BY WILL S. MONROE, PROFESSOR STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, MONTCLAIR, N. J.,
AUTHOR OF “BOHEMIA AND THE ČECHS,” “COMENIUS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF
EDUCATIONAL REFORM,” ETC.[26]
It remains to call attention to the place of Bohemia in letters, art,
music, education, social and religious reform. In this connection it
may be pointed out that the civilization of the Bohemians is distinctly
older than that of the German-Austrians, and that it developed wholly
independent of the Teutonic art movements in Germany and Austria.
In the matter of literature, Bohemia occupies a place of distinction
and priority. The development of the vulgar tongue took place at a
comparatively early period. Some of the most ancient of the poetic
documents date back to very early times. Indeed, the prose literature
of Bohemia, after the Greek and Latin, is one of the oldest in Europe.
The three centuries from the time of Charles IV. to the outbreak of the
Thirty Years’ War covers the early brilliant period in literature. Two
centuries of intellectual barrenness followed the fatal battle of the
White Mountain and the usurpation of the Bohemian Crown by the House of
Hapsburg. The ancient constitution of the kingdom was suppressed and it
was replaced by a slightly veiled system of Teutonic absolutism. The
lands of the Bohemian nobles, who had been patrons of letters, were
confiscated and given to generals in the Austrian army and to Austrian
noblemen. The inhabitants of the flourishing cities, that had been
strongholds of the national language and literature, were driven into
exile and their places were taken by immigrants of non-Bohemian birth.
The country people were reduced to a state of serfdom and attached to
the soil. The pillory, the gallows, and the whipping-post were the
sinister arguments that were employed to obliterate all traces of
national culture.
Not only was there a complete arrest in the remarkable literary
movement that intervened between the Middle Ages and the beginning
of the Thirty Years’ War, but most of the literary treasures of
the previous centuries were destroyed by the royal edicts of the
reactionary Hapsburg rulers. This was done with the notion that
the brilliant period of Bohemian existence might be blotted out and
forgotten. The book-destroyers that were turned loose in the land
burned not only all historical and theological works, but every form of
literary composition that might suggest to the Bohemian people their
glorious past. One book-destroyer, an Austrian priest, boasted with
pride that he had burned 60,000 Bohemian books. Many works were carried
by the Bohemian exiles to Saxony, Slovakland, and other countries,
and preserved; and these, together with others that escaped the fury
of pillaging soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War, constitute the
fragments out of which the literary history before the seventeenth
century must be constructed. But these fragments are little more
than the planks of a ship that was wrecked on the ocean of national
vicissitude.
The modern Bohemian literary movement dates back only one hundred
years. Joseph Dobrovský (1753-1829), the patriarch of Slavic philology,
initiated the literary movement at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The few other Bohemian scholars of the day--Jungmann, Palacký,
Kollár, Šafařík, and the incomparable publicist Charles Havlíček--lent
their services to the rehabilitation of a national language that was
long supposed to be dead. The letters of Jungmann give us our most
intimate accounts of the struggles of himself and his co-patriots
during the early day of the modern Bohemian literary renascence.[27]
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Austrian Government
had penalized the publication of books in the Bohemian language and
the teaching of the vernacular in the schools of the kingdom. But in
spite of prohibitions of the Hapsburg rulers, the vernacular continued
to be spoken in the country districts. This fact facilitated the
extraordinary progress made in the fields of poetry, drama, fiction,
criticism, and historical works during the last fourscore years. The
satirical writings of Jan Neruda, the historical dramas of Alois
Jirásek, the rich lyrical poetry of Jaroslav Vrchlický (Frida), the
bold imaginative compositions of Julius Zeyer, the modernist poetry
of J. S. Machar, the great national epics of Svatopluk Čech, the
historical works of Francis Palacký, and the political and sociological
writings of Thomas G. Masaryk have made notable contributions to the
literary history of modern Bohemia. When one recalls the dearth of
literature from Teutonic writers in Austria during the same period, the
contrast is marked indeed.
In matters of art also Bohemia was early in the field. The Prague
school of painting that came into prominence during the reign of
Charles IV. (1316-1378) took favorable rank with similar early art
movements in Italy. Painters, sculptors, and architects trained in
Bohemia are represented to-day at most of the great cities in Europe
where art treasures are preserved. The zealous and promising artistic
movement inaugurated in the country by the followers of the Prague
school, like most of the other culture movements in the kingdom, was
well-nigh extinguished by the attempted Teutonization of the country by
the Hapsburg rulers after the fatal Bílá Hora.
The political and literary activity in Bohemia during the opening years
of the last century reacted favorably on the art life of the nation.
A society of the fine arts, that was distinctly Bohemian and national
in character, was organized at Prague in 1848; and this was followed
by annual expositions of the chief productions of Bohemian and foreign
artists. As an immediate result of these activities, Bohemia produced
an astonishingly large number of painters who took high rank in their
art, artists of the rare talent of Hellich, Manes, Čermák, Schwaiger,
Aleš, Brožík, Mucha, Úprka. In sculpture, too, modern Bohemia has
taken a place of distinction in the works of Myslbek, Šimek, Seidan,
Sucharda, and Šaloun.
Bohemia’s music is probably better known throughout the civilized world
than any other branch of her creative art. This is largely due to the
universal character of the language of music and to the eminence of her
great tone poets, Smetana and Dvořák. Not that the history of music
in the country begins with these two modern composers, but because
they spoke in such musical forms and with such musical force that they
arrested the attention of the world.
We read in the chronicles of the mediæval historians of the rôle
played by music in the life of the Bohemian people; and we know that
during the Hussite period the Bohemian hymnology attained a degree of
excellence that has not been surpassed by later ages. The Bohemian
school of music of to-day takes foremost rank among the music schools
of modern Europe.
Bohemia’s position in the matter of education is likewise distinctive.
Education of an elementary and secondary character was general in
Bohemia several centuries in advance of Austria and Germany. The
University of Prague antedated similar institutions in Germany by
more than half a century. John Amos Komenský (known in America and
England by the Latinized form of his name, Comenius) was a Bohemian,
and in the judgment of competent historians of education he was the
real evangelist of modern pedagogy. Most of the school systems of
progressive and cultivated European peoples are based directly upon
ideas that he formulated.
In the domain of religion and ethics, Bohemia has given the greatest
moral reformer of the past five hundred years in Jan Hus, the
forerunner of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and William E. Channing. And
in Jerome of Prague, the contemporary of Hus, she produced another
spiritual leader of great power.