Slovak Poetry

Introduction

Slovakia is typically the least known among the West Slavic group of nations: Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. That is also true of its poetry. The reasons are mainly historical. The Slovak nation dates its beginnings to the ninth-century Great Moravian Empire that flourished under Svätopluk, included the territory of the former Czechoslovakia, southern Poland, parts of Austria, and most of Hungary. Attempts to Christianize this territory go back to the eighth-century missions from the West, but it was in 863 that the apostles of the Slavs, Saints Cyril and Methodius, arrived from Constantinople with the Old Church Slavonic liturgy. In the tenth century, the Great Moravian Empireafter a period of declinewas defeated by the Magyars, and Slovakia became a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Slovakia remained under Hungarian rule until 1918 when the new state of Czechoslovakia was established.

Slovak literature in general, and Slovak poetry in particular, reflect this tragic history. The lack of independence for more than a millennium forced Slovak poets, historians, and scientists to use other languages: Latin, Hungarian, German, and biblical Czech. While such literary works are usually mentioned in Slovak literary history, they are also claimed by others. There was, then, a long period when Slovak poets wrote their poetry predominantly in foreign languages: the Multilingual Period (tenth through sixteenth centuries). The Revival Period (1790-1863) saw a great flourishing of Slovak literature, especially of poetry. In the Period of Struggle (1863-1918), this revived literature met the challenge of Magyarization, the campaign by Hungarian authorities to stamp out the Slovak nationalist aspirations and to suppress the Slovak language. Large-scale emigration to the United States was one consequence of this harsh policy. The Modern Period (1918 to present) has been shaped by the increasing influence of foreign literary trends, by the ideological influence of the former Soviet Union, and by the resurgence of Catholic poetry.

Multilingual period (900-1790)

Slovak poetry did appear sporadically even in the multilingual context. Of crucial importance to Slovak poetry is the rich heritage of folk songs, some of which are of ancient origin. Also extant are a number of religious and historical songs; the latter describe military events resulting from Tatar (1241) and Turkish (sixteenth and seventeenth century) invasions of Slovakia. Descriptions of sackings of castles and fortresses predominate, as in Muráó (song about Murán castle) and Modrý kameó (song about Modrý Kameň castle), but there is also a more sophisticated poetry, based on the chivalrous epic, as in the ballad Siládi a Hadmázi (Siládi and Hadmázi), a tale of battle against the Turks. Most of these historical compositions are anonymous.

Of greater importance are the religious songs. The popularity of this genre is attested by the approximately 150 editions of Vithara sanctorum (1636; the lyre of saintliness), a Protestant hymnal compiled by Juraj Tranovský (1592–1637). Among translations, this hymnal included Slovak songs still sung in Slovakia today. Cithara sanctorum was also tremendously influential as a manual of versification and, therefore, played an important role in the development of Slovak poetry. The establishment of the Jesuit University in Trnava further strengthened the use of Slovak for literary purposes; there, Benedikt Szöllösi-Rybnický compiled a collection of songs, Cantus catholici (1655; Catholic hymnal), with more than two hundred songs in Slovak.

The Jesuit University of Trnava was not the first Slovak university; that honor goes to the Academia Istropolitana, founded in Bratislava in 1467, a center of Humanistic studies influenced by Western European Humanism. Slovaks who studied there published in Latin, but in Trnava, Slovak was encouraged, and a number of historical, philosophical, and grammatical works appeared, supporting the national cause. Whether Protestant or Catholic, the poetry of the Baroque period was largely the work of priests. Indeed, a poet without a priestly vocation was a rarity; one such poet was Peter Benický (1603-1664), author of Slovenské verše (1652; Slovak poems).

A poet close to Benický and probably influenced by him was the Franciscan Hugolín Gavlovič (1712-1787), author of Valaská šola (1755; the shepherd’s school), the most significant work of the Multilingual Period. A poem of some seventeen thousand lines, Valaská škola is divided into twenty-two cantos of fifty-nine “ideas” each, in three rhymed quatrains. The work is a compendium of genres: satire, fable, folk poetry, exemplum, and even social poetry.

A great disadvantage the poets of the period had to face was the absence of codified Slovak. Thus, some variety of Slovakized Czech was often used. Moreover, it was biblical Czech, derived from the standard Czech translation of the Bible, not the living, contemporary Czech language, which the Slovak poets used. In Slovakia, a variety of Slovak dialects vied for poets’ attention. Of the three main dialect groups, Western, Central, and Eastern, Antonín Bernolák (1762-1813) championed the Western dialect in his pioneering Grammatica slavica (1790; Slovak grammar). It was not the best choice, but nevertheless Bernolák’s work provided a basis for the systematic literary use of Slovak as an alternative to the artificial Slovakized Czech.

