Slovenská literatúra

4

Authors: Petra Nagyová

Review

8

Authors: Vladimíra Mravcová

The article focuses on the image of Bratislava during the first Czechoslovak Republic as presented in Ivan Horváth’s novella Laco a Bratislava. The city is viewed through the prism of the protagonist’s revaluation of his ideals and as a site of the possibilities it provides on the personal and social level. The movement of the hero through the city bears traces of imitation of certain literary traditions that creatively make use of motives typical for education or disillusionment novels as well as discourses bearing initiation function. In this way, Bratislava becomes a space of emotional education. The hero’s striving for self-actualisation is paralleled with Bratislava’s ambitions to develop, modernise or imitate the style of big cities. His attitude towards the city is analogous with a relationship with a woman. Bratislava is portrayed as a lover, maiden, dark lady or a double. The atmosphere with which the city is invested mirrors the development of a romantic relationship. At first, it is dreamy, postcard-like, melancholic, drawing on memories and history and invested with a hope for a future. The loss of certainty in the romantic relationship, revelation of the city’s social inequalities and the impossibility of self-actualisation are reflected in its changed atmosphere. Disillusionment and nostalgia prevail as the protagonist is leaving Bratislava, hoping for a return which, however, cannot be granted. The city is also portrayed through glimpses of scenes in cafés and exotic air of its oriental features.

9

Authors: Josef Hrdlička

The article addresses the problem of the city as a semiotic space that is defined by its boundary. The first part of the paper presents some of the models of this semiotic boundary and then looks at the city in Bohumil Hrabal’s novel In-House Weddings (1984). Methodologically, the article draws on semiotic works of J. M. Lotman and K. H. Stierle. Hrabal’s novel provides an image of the city in the period of political upheaval. This can be seen as a recoding of the old arrangement of the city to a new one and is exemplified on the fates of several characters. Several borderline protagonists, namely the central protagonist – the narrator – and the character of the doctor come to the fore in this process. These, rather than creating the outer limits of the city, form its inner boundaries. They share some features with the inhabitants of the city, but also occupy the position of strangers. They belong neither to the old nor the new political establishment and attempt to flee the city or view it from the position that is different from both relatively static establishments. Further on, a key role in this respect is played by elements of disorder owing to which the city’s semiosphere vanishes into unrestrained chaos. In this respect, it is possible to relate Hrabal’s text to the catastrophic model that exceeds the purely semiotic approach.

11

Authors: Radoslav Passia

At the turn of the 21st century, the spatial turn that took place in various fields of humanities and social sciences could also be observed in literary studies. On the international level, research was inspired by topics and theories from such fields as architecture, urban studies, sociology or anthropology. Slovak literary studies, however, has not been significantly inspired by geopoetics and has not devoted systematic attention to the study of urban locations and motives. This article provides a basic overview of existing research into the representations of urban settings in Slovak literature. It maps topics and methodological background of individual research initiatives with a special focus on literary and artistic representations of Bratislava. The paper also outlines new lines of inquiry, such as the relationship between literary representations of the city in the post-socialist Central Europe and the phenomenon of nostalgia. It also suggests the possibilities of comparative research. With regards to the latter, the author argues that juxtaposing literary representations of Bratislava with representations of urban settings in the literatures of other European “small nations” (Miroslav Hroch) offers more fruitful ground for research than searching for similarities in culturally and geographically closer Hungarian or Czech literature. The article also provides a list of selected literature on the problematics of urban representations in Slovak literature and culture.

11

Authors: Nora Nagyová

The aim of the article is to outline the problem of the urban topos in dramatic writing. The analysis is conducted on two plays by Viliam Klimáček, namely his Ginsberg v Bratislave (Beat Generation 1965) [Ginsberg in Bratislava (Beat Generation 1965); 2008] and Socík, sladký socík (alkoholický sprievodca socialistickou Bratislavou) [Socialism, sweet socialism (An alcoholic guide to socialist Bratislava); 2016] both of which deal with the socialist era. The introductory part of the article concentrates on Klimáček’s personal relationship to Bratislava and on specific locations portrayed in the two plays. The section devoted to the basic theoretical foundations of the problem of space in literature and drama concentrates mainly on the structuring of the dramatic text. It addresses the specific character of such a text as well as its dual form of existence (as a written text and as a stage production) that substantially influence the problematic portrayal of the urban setting. The textual handling of the space is confronted with its stage realisation which differs from the written form of the play. The differences once again testify to the dual character of the dramatic text which is written as a literary piece, but is prototypically realised on the stage.

12

Authors: Viliam Nádaskay

After the Second World War, Bratislava underwent a radical spatial and ideological reconstruction. The reconstruction of the city was projected into poetry and its imagery in the socialist semantic code. The article focuses on the analysis and evaluation of the new meanings Bratislava as a symbolic space of historical events (and their influence on the daily life of its inhabitants) acquired during the post-war reconstruction process. The article builds on Henri Lefebvre’s thesis that states that every revolution must also alter and create its own space, otherwise it does not fully utilise its potential. Investigations into the artistic representations of Bratislava are complemented by urbanist and sociological reflections on socialist urban space, as well as semiotic works of Vladimír Macura and Daniela Hodrová. In this respect, poetic representations of Slovakia’s capital city may be divided according to three aspects: historical, reconstruction and private. These polarise the space into the city centre and periphery and recode their meanings. The image of the city is thus inclined towards a certain type of utopia – in the specific case of Bratislava it is a utopia in mid-(re)construction. Capturing the period image of the city as outlined in the 1950s poetry aims at contributing to the more complex picture of the symbolic meaning of Bratislava in the cultural memory of the 20th century.

12

Authors: Jana Dudková

The article deals with the way Bratislava was portrayed in Slovak films with urban settings produced in the first decade of the 21st century and shows how these portrayals changed over this period. Methodologically, the article is based on basic heuristics, i.e. on the analysis of the films themselves. The aim of the paper is to provide a general overview rather than an in-depth analysis of individual pieces. The author draws on her previous research in the area, especially on her Slovenský film v ére transkulturality [Slovak film in the era of transculturality; 2011]. By widening the corpus, she tests the relevance of concepts used in film studies at the turn of the millennia (“lifestyle urban film”, “non-places”, “supermodernity”, “postmodernity”) for chosen films. The aim of the paper is to map the portrayals of Bratislava and devise their basic typology, while accentuating the narrative of Slovak cinematography as a series of films reacting to each other, gradually shifting their focus from the historical city centre to the places on the right side of the Danube (e.g. Veľký rešpekt [Big respect], Bratislavafilm) and subsequently to other Slovak regions and towns.

13

Authors: Jozef Tancer

The article analyses the image of Bratislava in the 1936 ethnographic-literary travelogue Columbus in der Slowakei [Columbus in Slovakia] by the Austrian author Leopold Wolfgang Rochowanski (1888 – 1961). Drawing on Paul Rodaway’s sensuous geographies, the article takes a look at how Rochowanski connects the flaneur’s view of the city with sensual perception, especially taste, sound and vision and constructs the “city’s specific tone” – a unique flavour of Bratislava. Flaneur’s view determines both the elements from which the image of the city is composed (cafés, wine bars, restaurants) and the fragmentary narrative techniques that combine anecdotes, legends, stories and musings of the narrator with historical-ethnographic discourse. Rochowanski accentuates cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the place and in doing so semantically opens Bratislava’s urban text. As the result of period political context, however, he also ignores or marginalises some of the semantic layers of the city (portrayal of Jews) and in effect reduces the urban text. Rochowanski portrays Bratislava as a space of imagination coded in a complex way. From the point of view of perception, this prevents the separation of material and non-material (imaginary) layers of the urban palimpsest.