways to foll ow a middle -class ex iste n ce as a governm en t official. Through indu stry a nd sob riety he accumul ated a con siderable fo rtune, which h e left to his son Stani slav , a youn g m a n with arti st ic inclin ations and tale nts and n ow e ndowed with e n ough wealth to cultivate these. H e return s h o m e to dwell in his an cestral m ansion in the provin cial town of Rudopolie . H e re he vacillates between two women: one the wife of his b est friend a nd the model for a great spiritualized portrait h e is p ainting which m ay vaguel y symbolize the Slovak people a nd its aspirations ; the o ther, a flirt a tiou s widow. The n ovel fin ally resolves the conflict b y transmittin g his affect io n for hi s friend's wife into spiritu al love a nd a rtistic creativ ity , thus leaving him to the wi dow , w h o turns out , in spite of h e r initi al capriciousness, to b e full y worthy of him . At first Stanislav is indiffere nt to the Slovak nation al cau se, which h e regards as a historical blind alley, but h e is ultimately brou ght through his frie ndship with Slovak p atriots to a tru e sense of the value and significan ce o f that cau se. Thus h e becomes what must h ave been a historical rarity: a zeman (squire) who is pro-Slovak and anti-Magyar. But we must remember that h e is landl ess and th at h e belongs essentially to th e middle class rath er t h an to th e gentry: in this Vajansky seems to be say in g th at the future hope of Slovakia lay in the middl e-class intelli ge ntsia and in the towns. Stanislav fight s a duel with the local leader of th e Magyar nationalist party: this is purely symbolic; in the duel he is n early k illed but a lso su cceeds in wounding hi s antagonist. Finally h e is nursed back to h ealth by the widow, and the novel ends w ith an opti mi stic, up-beat conclus io n . The title phrase, "Such a ratolest', " " dry branch," is applied to Stan islav , both by other ch aracters a nd by h imself. I t impli es his roo tlessness and purposel essness , qualiti es wh ich he feels strongly; at the e nd of the novel he would see m , however , to have transcended these qualities . Still, the novel has usu a ll y been taken as an ev idence th a t the �94 SLOVAKIA zemans had nothing to contribute to the Slovak nationalist cause (just as the Russian critic Dobroljubov took the novel Oblomov as a concrete evidence that the Russian gentry could not supply national leadership). The point remains ambiguous, and we must note here that this kind of ambiguity is quite typical of Turgenev ' s heroes. Rudin talks like a leader but is incapable of acting; Lavreckij too talks nobly but never acts; Insarov is killed off before he has an opportunity to lead ; Bazarov is a born leader but has no cause to lead, and he too is killed off to make doubly certain that the revolution will not come in hi s time. Just so Stanislav, or Stano as the author usually calls him , has a personal spiritual developme nt which is said to be fruitful, but that development seems to imply only fruitlessness for the national cause: the true ~ovak patriots and leaders in the novel are Stano's friends and not Stano. The point is furth er obscured in Vajansky' s romantic treatment of Stano as a painter: his activity is entirely idealized and spiritualized as artistic creation . We can read this as symbolic, but still the novel is too realistic (it co ntains an entire chapter describing an election, for instance), to permit us really to identify Stano ' s art as a symbol of the national struggle. Indeed , there is much in Stano which we could identify as "superfluity, " in the Russian tradition of the lisnij celovek or superfluous man . Essentially good, Stano is also fruitless and without purpose. H e vacillates in his love life. He almost gets killed in a duel. Only his art enables him to transcend lisnost' or superfluity. But is Vajansky's novel really so dependent on Turgenev as the critics have thought? Some general features do seem to resemble Turgenev: the treatment of landscape ( though Vajansky' s countryside is brighter and less somber than Turgenev's); the theme of a stranger returning home to the country to live there (Lavreckij, Bazarov); the theme of superfluity and the ambigu ity in its treatment; last perhaps, the theme of art, though actually it is not so typical of Turgenev as we might have supposed. Finally Vajansky , most unfortunately , e nded his novel with a virtual paraphase of the endi ng of Turgenev's Fathers and Children: the description of the cemetery in which Bazarov rests (in Sucha ratolest' the dead woman is Anna, one of the novel's three h eroines). But in fact Vajansky was not really very d ependent on Turgenev. Before discussing the novel 's independence, however, we should attend to several aspects that recall Pushkin rather than Turgenev. First, the �SLOVAKIA 95 trait of superfluity is as typical for Pu shkin as it is for Turgen ev, though in Pushkin it is d epicted with considerably less ambiguity . The theme of art is also Pushkinian , thou gh it must be said that Pushkin does not romanticize it the way Turgenev and Vajansky do . Several motifs involving Stano and the young orphan girl Anna recall Pushkin's Eugene On egin. As in On egin , a cultivated stranger comes to dwell in the countryside and makes a strong impression on a rathe r n aive native girl. As in On egin , the girl 's naivete is brought out throu gh the fact that she lacks discrimination in her choice of reading matter; specifically , the use of a library and books to assess character recalls Pushkin , though he used these for Onegin himself, for the hero , not the hero in e . There is a scene in which Anna , unable to sleep , gazes at the moon , as Tatyana does in Pushkin 's novel in verse. Finally, the duel in Vajansky's novel is som ewhat cl oser to the duel in On egin than it is to Bazarov' s duel wi th Pavel Kirsanov. But even in these d etails V aj a nsky shows great independence. Anna is impressed by Stano , but in the end she realizes his weakness and ambivalence a nd is repell ed by him , a nd the great bulk ofVajansky's novel is indepe nde nt both of Pushkin a nd Turgenev . If we look first of all at the n ovel 's st ructure, we a re impressed almost staggered - by V aj a n sky's originality. H e shows a freed om of con struction th at is truly amazing : without transitions he m oves from scene to scene, character to character, episode to episode. Events occur for which we are totally unprepared . Compared with Turgen ev, or Pushkin , his structure seems wild , formless , a rtl ess. These writers organize their materi al into tight structural units which themselves ha ve beginnings, middles and endi n gs. They operate with a restricted group of ch aracters in th e la te stages of their works. Vaj ansky can introdu ce a n ew ch aracter anyw here or at any time he wishes , nor does h e feel an obli gation to carry all hi s characters - even the importa nt ones - right down to the novel 's end. It would not be correct to say that Vajan sky' s novel is plotless it has a pl ot which, if less in scope than that of Pushkin 's Onegin could probably be compa red with T urge n ev's Smoke , or even Rudin . But in a certain sense, nothing h a ppens in Vajansky's novel with but one except ion: symbolic events occu r. Stano transcend s his attraction to his fri e