The Adventures and Experiences of the First Slovak Novel

Summary

Book II tells of René’s travels in “places that were less perfidious and less dangerous” (Northern Italy, Austria, and Upper Hungary). Like Montesquieu in Persian Letters (1721), Bajza uses the narrative ploy of delivering criticism of his own society through the eyes of a foreigner, which often creates space for irony and wit. René is perplexed by almost everything he encounters in Habsburg lands, including the wealth and corruption of monasteries, the forcing of young people into monastic life, or the use of Latin, incomprehensible to most, for mass. In Upper Hungary, René and Van Stiphout witness further social ills: illiteracy, ignorance, serfdom, usury, superstition, drunkenness, quack doctors, the exploitation of the peasants by landed gentry, mendicant orders, and the clergy, and so on. They are joined by a guide, who tells them of local aristocrats mimicking foreign lifestyles, “their wives’ clothes, the headdresses, capes, lacy skirts and all the other stuff that they don’t even have names for in their own tongue! . . . A gentleman would be ashamed to wear anything not made of the finest holland, though . . . he might well purchase and wear things woven from his own wool.” When the travellers are puzzled to see a man pummel another, who puts up no resistance, they miss that the aggressor pretends to be Hungarian (sporting Hungarian-style whiskers and speaking a mixture of Hungarian and Slovak) in order to claim social superiority. This is Bajza’s criticism of the Slovaks’ self-colonization — their belief that class progress involves becoming Hungarian: