Three Stories/Preface
PREFACE.
If the reader will take a map of the world and draw three lines, one from Venice to Dantzig, another from Constantinople to the White Sea, and a third from the Erz Mountains, west of Prague, to Kamschatka, he will be able to form some idea of the vast stretch of territory affected by Sclavonic civilization.
No confraternity of nations, not even the Anglo-Saxon, occupies so large a portion of the earth’s surface as the rapidly-increasing Sclavonic brotherhood.
On this account alone, if for no other reason, any attempt to bring home to English readers something of the inner life of some of these peoples is worthy of attention. Bohemian literature, moreover, has several special claims upon English readers. In the first place more than once the royal families of England and Bohemia have been united. Then again the country to some extent in its configuration and the variety of its strata, still more in its plethora of coal, ironstone, and other minerals has much in common with England. Bohemia has never broken entirely with the traditions of feudalism, and in the flourishing condition of its principalities and great-estates, the richness of its woodland, the abundance of its game, its fine breed of horses, and the excellence of its beer, we seem to see a copy of old England, and are reminded that similar causes produce similar effects: not that this is exactly true of the last item, however, which is at once milder and of purer quality than our own. Lastly, the religious struggles of the Reformation were fought out in Bohemia much on the same lines as in England, and while we may proudly claim some spiritual affinity between our own Protestant martyrs and the victims of Papal power in Prague, we are also reminded that in the national hero of Bohemia, John Hus, more than in any other of the great Protestant martyrs, were exhibited the most spotless purity of life, the most complete absence of self-seeking or worldly ambition, the most loyal devotion to duty, and the most simple and ready self-sacrifice in the cause of truth. The literature of a country which has produced the most perfect type of Christian piety which the world has yet seen, a man who of all others approximates most in his life and death to the originator of the Christian cult, merits something better than neglect at the hands of Christians steeped in the flimsy rhetoric of French triviality and the latest production of a civilization which was of no mean order while England still revelled in barbarism, might occasionally be exchanged with advantage for the endless verbiage of our own school of novels or the edifying lucrubations of Emile Zola, Gôethe, in a conversation with Eckerman, speaks with admiration of the simplicity and purity of the Bohemian writers, and since his time there has been a great re-awakening of the national spirit, and the language which had sunk to be a despised dialect of the common people of the towns and the peasantry of the rural districts, now claims half of the University of Prague, has its seat in one of the finest theatres in Europe, and is once more the proud mouthpiece of art and science.
The writer, some of whose stories are here brought to the notice of the English reading public, was one of those who helped on the attainment of this proud result. Palacky and Jungmanns aroused the interest of the people in their own history by publishing historical and antiquarian works in the vernacular. Cajetan Tyl is still remembered as a patriotic dramatist and writer of fiction, and Erben’s Sclavonic folk-lore has a general interest, but none of the Bohemian writers has caught so speaking a likeness of the inner life of the Bohemian people as Viteslav Halek, no one is remembered with such enthusiastic affection by all classes, or strikes so responsive a chord in the feelings of high and low. Already throughout Bohemia societies have been formed for the reading of his works, although he has not been dead fifteen years, and when I lodged in Smichoff with an honest Bohemian stonemason and his wife, I found it difficult to keep their hands off my copy of his stories. The more cultivated classes admire him for the simplicity of his style, and even the Germans are constrained grudgingly to acknowledge his merits. A complete edition of his works has indeed, been lately published in the original language edited by a writer, whom from his name (Ferdinand Schultz), I should judge to be a German.
These works consist of some half dozen dramas drawn chiefly from Sclavonic history, The first of these, Carevic Aleksej, was acted about the year 1860, and is modelled to some extent on Gôethe’s Egmont. For another, composed and brought out about the same time, (Kral Rudolf) the author had the honour of a short imprisonment at the hands of the Austrian Government. Sergius Catiline, Zavis z Falkenstjerna, Kral Vukasin (dealing with Servian history) and Amnon and Tamar are the names of his other dramas. They are all tragedies, and somewhat heavy reading. Amnon and Tamar, written in 1874, is the most powerful of them, but the subject is objectionable.
It is difficult for a foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of the language to judge correctly, but I should say that none of the other plays rise much above the level of Tennyson and Swinburne’s dramatic efforts. Most of them, however, are the work of the poet’s earlier years as a writer, and it is noteworthy that his latest works are far above those of a more youthful period, and this makes his somewhat premature death the more regrettable. These dramas fill two volumes. Another volume is devoted to lyrical pieces, ballads, and romances, written at different times between 1854 and 1870. A few samples are given in the present book of translations. These were most of them written in 1858. They are very popular in Bohemia. In fact a large number of them have been set to music and are now the ‘volks-lieder’ of the people. The student of Heine will observe that several of the ideas in these Bohemian poems have been adapted from the Jewish writer; for example, one of Halek’s lyrics beginning:
Nay marvel not if thou should’st hear
Schweigt still? wenn mein Herz es höretThe birds sing songs of thee, love, &c,
is a very close copy of Heine’s
Wer hat euch dies Wortlein gelehret
Ihr Vöglein in lustiger Höh?
