NEZNÁMA PRÍLEŽITOSTNÁ TLAČ MICHALA GODRU Z ROKU 1841

The article deals with unknown occasional print Carmen pastoricium by Michal Godra (1801 – 1874). It was published in Novi Sad in the year 1841, when M. Godra worked as a headmaster of the Slovak-German gymnasium in Novi Vrbas, Báčka, Vojvodina. The print consists of two autonomous poems, eclogues, which were written by the author on the occasion of appointing nobleman Anton Knézy as the Vice-ispán of Báčka County. The paper focuses on the first of the eclogues titled Beata Bacska. Ecloga I. (Blessed Báčka, eclogue I.), that is composed of 97 lines written in hexameter. Since the text of the poem is not well-known in professional circles, the article includes a transcription of the Latin text and a prosaic translation into Slovak. The interpretation of the themes and motifs leads to the conclusion that M. Godra´s poem Beata Bacska has the genre characteristics of the eclogue: a poetic message, arranged in the form of shepherds´ utterances, Báčka is glorified as the idyllic land of shepherds and farmers, some mythological motifs and historical digressions appear and complement the image of the glorified land. In line with the condition of the ´occasional nature´ of the poem, Godra updates the image of the land using an unusually high number of particular names of the geographical localities in Báčka as well as the period references. The occasional print by M. Godra is a proof of using the Latin language in literary production as late as the 1840s, at least in occasional poetry.