Slovenská literatúra

3

Authors: Angela Škovierová

Vráblová, Timotea, ed.: Occasion in Slovak literature of earlier periods

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Authors: Pavol Markovič

Vráblová, Timotea: Life on the battlegrounds of this world

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Authors: Erika Brtáňová

Sermon literature, as documented by manuscripts and prints archived in Slovak memory preservation institutions, played an important role in Slovak literature of older periods since as early as the Middle Ages. Texts of sermons testify to the key developmental processes in the history of Slovak literature, document the changes in languages used (leading to the use of the native language – Slovak), and reflect the values and topical issues of individual periods. Other fields of research – besides theology – started focusing on Slovak homiletic literature after the Velvet Revolution when religious genres started enjoying greater scholarly interest. The widening of research focus so that it would encompass new themes and research viewpoints can most readily be observed in monographs from the fields of philology, history, and literary history. Religious writing is also the focus of three research projects concentrating on Slovak and Central European texts. A common feature of these is a mutual cooperation between specialists and intensified academic communication and exchange of experience on the international level.

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Authors: Dana Hučková

Róbert Kiss Szemán, ed.: The OTHER Kollár – Kollár and the OTHER

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Authors: Marzanna Kuczyńska

Theologian and polemicist Hypatius Pociej (Polish: Hipacy Pociej, 1541 – 1613) was a bishop of the eparchy of Volodymyr-Brest (now a part of Ukraine) and since 1599 until his death, he was Metropolitan of Kiev. He was Protestant, later Orthodox, and then Unitarian. Hypatius played an active role in the Union of Brest which aimed at uniting the Orthodox Church with the Catholic one. His polemical texts have rarely been the subject of academic study – especially so in the context of historical-religious context of the era. Still less researched is the polemic included in the collection of sermons published by the printing house of Supraśl monastery by the theologian and metropolitan Leon Kiszka (1663 – 1728) in 1714 in Polish translation under the title Kazania y homilie męża Bożego nieśmiertelney sławy: y pamięci Hipacyusza Pocieia […] z listem Melecyusza Patryarchy Alexandryiskiego, a responsem Hipacyusza [Sermons and homilies of the man of god of immortal fame and memory, Hypatius Pociej (…) with a letter by Meletius, Patriarch of Alexandria and a response from Hypatius]. The Polish translator made significant changes to the original text and adapted it to the new circumstances. Since in the early 18th century, the main task of the polemicists was a unification of the nation in one – Catholic – faith, Kiszka advocated the union in a narrowly Counter-Reformation spirit. The collection of sermons is a declaration of the sense of belonging and a programmatic manifest of the union. This was markedly strengthened by the polemic in the new Baroque-Counter-Reformation light.

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Authors: Erika Brtáňová

The poet, author, and Protestant priest Bohuslav Tablic (1769 – 1732) only published seven occasional speeches from his sermon writings. As he explained, this was due to the lowered interest of the readers in religious literature as such. Sermons that were published strongly aimed at forming the readers’ values and opinions with respect to general religious issues. Influenced by Enlightenment rationalism, Tablic focused on moral norms in his sermons. He saw the solution to the critical state of his own Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession and the loose morals of its members in a deepening of the confessional awareness of the community. He believed in a strong (supernatural) motivation of religion towards moral purity and sought the benefits of religion in spiritual unity of the society, its effective working, and quality social relations. He saw religion as a significant educational and culture-forming phenomenon. The country’s progress in Tablic’s view was to be based on active participation of morally mature and educated citizens on the religious and public life. In his sermons, like in his other writings, he is a moderate enlightened thinker and author.

