Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations Part 11

[Footnote 36: Schaffarik observes, _Geschichte_, p. 283, "The public library in the state-house was delivered to the Jesuits, who had just been introduced. The books which these did not commit to the flames on the spot, perished in the great conflagration in 1774, together with the edifice of their college. In all Carniola only two copies of Bohorizh's grammar are known to exist"]

[Footnote 37: _Grammatik der Slavischen Sprache in Krain, Karnthen, und Steyermark_, Laibach 1808.]

[Footnote 38: These are: V. Vodnik's _Pismenost ali gramm. saperve shole_, Laib. 1811. Metelko's _Lehrgelaude der Slovenischen Sprache_, 1825. Schmigoz _Theor. pract. wind. Sprachlehre_, Gratz 1812. P.

Dainko _Lehrbuch der wind. Sprache,_ Gratz 1825. Mali _Bezedniak Slovenskich_, Laibach 1834.]

[Footnote 39: _Slovenske pjesmi Krajnskiga Naroda_, Laibach 1839.]

CHAPTER III.

LANGUAGE OF THE BULGARIANS.

According to the opinion of the Russian, and especially of the Bohemian philologians, Bulgaria and the adjacent regions of Macedonia, are the real home of the Old Slavic language; which was here, as they suppose, the language of the people in the time of Cyril, who was born in Thessalonica.[1] No other Slavic dialect however, as Kopitar remarks, has been so much affected as the Bulgarian by the course of time and foreign influence, both in its grammatical structure and its whole character.[2] It has an article, which, as if in order to show whence it was borrowed, is put _after_ the word it qualifies, like that of the Walachians and Albanians. Of the seven Slavic cases, only the nominative and vocative remain to it; all the rest being supplied by means of prepositions. As Bulgaria has been for centuries the great thoroughfare of other nations, the Slavic natives have become mixed with Rumenians, Turco-Tartars, and perhaps Greeks, It is in this way, that the state of their language may be accounted for.

Up to 1392, when Bulgaria was an independent kingdom,--tributary to the Greek empire, until the decline of the latter encouraged them to break the weak tie of va.s.salage.--their writings were in the Old Slavic language; and many doc.u.ments in it are still extant in monastic libraries. Venelin, a young Russian scholar, who by his researches on the Bulgarian, or, as he would fain call it, the _Bolgarian_ language, had excited great hopes in the learned Slavic world, was sent in 1835 to Bulgaria, by the Russian Archaeographical Commission, to search, after historical doc.u.ments and to examine the language. The publication of a "Bolgarian Grammar," and two volumes of a "History of the Bolgarians," were the result. While engaged in preparing a third volume, he died; less regretted by the literary world, it is said, than would have been antic.i.p.ated some years before; since his productions had not justified the expectations raised by his zeal. He seems to have been one of those visionary etymologists, who found their conclusions on the a.n.a.logy of sound and similar accidental features; a cla.s.s of scholars, which, in our age of philosophical research, has no longer much chance of success.

The history of the Bulgarians is a series of continued warfare with the Servians, Greeks, and Hungarians, on the one hand; and on the other, with the Turks, who subdued them, and put an end to the existence of a Bulgarian kingdom in A.D. 1392. The people, first converted to Christianity by Cyril and Methodius, had hitherto adhered to the Greek church; except for a short interval in the last half of the twelfth century, when the Roman chair succeeded in bringing them under its dominion. Since the establishment of the Turkish government, apostasy to Muhammedanism has been more frequent in Bulgaria, than in any other of the Christian provinces of the Porte. Still, the bulk of the population has remained faithful to the Slavic Greek wors.h.i.+p. The scanty germs of cultivation sown among them by two or three of their princes, who caused several Byzantine works to be translated into the Bulgarian dialect, perished during the Turkish invasion. The few books used by the priesthood in our days, are obtained from Russia.

They have no trace of a literature, and the only point of view from which their language, uncultivated as it is, can excite a general interest, is in respect to their popular songs. In these this dialect likewise is said to be exceedingly rich.

The Russian Bible Society had prepared a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament, intended more especially for the benefit of the Bulgarian inhabitants of the Russian province of Bessarabia. But the specimen printed in 1823 excited some doubt as to the competency of the translator in respect to his knowledge of the Bulgarian language; and it was deemed advisable to put a stop to its further progress.

