Read Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City Online
Authors: Peter Demetz
Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (7 page)
While living in Prague, Brentano untiringly worked on four versions of his grand drama,
The Founding of Prague
(1815), and the result renders his interpreters, if they remember the play, either speechless or enthusiastic
about something unique and strange. It is certainly not a play to be measured by Aristotelian norms of order, plot, and character but, rather, a text that actually feels impoverished by using mere words rather than music, for there are many songs, martial melodies, lyrical moments, trumpet fanfares; in its desire for musicality and its monumental conception, Brentano’s text longs for fulfillment in an opera. Libussa’s story is set in the context of a mythological spectacle; lacking an orchestra, Brentano uses an abundance of diverse poetic structures and modes, from the solemn to the grotesque, to show how the dark and devilish forces of the past confront the first stirrings of Christianity anachronistically brought to the Bohemian forest from Byzantium. In Brentano’s view, Libussa is a plantlike maiden, aware of the divine ground of all being; and though she can be as cold as steel in turning down uncouth suitors, she is graceful and tender when yielding to tradition and her spouse. There is plenty of melodramatic action, which would challenge a postmodern producer to take the play apart and stage, in the creative spirit of romantic irony, a Brentano collage: the Avars are attacking, and the belligerent maidens in the Bohemian forest (with whom the playwright does not really sympathize) occasionally resemble a distaff version of Friedrich Schiller’s
Robbers
. Libussa’s prophecy about the glories of Prague concludes the play, but the conflict of evil and good will clearly continue; she takes her cue about the name of the place from the people working on a threshold in the woods, and she sees a city slowly emerging on the banks of the river, “the golden city / in the mantle of a king / glides down from throne and promontory” (V,9341-42), and “like a starry cincture / around her solemnly the river Moldau [Vltava] flows.” Yet it is a highly ambivalent finale; Libussa collapses in agony, and while P
emysl dryly remarks that he will duly define the borders of the new settlement, his people, unaware of future vicissitudes, automatically repeat what they are asked to repeat by their duke: “Prague! Prague! Thou threshold of our deliverance and faith!” (V,9360).
The Founding of Prague
(1815), and the result renders his interpreters, if they remember the play, either speechless or enthusiastic
about something unique and strange. It is certainly not a play to be measured by Aristotelian norms of order, plot, and character but, rather, a text that actually feels impoverished by using mere words rather than music, for there are many songs, martial melodies, lyrical moments, trumpet fanfares; in its desire for musicality and its monumental conception, Brentano’s text longs for fulfillment in an opera. Libussa’s story is set in the context of a mythological spectacle; lacking an orchestra, Brentano uses an abundance of diverse poetic structures and modes, from the solemn to the grotesque, to show how the dark and devilish forces of the past confront the first stirrings of Christianity anachronistically brought to the Bohemian forest from Byzantium. In Brentano’s view, Libussa is a plantlike maiden, aware of the divine ground of all being; and though she can be as cold as steel in turning down uncouth suitors, she is graceful and tender when yielding to tradition and her spouse. There is plenty of melodramatic action, which would challenge a postmodern producer to take the play apart and stage, in the creative spirit of romantic irony, a Brentano collage: the Avars are attacking, and the belligerent maidens in the Bohemian forest (with whom the playwright does not really sympathize) occasionally resemble a distaff version of Friedrich Schiller’s
Robbers
. Libussa’s prophecy about the glories of Prague concludes the play, but the conflict of evil and good will clearly continue; she takes her cue about the name of the place from the people working on a threshold in the woods, and she sees a city slowly emerging on the banks of the river, “the golden city / in the mantle of a king / glides down from throne and promontory” (V,9341-42), and “like a starry cincture / around her solemnly the river Moldau [Vltava] flows.” Yet it is a highly ambivalent finale; Libussa collapses in agony, and while P
emysl dryly remarks that he will duly define the borders of the new settlement, his people, unaware of future vicissitudes, automatically repeat what they are asked to repeat by their duke: “Prague! Prague! Thou threshold of our deliverance and faith!” (V,9360).The first tale to include the Prague Jews in Libussa’s world appeared in print in 1847, only one year before the revolution that was to divide Czech and German interests and make life even more difficult for the Jews of Central Europe, who were asked to affirm their national allegiances. Salomon Kohn’s narrative
The Jews in Bohemia’s Ancient History
, published in German, argued implicitly that Jews were closer to Czechs than to Germans, at least those beyond the Bohemian borders, since before dying Libussa herself prophesies their appearance in Prague, and the narrative makes it clear that they come from the Slavic east rather than from
the German west: she proclaims that a “foreign, homeless and endangered” people who believe in one God would seek protection in Bohemia; and when, a hundred and more years later, Duke Hostiwit succeeds to the throne, she appears to him in a dream and tells him about the foreign people who will appeal to him for help and protection. In the year 850, the narrative tells us, the Jews are driven out of Muscovy, for many years search for new homes, finally arrive in Bohemia, and, sending two of their elders to Hostiwit, explain that they are the children of Abraham and ask humbly for a place to stay. Hostiwit immediately recognizes that they are the people announced by his grandmother Libussa, consults his council, and grants their wish. In a formal audience, the Jews declare that they will be “loyal and obedient subjects” who will love their new “fatherland” as much as their forefathers loved the blessed land of Canaan, from which they were expelled because of their sins. Hostiwit gives them a place on the left bank of the Vltava River; it is perhaps of some importance to the message of Kohn’s story that the Jews arrive in Prague even before the first P
emyslid is baptized. Later, the Jews strongly support Duke Bofivoj financially and otherwise when he must drive inimical German invaders from the region. Clearly, though Salomon Kohn writes good German, his heart is on the side of a pre-1848 territorial patriotism celebrating the history of a shared ground.