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Authors: Peter Benka

The article looks into tasks assigned to the preaching office in Protestant communities in towns of Upper Hungary in the 16th and 17th centuries (Pentapolitana league). It tackles the issue from the perspective of the history of ideas and contextual historical analysis. The analysis is based on a corpus of theological and normative texts of secular and religious character from the studied region. An outline of the theological frame (given by basic dogmatic texts) that for the Protestant communities served as the background for defining the nature of preaching office is followed by an analysis of expectations set by the representatives of the local church and town communities. Key to these are the matters of dogmatic orthodoxy and issues related to the contents of preaching, the expected social impact, and requirements set on preachers by secular and religious bodies. The article also outlines the opportunities and limitations for implementation of the idealised image of the preaching office in specific conditions of individual towns, especially with regards to educational and dogma-related requirements and the conflicting potential of preaching with respect to the secular power.

4

Authors: Joanna Goszczyńska

Samo Bohdan Hroboň - The Prayer of the Slovak Sick Beggar in the interpretation of Ján Zambor

4

Authors: Barbora Zlejšia

Kubínová Marie: The space-time of the lyric

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Authors: Ivana Hostová

The article discusses the diversity of understanding about the category of poetry at the backdrop of the tension between substantial definitions of poetry (and the lyric) and functional and sociological approaches to literature. After addressing the limitations of Jonathan Culler’s construction of the identity of the lyric, it summarises Miroslav Červenka’s views on what constitutes poetry in the era when metre, rhyme, and other formal elements are no longer operative with regards to defining poetry. Subsequently, it provides a short discussion of sociological approaches to the study of literature in the context of other social phenomena (Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour) and lists a few cases which demonstrate the way literary fame was evidently consciously created by actors and groups in the literary field (Walt Whitman, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Emily Dickinson). In the final sections, the article briefly mentions several similar examples from post-1989 Slovak poetry, addresses the ways in which modern and contemporary poetry crosses various boundaries, and introduces the articles included in this special issue of Slovenská literatúra.

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Authors: Matúš Mikšík

The article reads Miroslav Válek’s (1927 – 1991) poem “Večer [Evening]” published in the poet’s first collection of verse Dotyky ([Touches], 1959) as a deconstructive subversion of lyric tradition – of Ivan Krasko’s (1876 – 1958) symbolist model of the lyric and Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809 – 1849) “The Raven” (1845). The author argues that Válek subverts the tradition by the specific way he tackles the motifs of the night, rain, and raven known in the Slovak poetry mainly from the writing of Ivan Krasko and by the way the poet updates the lyric situation of Poe’s notoriously well-known poem and its central motif. Another aspect that gets subverted is the tragic-elegiac melancholic modality of the poem. The analysis notices the first line of the poem where the night setting is outlined, then moves on to the key image of rain “without melancholy” and the updated motif of the raven. Finally, it discusses the detachment of the speaker from what goes on in the poem – the speaker in the poem is different from the subject affected by emotions and moods modelled in the lines. The reading grasps Válek’s poem and sophisticated subversive deconstruction of the traditional model of symbolic poem concerned with romantic love.

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Authors: Karel Piorecký – Zuzana Husárová

One of the aims of this study is to present foreign, Czech, and Slovak projects created by generating literary texts through the use of artificial neural networks (we propose the term synthetic textual media). However, the main goal is to provide a critical analysis of the presentation strategies applied in the publication and promotion of the results of these projects. We will therefore test the hypothesis that these modes of presentation lead to the mythicisation of artificial intelligence and inappropriately skew the share of human and non-human involvement in the production of generative texts. We understand synthetic textual media and their presentational paratexts in complementary textual relations, and stress the necessity of critically analysing them as a whole. This stems from the fact that the current practice of literature generated by artificial neural networks is not suitable for a close reading approach without reductive reception and (mis)interpretation. We are also aware of the specificity of the reception processes initiated by literary texts of this kind and strive to support the concept of literary metareading, which we consider more appropriate for the technological and literary levels of this type of text.

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Authors: Jaroslav Šrank – Ivana Hostová – Róbert Novotný

The article focuses on poetological and axiological analysis of the Slovak collection of poems Liza Gennart: Výsledky vzniku ([Outcomes of origin], 2020). The collection is part of the project created by the poet and theorist of electronic literature, Zuzana Husárová (b. 1983) and the sound artist and programmer Ľubomír Panák (b. 1979) who trained a neural network to generate its poems. Texts generated by neural networks are usually referred to as synthetic. In the article, we therefore propose to use the term synthetic poetry to denote poetry generated by neural networks. Introductory parts of the article address the global contexts in which such a work of literature is nested (changes in the economy, position of literature in the current world, problems faced by the humanities today) and technological issues pertaining to natural language processing. What follows is a literary-historical contextualisation in which we outline the history of generative writing in Slovak literature, the issue of authorial teams co-creating poetry, and virtual authorial signatures. In concluding section, the article provides a textual analysis and proposes to conceptualise this instance of synthetic poetry in terms of (1) poetics of defect, (2) poetics of incoherence, and (3) poetics of reduction.

3

Authors: Simona Bajáková

Likavčan, Lukáš: Introduction to Comparative Planetology

3

Authors: Martina Péterová

Charvát, Martin: Magical crossing: Karel Teige and Vítězslav Nezval

6

Authors: Jana Piroščáková

Rácová, Veronika: Editing basics 1

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Authors: Anikó Dušíková

The article aims at describing some of the particulars of the formation of national identities in the 19th century in the work of Ján Palárik (1822 – 1870) Inkognito ([Incognito]1858) and Ján Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) Reštavrácia ([County elections], 1860), Milkovhrob ([Milko’s grave]1845/1846), and Knieža liptovské ([Prince of Liptov], 1852). The article analyses these worksthrough the prism of Ján Chalupka’s (1791 – 1871)oeuvre which, with regards to identities, seeks a balance between national identities in the multilingual Hungary. Ján Palárik and Ján Kalinčiak strive for similar goals in these works. Key notions in this regard are future and progress which is connected with youth. Starting point in this respect is the self-reflective space of the fictitious town of Kocúrkovo as the space of a possible, projected change embodied in the character of the young teacher Svoboda. Attention is devoted to the hypothesised reasons underlying those attitudes that diverge from the notions established in (national) cultural memory (such as the problem of the relationship towards Hungarian literary tradition or interpretations of the past). The article mainly focuses on the elements reflecting the relationship towards the Hungarian context of the times.

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Authors: József Demmel

The article analyses the novel Reštavrácia ([County elections], 1860) by Ján Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) through the prism of historical documents. The novel takes as its basis the historical events of 1845 – 1846 election campaigns in the Turiec County. The article identifies the historical figures on which the novel’s characters were built. Such reading of this literary work is not methodologically inappropriate – the elections had a significant bearing on the future events connected with historical events central to the building of the Slovak nation and identity. The analysis provided in the article helps understand the historical circumstances and the context of Slovak national revival of the 1860s and 1870s. This referential reading also helps clarify and revaluate Ján Kalinčiak’s position on the matter. At the same time, it provides one of the backgrounds for the literary reading of the novel.

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Authors: Zora Prušková

Research of arts and literature had moved from a striving for exact, structuralist handlings of its objects to observations of the world as mediated and experienced by humans. Research in aesthetics and literary studies not embedded in structuralism is often interdisciplinary in its nature and draws on a host of inspirations (anthropology, epistemology of imaginative processes, ontological transformations of existential meanings, etc.). The creative process and its product – the literary text – can be handled from various viewpoints. Traditionally, literary studies approached the text in terms of its structure, aesthetics, and poetics. Such observations do offer a systematic way in which the functioning and form of the literary work can be described; however, they are much less capable of grasping the ontological sources and origins of aesthetic experience. The latter are inherent to the engagement with an aesthetic object and as such need to be taken into account in the creation of knowledge and value of the literary work. Respecting the psychological subject of the writer and of communicative configurations of the literary text is crucial in this context. The article looks under the surface of textual structures and concentrates on imaginative processes in connection to thereception intention of the literary work.

1

Authors: Dana Hučková

european Avantgarde and modernism

3

Authors: Jaroslava Šaková

KVOČÁKOVÁ, Lucia: THE ROAD TO SLOVAK MYTH. CONSTRUCTION OF THE IDENTITY OF SLOVAK MODERN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE IDEA OF CZECHOSLOVAKISM.

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Authors: Viliam Nádaskay

KANDA, Roman: CZECH LITERARY SCIENCE MARXISM. CHAPTERS FROM THE MODERN PROJECT

5

Authors: Roman Mikuláš

ZAJAC, Peter: FROM AESTHETICS TO POETICS OF SHAKING

8

Authors: Markéta Polách Balonová

The contribution provides an overview of Fay Brauer’s highly inspiring chapter “Scientistic Magnetism and Hauntological Metarealism: The Phantasmatic Doubles of Duchamp and Durville” included in the edited volume Realisms of the Avant-Garde that was published in 2020 as part of De Gruyter’s European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies series. Focusing on early work of Marcel Duchamp in great detail, Brauer discusses the rarely addressed artist’s engagement with occultism and scientistic magnetism. The concept of hauntology, outlined by Jacques Derrida, provides Brauer with methodological tools that enable her to link the seemingly negligible connection and interdisciplinary affinity between Duchamp’s artistic visions she labels as “hauntological magnetism” with the occult experiments – “scientistic magnetism” – of Henry Durville. Derrida’s idea of the recurring spectres on which Brauer builds has the potential to contribute not only to the analysis of Duchamp’s work, but can also provide methodological tools for literary studies, e.g. for discussions of recurrent motifs in the oeuvre of a given author.

10

Authors: Karol Csiba

The article looks into how history is created and modelled in Milo Urban’s (1904 – 1982) third book of memoirs Na brehu krvavej rieky ([On the bank of a bloody river] 1994). The autobiographical character of the book is constructed through positioning him into various scenes and portraying him from different perspectives. The article concentrates mainly on outlining this authorial self-portrayal in the historical context of the Second World War. The memoirs provide a portrait of Milo Urban as both a public persona – writer, journalist and chief editor of the radical fascist newspaper Gardista – and as a husband and father. Methodologically, the article draws on literature that conceptualises autobiographical texts as ways of narrative shaping of the past by an individual. It is not just the personal history and individual identity that are formed in this way, but also collective memory and identity. Autobiographies as such are in this respect viewed as important part of collective memory, since they influence how we view the past and which events are to be remembered and which are to be erased.

15

Authors: Hana Lacová

The article presents an interpretation of Jozef Závodný’s (1899 – 1969) play Nadčlovek ([Overman] 1928). The dramatic text deals with a utopian topic of revolutionary change of the world through technological invention. In spite of the fact that the play was staged in 1928 by Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, it remains largely forgotten. The article outlines the way in which Závodný’s text builds its dramatic dialogues and models its characters and plot. At the same time, the contribution aims at specifying utopian motifs the play employs and strives to show the ways in which these influence the dramatic structure. The author of the contribution also provides an overview of the possible sources of inspiration (avant-garde art, film, political theatre, socialist ideology, Christian concepts) that resulted in play’s employment of multiple textual strategies and the principle of hybridisation on multiple levels (genre, characters, plot). The play accentuates political and ideological messages and this has a significant bearing on the dramatic dialogue and the category of the dramatic persona. The characters in the play are reduced to promoters of political beliefs and dialogues are narrowed down to presenting the utopian vision and as such lose their dramatic potential.