Among the Albanian portion of its inhabitants, the New Testament has been distributed by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

In the dearth of all philological helps in respect to the Bulgarian language, it is matter of grateful acknowledgment to Slavic scholars, that an American missionary, the Kev. E. Biggs, stationed at Smyrna, should recently have taken up the subject, and furnished us with a brief sketch of the princ.i.p.al features of the Bulgarian grammar. It seems that the Bulgarians have availed themselves of the printing establishment founded by the American missionaries at Smyrna; and some books in this language have been there printed. Mr. Kiggs says of the language, that "its literature is very slender, consisting almost entirely of a few elementary books, printed in Bucharest, Belgrad, Buda, Cracow, Constantinople, and Smyrna." A Bulgarian translation of Gallaudet's "Child's Book on the Soul," was sent by the same gentleman to New York. From the same source we learn that a Bulgarian version of the New Testament was printed at Smyrna in 1840, for the British and Foreign Bible Society; and that in 1844 the first number of a monthly magazine, ent.i.tled "Philology," was issued from the same press.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See above, pp. 27, 28.]

[Footnote 2: _Wiener Jahrbucher der Literatur_, 1822, Vol. XVII.]

PART III.

WESTERN SLAVI.

CHAPTER I.

CZEKHO-SLOVAKIAN BRANCH.

SECTION I

HISTORY OF THE CZEKHISH OR BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

Of all the Slavic languages, the Bohemian dialect with its literature is the only one, which, in the mind of the protestant reader, can escite a more than general interest. Not so much indeed by its own nature, in which it differs little from the other Slavic languages; but from those remarkable circ.u.mstances, which, in the night of a degenerate Romanism, made the Bohemian tongue, with the exception of the voice of Wickliffe, the first organ of truth. Wickliffe's influence, however great and decided it may have been, was nevertheless limited to the theologians and literati of the age; his voice did not find that responding echo among the common people, which alone is able to give life to abstract doctrines. It was in Bohemia, that the spark first blazed up into a lively flame, which a century later spread an enlightening fire over all Europe. The names of Huss and Jerome of Prague can never perish; although less success has made them less current than those of Luther and Melancthon. In no language of the world has the Bible been studied with more zeal and devotion; no nation has ever been more willing to seal their claims upon the Word of G.o.d with their blood. The long contests of the Bohemians for liberty of conscience, and their final destruction, present one of the most heart-rending tragedies to be found in human history. Not less ready to maintain their convictions with the pen than with the sword, the theological literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first twenty years of the seventeenth centuries, is of an extent with which that of no other Slavic language can be compared. It is true, however, that most of these productions bear decidedly the stamp of the period in which they were written. Dictated by the polemical spirit of the age, and for the most part directed by one protestant party against another, there is very little to be found in them to gratify the Christian, or from which the theological student of the present day could derive any other than historical instruction. On the other hand, while the theological literature of all the other Slavic nations is almost exclusively limited to sermons, catechisms, prayer-books, and other devotional exercises, among the Bohemians alone do we meet with cxegetical researches and interpretations, founded on a scientific examination of the original text of the Scriptures.

There are few branches of science or art in which the Bohemians have not to boast of some eminent name. But the talent for which this nation is the most distinguished is that of music A fondness for music and a natural gift to execute it is indeed common to all Slavic nations: but whilst their talent is mostly confined to a susceptible ear, and a skill in imitating,--for the Russians and Poles possess some celebrated musical _performers_ though very few distinguished _composers_,--the talent of the Bohemian is of a far higher order.

He unites the spirit of harmony which characterizes the Germans, with the sweet gift of melody belonging to the Italians, and thus seems to be the true _ideal_ of a complete musician. A great part of the most eminent names among German composers are Bohemians by birth; and there is hardly any thing which strikes the American and English traveller in that beautiful region more, than the general prevalence of a gift so seldom met with in their own countries.

Bohemia, until the sixth century was inhabited by a Celtic race, the Boii. After them the country was called _Boiohemnum,_ i.e., home of the Boii; in German still Boheim.[1] The Boii were driven to the south-west by the Markomanns; the Markomanns were conquered by the Lombards. After the downfall of the great kingdom of Thuringia in the middle of the sixth century, Slavic nations pushed forward into Germany, and the _Czekhes_ settled in Bohemia, where an almost deserted country offered them little or no resistance. The Czekhes, a Slavic race, came from Belo-Chrobatia, as the region north of the Carpathian range was then called.[2] Their name has been usually explained from that of their chief, Czekh; but Dobrovsky more satisfactorily derives it from _czeti, czjti_, to begin, to be the first; according to him Czekhes signifies much the same as Front-SIavi.[3] The person of Czekh has rather a mythological than an historical foundation. The whole history of that period, indeed, is so intimately interwoven with poetical legends and mythological traditions, that it seems impossible at the present time to distinguish real facts from poetical ornaments. The hero of the ancient chronicles Samo, the just Krok, Libussa the wise and beautiful, and the husband of her choice, the peasant Perzmislas, all move in a circle of poetical fiction. There is, however, no doubt that there is an historical foundation for all these persons; for tradition only expands and embellishes; but rarely, if ever, invents.

