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CHAPTER XVIII

Slovak Popular Art

By dušan jurkovič

THE cradle of the Slovaks lies beneath the shadow of the Tátra mountains. Their most typical settlements are the " kopanica " — lonely huts girt by forest and mountain, far from the world, far even from their nearest neighbours, with a mere patch of cultivated ground planted amid the wide heath. Here our people lives its own life apart — a life which has well-nigh become part of the surrounding nature. At home the Slovak is of a conservative bent, but in the greater world he proves himself open to new ideas and ready of judgment. At home he clings passionately to his old traditions, and in out-of-the-way spots he lives even to-day very much the same primitive life which his ancestors led a thousand years ago.

He built his house himself, and there are still many places where he prepares with his own hands and according to his own taste all the various necessaries of life. Throughout the spring and summer he is busy in the woods and in the fields, and in winter the whole family works at home. The men prepare articles of wood, metal, plaster, straw or leather; the women devote themselves to sewing, painting and decora­tion. Both sexes spin and weave, while the children assist at the work ; and thus the entire family is kept busy. The dwelling-house is at the same time workshop and school.

F. Málek.

A slovak peasant home.

(northern district.)

Before turning to a description of the Slovak dwelling­house, I am obliged to say something of the people itself and its highly original manner of life ; for it is impossible to understand the one without the other. The northern districts of the county of Trencsén are in this respect still un­touched by the outside world, and the primitive manner of life has by no means died out. Families still live in groups (hromada) or communities (zadruha), a practice which in almost every district of Slovensko has vanished without leaving a trace behind. The "group" is the home and refuge of the entire family, however large. Its eldest member is the manager (gazda), who in common with his wife the gazdina, manages the property and controls the household. The individual members of the family are on a footing of absolute equality among themselves, but all are subject to the gazda, or in the case of the women to the gazdina. According to true patriarchal tradition, the older members are held in peculiar reverence by the younger; but we none the less find quite young men as managers, for the many cares of this position often tempt the older men to hand it over voluntarily.

Every male member of the family, on reaching manhood, becomes part owner of the property, which is held in common and is indivisible ; the cash profits are divided annually in equal portions among all the members. Larger properties of this kind require the labour of young people of both sexes, and hence every member of the family must marry early. The dower of a bride consists, not in any portion of the pro­perty, but in cash and in clothes, and indeed the latter are often worthy of a place in a museum of arts and crafts. The happy possessor of twenty beautiful costumes is not looked upon as wealthy.

In case the number of male hands is insufficient, an out­sider can by common agreement be admitted ; but this course is only adopted as a last resort of dire necessity.

The last regular "groups" disappeared in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The indirect causes of the decay of 'this almost communist mode of life are the courts of law and the Jews. Wastrel members of the family, ejected for drunkenness, would seek the aid of the village publican (gene­rally a Jew), in whose bar he had wasted his substance, and would successfully dispute in court the indivisibility of the . joint property. The forms which such official partitioning of property take among the Slovaks are only too well known to the initiated, but to the foreigner it is well-nigh impossible to describe them. Suffice it to say that the individual members of the family eventually lose their whole means, and are forced as glassware pedlars to seek a scanty living by wandering across the Continent. None the less one or two partitioned "groups" have clung firmly to their old manner of life, and hence are still fairly prosperous.

The common dwelling-house of the whole family, large, roomy, one-storied, is built fronting on to the road or on to a stream. On this side is the front door, which leads into the "black room" (cierna izba). This is a commodious room, used by all members of the family for their various kinds of work; here the gazdina cooks and the joint meals are taken. In the corner towards the courtyard stands the hearth ; above it hangs the large kettle which serves for the preparation of their food. The walls are plastered with yellow clay, but only to two-thirds of their height; the upper portion and the ceiling are blackened with smoke, and retain a per­manent shiny black colour which has earned the room its name.

