Božena Němcová

**Božena Němcová** (1820-1862) was a Czech author that collected Czech and Slovak folktales.

## Biography

Although questioned by some historians, it's agreed that Němcová, whose real name was Barbora, was born in February 4th 1820 in Vienna, Austria, and that she was an illegitimate child of a woman called Terezie Novotné. In September 7th of the same year Novotné married a coachman called Johann Pankl, who recognised Barbora as his own daughter. Before their wedding the couple moved to Ratibořice, in what is currently northern Czech Republic, bringing little Barbora with them. Terezie got a job as a laundress, and her mother Marie Magdaléne moved to live with the family some time latter. Marie Magdaléne was a huge influence on her grandaughter's life upon her death in 1841. Barbora attended school for six years, from 1824 to 1830, before being sent to Chvalkovice to live with the local administrator of the state, Augustin Hoch, and his family, to deepen her education learning German, manners and to play piano. She spent there three years before returning to Ratibořice. In 1837 she was married to a tax official called Josef Němec. Much older than her, Němec was a Czech nationalist that helped shape Němcová's national conscioussness and that usually published text were he expressed his ideas under the pseudonym Bořivoj N. Bydžovský. This made Němec's superiors uncomfortable, and him and his family have to move a lot becuase he was constantly transferred. The first time was only one year after his wedding with Němcová, being transferred to Josefov, where Němcová gave borth to her first son, Hynek. The second, called Karel, was born one year later when the family had to transfer to Litomyšl.

In 1840 she met doctor Josef Čejka, who introduced her to many nationalist Czech authors of the time, including Jakub Malý. In 1842 the family finally moved to Prague, where she met several nationalist authors like Karel Jaromír Erben who motivated her to write her own books in the Czech language. She published her first poem titled *Ženám českým* (**tr.** *Czech Women*) in April 5th 1843. She also had a lover called Václav Bolemír Nebeský, who ended their short-lived affair to go to Vienna. After Nebeský's departure Němcová fell terribly ill. Despite that the family have to leave Prague that same year and moved to Domažlice, in which is currently the western Czech Republic. In 1845 Němcová published the first volume of his collection *National Legends and Tales*, publishing several more volume for the next three years untill the collection reached a total of seven volumes. But wether Němcová wanted to continue her collection or not didn't matter because in 1848, the same year she published the seventh volume, her husband of acccused of conspiracy by the Austrian authorities and the family have to forcily moved to Nymburk, where Němcová read an article called *Co jest komunismus?* (**tr.** *What is Comminism?*) published in the magazine *Týdenník*. The article made such an impact on Němcováthat she and her husband wanted to join the Czech-Moravian Brotherhood founded the the article's author, the Catholic priest František Matouš Klácel. There she met a new lover, Jan Helcelet.

But the family's situation got so bad that Němec to Hungary in 1850, but Němcová and the children could stay on the town of Česká Třebová in eastern Bohemia thanks to Klácel. There she met again with Helcelet, but things fell out between them because of disagreements. Meanwhile the Czech-Moravian Brotherhood also disintegrated, some believe because of Klácel's jealousy towards Němcová's relationship with Helcelet. In 1851 she met her third lover, physician Dušan Lambl, who was treating her first born son Hynek, but the realtionship ended when Němec found one of Lambl's letters. In 1853 Hynek died of tuberculosis at the age of fifteen. That same year Němec was removed from office, and because of her husband's unemployement the family soon started to have financial troubles. In 1854 she met her fourth lover, a medicine student called Hanuš Jurenka, but because of the opposition of Jurenka's parents to that relationship the affair ended abruptly when Jurenka was sent to Poland. Despite all her personal affairs and troubles, Němcová managed to have yet time to write, publishing his most famous novella *Babička* in 1855. She also grew interested in collecting the customs and folklore of the Slovak people around that time, and her fieldwork resulted in the two volume collection *Slovak Fairy Tales and Legends*, whose first volume was published in 1856 and its second in 1857. The tales were written in Slovak, something that many didn't consider at the time an independent language.

The situation of Němcová's family got so bad that she had really violent confrontations with her husband. Finally in 1861 she left her husband and returned to Litomyšl. Her health was in such a state that she died in January 21st 1862 in Prague.