nd 's wife. H e fi ghts a duel. Th e orphan Anna goes blind a nd dies. To a ttempt a more precise definition: th e realistic side of Vajan- �96 SLOVAKIA sky's novel lacks a plot stru cture . A second kind of event can occur which is radically unTurgenevan : this is the action of social groups: tavern brawls, demonstrations , election s held under conditions of corrupt ion. There is a far deeper sense of society in Vajansky' s fiction than in either Pushkin or Turgenev, and in this he was more of a realist. Presumabl y he had undergo ne the influ en ce of positivist philosophy, which turned its a ttent ion to society and created the new scien ce of sociology. Vajansky's "formlessn ess " would hardly have appealed to cultivated nineteenth-century readers . They would have preferred the powerful sense of form of a Pushkin , or the delicate understatement of a Turgenev. But to o ur times Vajansky's impatience with the constraints of form seems origin al and refreshing. I t h as often been said that Vajansky depicted a Slovak society that never ex isted, that is idealized. Yet in Sucha ratolest' that Slovak society hardl y appears a s idealized: it is dru nken , given to brawling, easily corrupted by bribes and drink. What Vajansky seems to intend here is a kind of dialectic opposition : ideal leaders will lead the people, brutalized by the Magyar oppress io n , to liberty . It is in suffi cient to say, then, that Vaj a nsky idealized Slovak society : in fact he gives us invaluable glimpses of life in a small Slovak country town of the day . The chapter depicting the elections is a masterly portrait that recalls, in its sordidness a nd detail , an American election of the ninetee nth or even twentieth century. Drink, arbitra ry challenges to the voters , repeat votin g - the familiar techniques of election control are all vividl y described. Thus Vajansky' s novel vacillates amb iguously be tween realism and id ealism . But the ambiguity is artistically fruitful and creative. In the years 1880- 1883 Vaj a n sky published a few sketch es of peasant a nd country life. The se sketch es, republish ed la ter in coll ected form unde r the titl e o f Na Basnarovom k opci a in e crty (On Basna rov Hill a nd Oth e r Ske tches), a re a m o n g hi s strongest a nd m os t ori ginal works, and it can o nly be re gretted th at he did not produ ce mo re exampl es of th e genre . T he form o fV ajan sky's sketch d e ri ves, o f co urse, from Turgenev , whose Sportsman ·s Sketches, pu bli shed in 1852, a re perh aps th a t writer 's stron ges t work. Lik e Turge nev , V ajan sky se ts hi s sketches in th e countrys id e, a nd th ey d ispl a y a stron gly im agisti c tre nd in th e d epi cti o n bo th of la nd scape a nd th e p easant cha racter s who pop ul a te it . In the sketches o f bo th w riters a n a rrator a ppears as a pe rce iver, a nd the di stan ce be- �SLOVAKIA 97 tween his perceiving eye and the peasants he views creates a subtle irony, one that does not , however , undercut the warm lyricism of the style and m anner. T u rgenev ' s narrator is a gentleman proprietor and hunter ; Vaj an sky's is (presum a bly) a middle-class intellectual turning his attention to the life of the Slovak peasantry. The ideological point of this is never m ade specific, bu t it was pa tently implicit in the political logic of the times: the Slovak intellectu als were waitin g for the d awn of political consciou sness am ong the peasantry. In the first of these sketches, " On Basna rov Hill ," the ideological mom ent is most incisive , though its intrusiveness detracts from the sketch artisti cally. A peasant m other and her younger son lam ent the cruelty of the elder son who has cast the widowed m other out with out provision for support. In her conversation she turns to attack Slovak officials , whom as a peasan t she di stru sts . V aj an sky, overhearing her , interrupts to de fend those offi cials who are Slovak nationalists. But the distinction is los t on the old woman , who has little political or national consciousness. She simply tu rns her back on his appeal. T hi s argum en t is of course quite un-Turgenevan ; Turgenev the hun ter m ay speak to the peasants, but he d oes not harran gu e them ; indeed , Tu rge nev is a master of understa tem en t and this q u ality Vajansky was perha ps un a ble to ass imila te, as we have already seen in the case of Su cha ra tolest'. But V ajan sky is capa ble o f creating im ages as powe rful and movin g as those of T u rgenev . P erh a ps the fines t of his sketcties is the one called " Hlasnik " (The Night W atchman): a movin g im agistic portrayal of a peasan t watchm an 's round s at nigh t, in te rtwined with hi s service to a dead m an fo r whom he digs a grave and whose bod y he later visits. With vivid depict ion of both the m ovem ent of the watchma n ' s round s and hi s calls th rough the night on his horn , the piece is a m asterpiece of mood im agery th at recall s the fin est sketches of Tu rgen ev such as "The Singe rs" or " Bezin M eadow," but d oes not imi tate them except in th e m ost ge neral way . In fac t , none of Vajansky' s ind ividual sketches recalls an y specific sketch b y T urgenev. Vaj an sky's land scape is too differe nt , a nd Slovak society too d ist inct. Vajan sky has perfectly ad apted th e Turgenevan ske tch and u sed it in the cause of Slovak li terature and Slovak ideology. We are now in a better pos ition to answer the ques tion we posed at the ou tset : what qu a:ities in T urgenev appealed to Vajansky and per- �98 SLOVAKIA suaded him to use elements taken from Turgenev 's work? The question should be asked in the light of the almost total difference we have found between the two writers, in personality, artistic temperament , psychology of character creation and development, optimism and pessimism, artistic structure. Still, there was something in Turgenev 's work, whether Vajansky realized it consciously or not, which Vajansky found of creative use . I suggest that this was that very ambiguity of treatment of ideological heroes by Turgenev which attracted Vajansky to his work. This in spite ofVajansky's much greater aggressiveness, his nationalism, his greater optimism . For tl;ie fact was that the Slovak cause was going nowhere in the 1880's. Though it might well have been that eventually it would go somewhere , it seemed bogged down - and this is the view Vajansky embodies in Sucha ratolest' in his chapter on the elections. Hence it was necessary to create characters who were "superfluous," who could achieve nothing in the present, yet characters capable of success, at least in an idealized dimension projected into the future . Turgenev had done the same thing: Bazarov is a born leader capable of reforming Russia, yet he is a leader without real followers and he comes at a time that is premature . The other common feature between Turgenev's writings and those of Vajansky is that of a passive human mass, the peasantry, needing to be awakened and educated . This is perhaps the only point where Turgenev's ideology acquires a nationalist tinge: Russia's peasantry holds her back, prevents her proper development : hence , it is necessary to educate the peasantry. In Vajansky the peasantry, and to some extent the town masses, play a similar role . It is necessary to win these masses over if the Slovak cause is to succeed. Following their leader l:.udovft Stur, the Slovak patriots turned to Russia because they perceived the West, including the Czechs , as decadent. They were influenced in this by Herder's prophecy of the future greatness of the Slavs, a prophecy Herder had specially made for the Eastern Slavs on the basis of his stay in Riga. Stur also noted that the closeness of kinship and family ties, so important to the Slovaks, was duplicated among the Eastern Slavs but not among the Czechs. 