Prague version of “Maystor i diavol” drama. Some notes on Kiril Hristov’s Czech period (1929–1938)
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ABSTRACT
This contribution closely focuses on the features of the first, as of yet not published, Prague version of the Kiril Hristov’s drama “Maystor i dyavol” [The Master and the Devil] written in 1935–1936. The manuscript is stored in the Museum of Czech Literature Literary Archive in Prague (unprocessed collection “Christov Kiril”). Attention is paid, first, to the original legend about the builder of the Church of the Assumption of the Our Lady and St. Charles the Great in Karlov (Prague) which Christov knew from various sources, and second, to the genealogical aspects of the drama (the author himself called it “a Prague dramatic legend”). It then deals with the circumstances of the genesis of the drama and possible genetic relations to other literary texts of diverse provenience. It has been supposed that, apart from newer literary treatments of the drama, the plot of the drama was built on Karel Navrátil’s (1830–1887) treatise about the aforementioned church in Karlov, written in the 1870s. Recently it was discovered that Navrátil’s treatise was only a impulse for the theater play, but especially Kiril Hristov’s own drama built its architectonic and plot line construction and composition on an older Eduard (Edvard) Herold’s (1820–1895) historical novella “The Builder of Karlov. A Short Story From the Times of Charles IV”, published in 1853.