Slovenská literatúra

4

Authors: Daniel Hupko

Landerer, the publisher, 18th century

5

Authors: Adam Svetlík

Slovak Vojvodina authors, phenomena, (neo)avant-garde

13

Authors: László V. Szabó

The article addresses the issue of national identity from the perspective of the Slovak theologian and writer Samuel Ferjenčík (1793 – 1855) primarily on the basis of his recently discovered manuscript notes. Although these notes resemble a mixture of newspaper clippings, quotations, snippets of thoughts, aphorisms, subjective remarks, and other similar material, they are nevertheless evidence of the period (1840 – 1842) during which the question of national identity was experiencing an extraordinary upsurge among the peoples of the region (Central Europe, more precisely the territory of the Habsburg monarchy before the revolutions of 1948). In the introduction, the article emphasises the role of German-language texts from the multi-ethnic cultural space of Central Europe (also) for German studies abroad. Subsequently, the essay examines Ferjenčík’s career from his studies in Jena, Germany, to his political involvement in the preservation of Slovak identity in the context of forced Magyarization in the first half of the nineteenth century.

16

Authors: Martin Braxatoris, Anita Braxatorisová

The paper looks into the German-language manuscript notebook and excerpt book of Samuel Ferjenčík (1793 – 1855) from the 1840s. The authors comprehensively reconstructed the sources of notes and excerpts, although the manuscript, with only a few exceptions, contained no references. The German-language originals and their adaptations in Ferjenčík’s manuscript were analysed, especially substitutions, contextual transpositions, insertions, etc. The paper used the concepts of intertextuality, hypertextuality, transformation, and imitation to interpret the text. Research results provide an insight into the Ferjenčík’s thoughts during the preparation and organization of the political text Slovenský prestolný prosbopis [Slovak petition to the throne] from 1842, written not long before the revolutionary events of 1848 – 1849. It also examines the reading of this Slovak intellectual of his time, the German-language sources he used and the problems he tried to grasp through parallels and analogies. The paper looks into the German-language manuscript notebook and excerpt book of Samuel Ferjenčík (1793 – 1855) from the 1840s. The authors comprehensively reconstructed the sources of notes and excerpts, although the manuscript, with only a few exceptions, contained no references. The German-language originals and their adaptations in Ferjenčík’s manuscript were analysed, especially substitutions, contextual transpositions, insertions, etc. The paper used the concepts of intertextuality, hypertextuality, transformation, and imitation to interpret the text. Research results provide an insight into the Ferjenčík’s thoughts during the preparation and organization of the political text Slovenský prestolný prosbopis [Slovak petition to the throne] from 1842, written not long before the revolutionary events of 1848 – 1849. It also examines the reading of this Slovak intellectual of his time, the German-language sources he used and the problems he tried to grasp through parallels and analogies.

18

Authors: Jozef Tancer

The article examines the correspondence between Viennese women’s rights activist and editor of the monthly magazine Neues Frauenleben Auguste Fickert (1855 – 1910) and Pressburg journalist Elsa Grailich (1880 – 1969), shedding light on the lesser-known Grailich’s role. Their letters, spanning 1907 to 1910, reveal the early phase of the bourgeois women’s movement in Pressburg and the strategic communication between the capital and the periphery. Grailich’s involvement in the women’s and labour movements shaped her intellectual development and social engagement, particularly in maternity protection and proletarian issues. Her critique of local conditions, including chauvinism and clericalism, highlights the challenges faced in realizing progressive ideas. Despite frustrations, the correspondence provided vital moral support, blurring the lines between private and professional spheres. Grailich’s life and work offer a fascinating glimpse into local and superregional contexts of the women’s movement.

3

Authors: Romana Kališová

Varja Balžalorsky Antić: The Lyric Subject: A Reconceptualization).

3

Authors: Karol Csiba

Klára Soukupová: To narrate oneself. Theory of autobiography

11

Authors: Martin Boszorád

Hip hop as a “cultural complex” – as Richard Shusterman conceptualises it – can generally be seen as one of the most somatic and gestural cultural phenomena. The paper focuses on the verbal gesture as one of the forms of hip hop gestures. Its scope is the analysis and interpretation of a representative sample of Slovak rap lyrics and is methodologically anchored in Nitra School reception aesthetics and Richard Shusterman’s pragmatist aesthetics and somaesthetics (and in part by the phenomenologically oriented works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty) which are productive in the study of the body as a topic or iconic element in the text. The leitmotif of the article is, somatically speaking, “feeling up” – of the genre, conventional verbal gestures tied to the body and corporeality (e.g. masculinity, expressivity and explicitness, objectification of the female body) and, conversely, those that defy or rather challenge core-like genre conventions of hip hop (and, within it, rap) by such mechanisms as “embodying” self-irony or by making the tracks take on the character of motivational or socio-politically engaged statements.

13

Authors: Veronika Rácová

The essay links a broader sociological and literary studies approach to the issue of old age, ageing, and ageism. On the basis of research in the field of sociology and gerontology, it outlines dominant tendencies that point to the social and individual reception of older age. The article then looks in the ways ageing-related processes are portrayed in Slovak poetry written by women over the age of sixty-five. The essay captures the basic thematic and motivic frameworks used by selected women poets to depict ageing and looks at how the transformations of the body are mirrored in the inner psychological experience of the lyrical subjects and focuses on the quality of such interpersonal relationships in the establishment or cultivation of which age can play an important role. The article also wishes to ask whether this period of life can be thought of as the so-called autumn of life, which has rather negative associations attached to it, or whether the period in question can, on the contrary, be understood as a source of new opportunities, the so-called new spring.

14

Authors: Jaroslav Šrank

The article examines Slovak poems by a wide range of authors published in the last third of the 20th century and linked by taking as its theme erotic social interactions in urban public transport. The analysis is conceptually related to Bakhtin’s chronotope of the journey and the topos of the encounter and to existing research on poetry with the motifs of accidental male-female encounters in the urban environment and especially in the context of public transport (Walter Benjamin, Alejandro Hermida de Blas, Josef Hrdlička, Pavol Minár). The essay also makes connections with related topoi and paradigmatic texts. The core of the paper focuses on encounters that are motivated erotically on the part of the subject and notices their various forms and distinctive features. It explores both the sensual side of the erotic theme and its reflexive overlaps that are typical of these poems. The encounter at the place of transit acts in the poetry as an opportunity for the subject to observe and gain knowledge and self-knowledge.

20

Authors: Ján Gavura

In the context of Slovak poetry, Miroslav Válek’s collection Milovanie v husej koži ([Love making in a goose skin] 1965) represents an example of an extreme confrontation of man with the pressing questions of his own mortality. The author derives his doubts about the meaning of the world and of man from strictly material and rational observations, from which he excludes the presence and action of a transcendent force or being (God), and instead presents the world as a confluence of coincidences, a mechanical action at the level of physical objects and bodies, whose movement is machine-like and whose life, often reduced to the level of animals, remains enclosed in an impoverishing animal finality. The publication of the book was followed by a literary polemic which largely influenced the perception and evaluation of Válek’s human attitude and the applied philosophical concepts. However, the thematisation of the negation of the immanent transcendent principle and its replacement by a fatalistic materialistic structure of the world does not in itself degrade the artistic achievement, and in retrospect, Válek’s radical and absolute gesture expressed in the book can be understood as part of his autonomous lyric journey.

3

Authors: Tomáš Eštok

Holly Lewis: The politics of everybody: Feminism, queer theory, and Marxism at the intersection

4

Authors: Olha Norba

Jakub Mikulecký: Between dissent, underground, and the grey zone. Unofficial Bulgarian literature 1944 – 1989

10

Authors: Terézia Guimard

The strong emphasis that is nowadays put on interdisciplinary approaches and – after the spatial turn in social sciences and the humanities – on space have also inspired literary research of space. From the perspective of contemporary literary studies, the theory of geocriticism developed by Bertrand Westphal is inspiring for its interdisciplinarity and geocentrism. In close connection with such fields as anthropology, geography, history, or cultural studies, B. Westphal defines geocriticism as a poetics of interactions between literature and human space. The French literary scholar also studies the relationships between the fictional and real worlds of literary works and their social and geographical contexts. These in his view help shape cultural identities. The article introduces in detail the theory of geocriticism and its main premises and principles in order to inspire future research, the object of which could be the formulation of a geocritical analysis.

15

Authors: Aneta Podhradská

The two women authors Viola Fischerová (1935 – 2010) and Jaroslava Blažková (1933 – 2017) belong to the same generation, but to (seemingly?) different national literary traditions. The writers ceaselessly experience in their life and work the Central European literary and political space from which they originate. The reception of their writing – by general and professional readership – is ambiguous in both cases. Although critics often suggest that from the literary point of view, they are individually “emptied vessels” about which there is nothing more to say, contemporary perspectives and literary scholarly discussions suggest that a return to their poetics is relevant. On the basis of established literary theoretical premises and by means of parallel analysis and interpretation (which also underline distinct authenticity of their work), the paper attempts to outline those aspects of the texts that might stimulate a renewed interest in the personalities and poetics of these authors in a broader context. In this way, it tries to transcend the boundaries (literary-historical, interpretative, etc.) that have been created for various reasons.

