Bohemian Legends And Other Poems (Paperback)

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. BOHEMIAN literature is hardly known indeed, many people do not even know that such a literature exists at all. Of late some praiseworthy efforts have heen made by Mr. Wratislaw, M.A. late fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, and some French writers, to rescue from oblivion at least something of Bohemian literature. In his own words Literature ofBohemia, George Bell Co. 1878, he says And at the present time the people of Great Britain are for the most part in a similar state of ignorance with regard to the literature of Bohemia, scarcely believing indeed that it has any literature at all, and utterly at a loss to account for that great intel- lectual and religious revolution, which, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, shook the power of Rome to its foundation, and animated a Slavonic people of only four millions to maintain successfully a single-handed conflict against the Papacy and the German empire for full tsvo hundred years. And if it yielded at length to overwhelming numbersand weight, it was not until it had been undermined for nearly a century by the crafty and cruel policy of scions of the Hapsbnrg dynasty upon its throne. It is a very unfortunate circumstance that so much of Bohemian literature has been lost, or rather ruthlessly destroyed by the emissaries and agents of the Church of Rome. It mattered little to such barbarians whether any work that fell into their clutches was of Catholic or Protestant tendency, if it were but in the detested Bohemian tongue, and one Jesuit boasted on his death-bed that he had destroyed with his own hands no less than sixty thousand volumes in that language. I would also mention a very valuablecollection of translations made from the Bohemian by the celebrated English linguist, Dr. John Bowring Vybor z basnictvi Ceskeho, Chesk- ian Anthology. Being a history of the poetical literature of Bohemia, with translations by Dr. John Bowring London, 1832 Rowland Hunter. He also in his introduction explains why Bohemia has so little literature, and also, in a way, why it never can have. Writing of the battle of Bila Hora, he says Though the battle of the White Mountain, in 1G20, was fatal only to the reformers of Bohemia, yet its consequences were terrible to the whole Bohemian people. Civil war in its worse shape devastated the land, and so fierce were its visitations that the Jesuit Balbin, in one of his letters, expresses his surprise that after somany proscriptions, exiles, flights, and suffering, a single inhabitant should remain. The language of Bohemia was abandoned its literature fell into decay. The taint of heresy had so deeply stained the works of more than two centuries, that they were all recklessly condemned to the flames. Banishment was the portion of the most illustrious among the Bohemians, and equal, uudistinguishiug malediction pursued everything which bore a Slavonian character. Legends of the saints, trumpery discussions about trumpery dogmas and all those streams of pitiful and useless learning, in which civil and religious despotism seek to engage and exhaust inquiry, were poured over Bohemia. An ingenuous criticism on the popular poetry of the Bohemians may be seen in the Prague Monthly Periodical August, 1827, written by M. Muller, the aesthetic professor, in that capital, There is truth In the observation, that history and heroism have furnished few subjectsfor the Bohemian national songs, and, he says, is the more remarkable when they are compared or con- trasted witli those ofother Slavonian races, especially the Servian and the Russian...