Báje, rituály a zvyky starých Slovanů 2 - Koloběh staroslovanských svátků – Růžička Josef (2023)

This second volume examines the cycle of ancient Slavic festivals, myths, rituals and customs. The Slavs have reached a moment of great importance, with their future in their own hands. They must either recognize the significance of their kinship, unite and form communities capable of engaging with the world’s most advanced ideas, improving their position, or reject this higher standpoint, fall back into old passions and become mere material for foreign yokes and enslavement. The surviving monuments of the Slavs have had unusual fates in history as well. Although they make up a considerable part of the antiquities preserved and brought to light in the lands of their ancestors, very little of this heritage is attributed to the Slavs. Objects of Slavic origin are scattered among various departments, missing from the places where they belong. Most of the scant cultural remains are declared false or forged. We should not deceive ourselves into thinking that Slavic studies have reached a high, mature or advanced stage. For a people as powerful and important to world history as the Slavs were, Slavic studies remain an overlooked field, a delicate young tree, scarcely beyond childhood. Although they were pioneered by great scholars of remarkable and wide-ranging intellect, including Dobrovský, Kollár and Šafařík, whose achievements overshadowed entire generations, the following eras have produced fewer successes, and progress has been difficult and slow. The contents are in Czech.