1 This began a Slovak turn toward Russia and Russian culture that was beneficial for the development of the nascent Slovak literature , if it was probably harmful to the development of the Slovak national ideology. �SLOVAKIA 99 It is perhaps ironic that , motivated by considerations such as warmth of emotionality and closeness of kinship ties, V ajansky should have turned to writers like Pushkin and Turgenev, who, among Russians, were to be regarded as Westerners. Curiously, the Slovak leaders hardly knew the Russian Slavophiles, and their influence was perceptible only later. Yet, clearly the Slovak writers were seeking something they could use, and the precise source was not important. It is remarkable that when artists such as Edouard Manet or Vincent van Gogh or Mary Cassat turned to Japanese art for inspiration , they found woodblock prints of grim acin g actors and simpering courtesans , rather than the infinitely more subtle and more sophisticated art of such J a panese schools as the Rimp a or Shijo schools. Yet apparently Manet, Van Gogh , or Mary Cassat kn ew what they were looking for, and they rejected what they could not use; thus they succeeded in making that Japanese influence fruitful and not pernicious . In a similar way, Turgenev was a writer in many ways not con genial to Vajansky. But Vajansky had his own individuality and was a great enough artist to take from Turgenev what he needed . And he incorporated that something into his own distinct art. NOTES See, e. g., Jan V . Novak and Arne Novak, Pfehledn e dejin y literatury ceske (Olomouc, 1936-39), p. 82 1; Andrej Mraz , Dejiny slovensk ej literatury, Slovenska vlastiveda , Vol. 1, Literatura a jazyk (Bra tislava: Sloven ska Akademia vied a umenf, 1948), p . 214; Slovenska Akademia Vied, Ustav slovenskej li te ra tury, D ejin y slovenskej literatury, III (Bra tislava, 1965), 630-31 a nd passim . ' See Ludovft Stur , 0 narodnich pisnich a povestech plemen slovanskych (Prague , 1853). I Presented in Panel 65, "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asilomar, California on 21 September 1981. � 92 SLOVAKIA Vajansky and Turgenev Willia m E. H a rkin s It h as bee n said th a t literature feeds on lite rature m o re tha n it d oes on life, b y which it is m eant th a t a writer finds it m o re diffi cult to work directl y from life a nd tran sla te living expe rience directly into verbal a rt. Whe n o ne's source s a re them selves wo rd s a nd verb al fo rms, no act of tra n sla tion is required. The new " intertex tu al " approach to the semiotic stud y of literature wo uld seem to co nfirm this t ruth. It is a truism of Slovak literary history tha t the writer Svetozar Hurba n V aj a nsky was stro n gly influ en ced b y Ru ssian literature, a nd in parti cul a r b y Turgen ev. 1 Hurba n V aj a n sky st ands in th at nin eteen th- century Slovak ideological traditio n which turned its back on the W est , a nd specifically on the C zechs, a nd sou ght instead to find a n ideological base in Ru ss ian cul ture a nd Ru ssia n lite rature . T hi s pa per is inte nded to explore the questio n o f the exte nt o f Hurba n V aj a n sky's d epe nde nce o n Turge nev a nd to ve ntu re a n expla n a tio n of why Turge nev's le gacy was a suita ble bas is for V aj a n sky's w ritin gs . I will analyze V ajan sky' s most famous and probably his greatest novel , Su ch a. ratolest'(T he Dry B ranch , 1884) , as well as several o f his co untry sketches from the collectio n N a Basna.rovom kopci a ine crty (On Basnarov Hill a nd Other Sketche s, 1880-1 883) . At first sight it would seem that Tu rge nev wo uld h ave had ve ry little to o ffer the Slovak writer. V aj a n sk y was a n aggressive , d etermined a nd zealou s fi ghte r in the Slovak n atio n al cau se, him self witho u t hesita tio n a nd w ithout the intellectu al rese rvatio n s so typi cal of Tu rge nev's heroes. The them e o f n at io na lism is weak in Ru ss ia n Lite ra ture , pa rtl y becau se write rs did not iden ti fy th em selves with the R ussia n tsarist regim e, pa rtly b ecau se Ru ssia n n a tion a lism and na tio nal independence co uld be taken for gr a nted . T he sam e thing is tru e, of co urse, for En gli sh , Ame rican , o r Fre nch liter a ture, in which na tio na li st a nd p atriotic the m es a re no rmally weak , a nd in which a nti-na tion alist w riters are even kn ow n (Celine , M a ile r , etc.). Bu t in Ru ssia n li terature th e them e of natio n alism is alm os t pathologicall y weaken ed ; the reaso ns fo r this pheno m eno n mu st be sou gh t in Ru ssia 's unique spiritual and id eological develop ment . The a mbivalence of Turgenev's heroes would likewise seem �SLOVAKIA 93 to offer little to Vajansky, who was in part see kin g to create p rototyp es for n a tional lead ership. Th e search for a lead e r is a Turge n evan the me , o f course, but in Turgenev would-be lead er after lead e r goes d own to d efeat: Rudin , L avreckij , ln sarov , Bazarov, Nezdanov. I will return to these points presently , but first let us look at Vajansky ' s n ovel, Sucha ratolest'. The h ero of the novel is Stani slav Rudopol'sky, the la ndless heir of a n ancient n oble family o f la ndowne rs . Stanislav's father, impoverished, h ad turned from the ancient noble ways to foll ow a middle -class ex iste n ce as a governm en t official. Through indu stry a nd sob riety he accumul ated a con siderable fo rtune, which h e left to his son Stani slav , a youn g m a n with arti st ic inclin ations and tale nts and n ow e ndowed with e n ough wealth to cultivate these. H e return s h o m e to dwell in his an cestral m ansion in the provin cial town of Rudopolie . H e re he vacillates between two women: one the wife of his b est friend a nd the model for a great spiritualized portrait h e is p ainting which m ay vaguel y symbolize the Slovak people a nd its aspirations ; the o ther, a flirt a tiou s widow. The n ovel fin ally resolves the conflict b y transmittin g his affect io n for hi s friend's wife into spiritu al love a nd a rtistic creativ ity , thus leaving him to the wi dow , w h o turns out , in spite of h e r initi al capriciousness, to b e full y worthy of him . At first Stanislav is indiffere nt to the Slovak nation al cau se, which h e regards as a historical blind alley, but h e is ultimately brou ght through his frie ndship with Slovak p atriots to a tru e sense of the value and significan ce o f that cau se. Thus h e becomes what must h ave been a historical rarity: a zeman (squire) who is pro-Slovak and anti-Magyar. But we must remember that h e is landl ess and th at h e belongs essentially to th e middle class rath er t h an to th e gentry: in this Vajansky seems to be say in g th at the future hope of Slovakia lay in the middl e-class intelli ge ntsia and in the towns. Stanislav fight s a duel with the local leader