Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (83 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
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As the Prague philologist Emil Skála has shown, many elements appeared and disappeared in the long history of Prague German; if, in early centuries, northern and central German idioms combined, the events of 1620 and the Hapsburg centralization brought about an “Austrianization” of the Prague idiom; the scene was thoroughly provincial. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offered a late, uneasy stage; Yiddish had gone underground and was spoken with ambivalent feelings by family patriarchs (Kafka’s father, for instance); when Czechs and Germans met in everyday situations, curious constructions with many interferences and fusions could be heard. Czechs spoke
Kucheldeutsch
(kitchen German) with German employers and superiors; middle-class German housewives used
Kuchelböhmisch
(kitchen Czech) to discuss culinary matters with their Czech cooks and servant girls.
Mauscheldeutsch
(the term used by the Jewish-German nationalist Fritz Mauthner, which suggests “kinky” German) denotes the last traces of ancient Jewish-German stubbornly defying the rules of polite German conversation. Phonetically, spoken German in Prague was part of an equally complicated situation: Whether Jew or gentile, Prague speakers of German immediately revealed to German listeners that they were “different,” using the consonants
p, t, k for b, d, g,
simplifying all diphthongs in a uniform
ai,
and relying on Czech prepositions where German would have been appropriate. Johannes Urzidil renewed the romantic belief that Prague German was the purest of them all, going back to Johannes Noviforensis, chancellor to Emperor Charles IV—a defensive myth that compensates for the idiosyncrasies of speech and the literary abstractions of a middle-class idiom largely out of sync with the everyday speech of small-town Bohemian and Moravian Germans.
Kucheldeutsch
(kitchen German) with German employers and superiors; middle-class German housewives used
Kuchelböhmisch
(kitchen Czech) to discuss culinary matters with their Czech cooks and servant girls.
Mauscheldeutsch
(the term used by the Jewish-German nationalist Fritz Mauthner, which suggests “kinky” German) denotes the last traces of ancient Jewish-German stubbornly defying the rules of polite German conversation. Phonetically, spoken German in Prague was part of an equally complicated situation: Whether Jew or gentile, Prague speakers of German immediately revealed to German listeners that they were “different,” using the consonants
p, t, k for b, d, g,
simplifying all diphthongs in a uniform
ai,
and relying on Czech prepositions where German would have been appropriate. Johannes Urzidil renewed the romantic belief that Prague German was the purest of them all, going back to Johannes Noviforensis, chancellor to Emperor Charles IV—a defensive myth that compensates for the idiosyncrasies of speech and the literary abstractions of a middle-class idiom largely out of sync with the everyday speech of small-town Bohemian and Moravian Germans.
It may be misleading to regard Kafka as incarnating “Kafka’s world” or Prague German writing (he was not even representative of himself, he would say), but he was one of the few writers who wrote about writing, and he did not avoid even the most painful, if not self-destructive, reflections about the language he was doomed to use in a city he wanted to leave. Kafka wrote little about Prague, and his early prose, as in
Beschreibung eines Kampfes (Description of a Fight,
1909), combines literary considerations with rare allusions to Prague’s streets, churches, and monuments, all unhesitatingly named; a similar combination can be found only in his
late
Das Stadtwappen (The City Escutcheon),
though there in a more impersonal mode of narration. In the first part of the early text, a Prague flaneur who knows his Hugo von Hofmannsthal talks to a chance companion who turns out to be a writer too, characterized in a lively way by his theatrical manners as an actor and a thorough solipsist (I hesitate to think of Franz Werfel, who is chronologically wrong for the part, but the thought persists). The flaneur does not have a high opinion of his colleague’s writings; they are too exalted, restless, “this fever, this seasickness on the firm earth.” Unfortunately, the fellow writer is not content to call a poplar tree a poplar tree; he is not satisfied, in his “utter heat” to use “the truthful names of these things,” and pours out words, in striking impatience, over things. He does not even want to know what kind of a tree a poplar is, speaking of it as “the tower of Babel,” and the critic ironically adds he could have called the tree, swaying in the wind, “Noah as he drank.” Such metaphors, though biblical and of high seriousness, hardly yield valid insights into matters as they are, though they do reveal good or bad writing; mobilizing metaphors, refusing to call a tree a tree, turns into a central indication of bad style. Good writing, the Prague flaneur assumes, would be unadorned, free of ornament, like Adolf Loos’s architecture, and confident of a language of untroubled reference.
