Kytice

by Karel Jaromír Erben

Sbírka baladických básní K. J. Erbena právem patří mezi klasická díla české literatury. Nejznámější a nejoblíbenější soubor básní začal autor psát již jako student. Jeho balady jsou inspirované slovanskými i jinými pověstmi a vyznačují se dějově dramatickým spádem. Promítají se do nich rovněž představy autora o vztazích mezi lidmi a přírodou a mezi lidmi navzájem.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Czech Literature, School, Horror, Fiction, Folklore

162 pages

First published January 1, 1853

About the author

Karel Jaromír Erben was a Czech historian, poet and writer of the mid-19th century, best known for his collection "Kytice", which contains poems based on traditional and folkloric themes.

He was born on November 7, 1811 in Miletín u Jičína. He went to college in Hradec Králové. Then, in 1831, he went to Prague where he studied philosophy and later law. He started working in the National Museum (Národní muzeum) with František Palacký in 1843. He became editor of a Prague's newspaper in 1848. Two years later, in 1850, he became archives' secretary of the National Museum. He died on November 21, 1870 of tuberculosis.

Reviews

[Milja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did read this book in Czech, however i will write the review in english;)
I am not that huge fan of (our) Slavic literature, no matter which region it comes from. However, this is my number 1 book when it comes to both Czech and Slavic literature.
I think that Erben did an amazing job in presenting the Czech folklore and legends in that pure, real and original form yet shaped so that it can be timeless. And kudos for in delivering them in their original, scary and even bizarre light. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone.

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across Kytice after reading an interview in which it was recommended by author Helen Oyeyemi, and I am thankful for her for bringing attention to this lovely little book.

Kytice, usually translated into English as Bouquet but meaning something closer to A Handful of Wild-flowers, is a collection of Czech folk-tales written in rhyming verse. The format is a little difficult to get used to, but Kytice is an astonishing piece of work on behalf of both the author, Karel Erben, and perhaps even more so, the translator, Susan Reynolds. To translate both the meaning and the form of such strictly rhyming folk-songs is an astonishing feat. I can't speak Czech, so cannot comment on how accurate the translation is, but it certainly captures the feeling of a true fairy tale.

An authentic fairy tale, one neither too artificially sweetened or full of obnoxious modern psychological undertones, is difficult to describe but instantly recognisable. These tales are full of darkness and violence true, for what is a fairy tale without spilled blood? But there is always a powerful moral undercurrent running underneath, a system of punishment and reward often unpalatable to a modern audience. A woman carrying her baby comes across a fairy barrow on her way to church and finds it is full of heaps of gold and silver. She fills her apron with coins, and temporarily sets the child down in the barrow, intending to return to it once she has secured the treasure. Anyone with any familiarity with almost any fairy tradition from around the world can guess what happens next.

Many of the poems could be described as horror. Witches, goblins and revenants abound, often clashing with the Christian church. The Virgin Mary here can be as capricious as any pagan goddess, but redemption is available for even monsters. Zahor's Bed, probably my favourite of the tales, features the various encounters between a priest and a flesh-eating forest spirit. However, the most awful danger in any tale is not any supernatural creature, but the all-too human capacity for self-destruction, and it is perhaps this detail that makes these poems ring so morally true.

Dreamlike and nightmarish, horrible and beautiful, Kytice is a handful of wild-flowers we are lucky to have dried, preserved and stuck between pages for posterity.

[Pertinacia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Klenot české literatury. Neprávem považovaný za "nudnou klasiku".

[Caro the Helmet Lady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kytice, Kytice, where have you been all my life?
Bouquet, or Kytice z pověstí národních, also known as just Kytice (Czech for "bouquet"), is a collection of ballads by the Czech author Karel Jaromír Erben. First published in the middle of XIX century, when Czech language was still pretty much an outcast in its own country, it became one of the most beloved and inspiring pieces of literature for the next generations. Which is sort of very cool and amazing, because the subject - folklore tales - was full of stories about ghosts, dead husbands, bloodthirsty supernatural creatures, doomed virgins etc... What's not to like? And it all inspired Antonín Dvořák to create music and many other artists to create art, cartoons and movies.
My fav was definitely Svatební košile (The Wedding Shirts).
And I found this on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryWdm... youtube and was simply enchanted.