of th e Magyar nationalist party: this is purely symbolic; in the duel he is n early k illed but a lso su cceeds in wounding hi s antagonist. Finally h e is nursed back to h ealth by the widow, and the novel ends w ith an opti mi stic, up-beat conclus io n . The title phrase, "Such a ratolest', " " dry branch," is applied to Stan islav , both by other ch aracters a nd by h imself. I t impli es his roo tlessness and purposel essness , qualiti es wh ich he feels strongly; at the e nd of the novel he would see m , however , to have transcended these qualities . Still, the novel has usu a ll y been taken as an ev idence th a t the �94 SLOVAKIA zemans had nothing to contribute to the Slovak nationalist cause (just as the Russian critic Dobroljubov took the novel Oblomov as a concrete evidence that the Russian gentry could not supply national leadership). The point remains ambiguous, and we must note here that this kind of ambiguity is quite typical of Turgenev ' s heroes. Rudin talks like a leader but is incapable of acting; Lavreckij too talks nobly but never acts; Insarov is killed off before he has an opportunity to lead ; Bazarov is a born leader but has no cause to lead, and he too is killed off to make doubly certain that the revolution will not come in hi s time. Just so Stanislav, or Stano as the author usually calls him , has a personal spiritual developme nt which is said to be fruitful, but that development seems to imply only fruitlessness for the national cause: the true ~ovak patriots and leaders in the novel are Stano's friends and not Stano. The point is furth er obscured in Vajansky' s romantic treatment of Stano as a painter: his activity is entirely idealized and spiritualized as artistic creation . We can read this as symbolic, but still the novel is too realistic (it co ntains an entire chapter describing an election, for instance), to permit us really to identify Stano ' s art as a symbol of the national struggle. Indeed , there is much in Stano which we could identify as "superfluity, " in the Russian tradition of the lisnij celovek or superfluous man . Essentially good, Stano is also fruitless and without purpose. H e vacillates in his love life. He almost gets killed in a duel. Only his art enables him to transcend lisnost' or superfluity. But is Vajansky's novel really so dependent on Turgenev as the critics have thought? Some general features do seem to resemble Turgenev: the treatment of landscape ( though Vajansky' s countryside is brighter and less somber than Turgenev's); the theme of a stranger returning home to the country to live there (Lavreckij, Bazarov); the theme of superfluity and the ambigu ity in its treatment; last perhaps, the theme of art, though actually it is not so typical of Turgenev as we might have supposed. Finally Vajansky , most unfortunately , e nded his novel with a virtual paraphase of the endi ng of Turgenev's Fathers and Children: the description of the cemetery in which Bazarov rests (in Sucha ratolest' the dead woman is Anna, one of the novel's three h eroines). But in fact Vajansky was not really very d ependent on Turgenev. Before discussing the novel 's independence, however, we should attend to several aspects that recall Pushkin rather than Turgenev. First, the �SLOVAKIA 95 trait of superfluity is as typical for Pu shkin as it is for Turgen ev, though in Pushkin it is d epicted with considerably less ambiguity . The theme of art is also Pushkinian , thou gh it must be said that Pushkin does not romanticize it the way Turgenev and Vajansky do . Several motifs involving Stano and the young orphan girl Anna recall Pushkin's Eugene On egin. As in On egin , a cultivated stranger comes to dwell in the countryside and makes a strong impression on a rathe r n aive native girl. As in On egin , the girl 's naivete is brought out throu gh the fact that she lacks discrimination in her choice of reading matter; specifically , the use of a library and books to assess character recalls Pushkin , though he used these for Onegin himself, for the hero , not the hero in e . There is a scene in which Anna , unable to sleep , gazes at the moon , as Tatyana does in Pushkin 's novel in verse. Finally, the duel in Vajansky's novel is som ewhat cl oser to the duel in On egin than it is to Bazarov' s duel wi th Pavel Kirsanov. But even in these d etails V aj a nsky shows great independence. Anna is impressed by Stano , but in the end she realizes his weakness and ambivalence a nd is repell ed by him , a nd the great bulk ofVajansky's novel is indepe nde nt both of Pushkin a nd Turgenev . If we look first of all at the n ovel 's st ructure, we a re impressed almost staggered - by V aj a n sky's originality. H e shows a freed om of con struction th at is truly amazing : without transitions he m oves from scene to scene, character to character, episode to episode. Events occur for which we are totally unprepared . Compared with Turgen ev, or Pushkin , his structure seems wild , formless , a rtl ess. These writers organize their materi al into tight structural units which themselves ha ve beginnings, middles and endi n gs. They operate with a restricted group of ch aracters in th e la te stages of their works. Vaj ansky can introdu ce a n ew ch aracter anyw here or at any time he wishes , nor does h e feel an obli gation to carry all hi s characters - even the importa nt ones - right down to the novel 's end. It would not be correct to say that Vajan sky' s novel is plotless it has a pl ot which, if less in scope than that of Pushkin 's Onegin could probably be compa red with T urge n ev's Smoke , or even Rudin . But in a certain sense, nothing h a ppens in Vajansky's novel with but one except ion: symbolic events occu r. Stano transcend s his attraction to his fri e nd 's wife. H e fi ghts a duel. Th e orphan Anna goes blind a nd dies. To a ttempt a more precise definition: th e realistic side of Vajan- �96 SLOVAKIA sky's novel lacks a plot stru cture . A second kind of event can occur which is radically unTurgenevan : this is the action of social groups: tavern brawls, demonstrations , election s held under conditions of corrupt ion. There is a far deeper sense of society in Vajansky' s fiction than in either Pushkin or Turgenev, and in this he was more of a realist. Presumabl y he had undergo ne the influ en ce of positivist philosophy, which turned its a ttent ion to society and created the new scien ce of sociology. Vajansky's "formlessn ess " would hardly have appealed to cultivated nineteenth-century readers . They would have preferred the powerful sense of form of a Pushkin , or the delicate understatement of a Turgenev. But to o ur times Vajansky's impatience with the constraints of form seems origin al and refreshing. I t h as often been said that Vajansky depicted a Slovak society that never ex isted, that is idealized. Yet in Sucha ratolest' that Slovak society hardl y appears a s idealized: it is dru nken , given to brawling, easily corrupted by bribes and drink. What Vajansky seems to intend here is a kind of dialectic opposition : ideal leaders will lead the people, brutalized by the Magyar oppress io n , to liberty . It is in suffi cient to say, then, that Vaj a nsky idealized Slovak society : in fact he gives us invaluable glimpses of life in a small Slovak country town of the day . The chapter depicting the