16

Authors: Gabriela Mihlaková

The paper analyses the presence of the motifs of the body, senses and emotions, the degree of representation, functions, and meanings of somaticisms, the ways of aestheticisation of the body and the contradiction or integration of the motifs of the body and the soul in the poetic cycle Ukojenie tôní (Soothing the shadows, 1845) by Samo Vozár (1823 – 1850), a Slovak Romantic poet. Vozár’s sonnets provide ample material for exploring the somatisms involved in the creation of the image (representation, personification) of death, but also of love (both maternal and filial). Corporeal motifs are tied to the object of the lyrical statement (the dead mother) and to the subject of the lyrical statement (her son). Stylistically neutral forms of somatisms prevail. These are used both in the primary sense (naming the parts of the body) and in the figurative one – in the depiction of other phenomena of the external and internal world. They “make visible” the affective experience of the lyrical subject, abstract phenomena connected with the inner experience (the soul), which is manifested in a higher representation of somatisms, which are conventionally considered as carriers, anifestations of mental, emotional movement such as the heart, tears, or blood.

20

Authors: Martin Navrátil

The article deals with Jozef Karol Viktorin’s (1822 – 1874) input into editorial practice regarding the ways of (re)publishing older Slovak literary works. As an editor, J. Viktorin advocated for a critical approach to textual sources, researched the history of the text, collected bibliographical data of variants, applied the procedures of variant collation and explication of obscure places, and used the results of these operations to varying degrees in the creation of the accompanying apparatus of the volumes (his edition of Ján Hollý was also accompanied by a description of editorial manipulation of the text). The linguistic material of individual editions varied (the texts were in Bernolák’s Slovak, reformed Štúr’s Slovak, and Slovak deliberately preserving common elements with the Czech language). In the case of publishing living authors, the editor led constructive dialogues (Andrej Sládkovič, Jonáš Záborský) and when it came to authors who were no longer alive (J. Hollý), he consulted other literary specialists about the optimal form of interventions. The preservation of the author’s distinctive language was in tension with the intention to stabilise the Slovak language by normalising the linguistic character of published texts after the Hodža-Hattala reform. However, J. Viktorin also based his interventions on whether the element in question was important from the formal verse structure.

3

Authors: Tünde Lengyelová

Glory to the noble VII. Word of the good doctor spreads fast

5

Authors: Martin Makara

Dominik Tatarka

6

Authors: Tomáš Horváth

Jan Tlustý: Too loud an emptiness

13

Authors: Štefania Vyskočová

Ladislav Grosman wrote his fiction in Czech, not in Slovak mother tongue. The study presents language particularities of Grosman´s fiction. I summarize the possible reasons for his exophonic writing in Czech. His fiction is the authentic example of Slovak-Czech bilingualism in literature, a specific example of exophony. The author´s Czech is unique in the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactical impact of the maternal language – Slovak. Another particularity of the language is using Jewish expressions with the following sentence explanation, and retention of Zemplin dialect lexemes. These aspects represent the multicultural phenomenon of Grosman´s work. Multiculturality is evident within the thematization of immigration. Grosman focuses on the subjective feeling of newcomers to the State of Israel, the perception of the Yom Kippur conflict, the generation gap within the Jewish community, and differences between domestic and immigrant Jews. The study represents the first attempt to map the linguistical specifics of Grosman's language. It is also an important contribution to the issue of exophony in the Slovak literature context, which has not been studied systematically yet.

18

Authors: Jaroslav Šrank

The contribution deals with the typewritten concrete poetry of the intermedia artist Milan Adamčiak (1946 – 2017), which was created in the second half of the 1960s. It focuses on two characteristic forms of concrete poetry: verbal and sentence constellations. It observes how the principle of seriality is applied to these text-image compositions. Seriality, as a key compositional and meaning-generating principle, is particularly associated with repetition and variation. In the context of verbal constellations, the article emphasizes the function of visual composition in dealing with a word extracted from linguistic syntax. In sentence constellations, it concentrates on the metacritical function of these forms, specified in the form of a critique of language as a means of communication and an instrument of power. Adamčiak’s repetitive-variation manipulation of linguistic material represents the application of visual techniques to literary creation. The contribution also points out the intermedia character of Adamčiak’s concrete poetry, highlights its parallels and connections with Czech experimental poetry, and selectively considers the socio-political circumstances of the time.

