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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
In the modern era, the institution of literature is being reconceived across Europe as a national institution. But the new paradigm of national literatures requires a remaking of literary discourse, including the transformation of critical terminology, and this results in literary discourse becoming politicized. By analyzing the history of the term libozvučnost (melodiousness) in the Czech national literary revival, David L. Cooper demonstrates how this seemingly innocent literary term became a political lightening rod for friends pursuing the same national program. This strongly suggests that, in the formative era of national literatures, using literary issues to discuss politics is not simply a matter of instrumentalizing literary criticism for covert political activity but that discussing literary values is directly political. The example of libozvučnost also reveals how the “borrowed“ discourses of Romanticism and nationalism were fundamentally remade to respond to the modern Czech situation.
Initial research for this article was supported by a PepsiCo/Harriman Institute Summer Travel Fellowship. An early version of the article benefited from discussion at the Sixth Michigan Czech Workshop in Ann Arbor in 2005. Thanks to Tomas Hlobil for encouraging me to pursue this topic further.
1. This transformation seemed to gain its initial momentum in the late seventeenthcentury French quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. See Patey, Douglas Lane, “Ancients and Moderns,” in Nisbet, H. B. and Rawson, Claude, eds., The Eighteenth Century, vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (Cambridge, Eng., 1997), 32–71, esp. 44-46,66-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. For an overview of some of the history of the term, see Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 8–9 Google Scholar. For a broad discussion of Czech concepts of nation in the Czech revival, see Macura, Vladimír, Znamení zrodu: České ndrodní obrození jako kulturní typ, rev. ed. (Prague, 1995), 153-69.Google Scholar
3. Bausinger, Hermann, Formen der “Volkspoesie” (Berlin, 1968), 14.Google Scholar
4. Cf. Bhabha, Homi K., “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Bhabha, Homi K., ed., Nation and Narration (New York, 1990), 1–7 Google Scholar. Although I have found Bhabha's suggestions useful, I have reservations about what appears to be an attempt to treat national discourse in general in a deconstructive manner, rather than to provide a critical reading of any particular nadonal discourse.
5. Prešpurk is one version of the period name Czech and Slovak speakers used for Bratislava, here taken from the volume's title page. On the renaming of the city, see Bugge, Peter, “The Making of a Slovak City: The Czechoslovak Renaming of Pressburg/Pozsony/Prešporok, 1918-19,” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 205-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. In the commonly accepted periodization of the Czech revival, Jungmann dominates the second period (1806-1830), during which greater demands were placed on Czech literature to aspire to the highest artistic levels and the major outlines of national revival ideology were developed. In Miroslav Hroch's well-known generalization of this periodization for the national movements of small European nations, this corresponds to the first part of Phase B in the national movement, when a small group of intellectual activists begin to agitate for the creation of a nation. Defining literary values for the national literature was an important task in developing an appealing national ideology. On periodization, see Vodička, Felix, “Úvod,” in Vodička, Felix, ed., Dějiny české literatury, vol. 2, Literatura národního obrození (Prague, 1960), 9 Google Scholar; Miroslav Hroch, “From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe,” in Gopal Balakrishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation (London, 1996), 81; and Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, trans. Ben Fowkes (Cambridge, Eng., 1985), 22-24.
7. Jungmann, Josef, “Ojazyku českém: Rozmlouvání prvni,” and “O jazyku českém: Rozmlouvání druhe,” in Josef Jungmann, Boj o obrození národa: Vyborz dila, ed. Vodička, Felix (Prague, 1948), 27–30 and 31-50Google Scholar; Hanus, Josef, “Pavel Josef Šafařík,” in Oltuv slovník naučný (Prague, 1888-1909), 24:528.Google Scholar
8. Felix Vodička, “Slovo uvodní,” in Jungmann, Boj o obrození národa, 11.
9. Hanuš, “Pavel Josef Šafařík,” 530.
10. Foist, Vladimír, “Kollárovo pražské intermezzo,” in Kraus, Cyril, ed., Ján Kollár (1793-1993): Zborník studii (Bratislava, 1993), 108-20Google Scholar. Forst's evidence that his visits to Prague are the critical moment for Kollár is rather thin and must be weighed against the spirit that was clearly developing among lyceum students and the undeniable influence of his experiences in Jena. Vodička had argued that the Jena period was critical in Dějiny české literatury, 2:255-58. On Czech society of this period as a kind of club into which one had to be initiated, see Macura, Znamenizrodu, 118-29.