Schweigt still? wenn mein Herz es höret
Denn thut es noch einmal so weh.
Es kam ein Jung-fräulein gegangen
Sie sang es immerfort
Da haben wir Vöglein gefangen
Das hubsche, goldene wort.
A wild poem by Heine, beginning
Schweigt still? wenn mein Herz es höretIch kam von meiner Herrin Haus
in which the dead are supposed to rise from their graves and recount to one another what brought them there is also twice imitated by Halek in his idyllic poems. Once ina scene in a poem called Alfred (1858) and again most elaborately in a poetical historical retrospect, Dedicove bile hory (1869).
This brings me to mention his volume of Idyllic poems written at different times between 1858 and 1871, some of which I judge to be the most perfect of his works. In the latest of these Idylls Devce z Tater (a maiden of the Carpathians) the splendour of the language and melody of the verse outshine that of any modern poet (Leopardi not excepted). The story is simple and interesting, the sentiment healthy, and the characters life-like; could it be adequately translated English critics would, I think, admit it to be one of the most perfect Idylls in any language. Krasna Lejla and Mejrima and Husejn, Turkish Stories in verse, (1859) and Alfred (a Czech romance) are also readable and highly poetical. Goar and Cerny prapor (the black flag) are the names of two others, A volume of prose stories written between 1857 and 1859 is of less interest.. The stories are diffuse, full of criticisms about art and Wagner’s music, the plot is slight and the characters commonplace. Two volumes of prose stories written at a much later period, a story called “In the cottage and on the estate,” and a volume or two of criticism comprise the rest of Halek’s works. One of these volumes of stories is here presented to the public in an English dress and of their merits the English reading public can therefore form its own opinion. The stories are for the most part translated literally and I must apologize for retaining here and there Bohemian words, sometimes where an English equivalent is wanting, sometimes, in order to give an idea of the character of the original language, which also means the character of the people who speak it. The stories have been twice revised. Once by a learned Bohemian Jew in Prague, to whom I read them aloud and who was kind enough to appreciate them in their English dress. “They are written from the heart to the heart,” he said. And again a second time by an English literary man to whom the sentiment of the stories was so obnoxious that he put his pen through about one third part of them. Most of his excisions I have rejected. In spite of these revisions I cannot hope to have avoided many errors of translation which I hope may be corrected by the critical reader; nor can I expect a wide circle of English readers. The stories appeal to a civilization developing on different lines from our own, and, although they are a true picture of Sclavonic life and sentiment, they will no doubt often appear to English readers fantastic and overstrained. It may be worth noticing, in passing, that ‘Poldik,’ the name of a character in one of the stories, is the diminutive of Leopold, and that of Bartos, in another of them, stands for Bartholomew.
He who can read between the lines will perceive in both these stories ingenious political allegories. These I will leave him to discover for himself, premising that in both the main idea is the maintenance of the Bohemian nationality against the encroachments of the centralizing Austrian power. The last story is based on a strange institution in the rural districts of Bohemia—that of “vejminkar.” In the case of small freehold estates or farms held on a long lease, the owner, as his sons grow up, pensions himself off; or, to put it differently, retires upon a settlement from the active management of the estate, in order that the eldest, youngest, or favorite son may marry and have the enjoyment of it. The pathetic fate of the village Lear in this story is an eloquent exposition of the abuses of the system which exists to this day in some parts of Bohemia.
I began this preface by pointing out what an immense portion of the globe forms the nidus of Sclavonic civilization, and as many people have very indefinite ideas about Slavism and its languages, it may not he amiss to conclude with a few remarks upon the Czech or Bohemian language and its relation to other Sclavonic dialects. As I do not profess to be a learned man, I have extracted the little I have to say on the subject from Mikes’s Russo-Czech grammar.
The Sclavonian nation, he writes, now contains eighty million souls, and is divided by its position into Southern, Eastern, and Western.
(1) The Cyrilian or Ancient Sclavonic used, like the Latin, but very much modified, as the language of the Church, by Russians, Servians, Bulgarians, and part of the Dalmatians.
(2) The Russian language divided into three slightly different dialects.
(b) Little Russian spoken by thirteen million people. And
(c) White Russian spoken by three million people.
II. South Sclavonic is divided into
(a) Servian spoken by five million people.
(b) Croatian spoken by one million people.
(c) Carinthian-Slovenian spoken by one million people.
(d) Bulgarian spoken by seven million people.
III. Western Sclavonic is divided into
(1) Polish employed by about ten million people.
(2) Czech divided into
(a) Cesko-Moravian spoken by over four million people.
and
(b) Hungarian-Slovenian spoken by two million people.
(3) Lusatian-Servian divided into Upper and Lower, and spoken by 150,000 people in Saxony.
I will not weary the reader by going over in detail the relationship of these languages to one another; suffice it to say that the Czech or Bohemian is most closely related to the Upper Lusatian, the Croatian and the Little Russian dialects. The Bohemians, like most of the Catholic and Western Sclavonians, use the Latin characters, and thus their language forms a good introduction to the study of the rest.
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