In
Czech culture
Czech culture has been shaped by the nation's geographical position in the middle of Europe, the Slavic ethnicity of Czechs, influences from its neighbors, political and social changes, wars and times of peace.
There are 16 Czech locations lis ...
, Kocourkov is a fictional place, whose inhabitants are attributed with doing various stupid things, similar to stories about other
towns of fools
A town of fools is the base of a number of joke cycles found in various cultures. Jokes of these cycles poke fun at the stupidity of the inhabitants of a real or fictional populated place (village, town, region, etc.). In English folklore the bes ...
: (how they sowed salt, how they dragged a bull to the church roof to graze the grass, etc.)
[ Cecílie Havlíková, "O lidových humorkách zvláště kocourkovských", I]
KRAJSKÉ STŘEDISKO LIDOVÉHO UMĚNÍ VE STRÁŽNICI 1970 - ČÍSLO 3-4
/ref>
The name of the town derives from the word "Kocour", "tomcat" in Czech, so it literally means "Tomcat's.
Ethnographer Cecílie Havlíková terms the "town of fools" stories as "Kocourkov stories" and classifies them into three categories. Some of them are "classic" stories present in nearly the same form in nearly every European culture. Others are adapted to the realities of a particular culture and thus may change quite considerably. The third category are tales peculiar only to a certain country and often only to a certain locality. She lists several other Czech and Slovak locations of similar glory: Přelouč
Přelouč () is a town in Pardubice District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 10,000 inhabitants.
Administrative division
Přelouč consists of eight municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): ...
in Czech Republic, Šimperk in northern Moravia
Moravia ( ; ) is a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic, roughly encompassing its territory within the Danube River's drainage basin. It is one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The medieval and early ...
, Lhotky in Horňácko region, in western Slovakia
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...
it is Skalica
Skalica (, , Latin: ''Sakolcium'') is the largest town in Skalica District in western Slovakia in the Záhorie region. Located near the Czech Republic, Czech border, Skalica has a population of around 15,000.
Etymology
The name is derived from Slo ...
and the fictional location of this type is known as Čudákova ("Oddball's").[
Czech poet and journalist in his 1832 satirical allegory "" mentions that a (satirical verse) "Die ]Fünsing
Fünsing is a fictional German " village of fools". The 19th-century ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' by the Brothers Grimm defines the word Fünsinger as a silly person, a simpleton whose actions provoke laughter; Latin: ''baburnus'', '' stultus'', and c ...
er Bauern" by German poet Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German ''Meistersinger'' ("mastersinger"), poetry, poet, playwright, and shoemaking, shoemaker.
Biography
Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg (). As a child he attended a singing school that w ...
was translated as "Kocourkovští sedláci", which dates the glory of Kocourkov to the 16th century at the latest.
Sample stories
Ondřej Sekora in his ''Chronicles of the Town of Kocourkov'' gave the following examples of the wisdom of Kocourkov.
The books record a case with an exemplary punishment of bird thieves - sparrows who brazenly stole grain. The chosen individual was executed by being thrown from the town hall tower; the execution was successful, not a feather was left of the sparrow [ Ondřej Sekora, ' (''Chronicles of the Town of Kocourkov'') (1947)]
A dweller of Kocourkov, Oblízal sowed three bags of salt in the freshly plowed black soil behind the walls at the turn of April and May. Nettles did grow instead of salt, but Kocourkovites considered them to be unripe salt, and many of them had health problems when trying to taste it. The Kocourkov women then fed the "unripe salt" to their geese.[
On an occasion of the opening of a new town hall, the musicians were ordered to play all over the city, but they had different repertoire, and produced what is now known as "Kocourkov music".][
]
In modern culture
In 1934 a full-length comedy film '' U nás v Kocourkově'' was released in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
. An escaped convict gets off a train in Kocourkov, where he is mistaken for the son of a famous poacher Jalovec, and "Jalovec, Junior" is elected city mayor.....
Ondřej Sekora's 1947 children's book ' was republished several times.
In 1988 a radio show ''Kocourkov'' was recorded by .
In 1959 Josef Hiršal
Josef Hiršal (24 July 1920, Chomutičky – 15 September 2003, Prague) was a Czech author, poet and novelist.
Hiršal was widely regarded as one of the most important Czech authors of experimental poetry; after early surrealistic writings, he ...
and Jiří Kolář
Jiří Kolář (24 September 1914, Protivín – 11 August 2002, Prague) was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work included both literary and visual art.
Life
Kolář was born in Protivín on September 29, 1914, in a work ...
wrote a children's book ''Kocourkov'', whose humorous stories were adapted from old German texts. In a 1992 TV comedy ''Kocourkov'' was released based on the book.
The alleged absurdities in politics of Czech Republics made various people to compare the country with Kocourkov.[, ''Český Kocourkov'']
See also
* Kocourkov Teachers
Notes
References
{{reflist
Joke cycles
Towns of fools
Czech humour