P.S. Yes, our national/international rock star poet Mickiewicz also created ballads about supernatural - and I loved them - but he didn't go as far as Vodnik's author.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Above the river Orlice I saw a church
and heard its golden bell. It extinguished
the rush of fierce passion first,
then the ancient Czech sincerity.
When Czech’s godly virtues – love, hope, and faith –
turned musty and stale from disuse,
the church hid itself in the depths of the earth,
and water then flooded the place.
(from “The Prophetess”)

Initially published in 1853, Karel Jaromir Erben’s A Bouquet has never been out of print, and it has been adapted into musical, theatrical, cinematic and animated works. There is probably not a more important book in the Czech language than this slim volume of thirteen lyrical works of folklore. At a time, when a National revival was coursing through Bohemia and Moravia (then parts of the Austria-Hungarian Empire), Erben’s project was to re-establish the Czech national character, and to that end he went out into the villages of Bohemia and gathered the stories that people – who had never ceased to think and dream and speak in Czech – had passed down through endless generations. The result was this bouquet of folktales, with the author’s annotations as to the origins of the tales and their connections to similar tales from other European cultures.

And their path moves down the lowlands,
across water, meadows, fens,
and in the swamps and in the cane,
Blue lights flicker off and on:
they form two rows with nine in each,
as when a body’s laid to rest.
From the stream the frogs emerge,
croaking out a funeral dirge.
(from Wedding Shirts)

The tales range from the very brief title piece, depicting in six verses the origin of the name for “thyme,” to longer pieces of 15-20 pages like “The Prophetess,” which is subtitled “fragments” and constitutes a mosaic of different prophetic tales relating to the fate of the Czech nation that Erben collected over many years. The piece was never finished, and it is the most complex in the book, with many references to ancient history that even with the aid of Erben’s notes make for difficult reading to the casual reader. Most of the other tales, on the other hand, are delightful and straightforward, told to explain phenomena of human life and nature. There are tales of water sprites luring young maidens into watery depths, deathly struggles with noon witches arriving to take noisy children away, and pilgrims travelling to hell and back. Other tales are cautionary, relating in grueling details the destinies that befall women (somehow always women), who are greedy, or envious, or who dishonor their husbands.

”Bury me in the green forest instead,
Heather will bloom there around my head;
birds will sing for me day and night,
there will my heart rejoice and delight.”
(from “Lily”)

In the introduction to her translation of Karel Jaromir Erben’s A Bouquet, Marcela Sulak describes a few scenes from her experience of living in the Czech Republic, concluding that “… it is no exaggeration to say that the intimacy with the natural world and its forces, upon which these poems draw, is still very much in evidence.” Like Sulak, I too have experienced this “intimacy with the natural world” and the historical riches of the country that the local people here display. Visiting Czech people, it is not uncommon to go into the garden or nearby forest, and gather fruits, vegetables or mushrooms to be used in that day’s meals, just as it is commonplace to make a trip into the countryside to visit an old castle or church, or simply stroll amongst foothills and river streams. Travelling in the Scandinavian countries, I have had similar experiences in Iceland, Norway and Finland. Like the Czech people, these peoples have gained independence within the last 100-150 years (from Danish, Swedish and Russian rule, respectively). My conclusion is that in “younger” nations, where the privilege of speaking the tongue and telling the tales of your ancestors has not always been a given, the sense of cultural and natural heritage is valued higher.

The illustrations that grace the pages of Erben’s book (and that I borrowed) were painted by Alén Divis in the late 1940s. According to the jacket copy, “[o]f the many illustrators who have contributed to the various editions that have appeared over the past century and a half, Alén Divis’s artwork is generally considered the most powerful.

[karolína · Rating 4 out of 5]

zahorovo loze hatepage

[:) · Rating 4 out of 5]

ono je to skvele krasne ja to cetl uz stokrat ale proste slovo umrlec me dojebava 😭 also neni jedinej singluarni moment kdy nepremejslim nad koncem vodnika protoze to je fr the scariest thing ever miluju miluju

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Pečivo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jelikož jsem napůl vlk, tak mne povinna četba české literatury na základce/gymplu úplně minula. Po fiasku se švejkem mi trvalo dalších 11 let, abych vzal z knihovny další klasiku. Hlavní důvod ale byl, že sem ráno moc dlouho sral a proto sem měl co dělat abych stihnul vlak a nebyl moc čas vybírat.

4 hvězdičky za to, že jsem to přečet cestou do a zpátky z prace, což je vždycky plus a taky za to, že se s tím Erben nesere. Pár věcí nečekaně skvělých (vodník), pár básní šlo mimo mě, protože sem ve vlaku usnul a zapomněl, kde sem vlastně skončil.

