Slovak literature

Unlike the Czech Republic from which it separated in the early 1990s, the Slovak Republic, commonly known as Slovakia, has not made as deep a mark on the international literary scene as its former counterpart. Despite a thriving literary scene and healthy book market, Slovak literature is one of the least-known Slavic literature in the English-speaking world.

The Slovak Republic has a plethora of publishing houses for a country its size, but only a handful of them produce what is considered quality writing, perhaps because decades of Communist suppression led to a thirst for low-brow literature. Mass-market fiction dominates Slovakian bookstore displays. The end of Communism nonetheless brought an explosion of writing in Slovakia—by authors who made names for themselves under Communist rule as well as by a new generation of writers.

Background

From the eleventh century until 1918, Slovakia was known as Upper Hungary, the northern part of the kingdom of Hungary. At the end of World War I (1914–1918), it became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, with the collapse of the Czechoslovak Republic, a Slovak state was established with German leadership. In 1945, most of this territory was returned to Czechoslovakia, albeit now under Communist control as a Soviet satellite state. Socialist Czechoslovakia became a federation from 1968 to 1992. By that time, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the federation of Czechoslovakia broke apart under economic, political, and national pressure, creating the independent Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic.

Overview

The earliest documents written in the Slovak language date to the fifteenth century. After a period of religious unrest, many Czech cultural leaders immigrated to Slovakia in the sixteenth century. There, Protestant liturgical and secular writings used Czech, while Slovak Catholics used Latin and later—in the seventeenth century—Slovak.

However, the main body of Slovak literature can be broken down into key older periods beginning around the ninth century in the Great Moravian era. This period was followed by the Medieval period (approximately 900 to 1500), which saw historical poetry, religiously tinged creativity, and secular essential texts. This era saw the first Central European universities and showed the influence of the Hussites on national consciousness.

The rise of Humanism in the Renaissance (1500–1640) brought deeper literary creativity as the period united Latin to the native languages, while the Baroque era (1640–1780) saw anti-Reformation activity and the influence of Catholicism. Religious literature and historical poets were popular. Book printing also began in the later sixteenth century. The classical, romantic, realist, and modern periods followed.

Slovak literature written in Latin or Czech received a boost in the seventeenth century, when the study of religious music, both Protestant and Catholic, became popular. Lyric and epic folk poems emerged with the archetype of a noble thief as a popular theme.

During the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, literature helped awaken the nation, with patriotism and Slavic community as the main ideas. The eighteenth century brought mostly anonymous love poems, traditional folksongs, and balladry. It also brought scholarly nationalism and the basis for a future Slovak mythology and history-based ideology. The eighteenth century reigns of Emperor Joseph and his mother Maria Theresa marked a watershed for a new era linked with general literacy. Hungarian elites aspired toward a homogeneous, Hungarian-language political nation, but Joseph II also encouraged local Slovak vernaculars for the less educated.

The nineteenth century brought a unified Slovak writing language created by Ľudovít Velislav Štúr, a revolutionary politician and organizer, around whom rallied the Slovak romantics and poets. They frequently portrayed hometown communities, the oppression of the Slovak people, and the Hungarian resistance. In so doing, they inspired younger, more realist writers.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Slovak literature became more multifaceted. The period featured notable poets, socialist prose, social compassion, and psychological novels. During the 1930s, Catholic modernism and Slovak surrealism were developed. During the Communist years from 1948 to 1989, literature was characterized by political adaptation. Writers began to liberate themselves after 1956, and the 1960s brought forth critics of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Despite the dearth of true Slovak literature, the rich history has produced several names considered among the greats.

Slovak classicist Ján Hollý (1785–1849) wrote epic ballads as homage to Slovak history, while Ján Kollár's Daughter of Slava (1924) and the scholarly works of Pavel Josef Šafařík extolled pan-Slavism, the nineteenth-century movement recognizing a common ethnic background among European Slavs and seeking to unite them in common goals.

The biographical data project Pantheon has named Šafařík (1795–1861) the most legendary Slovak writer of all time. He was a historical linguist, poet, literary historian, and ethnographer in the Kingdom of Hungary and one of the first scientific Slavic scholars.

Rounding out Pantheon’s top five Slovakian writers are Tibor Sekelj (1815–1856), the revolutionary politician Štúr (1793–1852), Kollár (1793–1852), and Baron Bálint Balassi (1554–1594).

Sekelj was the author of novels and novellas, travel books, and essays, plus a children’s book that has been translated into seventeen languages, while Štúr amassed followers during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. He was a poet, journalist, publisher, teacher, philosopher, linguist, and a member of parliament. Kollár, the main ideologist of pan-Slavism, was, first, a poet but also an archaeologist, scientist, priest, and politician. Bálint Balassi was a Hungarian Renaissance lyric poet and the founder of modern Hungarian lyric and erotic poetry.

Poetry and the novel factor heavily into the history of Slovak literature. Slovak romantic poetry of the early nineteenth century is represented by the satire of Samo Chalupka (1812–1883), the epic ballads of Ján Botto (1829–1881), the melancholy of Janko Král (1822–1876), and the philosophical lyrics of Andrej Sládkovič (1820–1872). Ján Kalincak’s novels perceptively describe Slovak life. In the late nineteenth century, Slovak literary life centered on the publication Slovak Views. A central period writer was lyrical poet and social novelist Svetozár Hurban Vajanský (1847–1916).