Beschreibung eines Kampfes (Description of a Fight,
1909), combines literary considerations with rare allusions to Prague’s streets, churches, and monuments, all unhesitatingly named; a similar combination can be found only in his
late
Das Stadtwappen (The City Escutcheon),
though there in a more impersonal mode of narration. In the first part of the early text, a Prague flaneur who knows his Hugo von Hofmannsthal talks to a chance companion who turns out to be a writer too, characterized in a lively way by his theatrical manners as an actor and a thorough solipsist (I hesitate to think of Franz Werfel, who is chronologically wrong for the part, but the thought persists). The flaneur does not have a high opinion of his colleague’s writings; they are too exalted, restless, “this fever, this seasickness on the firm earth.” Unfortunately, the fellow writer is not content to call a poplar tree a poplar tree; he is not satisfied, in his “utter heat” to use “the truthful names of these things,” and pours out words, in striking impatience, over things. He does not even want to know what kind of a tree a poplar is, speaking of it as “the tower of Babel,” and the critic ironically adds he could have called the tree, swaying in the wind, “Noah as he drank.” Such metaphors, though biblical and of high seriousness, hardly yield valid insights into matters as they are, though they do reveal good or bad writing; mobilizing metaphors, refusing to call a tree a tree, turns into a central indication of bad style. Good writing, the Prague flaneur assumes, would be unadorned, free of ornament, like Adolf Loos’s architecture, and confident of a language of untroubled reference.
In their splendid and chaotic essay classifying Prague Jewish-German writing among the “minor” literatures of strong political potential, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have suggested that Kafka, trying to solve his authorial problems, did not opt for Czech—as if it had been an option to leave or take. Kafka’s knowledge of Czech was better than Rilke’s, who knew deplorably little Czech (as emerges from his as yet unpublished correspondence with Valerie David-Rhonfeld, his first Prague love), but, after a completely German education from elementary school to his law degree, he never mastered it. He read it with great philological empathy, shown in his German letters to Milena, born and bred Czech, but his difficulties are revealed in letters he had to write to his superiors at the Labor Insurance Company (1908-24); as Josef
ermák has shown, he found himself in dire language straits when the company after 1918 switched to functioning solely in Czech; Kafka, when writing to his director, had to enlist the services of his “family translation office,” as he put it, consisting of his sister Ottla and her Czech husband, Josef. Kafka himself wrote about the “gorgeous lie about [his] knowledge of Czech” to his sister, and, when he went on writing in Czech to Josef, he curiously mixed spoken and literary idioms, ordered his sentences according to German syntactical rules, and stumbled over vocabulary and morphology,
particularly difficult for anybody educated in German schools. Yet he could not escape to Yiddish either, which powerfully attracted him when he attended the performances of a Jewish traveling theater group in the shabby Café Savoy; he even arranged an evening of Yiddish recitations for his acculturated Prague Jewish audience, who truly feared, he believed, a language that had been spoken in Prague two generations ago. He felt, in one of his romantic moods, that Yiddish was the vital and lustful language of an authentic and proud community of Jews, but he, son of his father and member of a German acculturated society, had gone too far the other way. More clearly than anyone else, he recognized himself as one of the young Jews who resolved to write in German, though “with their hind legs … still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their waving front legs they found no new ground,” who made their despair their inspiration. (His story of the young man who awakes one morning in the shape of an ugly insect may be a linguistic self-portrait.) In his search for pure and simple words, Kafka was, among all the impossibilities of writing (including the one
not
to write), condemned to German; he believed that the product of his despair “could not be German literature, though outwardly it seemed to be so.” In his self-flagellation, he used images current in the vocabulary of contemporary German anti-Semites, as the historian Christoph Stölzl has reminded us, and asserted in 1921 that he was producing “a gypsy literature which had stolen the German child out of its cradle and in great haste put it through some kind of training, for someone has to dance on the tightrope.” His anxieties were a far cry from the joy and exultation that brought together his Czech contemporaries, blissfully walking under his dark windows.