Revival period (1790-1863)

Bernolák’s Slovak was only a beginning, and there was quite a struggle ahead for the literary use of the Slovak language. Those who used Czech advanced the argument of unity to anyone suggesting the use of Slovak for literary purposes, while others would use Slovak, but not of Bernolák’s variety—that is, they preferred another dialect. Thus, Jozef Ignác Bajza (1755-1836) published Slovenské dvojnásobné epigramatá (1794; Slovak double epigrams) in his own Slovak, using hexameter and pentameter in the first attempt to adapt classical prosody to Slovak poetry. Bajza’s work was mercilessly criticized by Bernolák, and Bernolák’s approach prevailed. An entire Bernolák movement appeared, first acting through the Learned Society, founded in 1792 and comprising some five hundred influential members throughout Slovakia. It is the Bernolák movement that must be credited with saving Slovakia from total assimilation. Bernolák also authored the monumental Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian Dictionary (1825-1827), which runs to six volumes and more than five thousand pages.

After the generation of Bernolák and his followers, who paved the way with dictionaries and grammar, a generation of talented poets appeared. Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795-1861), the founder of Slavic studies, wrote a collection of poems, Tatranská múza s lýrou slovanskou (1814; the Muse of Tatras with a Slavic lyre), that includes poems about the legendary robber Jánošík (1688-1713), a Slovak Robin Hood. Šafárik also organized the systematic collection of folk songs and inspired Ján Kollár (1793-1852) to do the same. The latter thus produced Národnie zpiewanky (1834, 1835; folk songs). Šafárik also popularized Bernolák’s notion concerning the unity of Slavs, later known as Pan-Slavism. Individual Slavic nations, according to this idea, were merely various tribes of Slavdom. Kollár wrote a great epic poem animated by Pan-Slavism: Slávy dcera (1824, 1832; the daughter of Slava).

An equally important poet of this period was Ján Hollý (1785-1849), author of historical epics and beautiful nature lyrics. His epic trilogy, Svatopluk (1833), Cyrilometodiada (1835), and Sláv (1839), is a triumph of classicism, a happy marriage of history, legend, myth, and religion.

The poems of Kollár and Hollý were used to build up national consciousness. The new generation of revivalists found their inspiration in poetry. The Romantic movement in Slovak poetry coincided with the revival movement: Both were nurtured by Slovak classicism, with its Pan-Slavic ideal. Literary magazines and almanacs (such as Hronka, Tatranka, Plody) appeared to help the movement along.

The greatest figure of the revival movement was Ludovít Štúr (1815-1856). In 1843, he definitively solved the language problem by suggesting the Central Slovak dialect for the literary language. His suggestion was soon accepted, and today’s Slovak is a modified form of Štúr’s. Štúr published the first Slovak political newspaper, Slovak National Newspaper, with a literary supplement, Orol Tatránski (the eagle of Tatras). There, as well as in the almanac Nitra, Štúr’s generation published the best poetry yet to appear in Slovakia. The remarkable group of poets associated with Štúr included Samo Chalúpka, Janko Král, Andrej Sládkovič, and Ján Botto. Štúr himself published a book of poetry, Spevy a piesne (1853; lyrics and songs).

Janko Král (1822-1876), more than any other Slovak poet, was the embodiment of Romanticism. His poetry, marked by strong balladic and folk elements, celebrates the outsider, the Romantic hero, and bristles with imagery derived from dreams and fairy tales, as in Zakliata panna vo Váhu a divný Janko (1844; the enchanted maiden in the river Váh and strange Janko). In the revolutionary year 1848, Král rushed to fight and, like Štúr and others, languished in disappointment over the failure of the revolution. The haunting, prophetic, and enchanting quality of Král’s poetry is entirely his own.

Of the four great poets associated with Štúr, Andrej Sládkovič (1820-1872) has the distinction of having written the most beautiful and memorable poetry—poems that generations of students have memorized and loved. His Marína (1846) is a personification of the beauty of Slovakia and its language, as well as a deeply felt tribute to his beloved. His Detvan (1846), which tells of the freeing of a poor mountain boy from a certain punishment, is a parable of national liberation. Stylistically, Sládkovič’s poetry is very original, and it exercised a significant influence on the next generation of poets.

Samo Chalúpka (1812-1883) and Ján Botto (1829-1881) are also numbered among the four great poets of the Štúr generation. Chalúpka, in Spevy (1868; songs), consciously revised the classical tradition of such heroic epics as Hollý’s Svatopluk. Chalúpka’s hero is anonymous or collective. Botto returned to the Jánošík epic with his Smrt Jánošíková (1862; the death of Jánošík), a work that is at once legendary, fantastic, exaggerated, and tragic. It is full of grandeur, pathos, and deeply satisfying beauty.

The beginning of the 1860s marked the end of Slovak Romanticism, although Slovakia’s nationalistic ambitions had not been satisfied. A new period of reaction and national oppression was about to begin, coinciding with the advent of realistic conventions in prose and Symbolism in poetry.