elections is a masterly portrait that recalls, in its sordidness a nd detail , an American election of the ninetee nth or even twentieth century. Drink, arbitra ry challenges to the voters , repeat votin g - the familiar techniques of election control are all vividl y described. Thus Vajansky' s novel vacillates amb iguously be tween realism and id ealism . But the ambiguity is artistically fruitful and creative. In the years 1880- 1883 Vaj a n sky published a few sketch es of peasant a nd country life. The se sketch es, republish ed la ter in coll ected form unde r the titl e o f Na Basnarovom k opci a in e crty (On Basna rov Hill a nd Oth e r Ske tches), a re a m o n g hi s strongest a nd m os t ori ginal works, and it can o nly be re gretted th at he did not produ ce mo re exampl es of th e genre . T he form o fV ajan sky's sketch d e ri ves, o f co urse, from Turgenev , whose Sportsman ·s Sketches, pu bli shed in 1852, a re perh aps th a t writer 's stron ges t work. Lik e Turge nev , V ajan sky se ts hi s sketches in th e countrys id e, a nd th ey d ispl a y a stron gly im agisti c tre nd in th e d epi cti o n bo th of la nd scape a nd th e p easant cha racter s who pop ul a te it . In the sketches o f bo th w riters a n a rrator a ppears as a pe rce iver, a nd the di stan ce be- �SLOVAKIA 97 tween his perceiving eye and the peasants he views creates a subtle irony, one that does not , however , undercut the warm lyricism of the style and m anner. T u rgenev ' s narrator is a gentleman proprietor and hunter ; Vaj an sky's is (presum a bly) a middle-class intellectual turning his attention to the life of the Slovak peasantry. The ideological point of this is never m ade specific, bu t it was pa tently implicit in the political logic of the times: the Slovak intellectu als were waitin g for the d awn of political consciou sness am ong the peasantry. In the first of these sketches, " On Basna rov Hill ," the ideological mom ent is most incisive , though its intrusiveness detracts from the sketch artisti cally. A peasant m other and her younger son lam ent the cruelty of the elder son who has cast the widowed m other out with out provision for support. In her conversation she turns to attack Slovak officials , whom as a peasan t she di stru sts . V aj an sky, overhearing her , interrupts to de fend those offi cials who are Slovak nationalists. But the distinction is los t on the old woman , who has little political or national consciousness. She simply tu rns her back on his appeal. T hi s argum en t is of course quite un-Turgenevan ; Turgenev the hun ter m ay speak to the peasants, but he d oes not harran gu e them ; indeed , Tu rge nev is a master of understa tem en t and this q u ality Vajansky was perha ps un a ble to ass imila te, as we have already seen in the case of Su cha ra tolest'. But V ajan sky is capa ble o f creating im ages as powe rful and movin g as those of T u rgenev . P erh a ps the fines t of his sketcties is the one called " Hlasnik " (The Night W atchman): a movin g im agistic portrayal of a peasan t watchm an 's round s at nigh t, in te rtwined with hi s service to a dead m an fo r whom he digs a grave and whose bod y he later visits. With vivid depict ion of both the m ovem ent of the watchma n ' s round s and hi s calls th rough the night on his horn , the piece is a m asterpiece of mood im agery th at recall s the fin est sketches of Tu rgen ev such as "The Singe rs" or " Bezin M eadow," but d oes not imi tate them except in th e m ost ge neral way . In fac t , none of Vajansky' s ind ividual sketches recalls an y specific sketch b y T urgenev. Vaj an sky's land scape is too differe nt , a nd Slovak society too d ist inct. Vajan sky has perfectly ad apted th e Turgenevan ske tch and u sed it in the cause of Slovak li terature and Slovak ideology. We are now in a better pos ition to answer the ques tion we posed at the ou tset : what qu a:ities in T urgenev appealed to Vajansky and per- �98 SLOVAKIA suaded him to use elements taken from Turgenev 's work? The question should be asked in the light of the almost total difference we have found between the two writers, in personality, artistic temperament , psychology of character creation and development, optimism and pessimism, artistic structure. Still, there was something in Turgenev 's work, whether Vajansky realized it consciously or not, which Vajansky found of creative use . I suggest that this was that very ambiguity of treatment of ideological heroes by Turgenev which attracted Vajansky to his work. This in spite ofVajansky's much greater aggressiveness, his nationalism, his greater optimism . For tl;ie fact was that the Slovak cause was going nowhere in the 1880's. Though it might well have been that eventually it would go somewhere , it seemed bogged down - and this is the view Vajansky embodies in Sucha ratolest' in his chapter on the elections. Hence it was necessary to create characters who were "superfluous," who could achieve nothing in the present, yet characters capable of success, at least in an idealized dimension projected into the future . Turgenev had done the same thing: Bazarov is a born leader capable of reforming Russia, yet he is a leader without real followers and he comes at a time that is premature . The other common feature between Turgenev's writings and those of Vajansky is that of a passive human mass, the peasantry, needing to be awakened and educated . This is perhaps the only point where Turgenev's ideology acquires a nationalist tinge: Russia's peasantry holds her back, prevents her proper development : hence , it is necessary to educate the peasantry. In Vajansky the peasantry, and to some extent the town masses, play a similar role . It is necessary to win these masses over if the Slovak cause is to succeed. Following their leader l:.udovft Stur, the Slovak patriots turned to Russia because they perceived the West, including the Czechs , as decadent. They were influenced in this by Herder's prophecy of the future greatness of the Slavs, a prophecy Herder had specially made for the Eastern Slavs on the basis of his stay in Riga. Stur also noted that the closeness of kinship and family ties, so important to the Slovaks, was duplicated among the Eastern Slavs but not among the Czechs. 1 This began a Slovak turn toward Russia and Russian culture that was beneficial for the development of the nascent Slovak literature , if it was probably harmful to the development of the Slovak national ideology. �SLOVAKIA 99 It is perhaps ironic that , motivated by considerations such as warmth of emotionality and closeness of kinship ties, V ajansky should have turned to writers like Pushkin and Turgenev, who, among Russians, were to be regarded as Westerners. Curiously, the Slovak leaders hardly knew the Russian Slavophiles, and their influence was perceptible only later. Yet, clearly the Slovak writers were seeking something they could use, and the precise source was not important. It is remarkable that when artists such as Edouard Manet or Vincent van Gogh or Mary Cassat turned to Japanese art for inspiration , they found woodblock prints of grim acin g actors and simpering courtesans , rather than the infinitely more subtle and more sophisticated art of such J a panese schools as the Rimp a or Shijo schools. Yet apparently Manet, Van Gogh , or Mary Cassat kn ew what they were looking for, and they rejected what they could not use; thus they succeeded in making that Japanese influence fruitful and not pernicious . In a similar way, Turgenev was a writer in many ways not con genial to Vajansky. But Vajansky had his own individuality and was a great enough artist to take from Turgenev what he needed . And he incorporated that something into his own distinct art. NOTES See, e. g., Jan V . Novak and Arne Novak, Pfehledn e dejin y literatury ceske (Olomouc, 1936-39), p. 82 1; Andrej Mraz , Dejiny slovensk ej literatury, Slovenska vlastiveda , Vol. 1, Literatura a jazyk (Bra tislava: Sloven ska Akademia vied a umenf, 1948), p . 