JAN SMREK (CONDEMNED TO ETERNAL THIRST)

• Authors: Habaj M.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The aim of the study is to determine a specific place of Jan Smrek's debut in the context of his poetry and to point out its organic connection with the following collections of poems, although typologically and aesthetically different from the first one book. With regard to Smrek's poetry as a whole, the author interprets the religious and Biblical residua of decadently symbolic provenience in his debut in connection with the philosophy of vitalism and Henri Bergson's idea of 'creative development'. The collection of poems 'Odsudeny k vecitej zizni' (Condemned to Eternal Thirst) (1922) used to be overlooked and excluded from the complex of the reflection just because of its religiously symbolic character that was aesthetically and noeticly much different from the following Smrek's 'sunny books'. The author identifies three basic semantic gestures and stylisations in connections with three cycles of the debut: mystically erotic gesture in 'Casa opojnosti' (The Bowl of Potency), gesture of suffering in 'Basnik bolesti' (The Poet of Sorrow) and redeeming gesture in the cycle 'Dnes milujem svoj den' (Today I Love My Day). He finds a gradual transformation from 'mystic' life to 'social' life, the conversion from introverted to extroverted attitude, transformation from the religious complex of motives to the complex of profanely - intimate motives. The symbolism of night is replaced by the symbolism of day. The development from passivity to activity and from eternity of 'mystical nights' to common 'speedy days' is influenced by Biblically coded sign of 'resurrection'. But in the end of the book it is replaced by civil assignment in the space and time. Conflict between asceticism and vitality is resolved for sake the latter one. In the study, the author tries to analyse Smrek's poetic model of the world overlapping aesthetic categories to the anthropologically ontological. In a connection with Bergson's philosophy of 'creative development' he interprets the Smrek's poetic works represented by his book 'Odsudeny k vecitej zizni' (Condemned to Eternal Thirst) as process of creation and integration human personality. The core of Smrek's poetic gesture he finds in a 'creator's' vision of a man - in calling to ongoing making of oneself and the world.

Keywords

EN

ASCETICISM; SLOVAK POETRY; SMREK JAN; SYMBOLISM; VITALISM

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 443-453
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Habaj M.

• M. Habaj, Ustav slovenskej literatury SAV, Konventna 13, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08SKAAAA03587287