From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk: A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture

Preface

ix The intent of this dictionary is not to provide a complete account of Czech history and culture. I am neither a historian nor cultural critic, merely an observer of everyday life.My aim is simply to introduce the reader to a number of concepts—people,places, songs, games, slogans—common in Czech popular culture. These concepts generally do not appear in dictionaries, textbooks, or histories, or at least not in the form they do here. Where they do occur—mainly in daily newspapers or ordinary conversation —they are usually not explained. Yet all of them are well known to Czechs living in the latter half of the twentieth century. They are the furniture of his or her mental universe. Czechs allude to them when talking to friends, situate new phenomena in relation to them, and assume them to be a natural part of the world.This dictionary thus tries to explain both their literal meaning and the set of associations that has grown around them. In choosing the entries for the dictionary, I have followed one simple rule. All of the concepts are known to ordinary Czechs. Every Czech with a standard secondary school education should recognize virtually all of the entries even if they may be hazy on some of the details. In fact, most of the research for this dictionary involved simply quizzing Czechs about their lives and opinions.Another title for this dictionary might be: Things That Every Czech Knows, But No Foreigner Does. My model in this task—though I am less comprehensive and knowledgeable than he—is István Bart. His Hungary and the Hungarians:The Keywords is a minor treasure. It is the only book I know of that acquaints the reader with the range of images that citizens of a culture take for granted. Here is how Bart explains his approach: Language is not just words and grammar, it works by metaphors and allusions that make up (and also hide away) meanings which are indecipherable without knowledge of the cultural code. Every student of a foreign language is painfully aware how this meta-language lurking behind even the simplest of turns of phrase can make reception of even everyday speech such a precarious affair. For there may be worlds in a word, not unlike the boxes within boxes within boxes of a Chinese puzzle. And bilingual dictionaries, constructed on the principle of equivalence, do not help here, because they do not try to invoke the thoughts, concepts and images that are invoked for the native speaker Preface trev01.indd 9 05-09-06 03:22:44 x upon hearing the name of a town or a region, a festival, a form of address, a dish peculiar to his country or the lines of a song.For languages are made up of popular memories, myths and beliefs, customs and ever changing usage, words ring bells—and if our ears don’t hear their toll, life is merely a silent movie. This book was born out of innumerable futile efforts to explain to visitors what is behind a gesture or a melody, a name, an attitude. It is both a guide to the “secrets” of the Hungarians’ code-language and a concise cultural encyclopaedia of Hungarianness. My aim is similar to Bart’s, but with a few limitations. I have largely avoided high culture because it has been described better elsewhere. In any case, high culture is not well known by ordinary people—they are aware of it, but do not feel it in their bones. I have also focused more on communism than other eras because it is a particular interest of mine. It is also the era with which contemporary Czechs are most familiar. Most importantly, I am limited as a foreigner. I have tried to capture some aspects of the Czech cultural language,but everything came to me second-hand.I had to learn these terms and their associations; I did not grow up with them.In fact,I did not come to know Czech culture until I was in my early twenties. I publish this dictionary only in the hope that these concepts are not lost before someone better qualified takes up the task of documenting them. The dictionary is meant to serve a number of purposes. First, it is a handbook for those exploring Czech popular culture. One often comes across allusions to individuals or subjects that are difficult to track down in conventional reference...