3

Authors: Fedor Matejov

Milan Hamada

3

Authors: Ivica Hajdučeková

Ján Gbúr

9

Authors: Adam Svetlík

Since the beginning of the 21st century, older-generation writers in Slovak Vojvodina literature have published novels: Viera Benková (* 1939): Stred sveta ([The centre of the world], 2006), Tri ženy, dvaja muži a ja... ([Three women, two men, and me], 2017); Víťazoslav Hronec (* 1944): Dynastia Beňovských ([The Benyovszky dynasty], 2020); Zlatko Benka (* 1951): Deväť prsteňov ([Nine rings], 2005); Martin Prebudila (* 1960): No tak, usmej sa... ([Come on, smile...], 2012). In these novels, they largely synthesized their previous prose and overall literary work. A common feature in all the mentioned novels is the use of (neo)modernist, postmodern, and (neo)realistic narrative techniques and strategies in their composition, the influence of the author’s own poetry on their prose, and bilingualism in the case of two authors (V. Hronec, Z. Benka), where the work was written in Serbian and subsequently translated into Slovak. The aim of the contribution is to demonstrate how and to what extent the novelistic work of selected Slovak Vojvodina writers engages with current trends in literary transformations in Slovak, Serbian, and global literature.

13

Authors: Erika Brtáňová

In the “lowland” environment, within the territory of present-day Serbian Vojvodina, remarkable literary texts associated with the contemporary funeral culture emerged in the 19th century. The first example is the mourning poem by Juraj Rohoň (1773 – 1831), which he wrote during his time in Hložany and delivered at the funeral of Senior Ondrej Stehla in February 1818. This manuscript composition is evidence of an elegiac genre adapted to the church environment, characterized by classicist elevation and imagery. The first collection of funeral speeches composed by Slovak Evangelical preacher Ján Kutlík senior (1806 – 1890), published as Pohřebník aneb Kázně a řečí pohřební ([The mourner or Funeral sermons and speeches], 1852), was also written in Vojvodina. Kutlík worked as a teacher and later a preacher in Stara Pazova, where he likely began conceptualising his first funeral speeches, which became the basis for the collection he published in Sarvaš. In his model speeches addressed to young preachers, he emphasises spiritual counselling and consolation for the bereaved. Through presented insights into education, enlightenment, patriotism, and the composition of sermons, Kutlík’s preaching shares many commonalities with the preaching of Ján Kollár.

15

Authors: Ana Marić

This study focuses on Slovak Vojvodina drama in the last decade of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, with an emphasis on the theme of emigration as one of the important topics in current dramatic production in Serbia. It analyses dramatic texts from the collections Nová slovenská vojvodinská dráma ([New Slovak Vojvodina drama], 2004, 2014) and the journal Nový život written by Slovak author Ľubomír Šárik, Slovak Vojvodina author Jan Hrubík, and playwright Vladislava Fekete, originally from Vojvodina but living in Slovakia. The authors in these dramas respond to the complex socio-political situation in Yugoslavia, particularly Serbia, in the 1990s and its subsequent impacts on the following decades, including the prominent issue of Slovak emigration from Serbia. The portrayal of the thematic and motivational layer of emigration varies in value depending on the creative potential of the author and their contextual placement. It ranges from unique dramatic story backgrounds (Ľ. Šárik, J. Hrubík) to the existentially heightened description of the immigrant’s border situation, including those from the Slovak enclave in Serbia (V. Fekete). This research opens up space for a more active intercultural dialogue between Slovak, Slovak Vojvodina, and Serbian drama.

17

Authors: Zuzana Čížiková

Even though the historical narrative of the (mythical) migration of Slovaks to the Vojvodina (the so called Dolná zem – “Low Land”) and the founding of a new home is based on historical facts, it contains a range of relatively stable elements of a transnationally shared myth of the search for a promised land. This myth represents one of the key memories of the Slovak minority in Serbia, shaped and maintained across time, which contributed to the creation of national unity, a distinct image, and a specific Slovak identity. The paper primarily examines qualitatively varying literary texts in Vojvodina Slovak literature of the 20th century in which this myth and related thematic and expressive means dominate. These thematic and motivic paradigms include motifs of migration, flatland, land, building a house, ancestors, and others, often portrayed in comparison to what things were like in the old homeland. These, through systematic repetition in many works of fiction and non-fiction, contributed to the construction of the myth of the promised land and the finding of a second homeland which became part of the collective memory of Vojvodina Slovaks. In this sense, one can also speak of the historical and cultural memory of the Vojvodina Slovak ethnic group and the building of a distinctive Vojvodina – “Lowland” – Slovak identity.