11. Forst, “Kollárovo pražské intermezzo,” 110.
12. For an overview of Jungmann's program, see Vodička, , Dějiny české literatury, 2:232-39.Google Scholar
13. Jungmann, “O jazyku českém: Rozmlouvání druhe,” 47.
14. Ibid., 49.
15. Forst, “Kollárovo pražské intermezzo,” 118.
16. Ibid., 117.
17. [Pavel Jozef Šafárik (= Šafařík) and František Palacký], Pocátkové českého básniclví obzvlášté prozódie (Bratislava, 1961), 57 (30). This edition provides the original pagination, which will be given in parentheses in all further references.
18. See the overview of these defenses in Hugh LeCaine Agnevv, Origins of tlie Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh, 1993), 53ff. This survey is particularly valuable because many of the original texts are not readily available or easily accessible.
19. Quoted in Albert Pražák, Národ se bránil, obrany ndroda a jazyka českého od nejstarších dob po pntomnosli (Prague, 1945), 144. The original textis in German; many of the defenses of Czech were written in German. The use of libozvučnost in the Czech translation may or may not correspond to Wohlklang in the German. My lack of access to the original texts of these defenses made the question of developments in terminology difficult to address. In the 1820s, libozvučnost became a focus term in Czech. Whether this is a result of the influence of Počátkové or whether the discussion had coalesced around this term earlier is hard to determine. Certainly, as we shall see, Dobrovský used Wohlklang repeatedly. It is worth noting that those defending the Czech language mobilized a German discourse. While the Germans had been and still were defending their language against French detractors, the Czechs used the resources of German defenses to defend against German detractors. Klopstock, who is both the hero and villain of Palacký and Šafařík's discussion of German metrics, had defended German against French attacks as recently as in his 1794 Crammatische Gespräche, the third dialogue of which, under the title “Der Wohlklang,” compared the German and Greek languages and looked for common words. Blackall, Eric A., The Emergence of German as a Literary Language, 1700-1775 (Cambridge, Eng., 1959), 326-27.Google Scholar
20. Dobrovský, Josef, “Böhmische prosodie,” in Heřman, Miroslav, ed., Lilerární a prozodická bohemika (Prague, 1974), 77.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., 93.
22. [Šafařík and Palacký], Počátkové, 94 (91).
23. Ibid., 96(94-95).
24. Ibid., 97 (95-96).
25. Ibid., 98 (97).
26. Ibid., 99(98-99).
27. Ibid., 99 (99).
28. Ibid., 48 (16).
29. Ibid., 56(28).
30. The Slovesnost project was begun in 1816 in response to a government decree that seemed to promise mandatory instruction in Czech in the gymnasia. It is the first extensive handbook of literary theory and poetics in Czech, thus a representative work of Jungmann's linguistic project, for it introduces a number of new terms into Czech in order to make the language capable of this abstract discourse. In this case, the term did not entirely take. In contemporary Czech, skladba is the term for composition or syntax, while skladnost refers to the space-saving or synthetic character of a thing. Even the title of the volume borrows a Russian term for literature, and a term that was deeply involved in Russian debates over their national language and literature. Admiral Aleksandr Shishkov in his 1803 Rassuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka (Discourse on the old and new style in the Russian language) had opposed Rossiiskaia slovesnost (Russian literature) to frantsuzskaia literatura (French literature) and argued that the modeling of the literary language and literary genres on the French example introduced a foreign spirit into Russian letters. David Lee Cooper, “Inventing a National Literature: Czech and Russian Criticism, 1800-1830” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004), 52-60.
31. Jungmann, Josef, Slovesnost aneb sbirka pfildadu s krdtkym pojedndnim o slohu (Prague, 1820), xxv.Google Scholar
32. Given the correspondence, one might wonder whether Jungmann did not massage this section a bit in translating from his constant source, Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz (see below for a further discussion ofjungmann's use of this source). Karel Hikl gives Jungmann's sources in Pölitz for this section and notes that “what Pölitz discusses concerning the ‘numeri,’ symmetry, and libozvučnost ﹛Klang) of poetic discourse Jungmann adopts in his usual condensing and shortening way.” Karel Hikl, ‘Jungmannova Slovesnost a jejf pfedlohy,” Listy filologicke 38 (1911): 433. This is, then, a fine example of how Pölitz's writings appealed to the Czechs for the direct manner in which he addressed their concerns. Still, the choice of the term libozvučnost to translate Klang and not Wohlklang points to Jungmann's adaptive method, with an eye for making Pölitz fit.
