City, Sister, Silver, page 64
52. The Lučans, People of the Bow, were an ancient Slavic tribe that once inhabited the Czech Lands. Defeated in battle by the people we now know as Czechs.
Čech: The mythical original Czech. His name means “Czech” in Czech.
56. Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836), famed for his lyrical-epic work Máj (May, 1836), which scandalized his contemporaries but is now regarded as having been the starting point of a new direction in Czech poetry.
58. A reference to the story “Footprints” by Czech author Karel Čapek (1890-1938), from his Tales from Two Pockets (1929).
64. Terezín: Concentration camp in northern Bohemia set up by Nazis to fool outsiders into believing that conditions in the camps were basically good. Prisoners were transported on to other camps.
Batas: Named for Tomáš Bat’a, who founded the company in the Moravian town of Zlin in 1894.
65. toyfil: From the German Teufel, “devil.”
toluene: a liquid solvent sniffed like airplane glue.
67. Ribanna was an Apache heroine from the writings of Karl May (1842-1912), a German author best known for his series of popular novels set in the American West, although he also wrote about Arabia and Turkey. Though his works have sold nearly 100 million copies in Europe, he remains virtually unknown in the U.S.
76. Warriors of the Southern Cheyennes. Also the name of a popular band led by the author’s younger brother, Filip Topol. In the group’s early days, the author wrote their lyrics.
78. Lady Midday, the Midday Witch. Seen at the hottest time of a summer day. Also the personification of sunstroke.
82. Maryša: the title of a play by Alois (1861-1925) and Vilém (1863-1912) Mrštík about a village girl who is forced to wed a rich man she despises. She murders him by pouring poison in his coffee.
Josef Lada, illustrator of The Good Soldier Švejk (see note for p. 35), also known for his folksy calendar illustrations.
93. According to folk custom, lit during storms or at the bedside of a dying person.
97. Characters from Hunters of the Woolly Mammoth, a children’s book by Czech writer Eduard Štorch.
101. Josef Novák Czech equivalent of John Doe.
Žižkov: A working-class neighborhood in Prague.
102. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, an occupation government established by the Nazis on March 15, 1939.
Adinka: Adina Mandlová, Czech film actress, possibly a lover of Goebbels’. Her memoir was called / Laugh About It Now ( Dnes uz se tomu směju).
103. German for “Heil Hitler, my officers and doctors and scholars. I’m a little Czech swine, born from Žižkov.” Note: this is not proper German.
105. Karel Poláček: popular Czech Jewish novelist, journalist, humorist (1892-1944).
109. A phrase coined between the two world wars to boost the morale of craftspeople and designers at a time of increasingly machine-driven production.
111. Czech for “Falcon,” the name of a Czech patriotic and gymnastic society founded in 1862.
120. Emil Hácha was the Czech president under the Protectorate (see note for p. 101).
122. Andrei Chikatilo, a.k.a. the Soviet Hannibal Lecter. Estimated to have killed 52 people, mostly young boys, between 1980 and 1992.
124. We Were Five (1946, posthumous) is the title of a popular novel by Czech writer Karel Poláček (see note for p. 104) about a group of five boys growing up in a small town.
130. gotwaalds: A play on Klement Gottwald (1896-1953), the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia.
Jaroslav Foglar (1907-1999), author of a popular illustrated adventure series called Speedy Arrows. His advocacy of the scouting movement led the Communists to prevent him from publishing for many years.
Kcharal ben May: A play on Karl May (see note for p. 66).
132. Myslivec: “Huntsman,” a cheap Czech brandy.
In Czech Potok means “ brook.”
Notes to Sister
141. Towns in northern Bohemia.
142. At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia’s three million Germans, most of whom lived along its northern and western borders (known as the Sudetenland), were forcibly expelled. This process was preapproved by the Allied powers at the Potsdam Conference and officially referred to as a “transfer.” The Czechoslovak government, in a move supported by every political party and the overwhelming majority of the population, seized the Germans’ property and redistributed large portions of it to Czechs and Slovaks. To this day the expulsion remains a highly charged and emotional issue in Czech-German relations.
