Kytice sample by Jantar Publishing

KY TICE

Karel JaromĂr Erben

KY TICE

Czech & English bilingual edition TRANSLATED FROM THE CZECH BY

Susan Reynolds

J A N TA R P U B L I S H I N G 2 0 1 3

In loving and grateful memory of my parents Sidney Reynolds (1920–1986) and Vera Reynolds (1921–2013).

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Jantar Publishing Ltd.

www.jantarpublishing.com First published in Prague in 1853 as Kytice

This version is taken from the expanded 1861 edition Karel Jaromír Erben Kytice

The right of Susan Reynolds to be identified as translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-9568890-2-7

Contents

INTRODUCTION

by Susan Reynolds

iii

Holoubek

131

THE WILD DOVE

Kytice

Záhořovo lože

143

Poklad

Vodník

183

THE POSY

THE TREASURE

ZÁHOŘ’S BED

THE WATER-GOBLIN

Svatební košile

Vrba

207

Polednice

Lilie

221

Zlatý kolovrat

Dceřina kletba

231

Věštkyně

239

THE WEDDING SHIRTS

THE NOONDA Y WITCH

THE GOLDEN SPINNING-WHEEL

Štědrý den

CHRISTMAS EVE

113

THE WILLOW

THE LILY

THE DAUGHTER’S CURSE

THE PROPHETESS

Introduction

n many respects Karel Jaromír Erben (1811–70) appears a most unlikely figure to be responsible for one of the most treasured works of nineteenth-century Czech literature. The Májovci or ‘May generation’ of young writers who took their name from the almanac Máj (1858–62) considered this book the equal of Karel Hynek Mácha’s great poem Máj (May; 1836) and together with Božena Němcová’s novel of rural life Babička (Granny; 1855), it maintains a place among the best-loved and most widely read nineteenth-century Czech classics. However, while both Mácha and Němcová lived lives which might serve as illustrations of the typical career of the Romantic writer, full of incident, travel, colour, jealousy, poverty and love affairs, culminating in premature death, Erben’s was, in contrast, outwardly respectable and methodical to the point of dullness. Born in the little town of Miletín, he went off to Prague in 1831 to study philosophy and law. Six years later he began work as a court legal official before being recruited in 1843 by the great Czech patriot and historian František Palacký to join him in the National Museum, there to help with the organization of historical documents discovered in provincial archives.

INTRODUCTION

In 1850 he rose to become the Museum’s archivist, and edited a large number of texts including diplomatic documents, a medieval life of St. Catherine discovered in the Stockholm archives, the sixteenth-century Prague Chronicle by Bartoš Píšar, and the complete works of Jan Hus. After his first wife’s early death, he married again and raised a family of daughters. Following his one brief foray into politics in 1848, the year of revolutions, when he helped to organize the Slavic Congress in Prague and served as a Czech delegate to the Congress of the Croatian Assembly, he resigned from his short-lived editorship of the newspaper Pražské noviny (The Prague News) and retreated from political life altogether after the collapse of the Czech uprising and the establishment of Alexander Bach’s absolutist bureaucracy in 1851. x These dry facts, though, give a misleading picture of Erben’s activities and his inner life. The book which was to ensure that his name was known far beyond scholarly circles, Kytice*, was first published in 1853. When it appeared, Erben had become firmly entrenched in the archives of the National Museum, and there might appear to be little connection between his dutiful and methodical labours there and the poetic world of myth, folklore and imagination which its pages * The title is perhaps the most difficult word in the whole book to translate. It refers to the simple handful of wild flowers gathered by the poet in the introductory verses, and none of the English equivalents is wholly satisfactory: ‘posy’ or ‘nosegay’ have an air of quaintness, ‘bouquet’ and ‘spray’ suggest Interflora, and The Bunch sounds slightly comical. ‘Garland’ might work better, but is not strictly accurate. The decision was therefore taken to leave the title in the original. It is also worth pointing out that Erben established kytice as a standard term in Czech for a collection of poems. A convention that remains in use today.