33. J [an] K[ollár], “Myšlénky o libozwučnosti řečj wubec, obzwláste českoslowanské,“ Krok1.no. 3 (1823): 32.
34. Ibid., 33. Macura notes that the Czech revivalists frequently adopted contradictory conceptual stances on the Czech language, to the point that even the same person could advocate entirely opposite opinions in different circumstances. But far from all of these variations developed into actual differences of opinion. More important was the valence of a particular stance in a given set of circumstances, its value in the economy of Czech emancipatory efforts. Macura, Znameni zrodu, 31-41. Here, too, the consequences of Kollár's line of argumentation were more important than his principles. Although Jungmann disagreed with Kollár, Jungmann never questioned the principles from which Kollár argued.
35. K[ollár], “Myšlénky o libozwučnosti,” 33. Emphasis in the original.
36. Josef Dobrovský, “Uber den Wohlklang der Slawischen Sprache, mit besonderer Anwendung auf die Bohmische Mundart,” Slovanka 2 (1815): 1-67. In this article, Dobrovský spends much of his time attributing the insertion and removal of vowels in Czech and other Slavic languages, which were later shown to be the result of the “fall of the jers,“ to aesthetic considerations of sound. Ant. Frinta, “Dobrovský—fonetik,” in Jiff Horak, Matyas Murko, and Milos Weingart, eds., Josef Dobrovský 1753-1829, sbornik stati k stemu vyroci smrtijosefa Dobrovskeho (Prague, 1929), 93.
37. [Šafařík and Palacký], Počátkové, 99 (100).
38. K[ollár], “Myšlénky o libozwučnosti,” 41-43.
39. Ibid., 40.
40. Ibid., 41. v
41. Not that Šafařík and Jungmann had given up on the greater Slavic project. Throughout the 1820s and into the 1830s Šafařík would encovirage other Slavic literary cultures to adopt a quantitative basis for their poetry, as a means of bringing their literary cultures closer together. Mikulas Bakos, “'Pocatkove českého basnictvi, obzvlaste prozodie' a ich vyznam vo vyvine českéj a slovenskej poezie,” in [Šafařík and Palacký], Pocatkove, 20- 21. For an overview in English of Šafařík and Kollár's creation of a “myth of Slavness,” with emphasis on the mid-1820s on, see Pynsent, Robert, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest, 1994), 44–99.Google Scholar
42. Kollár, Jan, Prózy, vol. 2 of Vybrané spisý, ed Tichí, F. R. (Prague, 1956), 209.Google Scholar
43. Ibid., 214.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 218. The publication of songs in the Slovak dialect is thus conceived not at all as a part of the development of a separate Slovak literary language (a project to which it, nonetheless, contributed significantly) but rather as a suggestion of the contribution one dialect could make to a greater Slavic literary language.
46. Ibid., 216. In this article, Kollár uses the adjective “Czechoslovak” [československý] for the language and literature, as opposed to the more common “Czechoslav” [československý], which he used in the libozvučnost article.
47. Ibid., 217.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 219.
50. See Macura, Znamenizrodu, 209-10.
51. Quoted in Bakos, “'Pocatkove českého basnictvi,'” 28.
52. J[osef] J[ungmann], “O klasicnosti literatury vtibec a zvlaste české,” Casopis českého musea, 1827, no. 1: 29-39. Jungmann's title once again echoes Kollár's, which had echoed Dobrovský's. This form of title was enjoying a kind of fashion at the time, but the echo here seems to be deliberate: Palacký changed Jungmann's original title, which was “On Klasicnost of Literature and Its Importance.“
53. Josef Jungmann, “O klasicnosti literatury a dtilezitosti jeji,” in Jungmann, Boj o obrození, 102.1 will cite from this edition, which is a reprint of Jungmann's original version of the article, before Palacký edited it for publication and to pass the censor. Changes in the published version relevant to my argument will be noted below.
54. See Hikl, ‘Jungmannova Slovesnost,” 350-52. Tomas Hlobil has suggested that Jungmann's use of Pölitz is part of a broader pattern of important ties between Prague and the university in Leipzig, where Pölitz was educated and taught. Jungmann's influential professor of aesthetics in Prague, August Gottlieb Meissner, had been educated in Leipzig. See Hlobil, Tomas, “Ossianism in the Bohemian Lands,” Modern Language Review 101, no. 3 (July 2006): 792-12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Šafařík, too, in the Počátkové volume, made use of Pölitz's writing for general questions of aesthetics; moreover, he stopped in Leipzig on his way back from Jena in 1817 to seejohann Gottfried Hermann, author of Handbuch der Metrik (1799) and Elementa doctrinae melricae (1816), who provided him with ammunition for his attacks on the German syllabotonic system. Bakos, “'Pocatkove českého basnictvi,'” 14.
