Silent Wierdness: Born Today December 29: Karel Sabina

1813-1877

Czech writer Karel Sabina was born on this day in Prague; he was born illegitimate from an extra martial affair and was not treated well as a child, growing up without privilege or money. He was apparently given to family of servants that may have worked for the rather wealthy family into which he was physically born--the son of of one their unwed daughters. Despite his background, he was able to attend University, where he set his sights on studying the law and doubling up with a major in philosophy. He did not, however, graduate. He did discover a talent for writing. In the late 1840's Sabina became involved with the Czech democratic movement, a quite early version of several similar movements to follow over the next 60 years. Any sort of movement advocating an electoral government was a threat to monarchical rule. In 1848 he founded both a political secret circle and became an member of what amounted to the earliest form of the Czech National Congress (he said his political ideas of organization had been deeply influenced by the Irish struggle for independence). This is when he first found the need to write under pens names (he had so many by the end of his life, they are still not all known to a certainty). Under pen names, he wrote political tracts, while simultaneously working the news business (in addition to journalist, he also edited news magazines). There are two things to keep in mind about this period in Czech history. One was these types of political movements were very new at the time, it would be another 30 years before any of them came to any sort of prominence (although the Czech National Revival had it's inception as far back as the 18th century). The second is by far the most important. It is not well known that Czech, a West Slavic language, along with it's closely related tongue Slovak, were endangered languages by the 1830's, largely by both lack of standardization and because Czech speakers were regarded as second rate (and Protestant) by the Catholic aristocracy--largely German speakers. Both were pulled back from the brink of extinction by 1840's. Linguists Josef Dobrovsky and Josef Jungmann were principally responsible for the revival and standardizing of the Czech itself. Because the language was so tied up with other aspects of Czech identity, the language itself became, if not a political statement, then a type of political tool. It is hardly surprising then, that several of Sabina's articles were censored upon publication. The most serious moment of his adult life came in 1849, when he was arrested of planning on taking part in a coup, in 1851, he and 24 other men were convicted and sentenced to death, before the emperor commuted the sentences to 18 years of hard time. They were all released six years later, when on the 8th of May in 1857 a general amnesty was declared and he was released. He returned to Prague and set himself up as a freelance writer. His sense of freedom was not to last however. Though during this time, he made the most of his writing skills from 1857 through 1870. He wrote novels, plays and librettos--he was for a time even celebrated. One of his librettos was for the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana another celebrated revivalist who is now regarded as father of Czech music. He wrote the libretto for Prodaná nevesta (The Bartered Bride), a hugely popular comic opera, in the mid-1860's. It was first performed as a live opera in 1866; and was later made domestically into the a film for the first time in 1913 by early Czech film director Max Urban. His Prodaná nevesta was a bit unique by early film standards, as it was a film of a performance, though it was without actual singing. Filmed in Prague, it's unclear if it was intended to be accompanied by live music, or perhaps one of the newer amplifications of some form of recorded music. But for a writer, first and foremost, of Czech revivalist pamphlets and literature, it is important that the first film made from his work was a Czech one. One more film was made from libretto during the silent era, also in Czechoslovakia; this one-unlike the first-was actually a developed into a conventional screenplay by director Oldrich Kmínek. His Prodaná nevesta was made through the Czech production/distribution company Atropos and was filmed in Prague; it was released in September 1922. Given it's popularity, it is not surprise that The Battered Bride is the only one of his works so far to be adapted for film. It's first turn in a sound production was also no small thing! Legendary German theater director Max Ophuüls, who was to go on to a famed directing career in film in both France and the United States, was just getting into film directing at the time he made Die verkaufte Braut in 1932. The film was a full on musical adaptation (compare it to say, The Sound of Music) filmed at Bavaria Studios; it was his third film and his second to last feature made in Germany before he had to flee to France in 1933 because he was Jewish. It's next adaptation was also a German one, albiet a West German television production some 25 years later: Die verkaufte Braut aired on Christmas Day in 1958. While the American series The Metropolitan Opera Presents, a series airing on PBS, presented The Bartered Bride as one of it's early episodes in November of 1978 (directed by Kirk Browning). It was most recently presented as a 2-hour television production in 2006 on Czech television, airing on the 26th of September. As for Sabina himself, his life began to unravel in 1870. He first successfully sued a German language newspaper in 1870 who had published that he had been, and continued to be, a police informant--supposedly dating back to his incarceration. In 1872, though, things came completely apart for the writer. A sanctimonious group of eight Czech nationalist intellectuals, lead in part by Jan Neruda, held a trial of Sabina and found him "guilty" of being a police informant. For the rest of his life, he had to live in hiding, skulking about Prague quietly and often in disguise. There is little evidence that he was an informant and it is a stain on the life of Neruda, who like Sabina was a writer of many styles/genres and also worked in Czech language news journalism (thank goodness that are buried in separate cemeteries in Prague!). Sabina became such an outcast, posters containing his name at opera houses where removed; and his books, though not officially banned, were no longer sold. It was during this time that he wrote under many pens names, many of whom have to this day not been properly worked out (a singularly frustrating task taken on by more than one scholar over the years)--the result is that a complete bibliography of his works simply does not exist. It is hardly surprising to learn that Sabina died in extreme poverty on the 8th of November in 1877 at the age of 63. He was given a proper burial in Prague's historic Olsany Cemetery.