## Works

During her life Němcová published two fairy tale collections. The first was *National Legends and Tales*, a seven-volume collectionof Czech folktales published from 1845 to 1848 during Němcová's stay on Domažlice. The first volume had only six tales, the first one being *The Golden Spinning-Wheel*, the story in which a bad sister tear out her sister's eyes and leaves her in the woods to die, so she can take her place as a rich gentleman's wife. But her crime's revealed by the titular spinning-wheel. Another one of the most remarkable tales in this volume is *The Swan*, the story of a prince turned into a swan by his evil stepmother's orders. Because folklorist haven't found any other tale like this in oral tradition some speculate if the tale wasn't taken from oral tradition, but was actually Němcová's own invention. In the second volume, published the same year that the first, only five tales were included, although some of them ended up being some of the most iconic Němcová's classics, specially *Sun, Moon and Wind*, the story of a prince whose three sisters marry the Sun, the Moon and the Wind respectively, who later help him to get a horse so he can rescue his lover.

The third volume was published in 1846 had nine tales, some of them with the common theme of a female heroine tricking the Devil, as it's the case with *Katcha and the Devil* and *The Clever Princess*, the last one about a cunning princess who surpass in intelligence the Devil and saves his beloved, who made a deal with him. Antoher story of a hero making a deal with the Devil and marrying a princess appears in the fourth volume published the same year, this one titled *The Devil's Brother-in-Law*. The volume also included a version of *Cinderella* titled *The Three Sisters*, in which the heroine called Anuška is mistreated not by her stepfamily but by her biological family instead, and *The Talking Bird, the Water of Life and the Three Golden Apple Trees*. The fifth volume was also published that same year, and included among others a version of *King Thrushbeard* and a version of *Donkey Skin* titled *The Princess with the Golden Star on Her Brow* in which the princess called Lada started requesting dresses because she believed her father was joking when he told her he was gonna marry her after not finding anybody else with a golden star on her brow like her deceased mother had, and the dead queen's ghost advises her daughter in her dreams.

The last two volumes were published in 1847 and 1848 respectively. In the sixth Němcová included *Prince Bayaya*, the story of a prince who gets hired as a gardener after leaving the parental home, falls in love with one of the three daughters of the king he works for and saves the three princesses from a dragon; and *The Alabaster Hand*. And the seventh starts with *The Seven Ravens*, the story of Bohdanka, a girl who after discovering she had seven brothers that were cursed to become ravens by her own mother leaves her parents' house to find them and free them from the curse. It also includes *The Eagle, the Nigthingale and the Rose*, a tale that, like *The Swan*, the difficulty to find homologs in the oral tradition has made folklorist doubt if the tale is actually a folk tale and not a creation by Němcová. It tells the story of Mladoň, a youth raised for a witch called Burka to use his blood to rejuvante herself when he turns twenty, who falls in love with Viola, the daughter of a married couple that Burka turned them into birds. When Burka discovers their relationship she turns Viola into a rose but Mladoň breaks the spell aftering hearing a conversation between swallows. Although Němcová always expressed interest in continuing the collection and she even wrote in her letters that she had more stories collected, the publishing ended abruptly in 1848 when she had a left Domažlice with her family because his husband was accused of conspiracy by Austrian authorities.

Her second collection, *Slovak Tales and Legends*, was published in a much darker moment in her life. It consisted of two volumes, the first published in 1856 and the second in 1857, of the Slovak tales she collected herself, although the book also included the ten folktales that Jan Francisci-Rimavský collected himself and published in 1845. Among the tales that came from Němcová's own fieldwork we should mention a version of *Rumpelstiltskin* titled *Kinkaš Martinko* in which the heroine not only has to guess the dwarf's name but also from the hide of which animal his boots are made of. But the two most important tales from that collection are undoubtely *The Twelve Months* and *Salt is More Worth than Gold*. The first is the story of Maruška, a commoner girl whose evil stepmother and stepsister want to get rid of her, and to do it they send her to search for violets in the forest in a snowy night on New Year's Eve. But what the stepfamily doesn't count it's that Maruška will meet in the forest the anthropomorphic versions of the twelve months of the year, that help her accomplish the seemingly impossible task. The same happens when they send Maruška for strawberries and apples, until Holena, the stepsister, decides to get more apples herself, but when she meets the months she's rude with them, and both her and her mother die. In the second story the heroine is also called Maruška, but she's this time the youngest of the king's three daughters. When her father asks them how much they love him, she compares the love for her father with how much food needs salt, unlike her eldest sister Agnes and L'udmila who compared it with gold and emeralds. The king disliked Maruška's words and expelled her from his kingdom, but after the princess leaves all the salt in the kingdom dissapears, and its population suffer a famine that only stops once Maruška returns and forgives her father.