214; Slovenska Akademia Vied, Ustav slovenskej li te ra tury, D ejin y slovenskej literatury, III (Bra tislava, 1965), 630-31 a nd passim . ' See Ludovft Stur , 0 narodnich pisnich a povestech plemen slovanskych (Prague , 1853). I Presented in Panel 65, "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asilomar, California on 21 September 1981. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1982-83, Vol. 30 Description An account of the resource Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Slovak League of America Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 92 SLOVAKIA Vajansky and Turgenev Willia m E. H a rkin s It h as bee n said th a t literature feeds on lite rature m o re tha n it d oes on life, b y which it is m eant th a t a writer finds it m o re diffi cult to work directl y from life a nd tran sla te living expe rience directly into verbal a rt. Whe n o ne's source s a re them selves wo rd s a nd verb al fo rms, no act of tra n sla tion is required. The new " intertex tu al " approach to the semiotic stud y of literature wo uld seem to co nfirm this t ruth. It is a truism of Slovak literary history tha t the writer Svetozar Hurba n V aj a nsky was stro n gly influ en ced b y Ru ssian literature, a nd in parti cul a r b y Turgen ev. 1 Hurba n V aj a n sky st ands in th at nin eteen th- century Slovak ideological traditio n which turned its back on the W est , a nd specifically on the C zechs, a nd sou ght instead to find a n ideological base in Ru ss ian cul ture a nd Ru ssia n lite rature . T hi s pa per is inte nded to explore the questio n o f the exte nt o f Hurba n V aj a n sky's d epe nde nce o n Turge nev a nd to ve ntu re a n expla n a tio n of why Turge nev's le gacy was a suita ble bas is for V aj a n sky's w ritin gs . I will analyze V ajan sky' s most famous and probably his greatest novel , Su ch a. ratolest'(T he Dry B ranch , 1884) , as well as several o f his co untry sketches from the collectio n N a Basna.rovom kopci a ine crty (On Basnarov Hill a nd Other Sketche s, 1880-1 883) . At first sight it would seem that Tu rge nev wo uld h ave had ve ry little to o ffer the Slovak writer. V aj a n sk y was a n aggressive , d etermined a nd zealou s fi ghte r in the Slovak n atio n al cau se, him self witho u t hesita tio n a nd w ithout the intellectu al rese rvatio n s so typi cal of Tu rge nev's heroes. The them e o f n at io na lism is weak in Ru ss ia n Lite ra ture , pa rtl y becau se write rs did not iden ti fy th em selves with the R ussia n tsarist regim e, pa rtly b ecau se Ru ssia n n a tion a lism and na tio nal independence co uld be taken for gr a nted . T he sam e thing is tru e, of co urse, for En gli sh , Ame rican , o r Fre nch liter a ture, in which na tio na li st a nd p atriotic the m es a re no rmally weak , a nd in which a nti-na tion alist w riters are even kn ow n (Celine , M a ile r , etc.). Bu t in Ru ssia n li terature th e them e of natio n alism is alm os t pathologicall y weaken ed ; the reaso ns fo r this pheno m eno n mu st be sou gh t in Ru ssia 's unique spiritual and id eological develop ment . The a mbivalence of Turgenev's heroes would likewise seem SLOVAKIA 93 to offer little to Vajansky, who was in part see kin g to create p rototyp es for n a tional lead ership. Th e search for a lead e r is a Turge n evan the me , o f course, but in Turgenev would-be lead er after lead e r goes d own to d efeat: Rudin , L avreckij , ln sarov , Bazarov, Nezdanov. I will return to these points presently , but first let us look at Vajansky ' s n ovel, Sucha ratolest'. The h ero of the novel is Stani slav Rudopol'sky, the la ndless heir of a n ancient n oble family o f la ndowne rs . Stanislav's father, impoverished, h ad turned from the ancient noble ways to foll ow a middle -class ex iste n ce as a governm en t official. Through indu stry a nd sob riety he accumul ated a con siderable fo rtune, which h e left to his son Stani slav , a youn g m a n with arti st ic inclin ations and tale nts and n ow e ndowed with e n ough wealth to cultivate these. H e return s h o m e to dwell in his an cestral m ansion in the provin cial town of Rudopolie . H e re he vacillates between two women: one the wife of his b est friend a nd the model for a great spiritualized portrait h e is p ainting which m ay vaguel y symbolize the Slovak people a nd its aspirations ; the o ther, a flirt a tiou s widow. The n ovel fin ally resolves the conflict b y transmittin g his affect io n for hi s friend's wife into spiritu al love a nd a rtistic creativ ity , thus leaving him to the wi dow , w h o turns out , in spite of h e r initi al capriciousness, to b e full y worthy of him . At first Stanislav is indiffere nt to the Slovak nation al cau se, which h e regards as a historical blind alley, but h e is ultimately brou ght through his frie ndship with Slovak p atriots to a tru e sense of the value and significan ce o f that cau se. Thus h e becomes what must h ave been a historical rarity: a zeman (squire) who is pro-Slovak and anti-Magyar. But we must remember that h e is landl ess and th at h e belongs essentially to th e middle class rath er t h an to th e gentry: in this Vajansky seems to be say in g th at the future hope of Slovakia lay in the middl e-class intelli ge ntsia and in the towns. Stanislav fight s a duel with the local leader of th e Magyar nationalist party: this is purely symbolic; in the duel he is n early k illed but a lso su cceeds in wounding hi s antagonist. Finally h e is nursed back to h ealth by the widow, and the novel ends w ith an opti mi stic, up-beat conclus io n . The title phrase, "Such a ratolest', " " dry branch," is applied to Stan islav , both by other ch aracters a nd by h imself. I t impli es his roo tlessness and purposel essness , qualiti es wh ich he feels strongly; at the e nd of the novel he would see m , however , to have transcended these qualities . Still, the novel has usu a ll y been taken as an ev idence th a t the 94 SLOVAKIA zemans had nothing to contribute to the Slovak nationalist cause (just as the Russian critic Dobroljubov took the novel Oblomov as a concrete evidence that the Russian gentry could not supply national leadership). The point remains ambiguous, and we must note here that this kind of ambiguity is quite typical of Turgenev ' s heroes. Rudin talks like a leader but is incapable of acting; Lavreckij too talks nobly but never acts; Insarov is killed off before he has an opportunity to lead ; Bazarov is a born leader but has no cause to lead, and he too is killed off to make doubly certain that the revolution will not come in hi s time. Just so Stanislav, or Stano as the author usually calls him , has a