Slovenská literatúra

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.

4

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.

19

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.