## Cultural Legacy and Impact

Despite spending the last years of her life in poverty, Němcová became after her death one of the most celebrated writers in the Czech Republic, and her tales became beloved classics. During the Cold War the Czechoslovak film industry produced several adaptations. Bořivoj Zeman directed several of those adaptations in the 1950s. Zeman's adaptations gave the tales a socialist subtext, a less wild idea if we get into account Němcová's interest and affinity to communist ideas. The film *The Proud Princess*, released in 1952, was based on the tale *The Punished Pride* and told the story of a haughty princess called Krasomila, played by Alena Vránová, that learns the value of hard-work. In 1955 Zeman released a new film about a stuck-up royalty member who learns the value of simple things, this one a king played by actor and comedian Jan Werich, who also wrote his own fairy tales. The film was called *The Was Once a King...* and it was based on the Slovak folktale collected by Němcová *Salt is More Worth than Gold*. Another filmmaker who had success in the 1950s adapting Němcová's tales was Martin Frič, who in 1959 released the film *The Princess with the Golden Star*, based on *The Princess with the Golden Star on Her Brow*. It must be said that Frič's film bowldlerized Němcová's story, changing the reason why princess Lada, played here by Maria Kyselková, run away. Instead of an incesteous father like in the original text in the film she was bethroted against her will to an evil king who threaten to invade her father's kingdom.

In 1973 Václav Vorlíček released the film *Three Wishes for Cinderella*, nased on the version of *Cinderella* that Němcová included in *Slovak Fairy Tales and Legends*. The movie was a success, launching lead actress Libuše Šafránková's career, who starred later in more adapatations of Němcová's fairy tales, like *The Prince and the Evening Star*, realeased in 1979 and based on *Sun, Moon and Wind*, where she worked again with Vorlíček; and *The Salt Prince*, another adaptation of *Salt is More Worth than Gold*, directed by Martin Hollý and released in 1983. Besides live-action films Němcová's tales were also adapted to animated films, included stop-motion, with the most remarkable example being *Bayaya*, an adaptation of her tale *Prince Bayaya* directed by filmmaker and illustrator Jiří Trnka and released in 1950. Another remarkable stop-motion adaptation was *Sun, Moon and Wind* directed by František Mikeš, released in 1980. After Czechoslovakia was dissolved, the Czech film industry kept using Němcová's work as a source of inspiration. The tale *The Seven Ravens* was adapted twice, the first one directed by Ludvík Ráža and released in 1993, and the second directed by Alice Nellis and released in 2015.

But of all the tales collected by Němcová the one that probably had the biggest impact internationally was *The Twelve Months*. This was thanks to Russian playwright Samuil Marshak, who wrote a four act play based on the tale. Marshak significaly extended the story, so instead of being sent for violets in the middle of the winter because her step-family wants to get rid of her, Maruška goes because of a spoiled teenage queen's request. The play premiered in Moscow in 1947 and became a huge success, earning an animated adaptation in 1956 and a live-action one in 1973. But the play was not only a success in the Soviet Union, but also Japan, were it got an anime film adaptation in 1980 animated by Toei Animation. Closer to Němcová's tale was the Czech film *The Twelve Months* released in 2012 and directed by Karel Janák, adding a romantic rivalry between stepsisters as the motivation for sending the heroine to search for the violets and strawberries in the middle of the winter. Besides the film and animated adaptations the story has also been adapted into several picture books, included *Little Sister and the Month Brothers*, illustrated by Margot Tomes and published in 1976; *The Month-Brothers*, illustrated by Diane Stanley and published in 1983; and *Marushka and the Month Brothers*, illustrated by Anna Vojtech and published in 1996.