Mato Kosyk: Poet of the Lower Sorbs

Abstract

SEER, Vol.85,NAo. 2, April2007 Review Article Mato Kosyk:Poet of the Lower Sorbs GERALD STONE Janas, Pets and Marti, Roland (eds). Mato Kogyk. Spise.Celkowny wudawk. 4 vols (vol. 3 in two parts). Ludowe nakladnistwo Domowina, Budysyn, 2000, 200I, 2003, 2004, 2006. 480, 400, 595, 480, 375 PP. Tables. Notes. Documents. Bibliography. Indexes. 12.90 per volume/part. THE language of the Lower Sorbs is critically endangered. In 1995there were reckoned to be fewer than 7,000 speakers, most of whom were over sixty years old.' Even a century earlier they had numbered no more than 76,ooo,2 but at that time they at least formed a compact, close-knit community with a vigorous linguistic culture. Outstanding among their poets is Mato Kosyk (I853-I940) and, whatever the prospects for the language, his achievement remains and will continue to interest readers with a fondness for the secluded areas of European literature. For them and for literary scholars, whose attention Kosyk also merits, the appearance of this finely-produced critical edition of the complete works, now more than halfway towards completion, is an event of some importance. It contains poems (including hymns), prose, and correspondence. The critical apparatus, like the works themselves, is in Lower Sorbian. Mato Kosyk was born on i8 June I853 in the village of Werben (So. Wjerbno), some fifty miles south-east of Berlin. He was sent to the village school and, at the age of eight, began to learn German.3 Werben lies on the edge of the Spree Forest (Ger. Spreewald/So. Blota), a wooded fenland, where the Spree, as it flows north-west, divides into a network of rivulets, which are later reunited before it reaches Berlin. This landscape and its specific ecology moulded Kosyk's consciousness and appear time and again in his poetry. He attended the Cottbus gymnasium from I867 to I873, after which he worked as an untenured GeraldStone is an EmeritusFellowat HertfordCollege,Oxford. ' Ralph Jodlbauer, Gunter SpieBi and Han Steenwijk, Die aktuelleSituationder niedersorbischen Sprache. Ergebnisse einersoziolinguistischen Untersuchung derJahre i993-1995, Bautzen,200I, p. 39. 2 Ernst Muka, 'Statistika Serbow sakskeho kralestwa', casopis Mac'icy Serbskee,i886, p. 57. 3Biographical detailshere and hereafterare from Frido Metsk,MatoKosyk, Bautzen, I985, and RichardDalitz and GeraldStone, 'Mato Kosykin America',IltopisInstituta za serbskiludospyt, series A, 24, I977, pp. 42-79. 326 MATO KOSYK: POET OF THE LOWER SORBS employee of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company. His first published work, the poem 'Psi p?eze' ('Spinning'),appeared in the weekly Bramborski serski casnik in I877. He resigned from the railwaythat year and returnedto Werben, where for six years he lived with his parents and pursued his literary craft with remarkableintensity. The greater part of his life'swork was produced during the period I877 to I883. Single poems printedin periodicalsmarkedthe firststepsin Kosyk's literarycareer;but in i88o he published as a separate title his Serbska swajzba w Blotach (A SorbianWedding in the Spree Forest),a narrative poem in almost 2000 hexameters,in which one of the most memorable features are the detailed descriptions of traditional Sorbian wedding customsand rituals.To this period belong also the two dramaticworks Bozemjeserbskich wojakow(The Sorbian Soldiers' Farewell) and Cesc 1uzyskego gys'aja (The Honour of a Lusatian Hero), as well as his epic trilogy from Sorbian history, Serbskich woscows'erpjenje a chwalba(The Suffering and Glory of our Sorbian Forefathers),comprising Pserada markgroby Gera(The Treachery of Margrave Gero), Branibora pad (The Fall of Brandenburg),andJacslow.In addition, during the six years at home in Werben, he wrote over 200 shorterpoems, exhibitinga broa(d thematic range and a great variety of forms and, at the same time, assumedthe main burdenin the revisionof the Lower Sorbianhymnal. This was not mere editorial work. Although the hymns had all been translatedpreviously, many of Kosyk's versions are entirely new. He also workedwith HajndrichJordanand Kito Swjelaediting the weekly Lower Sorbian newspaper under its new title (fromJanuary i88I), Bramborske nowiny. Kosyk's ambition was to be a clergyman in a Sorbian parish, but having left school without the Abitur,he could not enter a German university.However, having for some years dreamedof travellingoverseas and hearingthat in America the lack of the Abitur was...