Wells of Love and Hearts of Stone: Two Centuries of the Trencin Legend in Slovak Literature

The Ottoman invasions are among the most significant historical events in Central European literature as well as popular culture. An important example is the legendary,well of love" at Trencin Castle, supposedly dug by the Turkish Omar in order to free his beloved Fatima, held in captivity by Stephen Zapolya. Despite its setting in the 1490s, this story was first published in German in the early nineteenth century by Hungarian nobleman Alois Freiherrn von Mednyanszky, which inspired Slovak poetic adaptations of this tale by Karol Stur (1844) and Mikulas Dohnany (1846). The narrative was popularized in several collections of,historical" tales set in Slovakia's castles by twentieth-century authors such as Ludovit Janota, Jozef Branecky, Jozef Horak and Jan Domasta, as well as in Jozef Niznansky's historical novel The Well of Love (1935), which provides a concrete political background for the legend. Although the story's events and characters (other than Zapolya) are fictional, it remains today one of the most enduring love stories in Slovak culture. This article will analyze the textual development of this legend in relation to evolving definitions of national identity over the last two centuries.