Songs of a Slave
Lieder eines Sklaven
Keywords: Czech Literature;
RE-DIGITZED COPY OF THE GERMAN VERSION OF SVATOPLUK ČECH’S BOOKLET OF POETRY, PUBLISHED IN 1897 BY J. H. W. DIETZ IN STUTTGART.EXTRACT FROM THE 1987 PUBLISHER’S INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK: If one wants to describe the basic tone of Slavic poetry in two words, one must say: it is the tone of a peculiarly gloomy melancholy that echoes everywhere in these songs of a family of peoples, constantly pressed down and oppressed by superior nations, but it is a tone that occasionally turns into its opposite: the outbursts of despair and determined ire. It is only too understandable beside the gloomy melancholy, that tone of desperate wrath. Who never, or only fleetingly, has seen the bright, clear day of freedom, will sing much more softly as the others when complaining and resenting himself, but will as well sing much harder when rumbling and feeling anger. For misfortune kills the midtones and sharpens the extremes of sensation.Having this in mind it can easily be understood that the consciousness of togetherness, which is erupting today among the opressed people in all countries, must be mirrored, above all, by the socialistically geared translations of literature, especially the literature of the Slavic peoples. It is this consciousness that determines the present (entirely free) transmission of the "Songs of a slave" by Swatopluk Čech from Bohemian into German.
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