K BÁSNICKÉMU KONCEPTU A VARIANTOM POHLAVNEJ LÁSKY VO VAJANSKÉHO VERŠOVANOM ROMÁNE DUŠINSKÝ

• Authors: Tatár Jozef

Title variants

EN

On the poetic concept and variant of sexual love in Vajanský´s verse novel Dušinský

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

Vajanský´s poetic concept titled Vít was created in 1878, while some of the parts came out in the late 1870s in the Národnie noviny and Orol. As a book with the title Dušinský it was only published as late as 1909 in Sobrané diela, volume 6. The astute observation made by I. Kusý (1987) about anticipating his debut collection does not need editing, neither the emphasis of his ideological and formal innovations in poetry. In comparison with the composition titled Maják (1879), where Vajanský applied the romantic or postromantic attitude to reality, Dušinský refers to the realist and critical face of the poet. By depicting the petite bourgeoisie environment with its readily observed characters, by applying reflexiveness, fragmentariness, lyric elements, conversational style etc., i.e. a new „non-prosaic“ rendition, the narrative and reflexive genre is made by the poet more modern and dynamic. The evolutionary stimulation accompanies the rise of the realist aesthetic structure with its typical attempts at critical probes into the reality of those times. Unlike the previous critical reflection of this literary work focusing on the writer´s share of the evolutionary progress in Slovak poetry and non/confirmation of Vajanský as a receptive poet, this paper pays special attention to the characteristics of the poetic concept with the accent placed on the analysis of the variants of sexual love. There is no need to question Kusý´s designation of the work as a „novel of love“, perhaps just to make it more accurate – the „intended“ novel of love. Everything else – i.e. the national or social issues of those times – is only the period background. Despite the fact that art wise Vajanský attempts to offer a wide variety of characters based on life experience, when thematizing sexual love he remains constrained by the contemporary social taboos as well as his own ones. The source of this „monochromatic“ attitude is the writer´s as well as the community awareness which affects the way the characters are shaped. What Vajanský did in Dušinský again is to only bet on love in the form of one-sided affection – platonic, leaning towards the Wertheresque type – lacking any contact with the vital force of Eros, by which he established a strict border between soul and body. Thus in an artistically unproductive way he simplifies things and he makes the characters seem inanimate, apathetic or even schizoid. Even though the writer managed to be in an activating contact with the reader, nowadays Dušinský could hardly be expected to get significant reception. However, due to the gaps in literary scientific reflection and orientation towards new analytical and interpretative reading, this important piece of the literary corpus of Slovak epic poetry presented an exciting challenge.

Keywords

EN

LOVE; VERSE NOVEL; DUŠINSKÝ; VAJANSKÝ S.H.; SLOVAK POETRY

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 447 – 461

Contributors

author

Tatár Jozef

• Katedra slovenskej literatúry a literárnej vedy FiF UMB, Tajovského 40, 974 00 Banská Bystrica, Slovak Republic