Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press
Volume XLIX, 2002 / No 2
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From scholarly life
Oskár Čepan
The study is from the manuscript inheritance of Oskár Čepan (1925 – 1992) – an important Slovak historian of literature. The author deals with Ján Botto – a Slovak poet, a representative of so-called Levoča circle. (The Levoča circle was after the Bratislava’s Lutheran lyceum leading by Ľudovít Štúr the second most important centre for Slovak Romanticism.) Levoča was a place of generation struggle for a new type of Romanticism initiated by a poet Ján Francisci. The new, more radical version of the Slovak Romanticism in poetry was the most adequate expressed by Ján Botto. He was the youngest among the founders of Slovak poetry of Romanticism.
Čepan points out the co-existence of messianic opinions and radically-political thinking. He shows the importance of revaluation of a Hegel’s term ”word spirit” in the Levoča circle. He focuses on Botto’s conception of a romantic hero in his poem Svetský víťaz (The World victor). He defines this poem as an allegorical composition in which heroically-balladic pathos has its semantic affinities in a redemptive myth from Slovak folk tale about Popolvár. Also his next poem Smrť Jánošíkova (Jánošík’s death) has the similar character in modified form. The same is for unfinished Čachtická pani (The lady of Čachtice) and for some other Botto´s epic poems. The author varies stress on so called heroic, redemptive and satanic myth (through the characters of a hero, martyr, criminal). Čepan proves that they are types of people characteristic for some periods in which the Slovak Romanticism was born, developed and declined.
Ľubomír Kováčik, Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity Mateja Bela, Banská Bystrica
The study The History in the poetry of Janko Kráľ as a territory of struggle between the good and the evil analyses the philosophy of history in the poet’s conception. It shows that Kráľ understood the history as a tragedy caused by a man in Eden. It was protohistory of the evil in the world like a consequence of free will of the man. The act of choice repeats in the history of mankind many times in micro and also macro measures. The history is a result of permanent repeating of the first sin model and the line of it declines. The evil is permanently present in the acts of human being and the graduation will reach out the deadline when the righteous are separated from unrighteous ones.
The poet’s voice is a voice of prophet. He prophesies things that can not be taken back but he gives an opportunity of salvation in the line of Christian doctrine. This view on the history comes from the Scripture and it tends to eschaton especially in its Old Testament form. In the prophetic expectations the Christian faith is connected with romantic desire for goodness and truth.
Irena Malec, Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV, Bratislava
Physiologically-natural body is a part of a dissertation work Topos tela v poézii slovenského romantizmu (The tope of body in the poetry of Slovak Romanticism). It is the first part of interpretations of motives of the ”lowest” carnality in the poetry of five authors of Slovak Romanticism (S. Chalupka, A. Sládkovič, J. Botto, J. Kráľ a S. Hroboň). The author of the work focused on the research of Slovak romantic poetry following the functional usage of those motives of carnality which have physiologically-natural character. Analysis of such motives like: mean of receiving foods, abdomen, lap, blood and heart should answer the question in which contexts they occurre, resp. they not and what semantic load they bear. Are they a part of personal experiencing of a body or cultural features with objective, national meanings?
Contemporary ”hysterics” about carnality and teleologization of literary production had an important impact to approach to the motives of the ”lowest” carnality of the romantic authors. The necessity to determine national identity caused that not personally counsciensced physiological body was not expressed. Physiologically-natural parts of body were decarnalised and they were used as symbols of national identity.
Kristína Krnová, Fakulta humanitných vied UMB, Banská Bystrica
The study Balladic nature of Sklený vrch (The Glass Mountain) and its semantic aspiration is an attempt to actualisation of the text having a specific position in the history of literature and sujet of it is very interesting. There were several aspects anticipating interpretations of it: the historical situation and one-side methodological orientation of the literary scholarship. Those interpretations did not take into consideration some functions of its structure.
At present we can just think about hidden elements and mechanisms of the text (the characteristic feature of ballads including the authority of fate) as means of determinating semantic shiftings in the novel (it is a shift from statement about polemic relationship of Sklený vrch to the life reality and art praxis in the first half of 50th that the work is an unobtrusive expression of negation of the totality regime deforming the character of literature).
The study stresses sign nature of the novel as a whole and also its particular (balladic) elements. The decisive semiotic gesture is considered to be a disharmony of actually experienced and supplementary put down (again experienced). The disharmony is based on the broken reality – one part describes ”that time” (past) which is life valuable and the other part points out ”this time” (now) - life limited reality of the 50th. This ideological and aesthetic state of the text stresses its rich semantic context. The balladic fabule is epicly and epistemologically (myth, irrationality) identical with a readable folk pattern. Acceptation of balladic character of the novel admits wider interpretative possibilities that it has been made out.