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Postcard 199 · 26 January 1904 · inscribed date

Card 199: A planned Rudolfinum concert

A message about jealousy, a missed ball and concert plans has a specific external match in two Prague newspaper announcements from 1904.

Maxim Egorov · prepared with AI assistance

What the card says

An editorial summary of the readable passages, rather than a complete translation of every sign. The sender remains unidentified; the nickname and similar language across cards do not establish a single writer.

The literal supports a connected account of thanks for a note, jealousy before learning who accompanied the addressee, and the writer’s absence from a ball despite attempts to persuade him to attend. The exact noun sanici remains uncertain. The message goes on to plan a Monday visit to the Rudolfinum for a third concert after finding no tickets for the second concert the previous day.

The separate region beginning skoly sevcikovy can be interpreted as a continuation referring to Ševčík’s school. Joining the two regions in this order is a linguistic interpretation; the frozen source transcription did not establish a cross-region reading order.

The inscription reads 26 January 1904, a Tuesday. If it dates composition and “Monday” means the next Monday, the proposed sequence points to 25 January and 1 February. The 25 January issue of Národní listy announces that day’s second concert of the Association of Czech Journalists at the Rudolfinum. The 31 January issue announces its third and final concert for Monday 1 February, with a group from Ševčík’s master school performing again. The linked primary newspaper pages match the dates, numbering, venue, organisation and school.

These notices were found after the fixed-key test. They corroborate the proposed reference but are advance announcements: they do not prove that the concerts occurred as advertised, that the writer attended, or who the writer was.

Saved literal readings

This is the saved decoding output. Question marks mark unresolved source units, which may be single letters, digraphs or uncertain groupings of strokes. Spelling defects, line breaks and source-region labels are preserved; proposed corrections are discussed separately.

First primary literal (secondary output is identical)

=== SOURCE REGION LEFT_CCW ===
vrely dik za drahy listek byl
jsem zarliv na vasi sanici
dokud jsem nevedel s kym jsi jela
vplesu sem nebyl ac vybori prisli
jeste v posledni chvili vecer v sobotu
mne premlou vati ples se krasne vydaril
bylo v ?em mnoho znamy? dam netouzil jsem vsak
po zabave s nimi bez t?be by mne tam nebylo nic
bavilo v pondeli pujdu do rudolfina na treti
koncert curnalistu chtel jsem jiti jiz vcera
na druhy koncert nebyly vsak jiz listky ??
koupi na ten koncert se tesim je pry pro?ukce

=== SOURCE REGION RIGHT_CW ===
skoly sevcikovy velkoleba
tisic vasnivy? pus posila vecne tvuj pepous ktery
svemu ?rdecku preje aby se dobre bavilo avaak
prosi aby nezapomnelo ze nalezi vyradne pepous?v?

What remains uncertain

  • curnalistu is not literal žurnalistů. That interpretation changes resolved c to z before adding Czech diacritics.
  • Other proposed repairs exceed unknown completion: velkoleba → velkolepá changes b to p; avaak → avšak changes a to s; vyradne → výhradně inserts h.
  • A later source-only audit did not authorize those lexical repairs. It retained the sequences behind curnalistu and avaak, allowed h/b rather than p at the disputed velkoleba position, and did not establish an extra h in vyradne.
  • The displayed LEFT_CCW then RIGHT_CW order is an indexing convention. A coherent continuation does not settle source reading order.

Source and method

Fresh fixed-24-entry-key test; no eligible secondary-mark positions on this card.

First fixed-key prediction: 522 of 532 source bodies mapped; 10 remain unknown. Secondary output is byte-identical.

HCPortal catalogue record for card 199 · Open the original photograph

26 January 1904 · inscribed date. The date label records its evidence source; it does not establish a posting or receipt date.

All 23 original assignments occur on the card, including the rare f in rudolfina. The later unbarred t form is absent. The secondary output adds nothing here because there were no eligible marked positions.

The source transcriptions and language checks were AI-generated. No external human expert review is claimed. Coverage counts signs assigned a value, not verified correct letters; one sign can produce the two-letter Czech ch.

Evidence and context

Editorial revision, 5 October 2026: the explanation has been reorganized and repeated cautions shortened. Saved Czech outputs, numerical results and source links are unchanged. Photographs remain linked at their source.