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Authors: Anton Hruboň

During the Second World War, Jozef Tiso (1887 – 1947), a Catholic priest, leader of the governing Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, and President of the Slovak State (1939 – 1945), a client state of Nazi Germany, had become an object of political cult that persisted after 1945. After being sentenced to death by the National Court in Bratislava and executed by hanging on 18 April 1947, Tiso was ultimately turned into a martyr in the eyes of the Hlinka’s Party wartime regime’s supporters. His image as a “martyr of the nation, state, Christian faith and the Church” formed mainly by actors who fled the communist regime and remained in exile from the late 1940s until 1980s. Tiso’s “sacrifice” was massively reflected in exile poetry. The poetry of the Catholic modernist group as well as poems written by occasional poets of nationalistic orientation has strongly contributed to the creation of the persona of Jozef Tiso as a martyr – a myth which did not disappear from Slovak politics and culture even after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Against the background of Tiso’s cult genesis and formation, the article analyses the semiotic dimension of politically engaged poetry, which has shaped his sacralised image in recent decades and led part of Slovak nationalistic organisations in the post-communist milieu to efforts for judicial and moral rehabilitation of Jozef Tiso, as well as his ecclesiastical beatification.

3

Authors: Jan Malura

Poetry’s occasion. The Place and Role of Occasional poetry by Juraj Palkovič, Bohuslav Tablic and Pavel Jozef Šafárik in the History of Slovak Literature

3

Authors: Nora Nagyová

Zvonko Taneski: Poetics of dislocation

5

Authors: Renáta Ondrejková

Slovak Studies. Collection of Articles

8

Authors: Barbora Zlejšia

The preparation of any critical edition must inevitably be based on textological research. When it comes to the prose works of Štefan Krčméry (1892 – 1955), issues to be taken into account include not only the history of the texts in question, but also the complexity of author’s oeuvre, since analysis of his prose works often confirms the need to consider both these components. Clarifying the literary-historical context, defining the position of the prose works in Krčméry’s oeuvre and identifying the features of author’s poetics helps the editor gain the basis for the creation of editorial conception that would determine the character of the edition and support subsequent corrections made in the texts. Key issues pertaining to the preparatory process include the questions of completing of the texts, their linguistic adjustment and the way of presentation. The article points to the most prominent issues Štefan Krčméry’s prose texts pose in the initial stages of editorial preparation, but also to the basic textological and editorial tasks. Some of the proposed editorial solutions are substantiated by the publishing history of the texts in question.

13

Authors: Ľubica Blažencová

The article focuses on reflective-meditative poetry the Slovak poet Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) wrote in the 1860s and early 1970s. His three psalmic adaptations (poems Žalm XLIV [Psalm XLIV], Žalm XXI [Psalm XXI] and Žalm III [Psalm III]) draw on biblical texts dealing with suffering, repentance, the passing of time and eternity. The three poems show the gradual change in the poet’s work – the restless revolutionary attitude changes into thankfulness for the victory and finally to the humble acceptance of life, submitting to God’s will the joyless state of the nation and the poet’s personal suffering. Sládkovič begins with a collective elegy, pleading on behalf of the whole nation, turning to the past and showing devotion and trust in God. In the royal psalm, he uses climax and literary devices involving repetition. The final poem, an elegy of a theologian, is marked by the author’s return to the use of the Czech language and to the melodies from the Protestant hymnal Cithara sanctorum. The elegiac parts resonate with motives of negative emotional states and accusations of enemies. Each poem ends in the lyrical subject making sure he has been heard.

17

Authors: Martin Braxatoris

The article tackles intratextual and intertextual contexts of irmoi in Slavic canons of the Byzantine tradition. It concentrates on the relations between irmoi and biblical canticles and troparions of canonical songs and on the function irmoi serve in creating connections between troparions and biblical texts. In the subsequent parts, the article takes a closer look at the so called Methodius’ Canon to St Demetrius of Thessaloniki and notes on various relationships between irmoi, troparions and biblical canticles, identifying forms of intratextual and intertextual references – quotations, paraphrases, refrains, common motives and identical lexical elements. The study analyses the role they play in the semantic construal of the text. Exact wordings of biblical texts and of Slavic and Greek irmoi often have bearing on the interpretation of the text and a critical edition of the canon and of its translation should therefore contain full texts of the irmoi in their original languages or in the language of the translation. Similarly, such an edition should contain critical commentaries providing the key textual variants.