Period of Struggle (1863-1918)

In 1867, the political situation in Hungary (the northern part of which was Slovakia) radically changed for the worse: Minorities were held in disfavor, and Slovak nationalist aspirations were deemed treasonous.

The two leading poets of this period, particularly of the last two decades of the century, were Svetozár Hurban-Vajanský (1847-1916) and Pavol Országh-Hviezdoslav (1849-1921). Vajanský, the author of Tatry a more (1879; the Tatras and the sea) and two other collections, was a journalist, novelist, critic, and poet. His first book of poems was a breakthrough and gained him wide readership, but his attempt to write a novel in verse was abandoned in favor of prose writing. Vajanský, though very interesting, is overshadowed by Hviezdoslav. Hviezdoslav’s best-known work is Krvavé sonety (1914; bloody sonnets), but this collection alone does not permit a fair assessment of his lifework. Indeed his oeuvre, which includes lyric and epic poetry as well as drama, is of such variety and richness that it has no equal in Slovak literature. Among his epics, Hájniková žena (1844-1886; gamekeeper’s wife) should be mentioned, and among his dramas, Herod i Herodias (1909).

Ludmila Podjavorinská (1872-1951) was the first significant female Slovak poet. She painstakingly documents the clash of Romantic and realistic worldviews in works such as Po bále (1903; after the ball), while her Balady (1930) takes up allegorical, symbolic, and tragic themes close in spirit to the Romantic school.

Podjavorinská and Hviezdoslav, though different, both seem to be poets of transition, ushering in the new poetic sensibility in Slovak literature known as Moderna. The main representative of this movement was Ivan Krasko (1876-1958), author of two slender collections: Nox et solitudo (1909) and Veršě (1912). Another Moderna poet of note was Vladimír Roy (1885-1936), who, influenced by the power of Krasko’s art, took the modernizing tendency even further, into the modern period.

Modern period

Out of the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the World War I, a new state appeared: Czechoslovakia. Slovak national life was strengthened, despite the fact that the new government continued the nineteenth century fiction of a Czechoslovak nation instead of two distinct nations of Czechs and Slovaks. Thus, the Slovak nationalist movement persisted, and in 1939, a Slovak Republic was proclaimed under Nazi pressure and with a pro-Nazi government. This government lasted until 1945, when the Czechoslovak Republic was reestablished. The communists took over the government through a coup in 1948, and only after the fall of communism in 1989 did the country manage to free itself of totalitarianism and become a democracy. In 1993, the Czech and Slovak Federation separated, and two states emerged: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. This was an amicable divorce, arranged by the political elite.

Institutionally, Slovak culture received a tremendous boost with the reopening in 1919 of Matica Slovenská, a central cultural institution. Slovak schools were organized, from the elementary level to Comenius University, founded in 1919 in Bratislava with the help of Czech professors. Thus, the obligatory instruction in Hungarian ended, and Slovak poetry ceased to be the sole repository of Slovak cultural, national, and linguistic aspirations.

Enthusiasm, a sense of a new beginning, a desire to catch up with the rest of Europe—such was the prevailing mood of the period between the wars. Slovak poets became aware of a variety of foreign literary movements from which they borrowed eclectically without committing themselves wholly to a single program. The only exception is Surrealism. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, this movement united poets, artists, and critics in a spontaneous manifestation of creative and aesthetic unity reminiscent of the efforts of the revivalist generation of Štúr. The older, more conservative, but at the same time best forum for Slovak literature during this period was the literary magazine Slovenské pohlǎdy (Slovak views), founded in the nineteenth century (1846), Europe’s oldest continuously published literary magazine.

Ján Smrek (1898-1982), the most popular and widely read Slovak poet of the twentieth century, began his career with an eclectic style influenced by French Symbolism and, to a lesser degree, Hungarian poetry. Soon, however, he formed his own vision: Sensuality, healthy eroticism, and the celebration of love and tenderness are his main characteristics, as in his Básnik a žena (1934; the poet and a woman). To these he added in later years melancholy reminiscences and the nostalgic celebration of women.

The career of this Dionysian poet was complemented by that of the Apollonian poet Emil Boleslav Lukáč (1900-1979). While in Smrek’s works, from Básnik a žena to the nostalgic Obraz sveta (1953; image of the world), the reader encounters the world of the senses—of the individual appreciating the happiness, beauty, and love of women—in Lukáč one finds the opposite. Lukáč was tormented by his philosophical musings, from his first collection, Spoved (1922; confession), to his highly personal O láske neláskavej (1928; on unkind love) to his late Óda na poslednú a prvú (1967; ode to the last and the first of Eumenides).