ermák has shown, he found himself in dire language straits when the company after 1918 switched to functioning solely in Czech; Kafka, when writing to his director, had to enlist the services of his “family translation office,” as he put it, consisting of his sister Ottla and her Czech husband, Josef. Kafka himself wrote about the “gorgeous lie about [his] knowledge of Czech” to his sister, and, when he went on writing in Czech to Josef, he curiously mixed spoken and literary idioms, ordered his sentences according to German syntactical rules, and stumbled over vocabulary and morphology,particularly difficult for anybody educated in German schools. Yet he could not escape to Yiddish either, which powerfully attracted him when he attended the performances of a Jewish traveling theater group in the shabby Café Savoy; he even arranged an evening of Yiddish recitations for his acculturated Prague Jewish audience, who truly feared, he believed, a language that had been spoken in Prague two generations ago. He felt, in one of his romantic moods, that Yiddish was the vital and lustful language of an authentic and proud community of Jews, but he, son of his father and member of a German acculturated society, had gone too far the other way. More clearly than anyone else, he recognized himself as one of the young Jews who resolved to write in German, though “with their hind legs … still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their waving front legs they found no new ground,” who made their despair their inspiration. (His story of the young man who awakes one morning in the shape of an ugly insect may be a linguistic self-portrait.) In his search for pure and simple words, Kafka was, among all the impossibilities of writing (including the one
not
to write), condemned to German; he believed that the product of his despair “could not be German literature, though outwardly it seemed to be so.” In his self-flagellation, he used images current in the vocabulary of contemporary German anti-Semites, as the historian Christoph Stölzl has reminded us, and asserted in 1921 that he was producing “a gypsy literature which had stolen the German child out of its cradle and in great haste put it through some kind of training, for someone has to dance on the tightrope.” His anxieties were a far cry from the joy and exultation that brought together his Czech contemporaries, blissfully walking under his dark windows.
The sad news of T. G. Masaryk’s demise did not come suddenly. He had been elected president of the republic four times, the last time in May 1934, but a year later decided that he should relinquish the office for reasons of health and age, and parliament voted to offer him his Lány residence and all his emoluments for life. He walked in the park, read, and welcomed a few visitors; his son Jan, an avid musician, said that his life went “from forte to fortissimo and then to pianissimo.” In mid-September 1937, symptoms of a stroke combined with an inflammation of the lungs, and on September 12, the attending physicians notified the family and the government that the inevitable end was near. Masaryk
died peacefully, on September 14, at 3:29 a.m., being eighty-seven years, six months, and seven days old. It was not an easy moment for the republic or for European democracy. Hitler had gone from success to success; in the Spanish Civil War there was heavy fighting around Oviedo and a new government offensive against Franco, the Prague newspapers reported; and when it was decided that Masaryk’s funeral should be conducted by the army, people felt it was the right gesture of resolve and dignity in the face of increasing dangers. Citizens began to travel to Prague from all corners of Czechoslovakia, and the trains were crowded. His coffin was first placed in the Ple
nik Hall of Hrad
any Castle, and people lined up for days and nights to pay their respects. Nobody prodded them, and yet they came, 600,000 strong, a silent and dark column slowly moving ahead.
