202. The Boii (in Czech, Bojove) were the Celtic people who gave their name to the region of Bohemia.
212. The people of Ingushetia, a small mountainous territory in the Caucasus next to Chechnya. The Ingush are Muslims, and after Stalin deported them for siding with the Germans in World War II, they were not allowed to return home until 1957. Now a republic in the Russian Federation.
230. German for “Foreigners out!”
235. The horses of Winnetou, an Apache, and Old Shatterhand, a white man, from the Western stories of Karl May (see note for p. 66).
241. From The Bagpiper of Strakonice (1846) by Josef Kajetán Tyl. A drama in which a bagpiper leaves the Czech Lands to make his fame and fortune abroad, but is morally tainted by foreigners. He is saved when he returns home and takes a Czech wife.
250. Land of Dreamers: The title of the Czech translation of the German book Die andere Seite (The Other Side, 1909), written and illustrated by Alfred Kubin; not actually filmed.
Winnetou: an East-German film based on Karl May’s Western stories (see note for p. 66).
Mrazík “Grandfather Frost,” a Soviet fairy tale designed to replace St. Nicholas (Santa Claus), shown every year on Czech TV.
254. Jiří Korn, Czech pop singer famous in the 70s and 80s.
256. Play on Edward Kelley, one of two English alchemists (along with John Dee) invited to serve in the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II in the 1580s.
258. English for Neználek, protagonist of a Soviet series of children’s books with titles like Neználek on the Moon, Neználek in the City on the Sun, and The Adventures of Neználek.
260. In Ukrainian, Chernobyl means “wormwood.”
269. Divadelní Akademie Múzických Umění, the theater school at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
285. The word luna for “moon” was introduced into Czech poetry by Karel Hynek Mácha (see note for p. 55).
293. Vladimír Holan (1905–1980), major Czech lyric poet.
315. Lucerna (1905), an allegorical fable by Alois Jirásek (1851–1930), popular Czech historian and ethnographer.
319. Described in a book of Kazakh legends, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980) by Chingis Aitmotov. Young men captured in battle are shaved bald and fresh-stripped patches of camel skin are placed on their heads. As the skin dries in the sun, it shrinks around the victim’s skull, squeezing it like a vice. Most either die or lose their memory forever, becoming a mankurt.
322. Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), Ukrainian nationalist who fought with Hitler against the Communists in World War II. At the end of the war, he turned his forces against the Germans.
328. Reference to Václav Havel’s famous essay “The Power of the Powerless” (1978), in which Havel used a greengrocer to illustrate how even minor deviations from accepted behavior represent a threat to the Communist power structure.
336. Site of the monastery in Moravia whose monks produced the first complete translation of the Bible into Czech (1579–1593), known as the Kralice Bible. The language of this work served as a norm for some 250 years.
367. A play on Medzilaborce, the eastern Slovak town where Andy Warhol’s family comes from, and where, due largely to the efforts of Czech artist Michal Cihlář, a Warhol museum was set up in 1990. Cihlář means “brickmaker,” thus “the guy with the brick.”
379. Kyselice: “Acidville” in Czech.
Bezbožice: “Godlessville” in Czech.
380. Hungarian word for treeless plains or steppe.
381. Reference to the title Golet v údolí (Exile in the Valley, 1937) by Ivan Olbracht (Kamil Zeman, 1882–1952), stories based on the life of Jews in the Carpathian region. The subtitle of the book is The Sad Eyes of Hana Karadžičová.
387. A Great Mother-type figurine discovered at a 25,000-year-old site in Dolní Věstonice (southern Moravia), the earliest evidence of clay firing.
Notes to Silver
406. Benderites: See note for p. 322.
Slovak National Uprising, August-October 1944, in which some 80,000 insurgents, both non-Communist and Communist, battled German forces in the mountains of central Slovakia. Though nominally independent, Slovakia was a puppet state of the Nazis during World War II.
460. English for a Czech collection of seventeenth-century baroque German poetry, translated into Czech in 1959.
463. Neighborhood in Prague 6, home to the Benedictine Archabbey, oldest monastery in the Czech Lands, founded by St. Adalbert c. 993 (see note for p. 488).
470. Jan Welzl (1868–1948), a Czech who spent some thirty years above the Arctic Circle as a trader, hunter, and Inuit chief. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, he wrote several books about his adventures.
František Venclovský was the first Czech to swim the English Channel.
471. Obora: Park in Prague 6-Liboc, site of the battle in which the Protestant troops of the Bohemian Estates fell to the united armies of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League on November 8, 1620, the famous Battle of White Mountain.
477. Battle in which the mainstream branch of the Hussites, known as the Utraquists, allied with Catholics to defeat various more radical branches (1434). As a result, the Hussite Church was accepted by the Papists.
483. The saint known in English as Adalbert (955–997). Named bishop of Prague in 983, he encouraged the evangelization of Poles and Hungarians, as well as Czechs. Died a martyr’s death at the hands of Prussian heathens in Pomerania (see note for p. 467).