Journal Article

Iniciačná úloha Jozefa Karola Viktorina v kritickom prístupe k textu

Navrátil, Martin

2024

Overview

The article deals with Jozef Karol Viktorin’s (1822 – 1874) input into editorial practice regarding the ways of (re)publishing older Slovak literary works. As an editor, J. Viktorin advocated for a critical approach to textual sources, researched the history of the text, collected bibliographical data of variants, applied the procedures of variant collation and explication of obscure places, and used the results of these operations to varying degrees in the creation of the accompanying apparatus of the volumes (his edition of Ján Hollý was also accompanied by a description of editorial manipulation of the text). The linguistic material of individual editions varied (the texts were in Bernolák’s Slovak, reformed Štúr’s Slovak, and Slovak deliberately preserving common elements with the Czech language). In the case of publishing living authors, the editor led constructive dialogues (Andrej Sládkovič, Jonáš Záborský) and when it came to authors who were no longer alive (J. Hollý), he consulted other literary specialists about the optimal form of interventions. The preservation of the author’s distinctive language was in tension with the intention to stabilise the Slovak language by normalising the linguistic character of published texts after the Hodža-Hattala reform. However, J. Viktorin also based his interventions on whether the element in question was important from the formal verse structure.

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature of Slovak Academy of Sciences,Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV
• Subject: Language and Literature Studies