Proglas

by Konštantín Filozof - sv. Cyril

Genres: School

67 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[ewa · Rating 3 out of 5]

nie wiem co w moim zyciu poszlo nie tak ze musze czytac takie syfy

[Martin Alojz Malacký · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve finished this book in one sitting (considering it’s only 17 pages long and written in verses). The problem here is how should I rate it? It’s very difficult rating a 1,100 year old religious poetic prologue to the Bible when you’re atheist and the school forced you to read it 😅. I understand that Proglas is quintessential to Slavic history and literature and in that aspect, I highly respect and value this text. However, based solely off of my personal taste, it is very difficult to rate this (especially since, as I mentioned, it is religious and it doesn’t have a story). If I had to rate this normally, I’d probably give it one star, but I feel like that’s unfair, so I’ll be rating this text based on it’s historical value and the structure and format of the manuscript. Proglas is considered by many the first Slavic piece of literature and since I’m Slovak, I thus can do nothing else but Thank Constantine/Cyril for giving us this poem and the Glagolitic script. Format and style-wise, I was shocked, to be honest. This poem comes from the 860s, but I felt like I was reading something written by Samo Chalupka. Compared to other medieval poems which we did study in school, Constantine/Cyril used very modern components and techniques of poetry. I was pleased by that. In conclusion, I’m giving Proglas 3 stars - it’s a fundamental piece of history and literature and its prose and lyricism is shockingly modern, but since I’m atheist and the poem didn’t really tell any kind of story, I had to lower the number of stars I’d give to Proglas (since based on my ratings, I won’t say that it was better than If We Were Villains, for example).