The Jews in Bohemia’s Ancient History
, published in German, argued implicitly that Jews were closer to Czechs than to Germans, at least those beyond the Bohemian borders, since before dying Libussa herself prophesies their appearance in Prague, and the narrative makes it clear that they come from the Slavic east rather than from
the German west: she proclaims that a “foreign, homeless and endangered” people who believe in one God would seek protection in Bohemia; and when, a hundred and more years later, Duke Hostiwit succeeds to the throne, she appears to him in a dream and tells him about the foreign people who will appeal to him for help and protection. In the year 850, the narrative tells us, the Jews are driven out of Muscovy, for many years search for new homes, finally arrive in Bohemia, and, sending two of their elders to Hostiwit, explain that they are the children of Abraham and ask humbly for a place to stay. Hostiwit immediately recognizes that they are the people announced by his grandmother Libussa, consults his council, and grants their wish. In a formal audience, the Jews declare that they will be “loyal and obedient subjects” who will love their new “fatherland” as much as their forefathers loved the blessed land of Canaan, from which they were expelled because of their sins. Hostiwit gives them a place on the left bank of the Vltava River; it is perhaps of some importance to the message of Kohn’s story that the Jews arrive in Prague even before the first P
emyslid is baptized. Later, the Jews strongly support Duke Bofivoj financially and otherwise when he must drive inimical German invaders from the region. Clearly, though Salomon Kohn writes good German, his heart is on the side of a pre-1848 territorial patriotism celebrating the history of a shared ground.The Viennese playwright Franz Grillparzer came to Prague for only a week on a trip to Germany in 1826, “with a kind of prejudice,” he confessed himself, against the town and the “narrow nationalism” (
Nationalsinn
) of its inhabitants. Grillparzer knew much more about the history of the Czechs than Brentano did, and he kept his mind open to the “grandiose impression” of the town, “the advantageous contours, the broad river right through the middle, … strange towers and the excellent architecture, and the Hradschin crowning the whole.” He compared Prague to Venice in its fusion of ancient and modern, or to Florence, and felt, when he looked down from the Pet
n Hill as Brentano had done, something fantastic, “strangely consonant with the spirit of the old history of Bohemia.” He felt irritated in the Jewish Town (though a few young women there struck him as more beautiful than any he had ever seen), but Prague had all the marks of “the free creative power of the mind” (
der freien schaffenden Geisteskraft
); and when he left by uncomfortable stagecoach for the north, he felt surprisingly reconciled to the Czechs, whom “he had never really liked” because he had never before had an opportunity to see how they lived in their own ambience. Grillparzer worked on his Libussa play, off and on, hopefully and despairingly, for
more than twenty years, from at least 1822, when he jotted down a few remarks about Libussa, to the prerevolutionary time of 1847-48. The first act was performed at a Viennese matinee in 1840, but the completed play did not appear on the stage of Vienna’s Burgtheater until 1874, two years after his death, and with indifferent results.