The third and perhaps the most eminent of this generation was Valentín Beniak (1894-1973). From his first collection, Tiahnime dalej oblaky (1928; clouds, let’s move on), to his magisterial epic trilogy Žofia (1941; Sophia), Popolec (1942; ashes), and Igric (1944; the minstrel), he experimented with language, style, and imagery, presenting a haunting, hallucinatory, and obsessively hypnotic vision of the world both distant and immediate, the world of war and love, of tormenting hopes and soul-searching. This fine Catholic poet was joined by an entire Catholic Moderna movement, including Pavol Gašparovic Hlbina (1908-1977) and Rudolf Dilong (1905-1986), a prolific and gifted author of mystical poetry who blended Fransiscan religiosity with Surrealist imagery, as in Mladý svadobník (1936; young member of the wedding party). They had many followers, particularly Mikuláš Šrinc (1914-1986) and Ján Silan (1914-1984).

The first important Surrealist work in Slovak poetry was Utaté ruky (1935; severed hands), by Rudolf Fábry (1915-1982). The most talented of the Slovak Surrealists proved to be Stefan Žáry (born 1918), whose Pečat plných amfór (1944; the seal of full amphoras) expresses the tragedy of uprooted modern humanity at the mercy of wars and ideologies and suffering from lack of love. Vladimír Reisel (1919-2007), Pavol Horov (1914-1975), and others also published fine Surrealist poetry, giving the movement a strong foundation. This potential could have resulted in a richer harvest had it not been for the official disbanding of the movement following the communist takeover after 1948.

The proletarian school of Slovak poets was influenced by the Czech poet Jiří Wolker (1900-1924) as much as by the socialist ideals and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The most talented of the group of the so-called DAV poets (named after their magazine) was Ladislav Novomeský (1904-1976), as his Svätý za dedinou (1935; a patron saint behind the village) shows.

Ludo Ondrejov (1901-1962) brought into his poems the untamed world of folk poetry, especially in his Pijanské piesne (1941; drinking songs). Folk poetry also influenced such poets as Andrej Plávka (1907-1982) and Ján Kostra (1910-1975).

The decade of the 1960s was a time of experimentation and of a departure from the sterile dictates of the Socialist Realism imported from the Soviet Union. A strong group of “concretist” poets, gathered under the leadership of Miroslav Válek (1927-1991), included such poets as Ján Ondruš (1932-1999), Ján Stacho (1936-1995), and Lubomír Feldek (born 1936), all of whom turned away from Socialist Realism toward the heritage of the Western avant-garde and modernism. Válek’s collection of his four early collections, Štyri knihy nepokoja (1971; four books of unease) documents his search for an original voice, as well as the initial schematic beginnings to which he returns in his last period.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Milan Rúfus (1928-2009), the strongest Slovak voice of the second half of the twentieth century, began to be noticed. His most important work, collected in Básne (1972, revised 1975; poems), represents a different path from the one taken by the concretists. Rúfus is purposefully antimodern in the sense that it is not the avant-garde that inspires him, but rather his rural background, his family, and the Bible with its imagery. Rúfus has successfully integrated his religiosity in his work and managed to find a form acceptable to the authorities. After the fall of communism, the religious component of his work became even more pronounced.

Before the end of the twentieth century, another movement of poets of different orientations appeared known as the lonely runners: Ivan Laucík (1944-2004), Peter Repka (born 1944), and particularly Ivan Štrpka (born 1944). Their roots are in the 1960s and in the protest against stale schematic poetry. A poet of Dionysian character who experimented with language and celebrated the Western Slovak region of Záhorie with panache and genius as a counterpart to the lonely runners was Štefan Moravcík (born 1943). Moravcík chose the world of senses, eroticism, and nature over the world of the decaying order of the 1980s, beginning with his first collection, Slávnosti baránkov (1969; the feast of the lambs). His Záhorie is a refuge as well as a fount of inspiration for his playful linguistic experimentation. This tendency toward excess continues with Ivan Kolenic (born 1965), whose stress on hedonism and intimate relationships is actually an attempt to build an autarchic world of the senses uncontaminated by ideology, as demonstrated in his Prinesené búrkou (1986; brought by the storm). Thus, the Modern Period demonstrates that Slovak poetry, which long served as a repository of a subjugated people’s hopes and dreams, remains a vital force in the twenty-first century.

However, the twenty-first century also saw interesting and innovative shifts from poets like Radovan Brenkus (born 1974) and Radoslav Rochallyi (1980). In his 2022 poetry collection, Rovnicová poézia (Equation poetry), Rochallyi provides instructions for reading in the introduction, yet, for most, the poems are likely still too difficult to truly understand. However, this type of poetry is meant to span languages and break the typical spacial mold of poetry. Brenkus, while more traditional, also pushed the boundaries of modern Slovak poetry by addressing larger philosophical questions that previous poets have hesitated to tackle.

Bibliography

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