On Fran Kurelac and Slovaks

Abstract

Enclosed are two letters that Fran Kurelac sent from Pest to Bratislava in 1836 and 1837 to his peer, Slovak revivalist Alexander Boleslavín Vrchovský. Numerous studies have been written about the life and work of philologist and writer Fran Kurelac (1811 – 1874), one of the pioneers of the Croatian national revival. In view of the fact that he only published his first noteworthy text in a Croatian periodical in April 1848, when he was already 37 years old, few of Kurelac’s biographers had the ambition to paint as complete and well-rounded a picture of him as possible. The main subject of the interpretation of these letters is Fran Kurelac’s relationship to the Slovak cultural and political situation at the time. He strongly advocated for the unity of linguistically and religiously divided Slovak intellectuals. The linguistic situation among the Slovaks at the time when these two letters were written was characterised by the coexistence of Slovak, Czech, and other languages, which was reflected above all in the lexical fund. Considering the fact that the Czech language was not yet fully standardised and there were different tendencies in its standardisation, we also find at least three variants in its use among the Slovaks. Kurelac’s letters are written in a special, interesting, and clearly bohemianised variant of the Slovak language, influenced by the language of Ján Kollár’s literary works.