Nationalsinn
) of its inhabitants. Grillparzer knew much more about the history of the Czechs than Brentano did, and he kept his mind open to the “grandiose impression” of the town, “the advantageous contours, the broad river right through the middle, … strange towers and the excellent architecture, and the Hradschin crowning the whole.” He compared Prague to Venice in its fusion of ancient and modern, or to Florence, and felt, when he looked down from the Pet
n Hill as Brentano had done, something fantastic, “strangely consonant with the spirit of the old history of Bohemia.” He felt irritated in the Jewish Town (though a few young women there struck him as more beautiful than any he had ever seen), but Prague had all the marks of “the free creative power of the mind” (der freien schaffenden Geisteskraft
); and when he left by uncomfortable stagecoach for the north, he felt surprisingly reconciled to the Czechs, whom “he had never really liked” because he had never before had an opportunity to see how they lived in their own ambience. Grillparzer worked on his Libussa play, off and on, hopefully and despairingly, for
more than twenty years, from at least 1822, when he jotted down a few remarks about Libussa, to the prerevolutionary time of 1847-48. The first act was performed at a Viennese matinee in 1840, but the completed play did not appear on the stage of Vienna’s Burgtheater until 1874, two years after his death, and with indifferent results.
In Grillparzer’s play traditional forms uneasily sustain pessimistic views of marriage and the history of humanity; Libussa and Primislaus, as they are called here, after a few wondrous moments of tenderness and anticipation (he saves her from drowning in a swift river) have terrible difficulties relating to each other, man and woman, plowman and princess. He does not want to be at her mercy as humble husband and duke consort, and she (though she loves him) does not want to submit unthinkingly to his wishes and resolves; though she bears his child, they remain an irritated couple, confronting each other in a Strindbergian marriage in which moments of intense if silent love quickly and agonizingly alternate with those of near-hate. (Grillparzer rightly says himself that he endangered the play by an unnecessary intrigue concerning jewels and gold chains.) His Libussa, by loving Primislaus the ruler-to-be, alienates herself from her essential nature, which is, like that of her sisters, one of feeling, solitude, and meditation on a divinely ordered universe; and when she decides that she wants “to be human together with other human beings” (1,405), she takes an irreversible step away from the pure realm of her origins, even though she insists on a matriarchal society inspired by “childlike trust” (1,446) rather than by the “rights” asserted by fierce male litigants:
wherever I look, I see but kindness, mercy
in everything that fills the world for all
Why, right and proof, what are they but the crutches
that help all lame and crooked causes stand? (II,903—4, 910—11)
(
trans. by Henry H. Stevens
)
trans. by Henry H. Stevens
)
It is inevitable that in such a clash of feeling and reason, sympathy and the law, Primislaus’s ideas will prevail. He wants to rule by formal order, intends to found the city, cleverly manipulates the elders to agree with his plans as if it had been their idea, and demands of Libussa that she give her priestly blessing to his urban project and “perhaps” provide an artfully arranged prophecy for the astonished nation, to inspire it with “hope of triumph and success.”
Grillparzer’s productive perversion of the Czech myth keeps Libussa
and Primislaus quarreling until she dies; though her husband is ready to cancel the ritual blessing of the future city, which she deeply resents, she insists on going through with it, stamping her priestly foot in a show of stubbornness and declaring that she will be “his obedient wife” again only after the rite. She makes it clear to him that it is his city, not hers; to build a city unfortunately means
and Primislaus quarreling until she dies; though her husband is ready to cancel the ritual blessing of the future city, which she deeply resents, she insists on going through with it, stamping her priestly foot in a show of stubbornness and declaring that she will be “his obedient wife” again only after the rite. She makes it clear to him that it is his city, not hers; to build a city unfortunately means
to leave behind your goodly cottages
where each lived as a man, a son, a husband,
a being in himself, and self-sufficient. (V,2329—31)
(
trans. by Henry H. Stevens
)
trans. by Henry H. Stevens
)
Instead of independence and self-sufficiency in union, labor and society will be divided, people will be “only parts of some large whole” and crave “use and profit,” or even leave with greedy zeal to make “a home in alien countries, alien here.” Almost condescendingly, Libussa tells Primislaus that his city will, of course, “thrive and prosper,” creating a threshold to history—yet history, she feels, will be dark and bloody before the primal conditions of humanity can be restored. Her visions of the great nations of the world, including the Slavs, are melancholy and far from consoling; all “races dwelling on earth” will, in turn, dominate the scene of history—Romans, Gauls, the English, Germans, “that blue-eyed race o’erflowing with rude force: / blind when it acts, inactive when it thinks” (V,2416). The Slavs, “age-old servants,” will finally be masters, and their dominance will be “far and wide, yet never high nor deep” (V,2421), like the Vltava River, as Grillparzer had noted in his diary, in a last chapter in the development of a “weary world” far removed from its origins. Primislaus wants to push her from the altar because her words endanger his political intentions, but before dying, she completes her prophecy: history will come to an end, she says, only when the long-lost moment of feeling is renewed; “then will the days return that now are gone, / the days of prophets and of genius” (V,2482-83). Until then, everyone will be alienated from the essential nature of humanity.
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