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Chapter three is entitled "Metainfor-mational (metatextual) operators" (pp. 285-349) and includes the following studies: "Metainformational pointers to meaning in text" (pp. 285-288), "Conjunctions as metatextual operators" (pp. 289-296), "On some metatextual operators containing the component 'mond' (s/he says)" (pp. 297-303), "On the structure and functions of text initial metainformational sentences" (pp. 304310), "On metatextual operators 'aha', 'igen', 'mi' (I see!, yes, what) and that of the expressive ones marking the end of a reply" (pp. 311-314), "Metainformational verbs describing the patterns of receiving information, the effects it makes on the receiver, and the state of memory of the information receiving device" (pp. 315-318), "Metainforma-tional verbs describing the value of information in Hungarian" (pp. 319-320), "The role of metainformation structures in meaning-modification" (pp. 321-324), "Metainformational verbs describing information processing in Hungarian" (pp. 325-328), "Review as a source of metainformation" (pp. 329-333), "Metainformational verbs describing the physical condition of the information source" (pp. 334-335), "Metainformational verbs describing the state of the information receiving device" (p. 336), and "Some notes on the concept and scope of information" (pp. 337-349). With its 64 pages, this chapter is the shortest in the book, but this does not mean that it is less valuable. This chapter is an important contribution to the discussion of the role of metainformational operators, as it reassesses the state of research, its results and directions.
The author uses a number of illustrative, real-life examples to support his thesis. Future research should move in
the direction of a better understanding of the interaction between speakers and their linguistic usage. This could be possibly due to recent developments in textlinguistics and can be achieved, among other things, by a close observation of speaking behaviour.
Despite the fact that our treatment of the papers contained in volume 86 of the Language Study series has been selective, we would like to express our high opinion of the whole book. It is extremely interesting, highly representative of what has been going on in the field of the cognitive linguistic paradigm for the last few decades and as such is highly rec-ommendable not only to those working in the field, but also to all the people who can read Hungarian and take an interest in language without being academically engaged in linguistics per se.
Péter Patrovics
Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem eva. egri@uniqa. hu
ROBERT KISS SZEMAN: "...GARAZDA EMBEREKAZ ETYMOLOGUSOK". IRODALMI TANULMANYOK. Budapest: ELTE BTK, Szlav Filologiai Tanszek, 2008, 171 pp.
The book "...garazda emberek az Etymologusok". Irodalmi tanulmanyok ("...Etymologists Are Riotous People". Literary Studies), by Robert Kiss Szeman, Hungarian literary scholar, essayist and translator of Czech and Slovak literature into Hungarian (see, for example his translation of Bohu-
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mil Hrabal's Ponorne Hcky) consists of eleven literary studies and essays written between 1995 and 2008. The studies are divided into three main sections treating Jan Kollar, conservatism and modernism, and Jan Patocka, respectively. The subjects, however, often overlap, since all the studies are devoted to Czech and Slovak literature of the 19th and the 20th century in general. A specific feature of almost all the essays is that they are enriched by the wider comparative context of Hungarian literature, which is, owing to difficulties caused by different languages, quite rare in Slavic studies. Some of the texts were originally published as chapters in Slovak and Hungarian books or as journal articles, and some are published here for the first time. Because of the large number of chapters, I will examine in detail only a few of them and merely touch upon the rest.
The first three studies are the longest and most in-depth. They trace the life and literary heritage of Jan Kollar, one of the most influential Central European writers of the nineteenth century and someone who had an enormous impact on the development and character of the Czech and Slovak National Revivals. Kollar's work is apparently especially attractive to Hungarian scholars because he lived, worked, and wrote in Pest, Hungary. This aspect of Kol-lar's life and work, however, has not been examined in depth until now, and it is one that opens up new possibilities of interpretation for such scholars as Robert Kiss Szeman, who introduces new and original ideas and enriches the existing state of Kollar research.
