Im Wettstreit der Werte. Sorbische Sprache, Kultur und Identität auf dem Weg ins 21.Jahrhundert by Dietrich ScholzeReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), pp. 117-118Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214050 .

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Reviews Scholze, Dietrich (ed.). Im Wettstreit der Werte. Sorbische Sprache, Kultur und

Identitat aufdem Weg ins 2J. Jahrhundert. Schriften des Sorbischen Instituts/ Spisy Serbskeho instituta, 33. Domowina Verlag, Bautzen/Budyiin, 2003. 448 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. ?22.90 (paperback).

IN May 200I a conference was held in Bautzen to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Institut za serbski ludospyt. The German Democratic Republic and its Academy of Sciences have passed away, but the Sorbian research institute which was once attached to the Academy lives on in the same premises in Bautzen under the simplified title Serbski institut, carrying out advanced research into the language, history and culture of the Sorbs. It houses the biggest Sorbian library in the world and the central Sorbian archives. With dwindling resources, however, its activities are slowly con- tracting. Thirty-four papers from the conference are now published under the catchy but cryptic title Im Wettstreit der Werte (In the Contest of Values).

Following its foundation in May 195 I the institute identified as an urgent priority the task of carrying out fieldwork to record the Sorbian dialects. The result was the Sorbischer Sprachatlas in fifteen volumes (Bautzen, I 965-96). An analysis in the present volume by Hanna Popowska-Taborska of the 1, I I 7 lexical maps in the Sprachatlas reveals that I36 of them show clear Upper Sorbian-Lower Sorbian oppositions which appear to reflect similar opposi- tions between Czech and Polish. This she interprets as evidence of the existence of 'two independent Sorbian languages' (pp. iio-ii), thereby making a new and challenging contribution to a longstanding debate. Ronald Lotzsch, representing the opposition to this view, emphasizes the significance of systematic features that are common to all Sorbian dialects yet are not found in other Slavonic languages, such as the formation with the prefix z- of the future tense of the verb 'to have' (e.g., zmejju, 'I shall have') or the lack of a verb meaning 'to live' (the sense being expressed by the adjective biw)y, 'living' + byc, 'to be'). These features prove (he says) that the oft-propounded theory of a prolonged isolation in pre-history of the Lower Sorbs from the Upper Sorbs is untenable (p. 423). Lotzsch also expertly counters August Leskien's specious description of Sorbian as 'mostly German with Slavonic words' (p. 424).

The main emphasis during the first forty years of the Institute's existence was on linguistic research, but there has since been a move towards literature, history, and cultural studies generally. An interesting contribution to the history of the Sorbs is made by K. H. Blaschke, who reconsiders, among other things, the question why the Sorbian language survived in Lusatia long after it died out in neighbouring areas. The key element, he believes, is in Lusatia's inability to develop all the attributes of statehood and, especially, its lack of political centralization. Unlike the neighbouring Mark Meissen, where Sorbian declined rapidly, Lusatia remained until the Thirty Years War what he calls an 'impeded state' without a princely dynasty and ruled by a legislative assembly content to live and let live (pp. 78-79).

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i i8 SEER, 83, I, 2005

Like most conference proceedings the papers published here are of uneven quality, but one or two are quite outstanding. Since the nineteenth century linguists have been trying to confine Sorbian to a Procrustean bed supplied by the other Slavonic languages. Some of this was an impulsive reaction to the attitudes of the likes of Leskien (see above). But now we have a younger generation of scholars who are not satisfied with any of this. Edward Wornar rejects the traditional view that Upper Sorbian perfective verbs cannot express the actual present or be combined with phasal verbs, such as 'to begin', a view that is simply not borne out by the evidence. General observations about Slavonic aspect, as if all Slavonic languages had something in common in this respect, are (he says) misguided. Even among the Slavonic languages aspect varies from one language to another. Aspect in Upper Sorbian is not a grammatical but a lexical category and it is doubtful whether grammatical verbal aspect ever existed (pp. I55-68). Another investigation into aspect is offered by Walter Breu. Based on fieldwork with informants from Ralbitz and Crostwitz, it does not go quite as far as Wornar, but agrees with him at least that aspect in Upper Sorbian is different from that in other Slavonic languages (PP. 143-54). Its specific quality in Lower Sorbian has yet to be explored, but by revealing something of its true nature in Upper Sorbian, Wornar and Breu have begun to dispel the confusion by which Sorbian grammar has long been troubled.

Her~ford College, Oxford GERALD STONE

Krasovec, Joze. Med Izvirnikom in Prevodi. Studijska zbirka, 3. Svetopisemska druzba Slovenije, Ljubljana, 2001. 784 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Biblio- graphy. Indexes. SIT I I,900.

IN the winter of I980, on the eve of the most momentous period in the constitutional history of the country, the Slovenian Bishops' conference accepted a proposal for the preparation of what would be chronologically the seventh complete Slovene translation of the Bible Slovenski standarni prevod celotnega Svetega pisma iz izvirnihhjezikov (Ljubljana, I 996). Overall editor of the work is Professor Joze Krasovec, holder of four doctorates and Professor of Old Testament exegesis in the Theological faculty of the University of Ljubljana, who has kept with meticulous care a full record of the project. After a short introduction extolling the excellence of the Bible (pp. 27-36) the three main sections deal with the historical background (pp. 37-230); the Slovene standard Bible translation: project and realization (pp. 231-378); attendant events and revision of the new translation (pp. 379-548). English-language summaries cover the following topics: an evaluation of literary translations (pp. 549-67); literary aesthetic in the Scriptures based on unity of content and form (pp. 568-86); translatability of literary works in general and the Scriptures in particular (pp. 587-604). A supplement reprints chronologically articles and interviews from the Slovene media from I 990 onwards (pp. 605-752).

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