143. In Czech Černá is the feminine form of the adjective “black.” It is also the female form of the common surname Černý.
144. Semion Budenny (1883-1973), a Soviet field marshal.
145. Normally dylina, a Romany word meaning “idiot,” “jerk,” “asshole.”
149. Moravian: Reference to Sigmund Freud, who was born in the north Moravian town of Příbor, known as Freiberg to German speakers.
Romul: A play on Jan Ruml, minister of the interior for Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic, 1992-1997.
161. A play on Topol’s first collection of poems, I Love You Madly (1991). The original samizdat edition of 1988 won the Tom Stoppard Prize for Unofficial Literature.
164. Battle of Britain: in which Czech pilots flew with the Royal Air Force against the Luftwaffe (1940).
Milan, King Vladislav: In 1158 Vladislav II, of the Přemyslid dynasty, was granted royal title as King of Bohemia by the Holy Roman Empire.
Reinhard Heydrich was the SS officer in charge of the Protectorate (see note for p. 101). In June 1942 he was assassinated by a Czech and a Slovak who were parachuted in from England. This led to the Heydrichiad, a wave of recriminations against the Czech population, including deportations to camps and the razing of two Czech villages. The assassins themselves were hunted down and killed by the Nazis after taking refuge in a church in Prague.
170. Gingerbread: Perník, a homemade amphetamine named for its color, popular in the Czech Republic.
Brno: A city two hours’ drive southeast of Prague, the capital of Moravia and the Czech Republic’s second-largest city. Reference to a well-known literary talk show that was taped there.
172. Rafal Wojaczek (1945-1971), poet described by some as Poland’s postwar Baudelaire.
177. Di do prdele: “Shove it, “up yours,” in Czech.
Chlop zasrany: “Shithead,” “piece of shit peasant,” in Polish.
178. “Give the knife, get the knife.” A Romany saying.
179. The Stag Moat is located at Prague Castle.
small works: a philosophy advocated by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, cofounder and first president of Czechoslovakia, in which large-scale change is brought about through the accumulation of small, individual efforts.
201. An untranslatable pun: samo means “by itself,” i.e., the boy is answering that it happened “by itself,” but his questioners believe that he is telling them his name. Sámo, however, was a Frankish merchant who united and ruled the western Slavs in the seventh century. According to German sources, he was actually a Jew by the name of Samuel, but as far as the Slavs were concerned, he was a Frank who betrayed the Franks. Samo was also responsible for teaching the Slavs modern warfare.
202. The Boii (in Czech, Bojove) were the Celtic people who gave their name to the region of Bohemia.
212. The people of Ingushetia, a small mountainous territory in the Caucasus next to Chechnya. The Ingush are Muslims, and after Stalin deported them for siding with the Germans in World War II, they were not allowed to return home until 1957. Now a republic in the Russian Federation.
230. German for “Foreigners out!”
235. The horses of Winnetou, an Apache, and Old Shatterhand, a white man, from the Western stories of Karl May (see note for p. 66).
241. From The Bagpiper of Strakonice (1846) by Josef Kajetán Tyl. A drama in which a bagpiper leaves the Czech Lands to make his fame and fortune abroad, but is morally tainted by foreigners. He is saved when he returns home and takes a Czech wife.
250. Land of Dreamers: The title of the Czech translation of the German book Die andere Seite (The Other Side, 1909), written and illustrated by Alfred Kubin; not actually filmed.
Winnetou: an East-German film based on Karl May’s Western stories (see note for p. 66).
Mrazík “Grandfather Frost,” a Soviet fairy tale designed to replace St. Nicholas (Santa Claus), shown every year on Czech TV.
254. Jiří Korn, Czech pop singer famous in the 70s and 80s.
256. Play on Edward Kelley, one of two English alchemists (along with John Dee) invited to serve in the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II in the 1580s.