personal spiritual developme nt which is said to be fruitful, but that development seems to imply only fruitlessness for the national cause: the true ~ovak patriots and leaders in the novel are Stano's friends and not Stano. The point is furth er obscured in Vajansky' s romantic treatment of Stano as a painter: his activity is entirely idealized and spiritualized as artistic creation . We can read this as symbolic, but still the novel is too realistic (it co ntains an entire chapter describing an election, for instance), to permit us really to identify Stano ' s art as a symbol of the national struggle. Indeed , there is much in Stano which we could identify as "superfluity, " in the Russian tradition of the lisnij celovek or superfluous man . Essentially good, Stano is also fruitless and without purpose. H e vacillates in his love life. He almost gets killed in a duel. Only his art enables him to transcend lisnost' or superfluity. But is Vajansky's novel really so dependent on Turgenev as the critics have thought? Some general features do seem to resemble Turgenev: the treatment of landscape ( though Vajansky' s countryside is brighter and less somber than Turgenev's); the theme of a stranger returning home to the country to live there (Lavreckij, Bazarov); the theme of superfluity and the ambigu ity in its treatment; last perhaps, the theme of art, though actually it is not so typical of Turgenev as we might have supposed. Finally Vajansky , most unfortunately , e nded his novel with a virtual paraphase of the endi ng of Turgenev's Fathers and Children: the description of the cemetery in which Bazarov rests (in Sucha ratolest' the dead woman is Anna, one of the novel's three h eroines). But in fact Vajansky was not really very d ependent on Turgenev. Before discussing the novel 's independence, however, we should attend to several aspects that recall Pushkin rather than Turgenev. First, the SLOVAKIA 95 trait of superfluity is as typical for Pu shkin as it is for Turgen ev, though in Pushkin it is d epicted with considerably less ambiguity . The theme of art is also Pushkinian , thou gh it must be said that Pushkin does not romanticize it the way Turgenev and Vajansky do . Several motifs involving Stano and the young orphan girl Anna recall Pushkin's Eugene On egin. As in On egin , a cultivated stranger comes to dwell in the countryside and makes a strong impression on a rathe r n aive native girl. As in On egin , the girl 's naivete is brought out throu gh the fact that she lacks discrimination in her choice of reading matter; specifically , the use of a library and books to assess character recalls Pushkin , though he used these for Onegin himself, for the hero , not the hero in e . There is a scene in which Anna , unable to sleep , gazes at the moon , as Tatyana does in Pushkin 's novel in verse. Finally, the duel in Vajansky's novel is som ewhat cl oser to the duel in On egin than it is to Bazarov' s duel wi th Pavel Kirsanov. But even in these d etails V aj a nsky shows great independence. Anna is impressed by Stano , but in the end she realizes his weakness and ambivalence a nd is repell ed by him , a nd the great bulk ofVajansky's novel is indepe nde nt both of Pushkin a nd Turgenev . If we look first of all at the n ovel 's st ructure, we a re impressed almost staggered - by V aj a n sky's originality. H e shows a freed om of con struction th at is truly amazing : without transitions he m oves from scene to scene, character to character, episode to episode. Events occur for which we are totally unprepared . Compared with Turgen ev, or Pushkin , his structure seems wild , formless , a rtl ess. These writers organize their materi al into tight structural units which themselves ha ve beginnings, middles and endi n gs. They operate with a restricted group of ch aracters in th e la te stages of their works. Vaj ansky can introdu ce a n ew ch aracter anyw here or at any time he wishes , nor does h e feel an obli gation to carry all hi s characters - even the importa nt ones - right down to the novel 's end. It would not be correct to say that Vajan sky' s novel is plotless it has a pl ot which, if less in scope than that of Pushkin 's Onegin could probably be compa red with T urge n ev's Smoke , or even Rudin . But in a certain sense, nothing h a ppens in Vajansky's novel with but one except ion: symbolic events occu r. Stano transcend s his attraction to his fri e nd 's wife. H e fi ghts a duel. Th e orphan Anna goes blind a nd dies. To a ttempt a more precise definition: th e realistic side of Vajan- 96 SLOVAKIA sky's novel lacks a plot stru cture . A second kind of event can occur which is radically unTurgenevan : this is the action of social groups: tavern brawls, demonstrations , election s held under conditions of corrupt ion. There is a far deeper sense of society in Vajansky' s fiction than in either Pushkin or Turgenev, and in this he was more of a realist. Presumabl y he had undergo ne the influ en ce of positivist philosophy, which turned its a ttent ion to society and created the new scien ce of sociology. Vajansky's "formlessn ess " would hardly have appealed to cultivated nineteenth-century readers . They would have preferred the powerful sense of form of a Pushkin , or the delicate understatement of a Turgenev. But to o ur times Vajansky's impatience with the constraints of form seems origin al and refreshing. I t h as often been said that Vajansky depicted a Slovak society that never ex isted, that is idealized. Yet in Sucha ratolest' that Slovak society hardl y appears a s idealized: it is dru nken , given to brawling, easily corrupted by bribes and drink. What Vajansky seems to intend here is a kind of dialectic opposition : ideal leaders will lead the people, brutalized by the Magyar oppress io n , to liberty . It is in suffi cient to say, then, that Vaj a nsky idealized Slovak society : in fact he gives us invaluable glimpses of life in a small Slovak country town of the day . The chapter depicting the elections is a masterly portrait that recalls, in its sordidness a nd detail , an American election of the ninetee nth or even twentieth century. Drink, arbitra ry challenges to the voters , repeat votin g - the familiar techniques of election control are all vividl y described. Thus Vajansky' s novel vacillates amb iguously be tween realism and id ealism . But the ambiguity is artistically fruitful and creative. In the years 1880- 1883 Vaj a n sky published a few sketch es of peasant a nd country life. The se sketch es, republish ed la ter in coll ected form unde r the titl e o f Na Basnarovom k opci a in e crty (On Basna rov Hill a nd Oth e r Ske tches), a re a m o n g hi s strongest a nd m os t ori ginal works, and it can o nly be re gretted th at he did not produ ce mo re exampl es of th e genre . T he form o fV ajan sky's sketch d e ri ves, o f co urse, from Turgenev , whose Sportsman ·s Sketches, pu bli shed in 1852, a re perh aps th a t writer 's stron ges t work. Lik e Turge nev , V ajan sky se ts hi s sketches in th e countrys id e, a nd th ey d ispl a y a stron gly im agisti c tre nd in th e d epi cti o n bo th of la nd scape a nd th e p easant cha racter s who pop ul a te it . In the sketches o f bo th w riters a n a rrator a ppears as a pe rce iver, a nd the di stan ce be- SLOVAKIA 97 tween his perceiving eye and the peasants he