The first study, "Kollar's Oeuvre in us," presents a compact overview on the changing interpretations of Kollar's literary work over the last two centuries,
especially against the Slovak, Czech and Hungarian backgrounds. The text points out the most significant reasons why interest in the author's works has declined among scholars. The most important, according to Kiss Szeman, are divergences in the development of Central European nations, methodological changes in the 19th century in the field of scholarship paradigms, and cultural policies that changed according to the various regimes that held power. Slovaks and Czechs had different goals during their National Revivals, and they took only those ideas from Kollar's conceptions that they thought useful for the development of their own nations. From this point of view, Kollar's texts were irrelevant for Hungarian scholars and literary critics during this period. The Czech and Slovak reception was strongly influenced by national interests, and only those ideas were emphasized that could positively influence the formation of their national identity. The next reason for the decline of Kollar's influence was the change in the scholarship paradigm that took place during the last decade of the 19th century. The development of positivism split Kollar's literary work into two parts according to scholastic and aesthetic paradigms. His poems were still seen as valuable, but his hypotheses and conceptions in the fields of etymology and history began to be seen as baseless and were ignored. His academic activity was gradually forgotten. Postivism was set on leaving behind Kollar's theological and religious publications. The erosion of Kollar's influence was accomplished by changes in political life during the 19th and the 20th centuries. The development of standard versions of Czech and Slovak made his ideas of a single common language appear obsolete. On the other
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hand, his theoretical biblical and ethical papers were banned under communism. Kollar's oeuvre was reduced virtually to Slavy dcera, actually to the opening sonnets of the poem. This study is particularly significant and thought provoking because it examines the mechanisms of a functioning literary heritage in a complex social, scholarly, political, and national context. It describes cultural aspects that have influenced and still influence the reception of one of the greatest personalities of Czech and Slovak literature in the 19th century. One of the greatest benefits of this study is to demonstrate the wide variety of factors that can transform the meaning of literary works and present them in the wider European context.
The next study, "Historicity and Creation-Parallels in the Attitudes and Historical Work of Jan Kollar and Istvan Hovrath," concentrates on Kollar's scholarly activity that was neglected at the end of the 19th century. Kiss Szeman analyzes the usage of historical sources in Kollar's literary work by researching lesser known publications that were written when Kollar lived in Pest and worked there as an evangelical pastor for the Slovak community. First of all, Kiss Szeman looks at the well-known and thoroughly researched factors that inspired Kollar's ideas and formed his identity and conceptions - books and other publications that probably influenced Kollar's worldview (works, for example, by Herder, Safarik, and Kara-mzin, et cetera). The author goes on to analyze and examine the other cultural influences that can hardly be grasped by traditional historical-philological tools - the atmosphere of Pest in the 19th century. Kollar spent 30 years in Pest during a time when Pest was the spiritual center of developing Hungary.
Pest was a multicultural city, a conglomerate of new ideas and conceptions produced by many nations - Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Romanians - each of whom wanted to fight for their political independence. New conceptions crystallized there and inspired each other. This long residence in the capital city of Hungary, its atmosphere and many creative impulses, had an enormous influence on Kollár, which Kiss Szemán demonstrates by finding parallels between Kollar's texts and texts of the famous Hungarian historian and linguist István Horváth. His statement about etymologists became part of the title of Kiss Szemán's paper. Parallels between Kollár and Horváth can be found in their attitude to the past of Hungarians and Slovaks. They consider the past and history as important factors in the constitution of the nation. Both etymologists located the roots of their nations in mythological places and both were wrong. According to Horváth, the original Hungarians came from Africa, and Kollár searched for the origin of the Slovaks in ancient Italy. Both were interested in linguistic questions, which often caused antagonism between them. The next significant parallel that Kiss Szemán finds by comparing their activity is their attitude to women, who could be important links in national movement. He also describes the history of their personal debates and antagonisms. The comparison of the activity of the two scholars facilitates an understanding of Kollár's ideas in a new context and shows that Kollár's conceptions followed the natural evolution of imaginary history and were central to historical discussions of his times. At the same time, Kiss Szemán demonstrates the narrow-mindedness of positivistic scholars who neglected Kol-
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lar's methodology, seeing it as archaic and regarding his conceptions as irresponsible and unreliable because they were evaluating them from a different point of view without understanding their meaning for the formation of the national consciousness.
