On Monday, October 13, co-editor Dobrota Pucherová presented the book “Jozef Ignác Bajza – René, or: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences. A Translation with Commentary of the First Slovak Novel” in the Education, Linguistics, European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies Library.
Partially banned upon publication and translated into English for the first time this year, "René, or: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences (1783–85)" found new readers in the communist era thanks to its critiques of feudalism, capitalism, and the Catholic Church.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This volume marks the first translation into another language of the first Slovak novel, René, or: A Young Man's Adventures and Experiences, published in Pressburg in 1783-1785. It was translated by David Short, a prize-winning translator from Czech and Slovak.
Written at a time when the Slovaks lived under the double domination of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Habsburg Monarchy, and their language was not yet codified, this Bildungsroman promotes the idea of the Slovak people as a modern European nation. Its familiar landscape, echoing Voltaire, Montesquieu, Wieland or Johnson, places it among the classics of the Age of Enlightenment. At the same time, the book documents the particular challenges faced by an Enlightenment intellectual writing in a minor language.
Jozef Ignác Bajza (1755-1836) was born in Upper Hungary and studied at Collegium Pazmanianum in Vienna. After being ordained as a priest in St. Stephen's Cathedral in 1780, he returned to Upper Hungary, where he would remain for the rest of his life, serving as a chaplain, a parish priest and a canon.
Read more in the essay “The Adventures and Experiences of the First Slovak Novel” by Dobrota Pucherová.
Programme
Welcome: Verena Kertelics, Deputy Librarian, Education, Linguistics, European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies Library
Book presentation: Dobrota Pucherová, Department of Comparative Literature and Senior Researcher at the Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Moderation: Norbert Bachleitner, Department of Comparative Literature
