VÝCHODOKARPATSKÝ MAGICKÝ REALIZMUS? REKONŠTRUKCIA CESTY „MAGICKÉHO REALIZMU“ DO SLOVENSKEJ LITERATÚRY Z VÝCHODU

• Authors: Passia Radoslav

Title variants

EN

Carpathian magic realism? Reconstruction of the journey of “magic realism” into Slovak literature from the East

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The paper explains the relation between the concepts of socialist realism and magic realism in the Slovak literature during the period of Perestroika occurring in the second half of the 1980s. The author claims that the ideologically biased criticism of the period warned of the increasing interest in magic realism among writers, critics and readers because magic realism was regarded as one of the tools of the “destruction” of socialist realism. Many of the new ideas that overcame the conservative thinking of socialist realism in Czechoslovakia then came from the East, i.e., from the Soviet Union. However, Slovak critics and writers did not just follow theoretical works but also translated works of prose, e.g., those from Ukrainian literature, which had been inspired by reading Latin American prose as well as by the indigenous folk sources and specific cultural situation in the multi-ethnic environment of the Eastern Carpathians. In addition to that, the 1960s saw translations of the “original” magic realism of Latin American provenance penetrating the Slovak cultural space. The individual national literatures from the territory of the Eastern Carpathians have also kept developing upon the inspirations from magic realism of Latin American literature, from the 1990s until now. Selected works of prose from this particular cultural region clearly reflect the phenomena of myth and magic and operate with natural circular time and relatively closed, isolated spaces, and they are strongly influenced by folk oral culture. All of these elements bring the cultural space in question closer to the premises of Latin American magic realism.

Keywords

EN

MAGIC REALISM; SOCIALIST REALISM; SLOVAK LITERATURE; CENTRAL EUROPE; CARPATHIAN REGION

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 29 – 39

Contributors

author

Passia Radoslav

• Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV, Konventná 13, 811 03 Bratislava, Slovak Republic