258. English for Neználek, protagonist of a Soviet series of children’s books with titles like Neználek on the Moon, Neználek in the City on the Sun, and The Adventures of Neználek.
260. In Ukrainian, Chernobyl means “wormwood.”
269. Divadelní Akademie Múzických Umění, the theater school at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
285. The word luna for “moon” was introduced into Czech poetry by Karel Hynek Mácha (see note for p. 55).
293. Vladimír Holan (1905-1980), major Czech lyric poet.
315. Lucerna (1905), an allegorical fable by Alois Jirásek (1851-1930), popular Czech historian and ethnographer.
319. Described in a book of Kazakh legends, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980) by Chingis Aitmotov. Young men captured in battle are shaved bald and fresh-stripped patches of camel skin are placed on their heads. As the skin dries in the sun, it shrinks around the victim’s skull, squeezing it like a vice. Most either die or lose their memory forever, becoming a mankurt.
322. Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), Ukrainian nationalist who fought with Hitler against the Communists in World War II. At the end of the war, he turned his forces against the Germans.
328. Reference to Václav Havel’s famous essay “The Power of the Powerless” (1978), in which Havel used a greengrocer to illustrate how even minor deviations from accepted behavior represent a threat to the Communist power structure.
336. Site of the monastery in Moravia whose monks produced the first complete translation of the Bible into Czech (1579-1593), known as the Kralice Bible. The language of this work served as a norm for some 250 years.
367. A play on Medzilaborce, the eastern Slovak town where Andy Warhol’s family comes from, and where, due largely to the efforts of Czech artist Michal Cihlář, a Warhol museum was set up in 1990. Cihlář means “brickmaker,” thus “the guy with the brick.”
379. Kyselice: “Acidville” in Czech.
Bezbožice: “Godlessville” in Czech.
380. Hungarian word for treeless plains or steppe.
381. Reference to the title Golet v údolí (Exile in the Valley, 1937) by Ivan Olbracht (Kamil Zeman, 1882-1952), stories based on the life of Jews in the Carpathian region. The subtitle of the book is The Sad Eyes of Hana Karadžičová.
387. A Great Mother-type figurine discovered at a 25,000-year-old site in Dolní Věstonice (southern Moravia), the earliest evidence of clay firing.
Notes to Silver
406. Benderites: See note for p. 322.
Slovak National Uprising, August-October 1944, in which some 80,000 insurgents, both non-Communist and Communist, battled German forces in the mountains of central Slovakia. Though nominally independent, Slovakia was a puppet state of the Nazis during World War II.
460. English for a Czech collection of seventeenth-century baroque German poetry, translated into Czech in 1959.
463. Neighborhood in Prague 6, home to the Benedictine Archabbey, oldest monastery in the Czech Lands, founded by St. Adalbert c. 993 (see note for p. 488).
470. Jan Welzl (1868-1948), a Czech who spent some thirty years above the Arctic Circle as a trader, hunter, and Inuit chief. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, he wrote several books about his adventures.
František Venclovský was the first Czech to swim the English Channel.
471. Obora: Park in Prague 6-Liboc, site of the battle in which the Protestant troops of the Bohemian Estates fell to the united armies of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League on November 8, 1620, the famous Battle of White Mountain.
477. Battle in which the mainstream branch of the Hussites, known as the Utraquists, allied with Catholics to defeat various more radical branches (1434). As a result, the Hussite Church was accepted by the Papists.
483. The saint known in English as Adalbert (955-997). Named bishop of Prague in 983, he encouraged the evangelization of Poles and Hungarians, as well as Czechs. Died a martyr’s death at the hands of Prussian heathens in Pomerania (see note for p. 467).
If you liked this book, you might be interested in other Czech literature from Catbird Press. Here is some information about these books. For more information, including excerpts, visit our website at www.catbirdpress.com. If you would like to order any of the books or receive notice of future Catbird books (i.e., our bi-annual catalogs), please call us at 800-360-2391, e-mail us at catbird@pipeline.com, fax us at 203-230-8029, or write us at 16 Windsor Road, North Haven, CT 06473-3015. Shipping and handling is $3.00 total, no matter how many books you order (at least as of 2000).
