The Prague Post
September 7th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Tempo

Culture (kul´cher)

1. the ideas, customs, arts and language of a people passed along to succeeding generations

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 29th, 2007 issue

enlarge
From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk

A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture
By Andrew Roberts
Central European University Press,
207 pages
www.ceupress.com

This is the book that I wish someone had given me the day I arrived in Prague.
Travel guides are great for finding monuments and museums, and the occasional writer like Benjamin Kuras has some enlightening insights to offer on Czech thinking and behavior. But for outsiders trying to understand this often-baffling country, nothing short of a comprehensive cultural dictionary will do.
Andrew Roberts, a political science professor from Northwestern University who spent three years teaching in Brno, took on the task and did an exemplary job. His From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk provides an informative and entertaining index to Czech customs, history and pop culture that will make an instant expert of anyone.
As his model, Roberts took the work of Hungarian author and publisher István Bart, whose Hungary and the Hungarians: The Keywords pioneered a new approach to cultural understanding. “Language is not just words and grammar,” Bart asserted. “It works by metaphors and allusions that make up meanings which are indecipherable without knowledge of the cultural code … [this book] is both a guide to the secrets of the Hungarians’ code language and a concise cultural encyclopedia of Hungarianness.”
Thus, in the case of the Czechs, we get pop singer Lucie Bílá hard by statesman Edvard Beneš, and on their heels an entry for Bílá hora that explains not just its significance as a decisive battle in the Thirty Years’ War, but how and why it is regarded as “the tragedy that haunts all of Czech history.”
Eat some chlebíčky? Watch Major Zeman? Move to a panelák? Dodge the revizor? Not just the explanations, but the connotations of all those terms are laid out in scholarly detail.
Even common expletives get intelligent, thoughtful treatment, as in this entry for Ježíšmarjá: “(Jesus and Mary) While Ježíšmarjá, pane bože (good lord) and krucifix are the most common oaths of everyone from kindergarteners to retirees, their religious meaning is lost on most Czechs. A combination of forced Catholicism, industrialism and communism have made the large majority into materialists who see little use for religious ritual.”
That entry also reflects the prevailing tone of the book, which strikes a delicate balance: It’s an outsider’s view of the country that is penetrating without being condescending,  respectful yet skeptical, often with doses of gentle humor. In the entry for kapr (carp), for example, Roberts explains the custom of buying a live fish out of big tubs on the streets and taking it home for Christmas dinner, then adds a comment on the obvious: “Though it is not viewed as the tastiest fish by Westerners (it likes to wallow in the mud), Czechs see carp as a delicacy, not least because, in a landlocked country, fish retain an exotic, holiday feel. On the other hand, its many small bones lead to crowded emergency rooms on Christmas Eve.”
Roberts worked on the book on and off for four years and got deep into Czech culture, eventually marrying a puppeteer from Brno. His interest was initially piqued by watching Czech films and plays filled with topical and historical allusions. “I was fascinated by the fact that there was this whole other shadow culture out there through which the Czechs communicated with each other, but which foreigners never got a glimpse of,” he says via e-mail.
Roberts began compiling lists and carrying them around with him, relying on students, friends and chance encounters to add terms and fill out entries. In the end, the biggest problem was knowing when to stop. “Say you were writing a dictionary of American popular culture,” he says. “Obviously, you have to include Frank Sinatra. But what about Dean Martin? Or Tony Bennett? This problem came up a lot. I included Karel Gott, but not Helena Vondráčková, Naďa Urbanková, Jiří Korn and lots of others. I’m still not sure if I drew the line in the right place.”
He covered some of that ground by including charts and lists, mostly taken from newspaper polls held to determine Czechs’ favorite books, movies, songs, food, beers and other indicators of national tastes. Some of these are dated and heavy in communist-era icons that won’t mean much to Westerners. (Though surely everyone has to marvel at Karel Gott’s 30 Zlatý slavík [Golden Nightingale] awards.)
Other lists, though, are great collections of random trivia. What street was formerly Lenin Boulevard? (Evropská) What quality do Czechs most admire in themselves? (pracovitost, industriousness) What does the communist-era slogan Ser rychle, posílíš mír mean? (Shit quickly and you strengthen peace.) What are the most common Czech names? (Jiří, Marie and Novák) The fun goes on like that for a good many pages.
The book is not without its flaws. The entry on Antonín Dvořák wonders why, “despite his fame and popularity, Prague still has no statue of Dvořák.” This overlooks the rather prominent statue of the composer that stands in front of the Rudolfinum. And in his explanation of teplouš (gay, literally the “warm one”), Roberts notes that “Parliament came close to passing a registered partnership act,” when in fact the act took effect last year.
But these are minor errors, some attributable to the fact that the book is already two years old (and still, unfortunately, hard to find). Overall, this is an indispensable compendium of cultural knowledge, written in a smart but easily accessible style, thoughtfully organized and indexed, an engaging read either front-to-back or in short, random bits.
Either way, it’s the best companion an expat in this country could ask for — after a tasty Pilsner Urquell, of course.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (29/08/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.