Ontologia powieści Górnołużyczan (wybrane zagadnienia ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem utworów niemieckojęzycznych)

• Authors: Tomasz Derlatka

Title variants

EN

Upper Sorbs’ Novel in German (Selected Issues)

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Considerations constituting the basis for the article deal with two important problem circles in the literature of Upper Sorbs: the novel and the works in the German language. In the genological system of this „small” literature, the novel constitutes a non-immanent genre; the Upper Sorbian authors for a long time also resisted literature in the German language. The beginning of both phenomena dates from the same period, after 1945, which naturally links them together. The most important point of reference for reflections on the Upper Sorbs’ German-language novel should be a novel in the Upper Sorbian language. Only by analysing mutual relationships, the importance of not only a German-language novel, but also a novel in the Upper Sorbian language, begins to be fully unveiled (both artefacts can also be considered as independent phenomena). Of the total number of no more than 50 novels of the Upper Sorbs, just three of them were written in German only, twenty-three in Upper Sorbian only, while the rest were written in two language variants (German and Upper Sorbian). Already on the basis of this calculation it turns out that the German-language novel of the Upper Sorbs constitutes a major proportion of their total novel production. Novels in German chronologically delimit the Upper Sorbs’ novel: all published attempts of novels until 1945 were written in Upper Sorbian only, all written after 1989 - obligatorily have both language variants, whereas the time between 1945 to 1989 is in this respect a transitional phase. The Upper Sorbs’ German-language novel variants by far gained larger reception - in the mother area (Upper Sorbian-German) and foreign, which is settled by two aspects. Firstly, some novels, even if they had an Upper Sorbian variant, sometimes a primary one, have been translated into foreign languages from a (secondary) German-language variant (the case of a novel by J. Brězan Robert a Sabina). This indeed sometimes resulted in evident problems, not just technical ones, but above all related to an inadequate presentation of the Upper Sorbian element. Secondly, in terms of the circulation of the novel in the German language, the Upper Sorbian editions are simply overwhelming. The mini-novel, Christa by J. Brězan, had three Upper Sorbian editions and as many as thirty in German, whereas the trilogy by this author about Feliks Hanuš reached German-speaking public in over a million copies. The most interesting phenomenon in the theory of literature concerning the Upper Sorbian (German-language) novel are the relationships between the German and Upper Sorbian variants of the novel. Their first aspect is the primacy of a particular variant. The starting version for some of the novels was the Upper Sorbian variant, for others - a German one, which resulted in the fact that for example the first two parts of the J. Brězan’s trilogy, prepared by him in German, were translated to Upper Sorbian by another writer (sic). Some of the novels that have two language variants are homogeneous in every respect: as far as the structure, title, and the name and surname of the author are concerned. It should be emphasized, however, that this phenomenon is less significant, because we are talking of four such cases only. A much more common, and thus more important phenomenon is the dissimilarity of the language variants. Křesćan Krawc is the author of the novel in Upper Sorbian entitled Wočakńmy nalěćo from 1989, and a man named Christian Schneider – the author of the novel in German Meine Braut, deine Braut?, published in 1990. In fact it is the same author and the same novel. The Upper Sorbian and German variants of the second part of J. Brězan’s dilogy about Krabat (1994) differs significantly within its structure. The Upper Sorbian edition has thirty-seven chapters, while the German variant only fifteen. On the other hand the German version has a kind of a prologue (as a Vorgeschichte function), which is not found in the Upper Sorbian version. The existence of the Upper Sorbs’ German-language novel is a major challenge for Sorbian literary studies. On the one hand, sometime significant difference of a German-language variant of the novel puts into question its affinity to the area of the Upper Sorbian literature. On the other hand, the history and poetics of the Upper Sorbs’ German-language novel truly reflects the paradigmatic changes that occurred after 1945 in their culture, literature, and finally, their identity.

Keywords

EN

Upper Sorbian literature; Upper Sorbs’ novel; Upper Sorbs’ novel in German; the equivalence of language variants in Upper Sorbs’ novel; the ontology of the Upper Sorbs’ novel in German

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Opolski
• Journal: Studia Slavica
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 59-76

Contributors

author

Tomasz Derlatka

• Slovanský Ústav AV ČR