Co mě ale nejvíc nadchlo je doslov - do teď jsem předmluvy a doslovy ignoroval, ale zjistil sem, že sem dělal velkou chybu. Takovou snůšku hoven sepsat, to je sakra kumšt - oficiálně jsem se začal ucházet o možnost napsat doslov palijovi do jeho novyho sbírky básni. Double spoiler!

[Štěpán · Rating 3 out of 5]

Po prvním čtení:

Nejoblíbenější: Svatební košile, Vodník

Nejhorší: Záhořovo lóže, Věštkyně
- didn’t even properly finish them 💀💀

[Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly enjoyable fantasy-horror poetry collection in a Czech/Slovak folklore setting. Poems work beautifully both in the original Czech but also in the Slovak translation (I have heard it´s also translated into English but I have not read that version so I can´t speak of its quality as of now).

Nature, which usually provides a sense of comfort, empathy or aesthetic beauty in poetry, was used as a source of terror, trial and hostility by Erben. Horror also bloomed from some themes like motherhood, religion, murder or romance. The poems were rather prozaic but that does not mean they necessarily lacked the lyrical quality; lyricism was just in the background of the particular story written in rhyme and verse. In a certain sense, the collection reminded me of The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, but Slavic and written in the poetic style.

This definitely wasn´t the last time I picked this collection up and I am very curious about the English translation as well.

[Pyza Wędrowniczka]

W skład „Kytic” wchodzi trzynaście ballad – które niestety nie miały szczęścia do polskiego tłumaczenia, co opłakuję codziennie rano przy wschodzie słońca, zawodząc rzewnym głosem „gdzieżeś jest, wyczekiwany tłumaczu Erbena?” – które są mniej lub bardziej nastawione na to, by czytelnika postraszyć, a równocześnie przemycić jakiś morał. Zwykle morał jest taki, że należy się słuchać praw boskich, szanować zdanie starszych, o ile akurat nie namawiają nas do porzucenia dziecka w jaskini i porąbania siostry siekierą, i nie ulegać wielkim namiętnościom, bo skończy się to zapewne zatrzaśnięciem w kostnicy przez upiora.

http://pierogipruskie.blogspot.com/20...

[KAYA · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

Přestože Kytice není zrovna současná literatura, dala se bez větších obtíží číst. Navíc jsem ji jako jednu z mála básnických sbírek dokázala pochopit (teda až na poslední báseň, ale člověk nemůže mít všechno že) a ocenit.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Macabre poetry. A breathless ride through gothic visions, like being taken by a skeletal hand and flown over 19th century Eastern European peasant landscapes. Excellent.

[majulinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kytice je jedna z těch nejlepší klasil, které bych mohla číst pořád dokola.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review originally posted at Eve's Alexandria, October 2013.

--

I recently read A Bouquet (1853), a collection of deliciously dark nineteenth-century Czech folktales, compiled by Karel Jaromír Erben (1811-70), and translated into English for the first time in 2012, by Marcela Malek Sulak. A copy was sent to me, very kindly, by marvellous Prague-based small publisher Twisted Spoon Press, who specialise in English translations of Central and Eastern European fiction.

The book itself is a lovely object: a small hardback with high-quality paper, a ribbon bookmark in the spine, and the creepy illustrations created by Alén Diviš for a mid-20th-century Czech edition of the text: The translator's introduction is clear and accessible, setting the collection in context and discussing the use of language of the folktales - in particular, the importance of metre and rhyme, for these are songs as much as they are stories - and the issues involved in translating them (I'd have liked a couple of concrete examples comparing the original with the choices the translator made, but it's possible I'm alone in this...). Sulak explains that Erben produced A Bouquet as part of the 19th-century 'National Revival' movement, which sought to make Czech a literary language for the first time, in reaction to the long-standing political and cultural weight of German within the Hapsburg empire.

The thirteen tales here comprise, Sulak says, "a literary depiction of the Czech national character". Without wanting to go too far down the road of what constitutes an 'authentic' folktale, or even whether 'authenticity' is a meaningful term to apply to the genre at all, it seems to me that Erben's tales - like many fairytale compilations of the same period from elsewhere in Europe - are perhaps best understood as poetic compositions embroidered upon the idea of a Czech 'folk' tradition, rather than a strict representation of it. They are an elaboration and imagining of what it might mean to be Czech, and to live in a Czech landscape - Sulak highlights "the intimacy with the natural world and its forces" present in many of the stories - that was created for the era of nationalisms.

