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The fourth issue of the Národopisná revue 1992 brings the final contributions to the survey focused on the importance of traditional and folk culture in our life (writers Antonín Přidal, Antonín Bajaja und Přemysl Rut, the musical editor Zdeněk Bláha and archeologist Jiří Pavelčík). The leading article is the study of Martina Pavlicová: Personalities of the history of the Czech ethnochoreography. The author investigates the ethnochoreo-graphic knowledge expressed in the works of significant representatives of the 19th Century Czech culture (Jan Jeník of Bratřice, Václav Krolmus, Josef Jaroslav Langer and Jan Neruda). She follows the scope of their interest in folk dance within the context of the period. By numerous quotations of their works she succeeds to exemplify the social atmosphere of those times.
The work of the important Czech ethnographer Jaromír Jech who died 1992 is the subject of the article by Marta Šrámková in pages 162-164.
Part of the fourth issue is again a photographic annex, this time by the Slovak photographer Ľubo Stach. He devotes a considerable part of his work to the documentation of the life in the Moravian region of Valachia.
Similarly to 1991, also the closing issue of Národopisná revue 1992 comprises the "credo" of our associates celebrating some sort of jubilee; they speak of their relation to scientific ethnography. These texts in pages 173-180 have a characteristic heading: Words as seed.
Reports and evaluations of folklore festivals in the Czech Republic and information of specific literature can be found in page 181-189. They are complemented by the annual report of the Institute of Folk Culture in Strážnice for 1992.
The third number of Národopisná revue (Ethnographie Review) is again predominantly devoted to folkloric issues. The last contributions from the XII. Strážnice Symposium, held 1991, are published here. H. Bočková demonstrates various expressions of folklorism in the traditional customs and celebrations in Brno and its neighborhoods in her study entitled Folklorism and folk habits. From the diversified manifestations of folklorism the author selected some examples of the application of folk customs to enhance social and cultural events of the club and school VESNA by the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th Century. She establishes that the beginnings of folklorism go back to the approach to the people at age of enlightment (village people performing their customs to please the nobility). She maintains that there are Signals of original practices dying out in the course of further development of the changing society in Moravia.
Part of folklorism are ethnographic festivals, "Strážnice" is acknowledged to be one of the oldest folklore festivals in Europe. Its programme structure and perspectives were the topics of a separate colloquium in Brno, in November 1992. The main papers were presented by J. Jančář (The Importance of the Strážnice Festival within the context of the transformations of the present day culture) and Karel Pavlištík (The programme structure of the International folklore festival Strážnice - problems and perspectives). In additions to that the copy contains also valuable Impulses from the discussion to this topic (M. Brtník, H. Laudová, L. Kunz, l. Vojancová and many others).
Interesting viewpoints to questions of modernity and tradition are presented in an essay by Vladislav Stanovský who Supports the UNESCO recommendation for the protection of traditional culture and folklore.
Also the third number of NR brings a profile of an important photographer from Moravia. This time it is devoted to Josef Šíma (born 1859 in Prague), painter and designer in Prague and Brno. As well as the previous ones, also this number is closed by a series of book and exhibition reviews as well as informations on Conferences in the field of ethnography.
The second issue of The Ethnographie Revue brings about more answers of the representatives of the Czech science and culture to the question of relation to the national traditions (Jiří Fukač - a musical science expert, Pavel Šmok - the head of the ballet at the National Theatre, Helena Jarošová - a sociologist, Jindřich Uher - a writer, Nina Pavelčíková, a historian, Vladimir Merta - a musical editor).
In the part dealing with ethnographic studies Miloš Melzer writes about the role of the outstanding folklorist Václav Tille played in the preparations of the Moravian participation in The Czechoslovak Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague, 1895. This study is a part of preparations for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of this exhibition. E. Večerková's study on the national customs in the cultural activity of the association The National Unity for the Southwest Moravia returns to the topic of folklore in the life of the society.
The central material of the second issue of The Ethnographic Revue is the remarkable study of Petr Dvořáček on the photographs of Jindřich Štreit showing the life of the common people in the North Moravia. The studies and photographs on p. 69 - 76 prove that a work of art may be at the same time an outstanding scientific document.
On p. 77 - 78 there is an obituary about the significant Czechoslovak ethnographer, university professor Václav Frolec. The obituary is followed by some more short contributions and papers on the ethnographic Conferences, news about important folk festivals (H. Laudová, J. M. Krist, M. Válka) and book reviews (A. Jeřábková, M. Mušinka, I. Benčíková).
An exceptional attention is paid by K. Pavlištík to the twentieth anniversary of the well known ensemble of folk songs and dances Kašava and to the remarkable action of The Studio of Folk Dances in Walachia. J. M. Krist informs about the project of the educational Videoprogramme which was started by The Institution of Folk Culture under the title The Folk Dances from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia All ten parts of the project - the first two of which have already been realized this year - are to be finished by the year 1995. ERRATA have been a traditional contribution of professor R. Jeřábek to The Ethnographic Revue. Errata 5 pay attention especially to mistakes in The Czechoslovak Biographical Dictionary (Prague 1992) where a lot of inaccuracy has appeared in the field of ethnography and folklore.
This year's volume of Národopisné revue (Ethnographic Review) has a new conception: it is a scientific-popular periodical published both for professionals and amateurs interested in folk culture and in its place in the contemporary cultural trends.
The first issue of the 1992 volume brings a Czech translation of a UNESCO document called "Recommendations on the Protection of Traditional and Folk Culture". Freely connected with these recommendations are the answers of some representatives of the Czech science and culture on a question regarding their personal relation to folk art and traditions (the sociologist M. Petrusek, dramatist F. Pavlíček, choreographer A. Skálová, graphic and plastic artist and educationalist K. Longer, the historian J. Válka, and L. Vaculík, a writer).
The central topic of the issue is folklorism. The introductory study by O. Sirovátka "Folklorism in the Cultural Life of the Society" tries to define the sense proper and deeper significance of the care of folk culture and of building on folk traditions. He holds that folklorism consists in rediscovering the folk art, folk culture and folk lore, in an effort to revive its phenomena and its values for the contemporary man. It is connected with a search for the actual sense and values of folklore and of folk art in the present world. Closely connected with the topic is the article "Hanatics as an Expression of Folklorism" by J. Válka trying to explain the role of folk culture of Haná - the ethnographic region covering central Moravia - as a source of inspiration. His study is based on the assessment of 17th - 19th century records and literature and follows the metamorphoses of social attitudes towards the traditional culture of the rural population, with special view to the Czech national rebirth and romanticism, when manifestations of folk culture were frequently used for the manifestation of national identity and of its ancient roots. Of controversial - eventually polemic character is the article by V. Stanovský "Regionalism, Nationalism and also Cosmopolitism". He emphasizes that the essence of the culture should be seen not only in its peaks, but also in its quantity and regional variety.
The column Errata 4 brings a list of printer's errors in the previous issues of the Národopisné revue, under the title "To Err is Inhuman", paraphrasing the known Latin saying. R. Jeřábek is putting right countless printers' errors in his study "Ethnische und ethnographische Gruppen und Regionen in den böhmischen Ländern (17. - 20. Jahrhundert) in the proceedings Ethnologia Slavica 19, Bratislava 1987. Both the editorial board of the proceedings and Slovenské pedagogické nakladatelství (Publishers of Slovak Educational Literature) refused to publisch the errata, some of them grossly distorting the facts. The author decided to sum up all those errors, and he mentions some of them in the column reserved for the errata occurred in the Czech ethnography.
