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provoke the reader’s sympathy for Hus and create a sense of injustice in the reader.
At first the attitude of the censor was so negative that he refused to give permission to publish as long as Palacký did not change his point of view concerning the historical period in question, and until the text was modified to agree with the official viewpoint of the church on this period. The analysis of the censor, which was attached to the censored text, was crammed with sharp invective toward Palacký and his views. Palacký’s response to this criticism of the Viennese censorship is well known.21 Even though the characterization of Hus on page 215 of the German edition had to be supplemented by the terms Rücksichtlosigkeit, Hartnäckigkeit, and unbiegsamer Eigensinn (Palacký did not add the fourth expression, Rechthaberei), the resolution of this argument was on the whole a victory for Palacký. Nevertheless, the text was subject to numerous changes, primarily in places where the author’s positive regard for Hus had to be toned down. The evidence of this are the numerous changes in stylistic formulations and the omission of entire passages in the text and notes. These were restored by Palacký in the Czech version of his History.22
Finally we approach the last aspect of the two versions, the aspect of their language.
It is unnecessary for us to read much of Palacký’s text to see that it was written by an excellent stylist, a master of Czech style. This reality will amaze us even more if we consider in depth the period during which Palacký wrote his work. During this period, the Czech language was slowly and with difficulty awakening from its long and deep sleep. Its orthographic and linguistic norms were therefore still very unsteady. The phonological and morphological forms were permeated with many dialectical elements, and the spoken language contained numerous Germanisms. The lexical wealth was small and quite inadequate for conveying complex ideas.
On the one hand, during this period the great Slavist, Josef Dobrovský, wrote only in German and doubted the ability of the Czech language ever to attain the level of other world languages in the scientific field. Even experts on the Czech language, such as Jungmann and Šafařík, struggled from time to time with Czech linguistic norms, and Svat. Presl had to supplement his Krok with a dictionary, to make his Czech understandable to his readers. On the other hand, there stands, alone, František Palacký, with his genuine and understandable language which enables him to express his complex philosophical thoughts clearly and plainly, with stylistic ease and fluency. He is able to form new words which do not