From the lobby a stair leads to the upper story. Here the rooms are not heated in winter; indeed, except in the "black room," there is hardly ever any heating. The upper rooms are used by married members of the family, and here they keep their private belongings, especially their dresses and household linen. Except the beds and a great array of chests, there is no furniture to speak of. Even though the inhabitants are Catholics, pictures of saints are seldom to be seen upon the walls. Above the vestibule they are wont to fasten little statues, whose meaning the present generation can no longer explain ; perhaps they arc an artistic survival of the household penates of pagan times. The houses are decorated with branches of palm and of lime, juniper flowers and berries and various plants — a custom which has doubt­less some primeval meaning which is now lost to us.

The mountain villages and townlets were also entirely built of wood, and fitted up according to the needs and status of their owners. Nestling close together, they are irretrievably doomed in the event of fire ; and hence many of the most characteristic and ornamental of these wooden houses have perished. In former days every man was at once his own designer and workman, and in this way the carpenter's and builder's crafts had their root in the people itself, as is proved by the most characteristic specimens of Slovak houses. Through the development of household industries and by its own exertions, our people had attained to a certain degree of prosperity,

354

A slovak peasant home.

(southern district.)

and at the very time when home industries had reached their highest point we find the greatest progress in building and in the treatment of interiors. It was in the plains, where lack of wood naturally rendered development on different lines necessary, that the Slovaks first began to employ solid material for building. The stone houses of the southern districts of Trencsén and Pressburg counties are built on exactly the same plan as the wooden huts of the north. The most characteristic innovation here is the arched and pro­jecting porch — the so-called výstupok or žebrácká — on either side of which are niches containing seats. It is on this porch that the Slovak peasant women concentrates all her skill in decoration and design. But in the southern districts the building art of the Slovaks undoubtedly sinks to a lower level, since the peasants follow a more intensive form of agriculture, and have no time left over for any save the most necessary work. The carvings on wooden houses are the work of the carpenter, who also executes all decorations on the gables and any paintings or inscriptions on the walls ; in the southern districts, on the other hand, the woman of the house is herself responsible for all the decorations without exception. For though the woman is not spared any of the work in the fields or the necessary household duties, she remains a model of tidiness, good order and taste. Just as the English proverb says, My house my castle, so the Slovak woman has every right to exclaim : My house my pride. How charming are all these simple little houses without false adornment, with their white-rimmed and gaily-coloured windows, with their quaint porches, dazzling white and painted in rich designs, enticing the stranger to enter. How many ideas of decorative art are to be found both inside and out­side these Slovak houses — above all on the walls of the dwelling­room and above the hearth. The simplest dwelling-room, with its hearth but no chimney-piece, became by a gradual evolution the "show" room of the house — the "white room" (biela izba), as it was called — whose design makes its sure appeal not merely to the intelligent townsman, but even to the gentry whom old culture has made sensitive to its personal surroundings.[1]

The earliest and most characteristic specimens are to be found in outlying mountainous districts, which also can boast the most tasteful peasant costumes. Hitherto we possess no complete study of Slovak national dress ; the excitements of the political struggle have led to a neglect of the subject, and I greatly fear that ere the calm necessary for such studies has been restored, it will already be too late. For the national garb is slowly but surely disappearing, and carrying with it all its rich treasure of delicate design. If the Slovak Museum in Turócz St. Márton does but take timely steps to secure the necessary collections, it might become the interpreter to future ages of Slovak popular culture and art, and might win for itself a unique position among the museums of Europe, as a haunt of artists and students of peasant life and manners.[2]

The national dress of the Slovaks was from the very first prepared by each family in its own home. And it is in its earliest form — consisting of underclothes of hemp and of the woolly "halena" material, and a kind of divided kilt — and later on when this original form is supplemented by rich ornamentation, that its simple character shows to most advantage and it attains its highest aesthetic value.

A slovak cottage interior.