There are plenty of familiar motifs. The archetypal evil stepmother, for example, turns up in 'The Golden Spinning Wheel', in which a girl named Dora catches the fancy of a passing king, and is promptly murdered by her stepmother and stepsister, so that the stepsister can go to the rather abrupt wedding ceremony and marry said king in Dora's place. (Perhaps the moral of the story is that one shouldn't agree to marry a man who can't tell you and your stepsister apart?) The comeuppance for the scheming steps strongly recalls that of 'The Two Sisters': Dora's bones are made into a spinning wheel, and when the spinning wheel is used at the king's court, it sings the truth of what happened to poor Dora. (Loreena McKennitt's 'The Bonny Swans' was playing in my head throughout...) Another surrogate maternal figure, the mother-in-law, proves equally dangerous in 'Lily' (at least by implication, since in this one we aren't shown the death); "You poisoned the flower of my life", the woman's son says, returning from a military campaign to find his young wife dead.

Spinning - as women's work, and as a demarcator of women's spaces - features in a number of the tales. 'Christmas Eve' has scenes of women spinning and talking bookends a story based around another familiar motif: looking into a body of water on a significant night of the year, in order to see one's future reflected there. The poor heroine of 'Wedding Shirts', meanwhile, faithfully spins and sews to be a good wife to her absent lover, only for him to return dead, tricksy, and determined to take her to the grave with him.

This particular tale is a good one to demonstrate Erben's style, which builds tension through rhythm and repetition to considerable effect. A recurring pattern of questions and answers in the dialogue - the villain playing cat and mouse with his victim as he lures her to the place where he can spring his trap - is used both to underline the heroine's peril, and to heighten the sense of relief at her sudden insight and (in this case) escape. One night, the evil lover leads the heroine away from the sanctuary of her home, on the promise that they can finally marry. As they travel, faster and supernaturally faster, she asks him questions - about his house, his parents - and he always responds with an evasion, all the while gradually stripping her of everything she carries that might protect her from him:

"Too many questions, doll, for me,
just come quickly - you will see.
Let's get going - time won't wait,
our journey is a long one yet.
But what's that in your right hand, dear?"
"I'm carrying some books of prayer."
"Throw them out, those kinds of books
are heavier than piles of rocks!
Throw them out and walk with ease
if you want to keep up with me."

Erben turns the screw beautifully - it's not unlike watching an unwitting horror film character walking blithely up the stairs in a needlessly darkened house - until the penny drops for our heroine, and she's able to use her final keepsake (a bundle of shirts she'd sewn for their wedding) to distract her undead lover long enough for her to turn the trap on him, and get away.
There aren't many other cheerful, life-affirming endings. The title story comes closest, with its short, bittersweet image of a mother who, even after her death, feels such pity and love for her grieving children that she turns into a plant with a beautiful scent that they can carry with them always:

She felt so sad for her son and daughter
her soul crept back one night
and took the form of a tiny flower
which spread across her gravesite.

But both 'Willow' and 'Water Sprite' tell of abusive husbands tormenting their wives; in the former, the petulant husband murders his wife for not paying enough attention to him, and in the latter the water sprite husband punishes his human wife for attempting to leave him by decapitating their child:

Two things lay there in the blood -
fear froze her where she stood -
a baby's body with no head,
a head without its body.

In 'The Treasure', it's a mother's turn to cause her child harm, as she foolishly ventures down into a surprise!tunnel that appears one day in front of the local church. Again, the sing-song rhythms of Erben's poetry really help bring the story - and its ominous undertones - to life:

Step by step, deeper and deeper,
she's powerfully compelled to go,
step by step, into the boulder,
until she wakes a sleeping echo.

Surprise!tunnel is, of course, one of those entrances to another plane that are constantly tempting the unwary in folktales, and the greedy woman duly falls for the trap, leaving behind her infant son - temporarily, she tells herself! - in order to haul away some of the shiny, shiny loot lying around. The tunnel, naturally, closes up and vanishes, the gold turns to clay, and the woman kicks herself for falling for that hoary old trick. After a year's wailing and repentance - Erben's rendition pays more attention to this aspect of the story than many fairytales do, with almost as many stanzas lavished on her maternal agony as on the atmospheric journey under the ground - she is rewarded with the reappearance of the tunnel, and after some strategic invocations of the Virgin Mary, the duly chastened woman is able to rescue her son.

[Kačaba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Příběh dne:

panický rereading - číslo pět z pytlíku - odmaturováno!

[Michaela]

just wondering why all these women gets punished by god when they've (for the most time) done nothing bad, and then this one guy literally kills several people, prays for a long time and then gets into heaven?

