The Adventures and Experiences of the First Slovak Novel – The Public Domain Review
Book II tells of René’s travels to “places less treacherous and less dangerous” (Northern Italy, Austria and Upper Hungary). As Montesquieu in Persian letters (1721), Bajza uses the narrative trick of criticizing his own society through the eyes of a foreigner, which often creates space for irony and humor. René is baffled by almost everything he encounters in Habsburg lands, including the wealth and corruption of monasteries, the forcing of young people into monastic life, or the use of Latin, incomprehensible to most, for the masses. In Upper Hungary, René and Van Stiphout witness even more social ills: illiteracy, ignorance, serfdom, usury, superstition, drunkenness, quacks, the exploitation of the peasants by landed gentry, mendicant orders and the clergy, and so on. They are accompanied by a guide, who tells them about local aristocrats who imitate the foreign lifestyle, “the clothes of their women, the headdresses, capes, lace skirts and everything else they don’t even have a name for in their own language! . . . However, a gentleman would be ashamed to wear something that was not made of the best Dutch material . . . he may well be buying and wearing things woven from his own wool.’ When the travelers are surprised to see a man beating up another who does not resist, they miss that the aggressor pretends to be Hungarian (with a Hungarian mustache and a mixture of Hungarian and Slovak) to claim social superiority. This is Bajza’s critique of the Slovaks’ self-colonization – their belief that class progress means becoming Hungarian:
