Slovenská literatúra

5

Authors: Lívia Barnišinová

Bariaková, Zuzana – Jakubík, Henrich – Kubealaková, Martina: Borders Around us and Within us. Literary Representations of Migration in Slovak

9

Authors: Ľubica Schmarcová

Based on the analysis of two period newspaper articles published in 1846, the contribution provides a glimpse into the shaping of the position of women in society during Romanticism with a special accent on women’s involvement in the national movement. The Protestant priest Štefan Václav Homola (1820 – 1881) published an article addressing girls’ and women’s education in Slovak entitled Ústavy pre vychovávanie dievčat [Institutions for girls’ education]. His text triggered a response from Johana Miloslava Lehocká (1810 – 1849), a published poet and wife of a Protestant priest from Liptovský Trnovec. Period intellectuals aimed at “awakening” the women and elevating them from the low “matter” to the higher level of national “spirit,” but they were primarily concerned with the interests of the national movement, not with women’s education. J. Lehocká accentuated the necessity of educating women and the need for professional training of Slovak women teachers. In her article, Lehocká – in line with period understanding of the function of the woman in society – interpreted the role of women in the Romantic national project as a duty. At the same time, however, she described various limitations that impeded women from self-realization.

11

Authors: Magdalena Bystrzak

The article is a contribution towards interpretations of Ján Botto’s (1829 – 1881) ballad Žltá ľalia ([Yellow lily] 1849, published in a magazine in 1860). It tackles the resonances between the Slovak Romantic poet’s poem with Lenore (1774), a ballad written by the German Pre-Romantic poet Gottfried August Bürger (1747 – 1794). It draws on comparatist works of the Slovak literary historian Zlatko Klátik and the Polish researcher Marie Janion, but also on literary-historical research that takes into account the specifics of Slavic versions of the motive of Lenore. The article dwells mainly on the female persona, primarily on the model set by Bürger, but also on other intertextual variants in Slavic poetry. Based on Botto’s ballad, the author identifies the Slovak variant of the motive of Lenore. This variation derives from folk literature, but simultaneously draws on some of the basic features of the Romantic imagination – the intertwining of the world of the living with the world of the dead and the presence of mysterious elements in everyday worldly life experience. Intertextual relations between the Slovak poem and Bürger’s Lenore, textual development of the female persona in the two texts and the position which female personas attain in Romanticism by way of accentuating feminine otherness are the central themes tackled in the article.

12

Authors: Petr Kučera

The article analyses the poems the Slovak poet Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav (1849 – 1921) wrote in German during his studies at the Evangelical Lyceum in Käsmark/Kežmarok (a town inhabited mostly by Germans at that time) in the late 1860s. The author tackles his poetry in German in the broader cultural and historical context of the region, taking also in account his later work in Slovak. In addition to the thematic-motivic construction of texts Hviezdoslav wrote in German, the paper also deals with their system of imagery and states the dual nature of the poet’s approach to depicting reality. The poems the article scrutinises were inspired by German poets from the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. Inspiration is most visible in the sensory concreteness – vividness – of natural sceneries in which space opens up and spreads in all directions in a surprising way. The highly personal tone of the poems and the fact that they address period social affairs lends the texts an even deeper social dimension. Hviezdoslav’s active attitude towards the classical and Christian cultural and spiritual heritage also plays an important role in the poems addressed in this article.

17

Authors: Anna Zelenková

Drawing also on formerly unexplored period documents, the article analyses the impact of P. O. Hviezdoslav’s participation in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the laying of the National Theatre’s foundation stone on the 16th – 18th May 1918. The contribution is methodologically grounded in the comparative-analytical model of the canonisation of cultural saints as outlined by J. Leerssen and M. Dović (J. K. Helgason – M. Dović: National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe, 2017). Through the prism of Hviezdoslav’s visit, the article follows the transfer of his personality and work from the secluded microcosm of intellectual elites into the public macrocosm of the future state-forming community. The poet’s transformation into a cultural saint, facilitated among other things by his speech addressed to Czech and Slovak extra-literary recipients at the celebrations, signified his approval for the ideology of Czechoslovakism. Historical importance of this visit to Prague consisted mainly in the fact that it was the first public acceptance of the envisaged integration into a common state.

3

Authors: Nora Nagyová

Pašuthová, Zdenka, ed.: Por/Traits of Peter Karvaš

6

Authors: Vladimír Barborík

Doskočil, Zdeněk: In Jail and Exile. Ladislav Novomeský in the Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Era

11

Authors: Jaroslava Šaková

Rudolf Fabry’s first collection of poems, Uťaté ruky (Severed hands, 1935) was the first book published in the Aligátor series – one of the most distinct projects that accompanied the formation of the Nadrealist movement, the Slovak variant of Surrealism. Owing to the Aligátor series and other activities and products of the actors experimenting with Surrealist poetics, Nadrealism markedly shaped Slovak literature, visual arts, typography, and other forms of art. In result, it became an important movement in Slovak poetry, introducing new poetics which was not, however, met with understanding. The critical reception of Fabry’s debut testifies to that. The debate concerning the new and the old – experiment and tradition – showed that it is crucial to recognise the degree to which Slovak Nadrealism was inspired by foreign authors and literatures (G. Apollinaire, Czech and French Surrealism). This article attempts at conceptualising Nadrealism in its objective contexts without which it cannot be adequately grasped.

16

Authors: Miloslav Vojtech

The article provides an insight into the conceptualisations of Biedermeier in Slovak literary historiography from the 1930s to the present day. It maps the process of establishment of the term in literary-historical discourse in the first half of the 20th century and points out the role German Literary Studies played in it. The article analyses the transformation of the term adopted from German literary theory in the 1930s and 1940s. In these decades, M. Pišút and A. Mráz applied Biedermeier to the study of Slovak literature. They identified features of this style – alongside the dominant Classicism and the early Romanticism – in several literary works and authorial styles. In the latter half of the 20th century, Biedermeier was researched by S. Šmatlák, V. Marčok, and J. Noge. The article also touches upon typological definition of Biedermeier in Slovak poetry and fiction of the 19th century, the relationship of this style with pre-Romantic and Romantic literature, the revitalisation of Biedermeier in the second half of the 19th century, and current research that focuses on Biedermeierian configurations of Realism and looks for its origins in pre-1815 texts.

20

Authors: Katarína Cupanová

The article provides a close reading of two one-act plays on love by Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov (1884 – 1950): Keď sa schladí (When it gets colder, 1905) and Boj (Fight, 1907). The plays were significantly influenced by Modernist poetics: they are markedly subjective (the same applies to Modernist Slovak poetry and fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), stylised as symbolic, the plot is pushed to the background, and psychological and emotional life of the heroes is foregrounded. Accentuating inner life in drama is intimately connected with the problem of the categories of the subject (internal dramatic subject) and time (temporal frame bearing meaning) and, on the level of composition, also with the degree of compactness and unity. The composition of the plays is fragmentary and discontinuous and they tend towards open endings. The dramatic potential of classical drama got distilled into the fragmentary genre of one-act play. Overlaps of artistic styles (Symbolism, Impressionism, Secession) and the technique of synaesthesia result in an overlap of various artistic methods and techniques which were used to achieve a nuanced realisation of prominent personal and subjective themes.

3

Authors: Dana Hučková

Kalnická, Zdeňka: Interpretation

5

Authors: Vladimír Barborík

Jančovič, Ivan – Lizoň, Martin – Zemaníková, Nadežda: Literature and its Conceptualisation in Educational Systems Metaphors

6

Authors: Zuzana Obertová

Čižmárová, Mária, ed.: Slavic Inter-Literary Contacts in Central European Cultural Space

10

Authors: Ingrid Papp

Accounts of the character and deeds of Nikola IV Zrinski (1508 – 1566) who became renowned for preventing the fall of Szigetvár in 1566 and of the work and life of his great-grandson Nikola VII Zrinski (1620 – 1664), a 17th-century baroque poet, had long played central roles in the building of national awareness and political ideology in Hungary. The Slavic inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hungary were familiar with the general who fought against the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century, but in the 19th century, in the context of the idea of Slavic mutuality and Pan-Slavism, this historical figure became more important. In 1866, Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) wrote a historical epic Gróf Mikuláš Šubić Zrínsky na Sihoti [Count Nikola Šubić Zrinski at Sziget] in which he described Zrinski’s heroic deeds from the perspective of Pan-Slavic identity in detail. He drew on Ján Kollár’s sonnet “My sme dali Uhrům Zríniho” [We gave Zrinski to the Hungarians] included in his Slávy dcera ([The daughter of Sláva] final version published in 1852). The sonnet asserts that the Slavs left Zrinski to the Hungarians, just like they left Ján Hus to the Germans and Nicolaus Copernicus to the Italians and that they also gave up Zrinski’s legacy. In his epic poem, with the help of the poetry of his grandson, he returned Zrinski to the Slavic Pantheon.

24

Authors: Ivan Halász

The article concentrates on the image and reception of Slovak literature in specialised Hungarian-language texts from the period of Austro-Hungarian Compromise. In the history of Slovak-Hungarian relations, this period was one of the most complicated: the middle classes were being speedily assimilated and the Slovak culture was under intense pressure of the state and Hungarian culture. The first comprehensive publication on Slovak literature in this period was written by Imre Gáspár as early as 1879, but it remained without much feedback. Subsequent articles and encyclopaedic entries were penned by Slovak authors who either worked in Budapest as civil servants (Samo Czambel, Adolf Pechány) or were based directly in Martin, Slovakia (Jozef Škultéty). Škultéty was invited to write on Slovak literature by the Budapest-based professor Oszkár Asbóth who also authored a journal article on Svetozár Hurban Vajanský. Despite differences in authors’ social and cultural backgrounds, the narrative texts share several similarities: in the introduction, they provide a general overview of the history of the Slovak language and literature and then deal with outer-literary aspects in the works of a few authors and looked for similarities. The works of Ján Hollý and Andrej Sládkovič were held in especially high esteem.

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.

4

Authors: Irena Bilińska

The poet, translator, literary critic and protestant priest Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) is generally considered a foremost poet of the Romantic generation. He authored two key works of Slovak literary Romanticism, Marína (1846) and Detvan (1853) – long poems that have significantly influenced further development of literature written in Slovak. There are two basic positions from which literary history views his oeuvre. These are based on the divided standpoints from which the whole period of Slovak literary Romanticism is viewed. Academics either see it as a single, undivided, conservative and nation-centred unit or as a polyphonic and progressive movement open to other European literatures. Advocates of the former opinion interpret Sládkovič’s works as part of national literary history the aim of which is the assertion of folk national identity. The opposing group of scholars emphasises the unique qualities of Sládkovič’s poetry and positions it within wider philosophical and aesthetic contexts of 19th-century European culture. From this point of view, developmental interferences of Slovak Romantic literature are seen as a dynamic part of multifaceted processes of the given period.

5

Authors: Anna Bukovinová

Reviews

7

Authors: Magdalena Bystrzak

Research activities and civil actions of Alžbeta Gwerková Göllnerová have recently become the focus of research attention. This contribution provides an overview of the literature on the topic and summarises the perspectives that were brought about by the interdisciplinary discussions that emerged from the online research seminar that took place on 28th January 2021. The seminar was organised by the Institute of Slovak Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and civil organisation Reminiscencie. It was a preparatory stage for the multi-authored monograph on Alžbeta Gwerková Göllnerová. The aim of the publication is to provide a collection of contemporary interpretations of her life and work, evaluate the accessible materials and create room for editorial preparation of archival documents. The publication primarily focuses on evaluating the position of Alžbeta Gwerková Göllnerová as a representative of the state-forming Czechoslovak milieu in the context of the First Czechoslovak Republic and on an adequate evaluation of her positions and activities during the First Slovak Republic. Apart from that, the authors aim at mapping women’s handling of progressive, democratic reformism of the 1930s. The publication equally wishes to address the topic of canonisation of chosen aspects of post-1989 cultural memory.

10

Authors: Kristína Gotthardtová

The poetry of Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) has become a strong source of inspiration for several Slovak musical composers. Their motivation, choice of poems and compositional approaches varied in time. In the 19th century, adaptations of Sládkovič’s shorter poems for a cappella choirs were popular (J. L. Bella, A. H. Krčméry, M. Francisci). The ideas of national emancipation formed the background for these. In the 20th century, greater variance in compositional approaches can be observed. However, these were based on a smaller number of the poems. The article analyses concretisations of various musical genres from the musical adaptation (of the long poem Marína) for an a cappella choir (Andrej Očenáš, 1957) and vocal-instrumental oratorio (Cyril a Metod – Constantine and Methodius, Tibor Andrašovan, 1987) through musical theatre and scenic music to multimedia composition. It takes a closer look at three adaptations of Detvan and describes the different authorial handlings of the poem. While Viliam Figuš-Bystrý’s opera (premiered 1928) illustrates the musical thinking of the late 19th century on a representative genre, the further two point to the use of progressive compositional techniques of the second half of the 20th century and represent utility music (Bartolomej Urbanec, 1963; Tadeáš Salva, 1975).

12

Authors: Martin Navrátil

In 1846, one of the most important works of Slovak literary Romanticism, Andrej Sládkovič’s (1820 – 1872) long poem Marína was published in the newly-codified Slovak language. Its second edition, which took into account the dynamic development of this young language, played an important role in the publishing tradition of the poem. Sládkovič revised it in cooperation with the editor Karol Viktorin (1822 – 1874) and it was printed in the series Spisy básnické Andreja Sládkoviča [Poetic writings of Andrej Sládkovič]. Since then, several editors attempted at bringing forth their editions of this canonical work. The latest edition was prepared by Cyril Kraus (1928 – 2012) at a time of a rapid development of Slovak textology. The period publishing conditions were also favourable and owing to these, Kraus not only had the largest corpus of sources at his disposal, but could also rely on these relatively developed publishing techniques. His text has become the authoritative source for later editions. The article takes a look at the various editions of Marína and analyses editorial practices used by Jozef Karol Viktorin and Cyril Kraus.

19

Authors: Gabriela Mihalková

Religious writings, intimately linked to his occupation of protestant priest, are an integral part of Andrej Sládkovič’s (1820 – 1872) oeuvre. They can be grouped into several genres, including religious reflective and occasional poetry, prayers, sermons and sermon outlines. Up until now, little attention has been paid to sermon outlines which he had been writing since 1847. This article analysed a selection of sermon outlines from the liturgical year 1850 – 1851. The analysis focused on their thematic features. These ranged from theological and dogmatic through occasional and ethical to moralising, formulated mainly from the position of the ethics of moral duty. Social-moral qualities as realised in the relationship of an individual towards another (specific) individual (in familial, marital or friendly context), and towards the human being in general as well as the society, world and humankind (in the form of social-moral qualities such as solidarity, help and charity) are central focal points of these texts.