AN_ANTHOLOGY_OF_SORBIAN_POETRY_from_the_16th-20th_centuries_-_A_rock_against_these_alien_waves.pdf

AN ANTHOLOGY OF SORBIAN POETRY

from the 16th-20th centuries

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION by Robert Elsie

ANONYMOUS

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JAN SKALA

In vain

Night passes...day fades...

JAN LAJNERT

Anguish

Coincidence

MINA WITKOJC

Song of the Sorbian people

The butterfly

JURIJ BREZAN

Promise made in 1948

How I found my fatherland

My little plan

JURIJ CHEZKA

Green Z

Fantasy

Memento

Sorbian song

JURIJ MLYNK

My aim

KITO LORENC

What the tiled stove is

Thoughts under a wooden roof

Painting Easter eggs

Homage to Handrij Zejler

Epitaph for Johannes Bobrowski

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE SORBIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

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INTRODUCTION

The very existence of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority in Germany, may be a surprise to

many. After coping bravely with the difference between Slovakia, Slovenia and Slavonia, the

English-speaking reader might be forgiven initially for thinking, or hoping, that Sorbian is

simply a misspelling for Serbian.

The Sorbs, also known as Lusatian Sorbs or Wends, are descendants of Western Slavic

tribes which took possession of the territory known as Lusatia by the end of the 5th century A.D.,

now in the southeastern part of the German Democratic Republic. Although soon separated from

other Slavic speakers, the Poles and Czechs, by successive waves of Germanic conquerors

during the Middle Ages, the Sorbs managed to resist assimilation and retain their cultural

identity. They clung tenaciously to their language and culture over the centuries in spite of long

periods of oppression, not least of which recently during the Third Reich. Since 1948, the Sorbs

have enjoyed official status as a national minority in the GDR and can use their language freely

in all walks of life where numbers warrant.

No reliable statistics are available as to the number of Sorbian speakers today and their

distribution. The traditional figure is 100,000. It is estimated, however, that only about 30,000

people are able to use the language, virtually all of whom speak German, too. Indeed, one of the

results of long years of bilingualism among the Sorbs has been that Sorbian no longer serves as

an essential means of communication in the region. As in Ireland, Wales and Brittany, where no

practical need for a language as a means of communication exists, it begins to die out,

irrespective of the strong cultural or emotional attachment speakers may have and despite

official backing.

Sorbian is spoken in a number of regional variants having crystallized into two related

literary languages: Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian, which are, given a bit of effort and good

will, quite mutually intelligible.

Upper Sorbian (hornjoserbscina) is spoken by large sections of the rural population of

Upper Lusatia northeast of Dresden between the towns of Bautzen (Budysin), Hoyerswerda

(Wojerecy) and Kamenz (Kamjenc). Although towns such as Bautzen are officially bilingual too,

very little Sorbian is to be heard there nowadays. The language is best preserved in the

countryside, in particular in the so-called Catholic villages west of Bautzen which, perhaps due

to their traditional isolation within a predominantly Protestant region, have held more faithfully

to their traditions.

Lower Sorbian (dolnoserbski) is spoken in the marshy Spree Forest of Lower Lusatia

around the town of Cottbus (Chosebuz), about one hundred kilometres southeast of Berlin. It is

used by far less numbers than is Upper Sorbian and seems to be well on the road to extinction.

Together with Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian and the now extinct Polabian language,

Sorbian forms part of the Western group of Slavic languages. Upper and Lower Sorbian form an

indisputable linguistic entity, although whether this entity comprises one language or two is a

matter of contention. Some authors refer to one Sorbian language with two standardized variants

while others prefer to speak of two Sorbian languages. Upper Sorbian, with stress on the initial

syllable and with h for Common Slavic g, appears to be closer to Czech, as one might expect

from its geographical position, whereas Lower Sorbian has many features in common with

Polish. Cut off as it is from the other Slavic languages by areas of German settlement to the east

and south of Lusatia, Sorbian has not gone without a strong German influence, not only in

vocabulary but also in phonology and syntax. On the other hand, it has retained a number of

archaic features which have long since disappeared from most other Slavic languages, e.g. the

presence, in addition to singular and plural, of a dual number in nouns, pronouns, adjectives and

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verbs, a feature found otherwise only in Slovenian, and preservation of the aorist and imperfect

tenses of the verb.

Earliest substantial records of the Sorbian language date from the 16th century. Among

them are the so- ’

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