"Nad Tatrou sa blýska" (Slovak pronunciation:[ˈnattatrɔwsaˈbliːska]; lit.'Lightning O'er the Tatras') is the national anthem of Slovakia. The origins of it are in the Central Europeanactivism of the 19th century. Its main themes are a storm over the Tatra mountains that symbolized danger to the Slovaks, and a desire for a resolution of the threat. It used to be particularly popular during the 1848–1849 insurgencies.
It was one of Czechoslovakia's dual national anthems and was played in many Slovak towns at noon; this tradition ceased to exist after Czechoslovakia split into two different states in the early 1990s with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
Origin
Background
Notation in Paulíny-Tóth notebook (1844)
23-year-old Janko Matúška wrote the lyrics of "Nad Tatrou sa blýska" in January and February 1844. The tune came from the folk song "Kopala studienku" (English: "She was digging a well") suggested to him by his fellow student Jozef Podhradský,[1] a future religious and Pan-Slavic activist and gymnasial teacher,[2] when Matúška and about two dozen other students left their prestigious Lutheran lyceum of Pressburg (preparatory high school and college) in protest over the removal of Ľudovít Štúr from his teaching position by the Lutheran Church under pressure from the authorities. The territory of present-day Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austrian Empire then, and the officials objected to his Slovak nationalism.
"Lightning over the Tatras" was written during the weeks when the students were agitated about the repeated denials of their and others' appeals to the school board to reverse Štúr's dismissal. About a dozen of the defecting students transferred to the Lutheran gymnasium of Levoča.[3] When one of the students, the 18-year-old budding journalist and writer Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, wrote down the oldest known record of the poem in his school notebook in 1844, he gave it the title of Prešporskí Slováci, budúci Levočania (Pressburg Slovaks, Future Levočians), which reflected the motivation of its origin.[4]
The journey from Pressburg (present-day Bratislava) to Levoča took the students past the High Tatras, Slovakia's and the then Kingdom of Hungary's highest, imposing, and symbolic mountain range. A storm above the mountains is a key theme in the poem.
Versions
No authorized version of Matúška's lyrics has been preserved and its early records remained without attribution.[5] He stopped publishing after 1849 and later became clerk of the district court.[6] The song became popular during the Slovak Volunteer campaigns of 1848 and 1849.[7] Its text was copied and recopied in hand before it appeared in print in 1851 (unattributed, as Dobrovoľnícka – Volunteer Song),[8] which gave rise to some variation, namely concerning the phrase zastavme ich ("let's stop them")[9] or zastavme sa ("let's stop").[10] A review of the extant copies and related literature inferred that Matúška's original was most likely to have contained "let's stop them." Among other documents, it occurred both in its oldest preserved handwritten record from 1844 and in its first printed version from 1851.[11] The legislated Slovak national anthem uses this version, the other phrase was used from 1920 to 1993 (as the second part of the anthem of Czechoslovakia with Kde domov můj).
A prodigious view of the Tatras as they may have appeared to Matúška's rebellious friends
National anthem
On 13 December 1918, only the first stanza of Janko Matúška's lyrics became half of the two-part bilingual Czechoslovak anthem, composed of the first stanza from a Czech operetta tune, Kde domov můj (Where Is My Home?), and the first stanza of Matúška's song, each sung in its respective language and both played in that sequence with their respective tunes.[12] The songs reflected the two nations' concerns in the 19th century[13] when they were confronted with the already fervent national-ethnic activism of the Hungarians and the Germans, their fellow ethnic groups in the Habsburg monarchy.
During the Second World War, "Hej, Slováci" was adopted as the unofficial state anthem of the puppet regime Slovak Republic.