55. This is Mojmfr Otruba's characterization in relation to Slovesnost. Otruba, Mojmir, “Josef Jungmann,” in Foist, Vladimir, ed., Lexikon české literatury (Prague, 1993), 2.1: 582 Google Scholar. For a general discussion of Jungmann's translations of learned discourse, see Macura, Znameni zrodu, 61-78.
56. Pölitz, Karel Heinrich Ludwig, Das Gesammtgebiet der teutschen Sprache, nach Prosa, Dichtkunst und Beredsamke.it theoretisch und practisch dargestellt (Leipzig, 1825), 1:24.Google Scholar
57. Jungmann, “O klasicnosti literatury,” 106.
58. As we saw earlier, in the Slovesnost volume from 1820 Jungmann translated Pölitz's Klangas libozvučnost in order to make's, connection to Palacký and Šafařík's discourse.
59. Blahozvucnost itself is a neologism, as is ndrodovost. A separate story could be told concerning this latter term. Jungmann's use of two distinct terms in the article, ndrodovost and ndrodnost, was eliminated by Palacký—in the edited version, the only term used is ndrodnost, and the final section of the article, in which Jungmann discusses narodnost, has been cut. Jungmann seems again to be diversifying the Czech vocabulary, reserving the term ndrodnost for Nationalitdt while looking for another word to translate the German terms Volkstiimand Volkstumlichkeit. In his 1813 translation of excerpts from F. L.Jahn's Z)as Deutsche Volkstum, Jungmann used yet another form, ndrodstvi, to translate the title. But later usage confirms Palacký's instincts here. By the time of Jungmann's Czech-German dictionary (volume 2 was published in 1836), narodnost was clearly the term in use, and narodovost is listed only as an alternative, while narodstvf is not to be found. Jungmann, Josef, Slovnik cesko-nemecky (Prague, 1836), 2:611-12.Google Scholar
60. Berkov, P. N., “A. N. Radishchev kak kritik,” VestnikLeningradskogo universiteta, 1949, no. 9:66-71Google Scholar; Lotman, Iurii M., “A. F. Merzliakov kak poet,” in Merzliakov, A. F., Stikhotvoreniia, 2d ed. (Leningrad, 1958), 42–43 Google Scholar.
61. Cooper, “Inventing a National Literature,” 147-54.
62. The classic study of these debates is Iurii N. Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory (Leningrad, 1929).
63. Blackall, Emergence of German, 114.
64. Ibid., 97-101, 112-13, 314-50.
65. Ibid., 143-44.
66. Lencek, Rado L., “Kopitar's Slavic Version of the Greek Dialects Theme,” in Zbirnyk na poshanu profesora doktora Iuriia Shevelova = Symbolae in honorem Georgii Y. Shevelov (Munich, 1971), 252 Google Scholar.
67. Ibid., 246. See also Rado L. Lencek and Henry R. Cooper Jr., eds., Papers in Slavic Philology 2, To Honor Jernej Kopitar 1780-1980 (Ann Arbor, 1982), xv.
68. [Jernej Kopitar], “O Slowanskych nafecjch, a prostfedcych gim se navciti,“ Prvotiny peknych umeni (Duben, 1813), List 22: 83-86, List 23: 89-91. The translation is reprinted in Lencek and Cooper, eds., Papers in Slavic Philology 2, 229-34. Lencek, “Kopitar's Slavic Version,” 253. Lencek, writing in 1971, suggests at the end of the article that the integrational tendency in modern Serbo-Croatian might have been the only real practical implementation of Kopitar's Slavic ideology (255). Today, of course, the opposite tendency reigns.
69. See Macura, Znamenizrodu, 133-38.
70. On the development of the reciprocity program, see Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 55-57.
71. See Macura, Znameni zrodu, 137.
72. Maria Todorova's recent article in this journal is an important critique of the too common treatments of eastern European nationalism as derivative and backwards, because delayed. Maria Todorova, “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism,” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 140-64.
73. Vodička, “Uvod,” 9. In Hroch's scheme for the national movements of small nations, this corresponds to the second part of Phase B, when the national agitators begin to find a receptive audience. Hroch, “From National Movement,” 81.
74. Macura frequendy points out, correctly, how certain projects are in effect the creation of simulacra. But the projected reality of the simulacrum also responds to the particular Czech situation. Macura, Znameni zrodu, esp. 102-17.
