From Jucewicz’s Jurata to Kvapil’s Rusalka: the reflections of the Lithuanian literary plots about the love between a man and a deity in the nineteenth-century Czech culture

Abstract

The article explores the reception of nineteenth-century love stories between a goddess and a man, displayed in Polish-Lithuanian romantic literature, in the contemporary Czech cultural press. It also points to a possible influence of those stories on the libretto of Antonin Dvořák’s Rusalka by Jaroslav Kvapil. Ludwik Adam Jucewicz’s Jurata, the Baltic Queen, was published in Czech. Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s Witolo rauda and his libretto to Stanisław Moniuszko’s cantata Milda were not translated but appreciated and repeatedly remembered in the Czech cultural press. Even though it is not possible to hint at the intertextuality among Polish-Lithuanian and Czech fiction in a stronger than hypothetical manner, the libretto of Rusalka resembles Adam Mickiewicz’s ballad Świtezianka by its means of poetical expression and by the thematization of the different erotic expectations of the male and female heroes. Kraszewski’s influence, most probably mediated by Julius Zeyer’s works, may be seen in the suicidal behavior of the prince.