[Agnes]

Tak jsem si jako dala re-reading, jo? Protože, co si budem - maturita klepe na dveře a já Kytici četla...před...no...kdysi. Někdy za můj středoškolský život určitě. A tak si říkám: Hmm, tak to je sice pěkný, ale já vlastně už ani nevím, co tam všechno je. Jako rozbory na internetu, děkuju pěkně moc, trochu to pomůže, ok, ale já si to potřebuju přečíst sama.
Tak jsem využila situace, když jsem Kytici našla u bratra v pokoji. Ne, že by si mé výpujčky všimnul. Kdybych mu to neřekla, tak by o tom neměl ani tucha.
Takže ke Kytici - jako všichni jsou z toho úplně paf juhuu Kytice, Erben, toho zná každej žeo? A stejně nakonec všichni zjistí, že to byl špatný nápad. To tam máte ještě okolo národní obrození, ústní lidovou slovesnost a super srandy s Národním divadlem. Takže, klidně si to přečtěte, je to základ, ale k maturitě si to neberte. Zdá se to jako skvělý nápad, ale není. Stačilo mi, když v češtině jsme se mohli nechat vyzkoušet z knih, ze kterých máme obavy a všichni šli z Kytice. Takže asi tak.

Ani po druhém přečtení nechápu Záhořovo lože a asi ho ani nikdy v životě nepochopím, ale dokážu s tím žít. Věštkyně mi taky unikla, ale už nemám sílu na to to pochopit a popravdě mě to vůbec netrápí. End of my story.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who finds Grimm's Fairy Tales to their liking will like this book. These poems/ballads are all quite grim, "dotted with murder and mayhem, graves opening and the dead walking the earth, the animate becoming the inanimate and vice versa, ogres and monsters of lake and wood, human transformations..." (dust jacket). I read the version translated by Marcela Sulak with artwork by Alen Divis. The physical book is beautiful. The artwork is dark and macabre, far from charming, and captures the nature of the poems perfectly. Sulak spent fifteen years "on and off" translating the poems, originally published in Czech in 1853, and claims that her translation, "is sensitive to Erben's prosodic and syntactic innovations that produced a living language filled with the musicality for which Czechs have long been known." The poems read beautifully and fluidly. Antonin Dvorak based four of his symphonic poems on four of the poems in this collection. I will never listen to Noon Witch the same way again!

[Keruonedz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tu na planině široké
stavení stojí vysoké;
úzká a dlouhá okna jsou,
a věž se zvonkem nad střechou.

„Hoj, má panenko, tu jsme již!
Nic, má panenko, nevidíš?“

„Ach pro boha! ten kostel snad?“

„To není kostel, to můj hrad!“

„Ten hřbitov - a těch křížů řad?“

„To nejsou kříže, to můj sad!
Hoj, má panenko, na mě hleď,
a skoč vesele přes tu zeď!“

[terka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prostě Kytice, co dodat.

[Klára Štěpánková · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poezie mě tolik nebaví, ani ji nevyhledávám, ale Kytice byla super a možná se k ní i někdy vrátím ještě.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Krásné ilustrace navodí úplně jinou, naprosto novou atmosféru.

[Carolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful collection of dark folk stories told in verse form. The translation is mesmerizing and reads with much beauty. Nevertheless, I’m a little sad that I’ll never have the chance to hear the sounds of the original as they were intended.

At times enchanting, at other times frightening, these tales are never just lessons imbued with morality, but also clamours to the darkest folds of the human soul. My favourite piece of this bouquet was ‘Willow’, in which a woman deserts her body at night to become one with a willow tree. Her fate and the tree’s are intertwined — what becomes of one will become the other’s lot.

This review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Diviš’s haunting artwork, dreamlike and as if haunted, inspired by the drawings the artist saw on prison walls while held prisoner. Erben’s poetry and Diviš’s art are like a marriage of heaven and hell.

If you’re looking for something to read by the fireplace over winter, it doesn’t get better than this.

[princeznazknih · Rating 3 out of 5]

joo, tak erbenovy balady jsou klasika. nedívala jsem se na to nijak jinak, když teď vím, že se jedná o biedermeier, ne o romantismus, ale přesto mě to baví. ty rýmy má prostě parádní, střídá různé typy a mě baví, jak krásně to zní dohromady, ale zároveň se to baladu od balady liší.

[Sára Pokorná · Rating 5 out of 5]

až na Věštkyni moc pěkný a čtivý, poslední jsem úplně nepobrala upsik

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Řekni mi, jaká je tvá oblíbená balada z Kytice, a já ti řeknu, kdo jsi.”

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

milujem

[gáťa halasová · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snivé