The repertoire of the leading Yugoslav theaters before the war concentrated on domestic works which reflected the main trends of modern dramatic presentation. Representative playwrights dealt successfully not only with the modern revolt against the conventionalized features of dramatic art, but also with the effort to raise it to a powerful medium chronicling and analyzing the basic trends in the complex social milieu of the present day.

Interest among the Slovenes in English literature dates back to the Age of Enlightenment (1765–1810). During this period the Jansenist and biblical scholar Jurij Japelj (1744–1807) chose Alexander Pope's moralistic-didactic poetry for translation. Later, we find J. N. Primic (1785-1823), a Graz professor, publishing in 1812 a translation of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. Both of these used German texts.

Written in Wilno, probably in the year 1819, but omitted from Mickiewicz's first published Poems, 1 and 11, 1822 and 1823. For full account of the poem's origin, see A. P. Coleman, “Mickiewicz and Northern Balladry,” Slavonic and East European Review, xx (1941), 179-181.

Were one to confess total ignorance concerning an alleged tie between the Ballades of Chopin and the poetry of his friend-compatriot Adam Mickiewicz, he would be forever ostracized from among musical conoscenti. Only slightly less flagrant an offense would be the omission of Schumann or perhaps Liszt as reported go-betweens. But, while accord has been reached on the poems which provided Chopin with his musical imagery, even Chopin scholars (Karasowski, Ganche, Bidou, Binental, Hadden) would be at a loss to trace the list down to its origins. Yet, so meaty is the whole, so plausible on the surface, so brimming with national-patriotic-romantic potentialities, that each and every Chopinite has succumbed to its lure, varying solely the stress on this or that facet and the reserve brought to bear on it.

The status of social organization and primitive government among the Eastern Slavs at the dawn of their history is not definable with complete certainty, but may best be determined by comparing the data preserved both by the earliest native sources and in the accounts of contemporary foreign observers with survivals of early custom and usage among the modern branches of the Slavic race least touched by the inroads of modern culture. Accurate definition of early Eastern Slavic social organization has, however, been gravely hampered by the dubious terminology of the mediaeval Russian sources themselves and particularly by the ambiguous use of the word rod, which is indiscriminately employed by eleventh and twelfth century texts to mean family, clan, tribe, and even nation.

Russian literary jubilees have always been events of the highest importance — dates significant not merely for students of literature, not alone for the historians of Russian culture, but for Russian culture itself. A sum total of the studies devoted to the fêted writers is cast up, gaps are industriously filled in, wide circles of society are once again, and more persistently, associated with the classical heritage, but most important — the author whose memory is celebrated is reappraised in the light of the present time and this latter is in its turn subjected to judgment in the light of the writer's legacy.

However often I come in contact with the works of Józef Tretiak on Pushkin, I am invariably struck by the special acuteness and the frequently remarkable intuition of our celebrated scholar. Not always, however, do I find myself in agreement with the final results of his investigations and the inferences he draws from the subject-matter of his researches. Most often, a true instinct has led Tretiak in a just and proper direction, but not always to the goal. It has seemed as though he did not reach the end of the road, but at a certain point suddenly stopped or swerved aside and deviated from his proper destination.

In considering the literary works of Schiller, one is confronted by the unusual phenomenon of having before him what seems at first to be no less than three separate personalities: the writer of the four youthful plays, the lyric poet, and the great dramatist of the years from 1799-1805. Upon closer study, to be sure, a definite unity of purpose and of temperament is revealed. But it is not at all surprising that his contemporaries and the generation which immediately followed him were some times at a loss to know just where to place him. Schiller's untimely death in 1805 interrupted a fertile creative period which the poet himself would in all likelihood have regarded as but the beginning of yet another excursion into new fields, and he could hardly have been happy to know that at the hour of his death the vanguard of Russian literati, almost wholly unaware of his major works, mourned him as the poet of Die Räuber and Don Carlos.

The influence of America upon the thought of Peter Lavrov, the great Narodnik sociologist of the late nineteenth century, has hitherto been overlooked in any serious study of his life and work. It was the American labor movement, above all, which interested Lavrov — an interest which not only harmonized with his intransigent views on the “economic question,” but one which coincided, appropriately enough, with the decade that witnessed Lavrov's closest approach to Marxism.

In Lavrov's journal V pered, for example, there was always a section devoted to a Chronicle of the Labor Movement and also one to a Chronicle of Struggle. These two features were carried to report the positive constructive elements in the working class struggle and to contrast these with “the chaos of bourgeois civilization.” In these reports on the state of the world labor movement, the progress of the American working class had a prominent place.

The first parties of colonists set out for North America as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. They counted on finding gold there, as well as in Central America.

But they were disappointed. On the Atlantic coast of North America they found no gold at this time.

It went hard for the first settlers. Many died of malaria and tropical diseases, and some had to return again to Europe.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, most colonies in North America belonged to the British; the British first expelled the Dutch, then the French. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was taken by the British in 1664. This colony was given to the Duke of York, the brother of the English king, and named New York.

The subject of this paper is very much the same as that discussed in the programmatic article of Samuel H. Cross, “Teaching College Russian,” which appeared in the Slavonic and East European Review, American Series, in, 3 (1944), pp. 39-52. While I am not conscious of differing in my views fron those expressed by Professor Cross, I feel nevertheless the necessity of taking up the same topic once more, especially since in the meantime quite a lively controversy has been going on in professional magazines. I think also that we are now able to appraise the achievements of the Army Specialized Training Program and the so-called intensive method.

The importance for American scientists of closely following the published Russian researches in their fields is gaining general recognition in this country. In this connection the American Association of Teachers of Slavonic and East European Languages appointed about a year ago a Committee on Teaching Scientific Russian, and planned to hold, at its national meeting in Chicago, December 27-29, 1945, a session devoted to this problem.

Dezso Kosztolanyi, the Hungarian poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic and translator, played a prominent part in the cultural life of his native land, and for a time he was the center of heated controversies. His works are translated into English, Italian, French, German and other languages. His artistic consciousness determined his relationship to the Hungarian literary scene. Kosztolanyi was extremely word-conscious. He said that to play with words is to play with destiny. As a purifier of the Hungarian language, he emphasized the coordination of the nation's morality with the integrity of words. In his university years he was influenced by Professor Laszlo Negyesy's canons of Hungarian philology; and when Negyesy, at the age of seventy-two, renewed his campaign for linguistic purity, Kosztolanyi, then a recognized poet, joined this movement and added greatly to its success. He was not against neologisms, but against the corruption of the language.