Pavol Országh-Hviezdoslav (1849–1921) wrote lyric and epic poetry that remains among the best of Slovak verse, while Martin Kukučín (1860–1928), Elena Marothy-Soltesova (1855–1939), Timrava (pseudonym of Božena Slančíková, 1867–1951), and Josef Gregor Tajovský (1874–1940) brought realism to Slovak prose. Ferko Urbanek (1859–1934) brought similar realism to drama.

Notable twentieth-century Slovak poetry includes the sensuous lyrics of Ján Smrek and the religious lyrics of Emil Boleslav Lukáč, along with the humanitarian, patriotic verse of Andrej Zarnov (pseudonym of František Subik), who inspired a whole generation of Slovak writers. Writers of the Communist period include Laco Novomeský, Peter Karvaš, Ladislav Mňačko, Alfonz Bednár, and Dominik Tatarka.

The modern era was likely the first period in which writers became comfortable with a diverse, pluralist society. Its largest names include Pavol Vilikovsky (author of the poetry collection Ever Green Is …), Peter Pišťanek (the Rivers of Babylon trilogy), and Daniela Kapitáňová (Cemetery Book).

Literary critic Ivana Taranenková identifies three key trends in Slovak fiction since the turn of the century. The first trend, characterized by fantasy and horror, is seen in the stories of Václav Pankovčin, Viliam Klimáček, and Márius Kopcsay as well as in the lauded works of Balla, who does not use his first name, Vladimir, in his literary works. He has been called “the chief alchemist of Slovak literature” and “the Slovak Kafka.” He made his name with a short story collection, Leptokaria, in 1996.

The second trend is autobiographical and is represented by Alta Vášová’s Immemorial Islands (Ostrovy Nepamäti, 2008) and Ján Rozner’s Seven Days to the Funeral (Sedem dní do Pohrebu, 2008).

The third trend is feminist writing from a cohort of writers associated with the feminist press Aspekt. Translator Julia Sherwood has noted the proliferation of female authors, some of whom came to create a sub-genre known as expat literature, as an interesting Slovakian literary trend. Notable among them are Ivana Dobrakovová, Zuska Kepplová, and Svetlana Žuchová.

Sherwood, who has been an advocate before English publishing houses for the translation of Slovakian writing, notes the development of literature after 1989, when authors welcomed freedom of expression and the chance to write about abstract and previously taboo issues.

While translated Slovakian literature remains rare, writers began appearing on the global scene in more abundance after the turn of the millennium. One of the most significant of those is Balla, the post-modernist author of In the Name of the Father. Similarly, author Jozef Banáš received international celebrity for his novel Milan Rastislav Štefánik: A Man of Iron Will, which won the Literary Fund Prize in Slovakia. Banáš novel was translated and published in the United States.

Sherwood, who collaborates with her husband, Peter, and has been almost solely responsible for Slovak literature’s emergence, translated Balla’s In the Name of the Father along with three other short stories for a volume produced by Jantar Publishing of the United Kingdom.

Balla is among the generation of Slovak writers who came of age in the last decade of the twentieth century and has picked up on its familiar themes. In the Name of the Father describes the narrator’s dysfunctional relationship with his wife and two sons. The novel’s central metaphor is an odd, labyrinthine house built by the narrator’s brother that represents the family, the town’s inhabitants, and the nation of Slovakia itself.

Other modern Slovakian best-selling authors include Maxim E. Matkin and true-crime writer Dominik Dán. While popular literature has dominated Slovakian literary culture, certain pieces of quality literature have found huge success, with Peter Krištufek’s sweeping family saga, House of the Deaf Man, standing as a notable example. It is a father-son tale told within a tour of Slovak history from the 1930s through the 1990s and explores how the pressure of history can make a good but weak man harm those around him.

Bibliography

"Balla." Julia and Peter Sherwood, 2022, juliaandpetersherwood.com/balla/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.

"Jozef's Novel About Štefánik Was Published in the USA and Russia." Jozef Banas, www.jozefbanas.com/jozefs-novel-about-stefanik-was-published-in-the-usa-and-russia/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

Moravčíková, Monika. "Slovak Translator: The English Are Still Afraid of Slovak Literature." The Slovak Spectator, 3 Dec. 2019, spectator.sme.sk/c/22274230/slovak-translator-julia-sherwood-the-english-are-still-afraid-of-slovak-literature.html. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

"The Most Famous Writers From Slovakia." Pantheon, pantheon.world/profile/occupation/writer/country/slovakia. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

Naughton, James. "Slovak Literature: A Brief Introduction." University of Oxford Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Jan. 2018, czech.mml.ox.ac.uk/slovak-literature. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

Sabatos, Charles. "The Slovak Kafka: On Balla's 'In the Name of the Father.'" Los Angeles Review of Books, 28 Aug. 2017, lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-slovak-kafka-on-ballas-in-the-name-of-the-father/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

Sherwood, Julia. "A Beginner's Guide to the Slovak Book and Literature Market." Publishing Perspectives, 13 Nov. 2013, publishingperspectives.com/2013/11/a-beginners-guide-to-the-slovak-book-and-literature-market/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.