views creates a subtle irony, one that does not , however , undercut the warm lyricism of the style and m anner. T u rgenev ' s narrator is a gentleman proprietor and hunter ; Vaj an sky's is (presum a bly) a middle-class intellectual turning his attention to the life of the Slovak peasantry. The ideological point of this is never m ade specific, bu t it was pa tently implicit in the political logic of the times: the Slovak intellectu als were waitin g for the d awn of political consciou sness am ong the peasantry. In the first of these sketches, " On Basna rov Hill ," the ideological mom ent is most incisive , though its intrusiveness detracts from the sketch artisti cally. A peasant m other and her younger son lam ent the cruelty of the elder son who has cast the widowed m other out with out provision for support. In her conversation she turns to attack Slovak officials , whom as a peasan t she di stru sts . V aj an sky, overhearing her , interrupts to de fend those offi cials who are Slovak nationalists. But the distinction is los t on the old woman , who has little political or national consciousness. She simply tu rns her back on his appeal. T hi s argum en t is of course quite un-Turgenevan ; Turgenev the hun ter m ay speak to the peasants, but he d oes not harran gu e them ; indeed , Tu rge nev is a master of understa tem en t and this q u ality Vajansky was perha ps un a ble to ass imila te, as we have already seen in the case of Su cha ra tolest'. But V ajan sky is capa ble o f creating im ages as powe rful and movin g as those of T u rgenev . P erh a ps the fines t of his sketcties is the one called " Hlasnik " (The Night W atchman): a movin g im agistic portrayal of a peasan t watchm an 's round s at nigh t, in te rtwined with hi s service to a dead m an fo r whom he digs a grave and whose bod y he later visits. With vivid depict ion of both the m ovem ent of the watchma n ' s round s and hi s calls th rough the night on his horn , the piece is a m asterpiece of mood im agery th at recall s the fin est sketches of Tu rgen ev such as "The Singe rs" or " Bezin M eadow," but d oes not imi tate them except in th e m ost ge neral way . In fac t , none of Vajansky' s ind ividual sketches recalls an y specific sketch b y T urgenev. Vaj an sky's land scape is too differe nt , a nd Slovak society too d ist inct. Vajan sky has perfectly ad apted th e Turgenevan ske tch and u sed it in the cause of Slovak li terature and Slovak ideology. We are now in a better pos ition to answer the ques tion we posed at the ou tset : what qu a:ities in T urgenev appealed to Vajansky and per- 98 SLOVAKIA suaded him to use elements taken from Turgenev 's work? The question should be asked in the light of the almost total difference we have found between the two writers, in personality, artistic temperament , psychology of character creation and development, optimism and pessimism, artistic structure. Still, there was something in Turgenev 's work, whether Vajansky realized it consciously or not, which Vajansky found of creative use . I suggest that this was that very ambiguity of treatment of ideological heroes by Turgenev which attracted Vajansky to his work. This in spite ofVajansky's much greater aggressiveness, his nationalism, his greater optimism . For tl;ie fact was that the Slovak cause was going nowhere in the 1880's. Though it might well have been that eventually it would go somewhere , it seemed bogged down - and this is the view Vajansky embodies in Sucha ratolest' in his chapter on the elections. Hence it was necessary to create characters who were "superfluous," who could achieve nothing in the present, yet characters capable of success, at least in an idealized dimension projected into the future . Turgenev had done the same thing: Bazarov is a born leader capable of reforming Russia, yet he is a leader without real followers and he comes at a time that is premature . The other common feature between Turgenev's writings and those of Vajansky is that of a passive human mass, the peasantry, needing to be awakened and educated . This is perhaps the only point where Turgenev's ideology acquires a nationalist tinge: Russia's peasantry holds her back, prevents her proper development : hence , it is necessary to educate the peasantry. In Vajansky the peasantry, and to some extent the town masses, play a similar role . It is necessary to win these masses over if the Slovak cause is to succeed. Following their leader l:.udovft Stur, the Slovak patriots turned to Russia because they perceived the West, including the Czechs , as decadent. They were influenced in this by Herder's prophecy of the future greatness of the Slavs, a prophecy Herder had specially made for the Eastern Slavs on the basis of his stay in Riga. Stur also noted that the closeness of kinship and family ties, so important to the Slovaks, was duplicated among the Eastern Slavs but not among the Czechs. 1 This began a Slovak turn toward Russia and Russian culture that was beneficial for the development of the nascent Slovak literature , if it was probably harmful to the development of the Slovak national ideology. SLOVAKIA 99 It is perhaps ironic that , motivated by considerations such as warmth of emotionality and closeness of kinship ties, V ajansky should have turned to writers like Pushkin and Turgenev, who, among Russians, were to be regarded as Westerners. Curiously, the Slovak leaders hardly knew the Russian Slavophiles, and their influence was perceptible only later. Yet, clearly the Slovak writers were seeking something they could use, and the precise source was not important. It is remarkable that when artists such as Edouard Manet or Vincent van Gogh or Mary Cassat turned to Japanese art for inspiration , they found woodblock prints of grim acin g actors and simpering courtesans , rather than the infinitely more subtle and more sophisticated art of such J a panese schools as the Rimp a or Shijo schools. Yet apparently Manet, Van Gogh , or Mary Cassat kn ew what they were looking for, and they rejected what they could not use; thus they succeeded in making that Japanese influence fruitful and not pernicious . In a similar way, Turgenev was a writer in many ways not con genial to Vajansky. But Vajansky had his own individuality and was a great enough artist to take from Turgenev what he needed . And he incorporated that something into his own distinct art. NOTES See, e. g., Jan V . Novak and Arne Novak, Pfehledn e dejin y literatury ceske (Olomouc, 1936-39), p. 82 1; Andrej Mraz , Dejiny slovensk ej literatury, Slovenska vlastiveda , Vol. 1, Literatura a jazyk (Bra tislava: Sloven ska Akademia vied a umenf, 1948), p . 214; Slovenska Akademia Vied, Ustav slovenskej li te ra tury, D ejin y slovenskej literatury, III (Bra tislava, 1965), 630-31 a nd passim . ' See Ludovft Stur , 0 narodnich pisnich a povestech plemen slovanskych (Prague , 1853). I Presented in Panel 65, "The Village in Slovak Literature ," at the AAASS convention in Asilomar, California on 21 September 1981.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vajanský and Turgenev Description An account of the resource William E. Harkins Slovakia, Vol. 30 (No. 55-56), 1982-83 pp. 92-99 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harkins, William Edward, 1921-2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-83 LCNAF+dates