The third study "Jan Kollar or "The Good Qualities of the Slav Nation" deals in detail with Kollar's methodology of history, which followed the tradition of the Romantic Age and was a natural continuation of Herder's conceptions. That is why it could not have been understood and appreciated by positivists, who used a completely different methodology. Kiss Szeman analyzes a two-part sermon entitled The Good Qualities of the Slav Nation and sketches out the background of its origin. When Kollar started to work in Pest in 1819 as a pastor, he wanted to encourage the generally Slav minority, and this was one of the main goals of writing his sermons. He probably looked for inspiration in a Hungarian text entitled On the Religious and Moral Condition of the Hungarian, written by a Veszprem canon named Janos Horvath. In this paper, there is a comparison of Kollar's and Horvath's sermons and parallels between them. Kiss Szeman shows how Kollar used certain motifs and creatively adapted them to his conception. Again, the Hungarian context enriches the state of research and provides new inspiration for other scholars, since it examines Kollar's literary work from a new point of view.
The next section of studies - "Conservatism as an Intellectual and Literary Trend in Europe in the 19th and 20th century," "The European Background and Certain Characteristics of Central European Conservatism and Catholic literature, West or East? - Modernism and Conservatism in the Literatures
of Central Europe," "'God's Rainbow' - The Leading Ideas and Figures of Czech Catholic Literature," "The Baroque Phenomenon as a Morphological Zero in the Paradigm System of Czech Catholic Modernism," "The Horizontal and Vertical as Principles for the Arrangement of Jan Cervens 'The Blue Cathedral'," and "Marginality as the Organising Force in the Art of Pavol Strauss"- calls attention to the phenomena of conservatism, Catholic literature, Catholic modernism and Catholic/ Christian existentialism. They point to a phenomenological description of conservatism, define modernism and also illustrate practical applications of these intellectual trends in literature. Kiss Szeman uses a wide variety of examples from German, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and especially Czech, Slovak and Hungarian literature. In one of his studies, he claims that Czech and Hungarian modernism cannot be entirely understood without looking at them side by side. Especially notable is an experiment in the study "The Baroque Phenomenon as a Morphological Zero in the Paradigm System of Czech Catholic Modernism," which is written in the form and language of a baroque essay. It can be seen as proof of Kiss Szeman's artistic and literary skills. In this attractive form, the Hungarian scholar looks for the reasons why Czech Catholic modernism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was not inspired by the baroque literary tradition. One possible explanation is the identification of the baroque period with the loss of Czech political independence after the Battle of White Mountain. Kiss Szeman, by analyzing texts by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, defines the main features of the baroque style and the way baroque authors saw and de-
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scribed reality. He also uses a description of baroque sculptures in Kuks to demonstrate the way of thinking in the 17th century and to capture the baroque phenomenon as a whole. Finding the primary characteristics of baroque literature helps us to understand the absence of the baroque tradition in the literary works of the first generation of Czech Catholic modernism. The second generation (especially Sigismund Bouska and Julius Zeyer) began to rehabilitate the baroque and started to employ typical baroque literary genres. Actually, however, only Jaroslav Durych can be seen as an author who was deeply inspired by baroque style, language and philosophy. It can be seen both in the literary genres he used, as well as in his language and the spiritual content of his literary works.
The last section contains two essays, "Jan Patocka, Philosopher of Czech Phenomenology" and "An Introduction to Jan Patocka's Philosophy of Art Based Several of his Writings on Aesthetics Generally and on Czech Literature." They are devoted to the life and work of Jan Patocka, one of the most important Czech philosophers of the 20th century.
One of the greatest benefits of this publication is the fact that these studies show new connections between some already well-known pieces of knowledge. It opens new directions for research and new avenues of interpretation. It will certainly inspire other scholars, teachers and students, since these studies are not hermetic and can be useful for many readers, not only for people who know the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian context very well. They should be beneficial to all people interested in the history, literature and culture of Central Europe. On the other hand, even specialists will be introduced to previously little-known information, which is required for a deeper understanding of the complex relations among Central European countries. Finally, this publication is important because in today's world, when antagonisms between nations easily spread, it is objective and sincere, and treats delicate matters between Slovaks and Hungarians in a sophisticated and unbiased way.
Agnieszka Janiec-Nyitrai
Masarykova univerzita janiec. nyitrai@gmail. com
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