EN
Jozef Ignác Bajza’s collection of anecdotes and facetiae, a pioneering work in Slovak literature, was published in 1795 in Trnava. The collection, which has since become a book rarity, was republished in 1978 by J. Minárik, translated into modern Slovak literary language. Later publishers and analysts, aware that Bajza’s texts in fact provide the same view of the world that we have come to know through Arlotto, Gonella, Poggio, or Bebel, one of the (actually unwitting) forerunners of the Reformation, have tangentially (suspecting mainly Latin, German, and Polish predecessors) looked into the direct sources of Bajza’s anecdotes. Although the characteristic features of Bajza's narrative and style are ab ovo for the centuries-old genre itself, they are not unique to Bajza, but are also found in Democritus ridens (1770) and in the Hungarian S. Andrád (1789, 1790). And one of the presumed, indirect or direct precursors of all this is also present in the pages of the Vade Mecum (in whole or in part) (1774–1777), annotated by Friedrich Nikolai. This paper attempts to explore possible Hungarian and German sources for Bajza’s anecdotes and facetiae.