What we have said in our introduction, in regard to the vestiges of an early cultivation of the Slavic nations in general, must be applied to the Czekhes particularly.[4] The courts of justice in which the just Krok and his daughter presided, and which the chronicles describe to us, present indeed a wonderful mixture of the sacred forms of a well organized society, and of that patriarchal relation, which induced the dissenting parties to yield with childlike submission to the arbitrary decisions of the prince's wisdom. According to the chronicle, so early as A.D. 722, Libussa kept a _pisak_ or clerk, literally, _a, writer;_ and her prophecies were written down in Slavic characters. The same princess is said to have founded Prague. A considerable number of Bohemian poems, some of which have been only recently discovered, are evidently derived from the pagan period. Libussa's choice of the country yeoman Perzmislas for her husband, in preference to her n.o.ble suitors, indicates the early existence of a free and independent peasantry. All these scattered features are however insufficient to give us a distinct picture of this early period; and here, as among all other Slavic nations, _history_ commences only with the introduction of Christianity. The small states originally founded by the Czekhes, were first united into one dukedom during the last years of Perzmislas; while under his son Nezamysl, in the year 752, they are said to have first distributed the lands in fee, and to have given to the whole community a const.i.tutional form.

The name of Boii, Bohemians, was transferred to the Czekhes by the neighbouring nations. They continued to call themselves Czekhes, as they do even now. The Moravians, a nearly related Slavic race, who probably came to these regions at the same time with the Czekhes, called themselves _Morawczik_,[5] from _Morawa,_ mora.s.s, a name frequently repeated in Slavic countries. Until A.D. 1029, they were as a people entirely separated from the Bohemians. They had formed different petty states; their chiefs were called _Kniazi_, like those of their eastern brethren. The ancient Moravia, however, spread far beyond the limits of the present country of this name, and extended deep into Hungary. Hence this portion of the Slavic race was also generally comprised under the name of the Pannonic Slavi. We have shown above, in the history of the Old Slavonic language, that Moravia, then for a short period a powerful kingdom, was the princ.i.p.al theatre of Methodius' exertions.[6] As at this time Christianity had been already introduced into these regions, and the kings Rostislav and Svatopluk, as well as most of their subjects, were already baptized, it is very probable that they were induced by motives of policy to send to Constantinople for a Christian teacher. Oppressed by the Germans, the usurpations of whose emperors were in a certain measure sanctioned by the chair of Rome, they desired to secure for themselves in the Byzantine court a powerful ally. After the dissolution of the Moravian kingdom in A.D. 1029, the present Moravia fell to Bohemia; was separated from it repeatedly in the course of the following centuries; and at length, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, became together with this kingdom an ingredient part of the Austrian states.

The Moravians were among the earliest Slavic tribes converted to Christianity. As early as the seventeenth century a considerable portion of them were baptized by German priests. It was however not before the first half of the ninth century, that the first Christian missionaries entered Bohemia. In the year 845, fourteen Bohemian princes were baptized at Ratisbon. In the year 894 the duke Borzivog, the head of the nation, received baptism; but his successors went back to idolatry, and with them the greatest part of the people.

Christianity was not firmly established in these regions until the second half of the tenth century. At this time the Slavic liturgy introduced by Methodius into Moravia was already, in some measure, by the indefatigable exertions of the Romish German priesthood, superseded by the Latin wors.h.i.+p. Thus it never was fully established in Bohemia with the exception of a few churches, attached to convents founded expressly in memory of the Slavic saints, Jerome, Cyril, and Methodius. Their inmates however were expelled in favour of German-Bohemian monks, or they died; and with them disappeared every vestige of the innovations of Cyril and Methodius. Hence the Old Slavic language, and the n.o.ble translation of the Bible extant in it, have exercised only an inconsiderable influence on the Bohemian idiom.[7]

Bohemia, under the sovereignty of her dukes, and from A.D. 1198, under that of kings, was independent of the German empire, or at least did not belong to its circles; it recognized however a kind of sovereignty in that powerful neighbour, and the kings of Bohemia deemed it an honour to belong to the seven Electors, who chose the worldly head of Christianity. In the year 1306, the last male descendant of Perzmislas was murdered. His house had reigned in Bohemia in uninterrupted succession; although the kingdom was properly not hereditary, but elective, like Germany, Hungary, and Poland. After a short interval, the crown of Bohemia fell by succession to the house of Luxemburg, and thus became several times united with the Roman imperial crown. Under the emperor Charles IV, Bohemia rose to the summit of its l.u.s.tre. It was he who founded, A.D. 1348, the university of Prague, the first Slavic inst.i.tution of that description.[8] Under his successor, Wenceslaus, the war of the Hussites began. In the year 1457. the Bohemians maintained their right of election by placing George Podiebrad, a Bohemian, on the throne. The wisdom and equity of this individual justified their choice. In A.D. 1527, Ferdinand I, archduke of Austria, was elected king; and from that time the Bohemians have never again been able to detach themselves from Austria; with the exception of a short interval, during which the unfortunate palatine Frederic, known in the history of the thirty years' war, was placed on their throne. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth, centuries. Bohemia was almost without interruption the theatre of b.l.o.o.d.y wars and contests in behalf of their religious liberties. Then came the awful stillness of death, which reigned for more than a hundred years over this exhausted and agonized country.