died peacefully, on September 14, at 3:29 a.m., being eighty-seven years, six months, and seven days old. It was not an easy moment for the republic or for European democracy. Hitler had gone from success to success; in the Spanish Civil War there was heavy fighting around Oviedo and a new government offensive against Franco, the Prague newspapers reported; and when it was decided that Masaryk’s funeral should be conducted by the army, people felt it was the right gesture of resolve and dignity in the face of increasing dangers. Citizens began to travel to Prague from all corners of Czechoslovakia, and the trains were crowded. His coffin was first placed in the Ple
nik Hall of Hradany Castle, and people lined up for days and nights to pay their respects. Nobody prodded them, and yet they came, 600,000 strong, a silent and dark column slowly moving ahead.On September 21, the funeral was to proceed from Hrad
any Castle to the Old Town and up Wenceslas Square to the railroad station (actually reversing the path Masaryk had taken when he triumphantly entered the city after his exile), and people put up chairs and little stools in the streets the evening before, to be there in the morning. By 10 a.m., after the family members had a last chance to take their leave, the casket was carried by six generals to the courtyard of the castle, where, on black-clad tribunes, the official guests gathered, on three sides, row after row. After President Beneš’s funeral oration (which makes melancholy reading today, considering the development of his policies later), the old Hussite battle hymn, sung by a famous chorus of Prague schoolteachers, sounded out, and the procession formed while an air force squadron (later that air force was handed over to the Nazis plane by plane) crossed the sky. First in the procession was General Syrový on his horse, steel helmet and saber drawn; he was followed by representatives of all the Czechoslovak regiments, legions, and Sokols, carrying army flags and standards. The casket, placed on a howitzer gun carriage, was covered by the tricolor of the republic and accompanied by six soldiers who (a thought that might have pleased Masaryk) represented the six language groups serving in the army—Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and Poles. Behind the gun carriage walked Jan Masaryk and two grandsons (daughters and granddaughters waited at the railroad station), and behind them President Beneš, all alone, and his staff of presidential advisers at some distance. I was in the crowd, a fifteen-year-old kid, and we all were especially excited to see the many foreign representatives, ministers, generals, and diplomats, among them Léon Blum of France (of the government of the French Popular Front) with his shaggy head; Constantine Stojadinovi
,
chief of the Yugoslav government; Norwegians, Americans, Albanians, British, Romanians, and dozens of others. I can see from newspaper clippings that Ambassador Eisenlohr of Germany was also there with two Wehrmacht attachés, and a first secretary of the Soviet embassy (actually a diplomatic snub, but the Soviets and Masaryk, who had financed a university of Russian émigrés in Prague from his own pocket, never liked each other very much). Konrad Henlein,
Führer
of the victorious Sudeten Party, called in sick at the last moment like a schoolboy, and he was represented by none other than Karl Hermann Frank, an ardent National Socialist, SS general (later), and Germany’s last state minister in Prague before the Reich collapsed (he was executed immediately after the war). Massive units of legionnaires concluded the procession; twenty-five thousand of the Russian legions, joined by units who had fought in France and Italy, marched together for the last time under a clear autumn sky. I remember the eerie silence of the day; one million people lined the streets, but you heard only the muffled sound of the horses’ hooves, the clink of wheels and weapons, the infantry boots on the cobbled streets, and quiet sobbing in the crowds.
