Studne lásky a srdcia kamenné: dve storočia trenčianskej legendy v slovenskej literatúre
Wells of Love and Hearts of Stone: Two Centuries of the Trenčín Legend in Slovak Literature

Summary/Abstract: The Ottoman invasions are among the most significant historical events in CentralEuropean literature as well as popular culture. An important example is the legendary„well of love“ at Trenčín Castle, supposedly dug by the Turkish Omar in order tofree his beloved Fatima, held in captivity by Stephen Zápolya. Despite its setting inthe 1490s, this story was first published in German in the early nineteenth centuryby Hungarian nobleman Alois Freiherrn von Mednyánszky, which inspired Slovakpoetic adaptations of this tale by Karol Štúr (1844) and Mikuláš Dohnány (1846). Thenarrative was popularized in several collections of „historical“ tales set in Slovakia’scastles by twentieth-century authors such as Ľudovít Janota, Jozef Branecký, JozefHorák and Ján Domasta, as well as in Jozef Nižnánsky’s historical novel The Well ofLove (1935), which provides a concrete political background for the legend. Althoughthe story’s events and characters (other than Zápolya) are fictional, it remains todayone of the most enduring love stories in Slovak culture. This article will analyze thetextual development of this legend in relation to evolving definitions of national identityover the last two centuries.

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