F. Málek

In the plains, where the economic conditions are more favourable and intercourse with the towns is easier, the national costume assumes new forms and even new materials in almost every parish, and yet every change introduced has been carefully adapted and blended with the characteristic Slovak style. In the mountainous districts the material employed both for the costume and for embroideries consisted exclu­sively of coarse bleached linen thread, dyed with saffron and a decoction made from willow bark and wild pears ; whereas in the plains coloured silks are used to embroider and decorate. The original geometrical patterns were worked without any frame, right on the linen itself, the threads being counted. These straight-lined ornamentations, combined with drawn thread work and prepared in various colours, for the most part yellow or red, have the very greatest artistic value. In Slovak embroidery may be traced the whole technique of artistic needlework design, and one continually conies across articles of clothing, especially baby linen and churching­cloths, which, we are amazed to find, must have taken a whole lifetime to prepare. To-day it is already generally known that the Slovaks follow the so-called Holbein technique in their embroidery, and from the oldest dated specimens of this work, we find that they worked in exactly the same way during the Holbein period. They also used for these costumes artistic textures which had been prepared according to the same process as ancient costumes discovered in Egyptian tombs. Lacework of all kinds has survived up to the present day among the peasantry, and modern home industries could easily be developed on these lines.[3]

The Slovaks, then, are divided according to their costume into two groups: the White Slovaks (bieli Slováci) of the mountain districts, and the Red Slovaks, who belong to the more prosperous south. The dress of the former is cut in simple straight lines and square shapes, and adorned with geometrical designs, while the natural white colour of the material predominates. The latter choose bright materials for their dress, which has already been essentially modified by foreign influences, but none the less remains effective owing to its harmonious blend of colours. The difference in dress bears out the contrast between the fiery temperament of the southern Slovak and the soft, pensive and melancholy char­acter of the mountaineer.

This lowland district is the birthplace and home of Joža Uprka, a few of whose pictures are reproduced in the present volume. Uprka lives in the Moravian Slovensko, at a two hours' drive from the Hungarian frontier. This frontier is merely political, it does not correspond to ethnographical and cultural divisions ; and this in itself explains the fact that Uprka is the artist alike of the Moravian and of the Hungarian Slovaks. He fetches his models even from the Little Carpathians, and makes excursions for study as far as the "White Mountain" (Biela hora) in that range of hills ; while, on the other hand, Hungarian Slovaks visit the places of pilgrimage lying to the west of the Moravian frontier, and have thus provided Uprka with many of the most charming motives for his pictures.

The Czech art critic, V. Mrštík writes as follows regarding Uprka and his work. "After completing his studies, Uprka shook off the dust of Prague, as soon as he realized the cruel mockery of the model dressed in Slovak costume. He felt that it was not enough to hang clothing on a handsome human form, but that he must study everything in the very spot where these gay blossoms grow and flourish. And so he settled in Moravia, and mastered what had really lain hidden in his own soul. As son of the soil, healthy, spirited, full of verve, and yet at times of a dreamy and thoughtful disposition, he watched the people in the fields, in church, in their own homes, in the village inn, at the fairs and processions; he studied the children, the old women, the young girls, the village patriarchs, the splendid figures of the young men, and everywhere he endeavoured to gain insight into the character of the people. Their country unveiled its inmost secrets to his gaze, and the whole poetry of the Slovaks found in him its truest and most spirited interpreter. What some call mystère des formes,' became for him an open book, his figures must all move and stand in this way and in no other, he knows their walk, their every action is familiar to him, and as he himself belonged to this little world of theirs, he felt it to be in the nature of things that the girls' light movements, the old men's prayers, the children's play should be as they are and not as among other peoples. He portrays them all in their natural truth and beauty, with all their gaiety and simplicity, with their traits of weakness and brutality, with all the passion, the dreaminess, the breadth of the true Slav character. There is not one of his sketches of which you can say, 'ce n'est pas de notre pays.' All his figures are so intimately bound up with their own native district, with the poetry of the fields, that those who look at his pictures seem to breathe in the very soul of the country ('The Sowers,' King's Festival,' 'A Spring Idyll,' etc.). His composition is simple and yet rich with the glowing colours of his native land and of the people whom he loves so passion­ately. His pictures combine lyrical balance and epical calm ; to reproduce what he feels is not enough for his desires, he transcends the bounds of what is possible, and from the realm of sight he seems to pass to the realm of sound. His exquisite picture, 'A Pilgrimage to St. Antony,' breathes a boundless silence over the people as they kneel sunk in prayer. Noise and clamour, the neighing and whinnying of frightened horses, come to us from his later picture of the 'King's Festival,' painted with a true dramatic power. As is the case with all artistic geniuses, Uprka's own native district supplies the key to his originality ; for there every peasant is ä poet and an artist in embryo, taste and temperament assert themselves in every motion, and above all in the clear and passionate colours of the national dress. The ' gorgeous East' has breathed upon the land; beauty and strength of race speak to us from its colours. The crowds at a fair, a pilgrimage, or a church festival, convey the impression of a garden in flower, where the dominant red and white mingle with every imagin­able colour, and form a rich and varied symphony."