any Castle to the Old Town and up Wenceslas Square to the railroad station (actually reversing the path Masaryk had taken when he triumphantly entered the city after his exile), and people put up chairs and little stools in the streets the evening before, to be there in the morning. By 10 a.m., after the family members had a last chance to take their leave, the casket was carried by six generals to the courtyard of the castle, where, on black-clad tribunes, the official guests gathered, on three sides, row after row. After President Beneš’s funeral oration (which makes melancholy reading today, considering the development of his policies later), the old Hussite battle hymn, sung by a famous chorus of Prague schoolteachers, sounded out, and the procession formed while an air force squadron (later that air force was handed over to the Nazis plane by plane) crossed the sky. First in the procession was General Syrový on his horse, steel helmet and saber drawn; he was followed by representatives of all the Czechoslovak regiments, legions, and Sokols, carrying army flags and standards. The casket, placed on a howitzer gun carriage, was covered by the tricolor of the republic and accompanied by six soldiers who (a thought that might have pleased Masaryk) represented the six language groups serving in the army—Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and Poles. Behind the gun carriage walked Jan Masaryk and two grandsons (daughters and granddaughters waited at the railroad station), and behind them President Beneš, all alone, and his staff of presidential advisers at some distance. I was in the crowd, a fifteen-year-old kid, and we all were especially excited to see the many foreign representatives, ministers, generals, and diplomats, among them Léon Blum of France (of the government of the French Popular Front) with his shaggy head; Constantine Stojadinovi,chief of the Yugoslav government; Norwegians, Americans, Albanians, British, Romanians, and dozens of others. I can see from newspaper clippings that Ambassador Eisenlohr of Germany was also there with two Wehrmacht attachés, and a first secretary of the Soviet embassy (actually a diplomatic snub, but the Soviets and Masaryk, who had financed a university of Russian émigrés in Prague from his own pocket, never liked each other very much). Konrad Henlein,
Führer
of the victorious Sudeten Party, called in sick at the last moment like a schoolboy, and he was represented by none other than Karl Hermann Frank, an ardent National Socialist, SS general (later), and Germany’s last state minister in Prague before the Reich collapsed (he was executed immediately after the war). Massive units of legionnaires concluded the procession; twenty-five thousand of the Russian legions, joined by units who had fought in France and Italy, marched together for the last time under a clear autumn sky. I remember the eerie silence of the day; one million people lined the streets, but you heard only the muffled sound of the horses’ hooves, the clink of wheels and weapons, the infantry boots on the cobbled streets, and quiet sobbing in the crowds.
Shortly after 3 p.m. the funeral procession arrived at the railroad station, and the small group that would accompany the casket to Lány County Cemetery was joined by Masaryk’s entire family, including his daughters Alice and Olga, granddaughters Herberta and Anna, his niece Ludmila, as well as Hana Benešová, wife of the president. Two trains were readied, and all along the short route people waited and many of them threw flowers on the rails. Railroad workers took the coffin from the train at 6:45 p.m., and the final ceremony in the peaceful cemetery was private and brief. A preacher of the Czechoslovak Brethren read a psalm and a page from the Revelation of John, so dear to Emperor Charles IV, and while the hymn of the republic was intoned, the coffin was lowered into the grave, where Masaryk’s mortal remains came to rest near his unhappy and courageous wife, Charlotte. Many poems and eulogies were published the next day, but none was more fair and moving than a short meditative piece written by Masaryk’s friend Karel
apek. He tried to grasp the many strains of his personality at a moment when legend had already begun to prevail, and in simple words suggested that Masaryk had been a “Greek Platonic” but also a man of science and reason and a believer in Christ’s example. Capek clearly explained what many had felt that day in a diffuse and anxious way. In Europe, new forces were emerging, of blood and collective instincts, and Masaryk had embodied, without strain and in living deeds, the most powerful counterforces
to these new threats: classical individualism coming to us from antiquity, sober reason in guiding the world, and, above all, a pristine Christian moral ideal of love for all your fellow people.
apek was a student of American pragmatism, and it may have been his disinclination to accept metaphysical norms that made him particularly sensitive to what Masaryk had thought and done, in his own contradictory ways.
apek. He tried to grasp the many strains of his personality at a moment when legend had already begun to prevail, and in simple words suggested that Masaryk had been a “Greek Platonic” but also a man of science and reason and a believer in Christ’s example. Capek clearly explained what many had felt that day in a diffuse and anxious way. In Europe, new forces were emerging, of blood and collective instincts, and Masaryk had embodied, without strain and in living deeds, the most powerful counterforcesto these new threats: classical individualism coming to us from antiquity, sober reason in guiding the world, and, above all, a pristine Christian moral ideal of love for all your fellow people.
apek was a student of American pragmatism, and it may have been his disinclination to accept metaphysical norms that made him particularly sensitive to what Masaryk had thought and done, in his own contradictory ways.Other books
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