INTRODUCTION

evoke. For Erben, however, the distinction was an artificial one. Every text presented in a thorough scholarly edition was a contribution to the building of a truly Czech national identity, requiring scrupulous attention to detail to arrive at complete authenticity, and the skills which he practised in gathering and collating such papers had been honed on very different material. From an early age Erben had been drawn to music and had supported himself by giving music lessons alongside copying manuscripts for Palacký. On being appointed to scour provincial archives for historical documents, he spent the summer months travelling through Bohemian towns in search of these, but also, in his leisure time, through the countryside, where he collected not only folksongs but also folk-tales and oral poetry. Like Richard Strauss’s Composer in the opera Capriccio, he firmly believed that the music came first and the words later, and noted down the tunes as sedulously as he did the texts sung to them. In gathering his material, he followed the same methods as the brothers Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, two more figures of the early nineteenth-century nationalist movement, now remembered for their collections of fairy tales rather than their considerable contribution to philology and librarianship. Like Erben and the Romantics in general, they regarded folksong as the manifestation of a nation’s spirit in its truest form, following the ideas of the German philosopher and poet Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who similarly published collections of folksongs from right across Europe. These, in their turn, inspired a tradition of literary ballads developed by Goethe and Schiller and, in the Czech language, by František Ladislav Čelakovský, described by the critic. F. X. Šalda as ‘Goethe’s grandson’; the family resemblance is evident when one compares

Polednice The Noonday Witch

POLEDNICE

U lavice dítě stálo, z plna hrdla křičelo. ‚Bodejž jsi jen trochu málo, ty cikáně, mlčelo!‘ ‚Poledne v tom okamžení, táta přijde z roboty: a mně hasne u vaření pro tebe, ty zlobo, ty!‘ ‚Mlč! hle husar a kočárek – hrej si! – tu máš kohouta!‘ – Než kohout, vůz i husárek bouch, bác! letí do kouta. A zas do hrozného křiku – ‚I bodejž tě sršeň sám – ! že na tebe, nezvedníku, Polednici zavolám!‘ ‚Pojď si proň, ty Polednice, pojď, vem si ho zlostníka!‘ – A hle, tu kdos u světnice dvéře zlehka odmyká. Malá, hnědá, tváři divé pod plachetkou osoba; o berličce, hnáty křivé, hlas – vichřice podoba!

THE NOONDAY W ITCH

By the bench there stood an infant, Screaming, screaming, loud and wild; ‘Can’t you just be quiet an instant? Hush, you nasty gipsy-child!’ ‘Now it’s noon, or just about, Daddy’s coming home for dinner: while I cook, the fire’s gone out – all your fault, you little sinner!’ ‘Hush! Your cart’s here, your hussar – look, your cockerel! – Go on, play!’ Crash, bang! Soldier, cock and cart To the corner fly away. Once again that fearful bellow – ‘May a hornet come and sting you! Hush, you naughty little fellow, Or the Noonday Witch I’ll bring you!’ ‘Come for him, you Noonday Witch, then! Come and take this pest for me!’ – In the door into the kitchen, Someone softly turns the key. Little, brown-skinned, strange of feature, On her head a kerchief pinned; With a stick – crook-legged creature, Voice that booms like roaring wind!

POLEDNICE

„Dej sem dítě!“ – ‚Kriste pane! odpusť hříchy hříšnici!‘ Div že smrt jí neovane, ejhle tuť – Polednici! Ke stolu se plíží tiše Polednice jako stín: matka hrůzou sotva dýše, dítě chopíc na svůj klín. A vinouc je, zpět pohlíží – běda, běda dítěti! Polednice blíž se plíží blíž – a již je v zápětí. Již ztahuje po něm ruku – matka tisknouc ramena: ‚Pro Kristovu drahou muku!‘ klesá smyslů zbavena. Tu slyš: jedna – druhá – třetí poledne zvon udeří; klika cvakla, dvéře letí – táta vchází do dveří. Ve mdlobách tu matka leží, k ňadrám dítě přimknuté: matku zkřísil ještě stěží, avšak dítě – zalknuté.

THE NOONDAY W ITCH

“Give that child here!” ‘Lord, forgive this sinner’s sins, my Saviour dear!’ It’s a wonder she still lives, For see – the Noonday Witch is here! Silent as a shadow wreathes, The witch towards the table’s slipping: Mother, fearful, scarcely breathes, In her lap the child she’s gripping. Twisting round, she looks behind her – Poor, poor child – ah, what a fate! Closer creeps the witch to find her, Closer – now she’s there – too late!. Now for him her hand is grasping – Tighter squeeze the mother’s arms: ‘For Christ’s precious torments!’ gasping, She sinks senseless with alarm. Listen – one, two, three and more: The noonday bell is ringing clear; The handle clicks, and as the door Flies wide open, father’s here. Child clasped to her breast, he found, Lying in a faint, the mother; He could hardly bring her round, But the little one was – smothered.