ingle-neuk in a slovak cottage.

It is impossible to do justice to popular art within the limits of the present work. Everything which the people makes has its own character and style. I need only refer to the metal ornaments — clasps and brooches, girdles, cudgels, axe hilts, spinning-wheels, pieces of furniture, the painted Easter eggs (Kraslice) and " little doves" (as symbols of the Holy Ghost), all of which are decorated, carved, pokered, inlaid, or painted.[4] As time went on, the production of such articles spread from the outlying peasant houses to the villages and little towns, and thus a local art industry gradually arose and flourished. I need only mention the native pottery and modelling in clay, weaving and dyeing, leather work, and work in brass and other metals. These simple observers of nature, with their clear unspoilt perception, have borrowed from nature a few of the most ancient forms of ornament; the eye of the born artist of the people has given its own interpretation to the magic forms of nature.

But popular art did not rest content with a mere slavish imitation of nature, and free play was given to the Slovak people's peculiar gift of invention and combination, through which its art was raised to a quite unusual standard of taste. Of course even here the due limits were sometimes exceeded, and the playful fancy of certain less talented individuals degenerated into the bizarre.

This popular art is a precious heritage whose mysteries the child drinks in with its mother tongue and the popular poetry of the race. Wherever decoration is attempted, from the cradle to the coffin, to the churchyard and the sepulchral cross,[5] everywhere the same ruling motive is to be found ; for the Slovaks did not merely build their own houses, they imparted to them a style and character which is entirely their own, and proved themselves capable of work on a still more ambitious scale, by building their own churches. The great majority of wooden churches have, it is true, perished, and those which have survived have been injured by repeated restorations. The church of Velká Pamdzá (Nagy Paludza), of which two reproductions are included in the present volume, dates from the year 1773.[6]

The Slovak districts of Hungary have not received the attention which they deserve; and unjustly enough, it is in matters of art and culture that they are most neglected. The stream of modern pseudo-culture is undermining the work of our people, and the lack of interest in the Slovaks displayed by the Government cannot be deprecated too strongly. The authorities realize clearly enough that it is impossible to Magyarize or exterminate a race so well preserved and so distinctive as the Slovaks, but for this very reason they give free play to demoralizing influences, in the hope of ruining those whom they fear. The Slovak who has re­nounced his nationality is more accessible to Magyarization both in language and in politics. The most striking example of this is supplied by America ; for though the Slovak emigrant often returns home stronger both from an economic and a national point of view, he none the less lays aside with his national costume the songs, the habits, and the customs of his race, and no longer preserves his simple poetic outlook upon life, his sense of personal dignity or his ideal love of a home life.

PORTION OF AN EMBROIDERED SLOVAK SHROUD.

The Jewish dealers, with a keen sense of the aesthetic value of Slovak popular art, have been for years past denuding the Slovak districts of their artistic treasures. The German museums are especially rich in these articles, and only too often no indication is given of their true origin. The present generation is only partially educated in such work, and having no idea of their monetary value, is often tempted to part with real treasures for a few pence. A few old women, who all their lives have sat up at night with needle in hand — in fear lest they should lose the result of their labours carry them with them to the grave. The exquisite piece of needle­work which is reproduced on the opposite page, was intended as the winding-sheet of a Slovak peasant. Let us hope that this is no omen for the fate of the Slovak race, and that what has been saved from the hands of strangers will still serve as an inspiration to the Slovaks in their'national revival.