a1_The comparative method in investigating folk literature has so far concentrated mainly on the study of types and motifs and has also attained its greatest successes in this field. On the other hand comparative research into style and poetics has lagged behind, being confined to isolated attempts and having reached only partial conclusions. However a complex knowledge of the international connections, national differences and regional peculiarities requires that research should be directed to these questions as well, so as to amplify the research done hitherto on the literary material by opening up new aspects and providing new information. As a contribution to such a conception the author has carried out a comparison of the narrative style of the Czech and the Russian ballad. He takes as his main starting point the parallels in material in Czech and Russian folk ballads, in what we designate as Czech and Russian ballad poetry of identical matter. Analogical situations of plot, conflicts and characters allow us to compare the way in which they are presented in the Czech and in the Russian ballad, and to clarify their similar or different narrative approach.
Analysis shows that there are fairly considerable slylistic differences between the Czech and the Russian ballad. While the Czech ballad tends to give a bare account of the action and suggests the background of events and the participating characters by simple means, the Russian ballad describes scenes and figures much more circumstantially, piles up concrete details, frequently gives the exact place of the event and names of characters. In the same way dramatic speech often has a
descriptive or lyric function in the Russian ballad, developing at times into extensive monologues; on the other hand in the Czech
ballad, the dialogues and monologues have mainly the function of
dramatic factors and the short exchanges of the characters heighten the suspense of the action., a2_Contrary to the Czech ballad, the Russian ballad stresses lyric
elements much more strongly. These lyric devices are very frequent
and varied (e.g. the ballad opening with lyric description of nature or
with an apostrophe to nature, descriptions of the emotional state of
the main characters, the frequent use of diminutives). Some ballads are entirely composed as lyrical monologues of the main
character; this approach is quite foreign to the Czech ballad, which
presents the action of the ballad without the subjective intervention of the narrator, as an event seen from without.
The narrative method of the Russian ballad also tends towards
considerable ornamentation of style: it delights in frequent repetition of words, lines and even whole passages, which emphasizes the descriplive nature of its style and retards the course of the action; dialogues and monologues are regularly presented by introductory senlences; the individual characters address each other extensively in conversalion; the introductory passages of the ballads are often of an expansive character and use fixed formulae,which pass from one ballad to another; constant epithets frequently appear as fixed pattems (čisté pole, kalená střela, jasný sokol, dobrý kůň, etc.); refrains often occur, which contribute to the decorative style and slow down the course of the action.The Czech ballad, too, makes use of all these means, but more sparsely; its language remains simple and laconic, while in comparison the diction of the Russian ballad has a strongly decorative and formalized aspect., and a3_In many of its resources (descriptiveness, slylistic decorativeness and stabilization) the Russian ballad agrees with other kinds of Russian folk compositions - the bylina (legend), the historical lyric song and the fairy-tale - in which similar slylistic approaches occur and which also tend towards amplitude and richness of ornament.
The conclusions as to the narrative style of the Czech ballad are valid for the ballads of all the Western Slavs - for that of the Lusatian Serbs, the Poles, the Slovaks and also for the ballad of the Western area of the Ukraine. The author compares certain Czech ballads with German parallels using similar material and draws attention to the similarity of narrative method in the Western Slav and German ballad. A comparalive analysis of the style of the Czech and the Russian ballad thus leads to the conclusion that the Czech ballad (along with the Western Slavonic ballad in general) belongs to the Central European ballad sphere; this means that an account of the Czech ballad and of the whole of Czech folk composition cannot be given oniy within the framework of Slav folk literature, but must also be studied in the conlext of the traditions of the other Central and Western European non-Slavonic nations, especially in the context of the German and Hungarian traditions.
Sak, Robert: „Život na vidrholci“: Příběh Bedřicha Fučíka. Praha – Litomyšl, Paseka 2004, 424 stran. Sakova práce, nazvaná podle fučíkovského eseje Václava Havla, je první knižní biografií o předním literárním historikovi a kritikovi, katolickém intelektuálovi Bedřichu Fučíkovi, který byl ve třicáých letech minulého století úspěšným ředitelem velkého nakladatelství Melantrich, v padesátých letech byl dlouho vězněn a za „normalizace“ byl opět zahnán do samizdatové subkultury. Recenzentka oceňuje životopiscův vhled do historie nakladatelského podnikání za první republiky a vylíčení Fučíkova procesu a věznění, celkově však vytýká Sakovi zjednodušenou orientaci v literární historii, nepřítomnost vlastního hlubšího úsudku a časté necitlivé parafrázování Fučíkových textů. and Sak, Robert. “Život na vidrholci”: Příběh Bedřicha Fučíka. Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka, 2004, 424 pp. Sak’s work, which borrows its title from an essay about the same man by Václav Havel, is the first biography in book form about Bedřich Fučík (1900–1984), a Roman Catholic intellectual, and a leading literary historian and critic. In the 1930s, Fučík was the successful director of the Melantrich publishing house. In the 1950s, he spent many years in prison. During the 1970s and 1980s he was driven into the underground culture of samizdat. The reviewer praises the biographer’s insight into the history of publishing in interwar Czechoslovakia and his description of Fučík’s trial and imprisonment. On the whole, however, he reproaches Sak for a simplistic orientation to literary history, a failure to provide a more profound judgement of his own, and a frequently insensitive paraphrasing of Fučík’s writing.