𝄆 Far above the Tatras[b] Lightning bolts are pounding. 𝄇 𝄆 These bolts shall we banish, brothers, they will vanish; Slovaks are rebounding. 𝄇
𝄆 Our Slovakia was, until now, quiescent. 𝄇 𝄆 But the lightning flashing and the thunder crashing made it effervescent. 𝄇[c]
𝄆 Slovakia's now risen,
Her shackles shattering 𝄇
𝄆 Hey, family endeared
The hour's collided
Mother Glory's[d] living. 𝄇
𝄆 Still blooming are the firs[e]
On the Krivan[f] borders 𝄇
𝄆 Who feels like a Slovak
He shall hold the sabre
And among us endure. 𝄇
Hungarian verse (1920–1938)
German verse
𝄆 Fenn a Tátra ormán
Villámok cikáznak. 𝄇
𝄆 Állj meg szlovák testvér,
Elmúlik a veszély
Népünk ébredez már. 𝄇
𝄆 Ob der Tatra blitzt es,
Dröhnt des Donners Krachen. 𝄇
𝄆 Doch der Stürme Wehen,
Wird gar bald vergehen,
Brüder, wir erwachen! 𝄇
Poetics
Janko Matúška, the author of the Slovak national anthem
One of the trends shared by many Slovak Romantic poets was frequent versification that imitated the patterns of the local folk songs.[18] The additional impetus for Janko Matúška to embrace the trend in Lightning over the Tatras was that he actually designed it to replace the lyrics of an existing folk song. Among the Romantic-folkloric features in the structure of Lightning over the Tatras are the equal number of syllables per verse, and the consistent a−b−b−a disyllabic rhyming of verses 2-5 in each stanza. Leaving the first verses unrhymed was Matúška's license (a single matching sound, blýska—bratia, did not qualify as a rhyme):
— Nad Tatrou sa blýska
a - Hromy divo bijú
b - Zastavme ich bratia
b - Veď sa ony stratia
a - Slováci ožijú
Another traditional arrangement of Matúška's lines gives 4-verse stanzas rhymed a−b−b−a with the first verse made up of 12 syllables split by a mid-pause, and each of the remaining 3 verses made up of 6 syllables:[19]
^ abThe standard meaning of sláva is "glory" or "fame". The figurative meaning, first used by Ján Kollár in the monumental poem The Daughter Of Sláva in 1824,[17] is "Goddess/Mother of the Slavs".
^ abThe idiomaticsimile "like a fir" (ako jedľa) was applied to men in a variety of positive meanings: "stand tall," "have a handsome figure," "be tall and brawny," etc.
^ abSee the article on Kriváň for the mountain's symbolism.
References
^Brtáň, Rudo (1971). Postavy slovenskej literatúry.
^Buchta, Vladimír (1983). "Jozef Podhradský - autor prvého pravoslávneho katechizmu pre Čechov a Slovákov". Pravoslavný teologický sborník (10).
^Sojková, Zdenka (2005). Knížka o životě Ľudovíta Štúra.
^Brtáň, Rudo (1971). "Vznik piesne Nad Tatrou sa blýska". Slovenské pohľady.
^Cornis-Pope, Marcel; John Neubauer (2004). History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
^Čepan, Oskár (1958). Dejiny slovenskej literatúry.
^Sloboda, Ján (1971). Slovenská jar: slovenské povstanie 1848-49.
^Varsík, Milan (1970). "Spievame správne našu hymnu?". Slovenská literatúra.
^Vongrej, Pavol (1983). "Výročie nášho romantika". Slovenské pohľady. 1.
^Brtáň, Rudo (1979). Slovensko-slovanské literárne vzťahy a kontakty.
^Klofáč, Václav (1918-12-21). "Výnos ministra národní obrany č. 4580, 13. prosince 1918". Osobní věstník ministerstva Národní obrany. 1.
^Auer, Stefan (2004). Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe.
^National Council of the Slovak Republic (1 September 1992). "Law 460/1992, Zbierka zákonov. Paragraph 4, Article 9, Chapter 1". Constitution of the Slovak Republic.
^National Council of the Slovak Republic (18 February 1993). "Law 63/1993, Zbierka zákonov. Section 1, Paragraph 13, Part 18". Law on National Symbols of the Slovak Republic and Their Use.