Other Contemporary Czech Writers
DANIELA FISCHEROVÁ, Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else, translated by Neil Bermel. The first work of fiction by a Czech baby-boomer to appear in English. Meticulously well-crafted stories about various stages in a woman’s life, plus two other tales that take place in Asia. “Fischerová creates a mulitlayered meditation on truths and fictions, innocence, curiosity, politics and expressions of love both physical and imaginative.”
—Prague Post. hardcover, 192 pages, ISBN 0-945774-44-3.
The Poetry of JAROSLAV SEIFERT, translated by Ewald Osers, edited by George Gibian. The largest collection in English from the Czech Nobel Prize-winning poet’s entire career. paperback, 255 pages, ISBN 0-945774-39-7.
VLADIMÍR PÁRAL: Catapult, translated by William Harkins. This twist on the Don Juan story looks at the attractions and difficulties of freedom. “Páral masterfully switches from farce to drama and back again, so that in the end we feel Jost’s dilemma even as we’re laughing at him.” —N.Y. Times Book Review. paperback, 240 pages, ISBN 0-945774-17-6.
_____________: The Four Sonyas, translated by William Harkins. In this darkly comic world, people will do almost anything to attain their dreams, and Sonya is their principal target. “The ways in which The Four Sonyas … conceals its larger meaning just beneath the surface of the narration is wonderful to behold.” —Newsday. hardcover, 391 pages, ISBN 0-945774-15-X.
DAYLIGHT IN NIGHTCLUB INFERNO: Czech Fiction from the Post-Kundera Generation, selected by Elena Lappin, various translators. Stories and novel excerpts from the generations that came of age after the Prague Spring of the 1960s. “This important anthology … places some marvelous talent on display.” —Booklist. paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0-945774-33-8.
Pre-War Czech Writers
Karel Čapek
TOWARD THE RADICAL CENTER: A Karel Čapek Reader, edited by Peter Kussi, foreword by Arthur Miller, various translators. Čapek’s best plays, stories, and columns take us from the social contributions of clumsy people to dramatic meditations on mortality and commitment. This volume includes the first complete English translation of R.U.R. (Possum’s Universal Robots), the play that introduced the literary robot. paperback, hardcover, 416 pages, illus., ISBN 0-945774-07-9, 06-0.
WAR WITH THE NEWTS, translated by Ewald Osers. This new translation revitalizes one of the great anti-utopian satires of the twentieth century. Čapek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, journalism, militarism, even Hollywood. “A bracing parody of totalitarianism and technological overkill, one of the most amusing and provocative books in its genre.” —Philadelphia Inquirer. paperback, 240 pages, ISBN 0-945774-10-9.
TALES FROM TWO POCKETS, translated by Norma Comrada. Čapek’s unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of twists and turns, the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism. Selected by Publishers Weekly as One of the Best Books of the Year. paperback, 365 pages, illus., ISBN 0-945774-25-7.
THREE NOVELS: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Life, translated by M. & R. Weatherall. This trilogy of novels approaches the problem of mutual understanding through various kinds of storytelling. “Čapek’s masterpiece.” —Chicago Tribune. paperback, 480 pages, ISBN 0-945774-08-7.
TALKS WITH T. G. MASARYK, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Never have two such important world figures collaborated in a biography. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) was the original Philosopher-President who founded Czechoslovakia in 1918, an important inspiration for Vaclav Havel. paperback, 256 pages, ISBN 0-945774-26-5.
Karel Poláček
WHAT OWNERSHIP’S ALL ABOUT, translated by Peter Kussi. The first novel translated into English by the most prominent Czech Jewish writer between the wars. “Poláček studies the effect of power on the values and dreams of ordinary people, revealing their weaknesses and skewering their pomposity with a deftness and dark wit reminiscent of Chekhov.” —Library Journal. hardcover, 238 pages, ISBN 0-945774-19-2.
Topol, Jáchym, City, Sister, Silver