For its revival and its present comparatively flouris.h.i.+ng condition, it is indebted to its own rich natural resources, and to the wiser policy and milder dispositions of the more recent Austrian sovereigns.

The Bohemian language is the common property not only of the Bohemians and the Moravians, const.i.tuting together about three and a half millions in number, but also of nearly two millions of Slovaks, those venerable remains of the ancient Slavic settlements between the Carpathian mountains and the rivers Theiss and Danube. This people, so nearly related to the Czekhes, occupy the whole north-western part of Hungary; and are, besides this, scattered over that whole kingdom.

They _speak_ indeed a dialect or rather several dialects essentially different from the language spoken in Bohemia and Moravia; but the circ.u.mstance of their having, since the Reformation, chosen the Bohemian for their literary language, amalgamates their contributions to literature with those of the Bohemians, and gives them an equal right to the productions of these latter.

Of all the modern Slavic languages, the Bohemian was the first cultivated. Two bishops of Merscburg, Boso towards the middle of the tenth century, and Werner at the close of the eleventh, as also fifty years later another German priest, Bruno, were above all active in promoting the holy cause of Christianity by religious instruction. The application of Latin characters to Slavic words had long been familiar to the German priesthood; inasmuch as very early attempts had been made to convert the subjugated Slavic tribes, scattered through the north of Germany.

They now were applied to the Bohemian, so far as writing was requisite for religious instruction. According to the old chronicles, there were even some regular schools erected in those early times, one at Budecz, near Prague, and another somewhat later in Prague itself, where Latin was taught. Be this as it may, the Latin and German languages had an early influence on the formation of the Bohemian. Many foreign words were adopted and amalgamated with the language; still more were formed from native roots, after the model of those two idioms. In later times this capacity of the Bohemian has been greatly improved; it being one of the few languages, which, in philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence, have not borrowed their terminology from the Latins and Greeks, but formed their own technical expressions for ideas received only in part from other nations. The extraordinary refinement of the Bohemian verb we have mentioned in our remarks upon the Slavic languages in general. In respect to free and independent construction, the Bohemian approaches the Latin; by its richness in conjunctions it differs essentially from the Russian, and is able to imitate the Greek in all its lighter shades. Thus it yields neither in copiousness nor in pliability, neither in clearness nor in precision,[9] to any other Slavic language; while in respect to lexical and grammatical cultivation it is superior to all of them. The Bohemian alone, of all the Slavic languages, has. .h.i.therto succeeded in imitating perfectly the cla.s.sic metres; although the same degree of capacity for them is acknowledged in the Southern-Slavic dialects.

After so much well deserved praise, we must also mention, that in respect to sound, the reproach of harshness and want of euphony has been made with more justice against none of the Slavic tongues. It is true that all the reasons, by which we have above seen the Slavic languages in general defended,[10] apply with equal weight to the Bohemian in particular. It appears also, that this apparent harshness is more a production of modern times, than a necessary ingredient of the original language; for the ancient Bohemian of legends and popular songs sounds by far more melodious; and the dialects spoken by the Slovaks, which are kindred to the Old Bohemian, are full of vowels, and are even distinguished from the other Slavic tongues by diphthongs. On the other hand, it cannot be denied, that the acc.u.mulation of consonants, in which the Bohemian surpa.s.ses by far, not the Polish, but the southern and eastern languages, and its peculiar preference of the vowels _e_ and _i_ over the fuller sounding _a, o, u_, do not add to the euphony of the language; although it seems singular to bring forward such a reproach against a people so distinguished for their musical talent.

The history of the Bohemian literature may be divided into five periods.

The _first_ comprises the whole interval from our first knowledge of the Czekhes to the influence of Huss; or from A.D. 550 to A.D. 1400.

The _second_ period comprises a full century, from Huss to the general diffusion of the art of printing.

The _third_ period, the golden age of the Bohemian literature, comprises about the same interval, and extends to the battle at the White Mountain, A.D. 1620.

The _fourth_ period, extends from the battle at the White Mountain to the revival of literature in 1774-1780.

The _fifth_ period, covers the interval from 1780 to the present time.

FIRST PERIOD.