Magiczny cmentarz Słowacja. Powieść Dušana Mitany „Mój rodzinny cmentarz”

• Authors: Dagmar Kročanová Roberts

Title variants

EN

Slovakia: a Magic Cemetery. Dušan Mitana’s novel „My Home Cemetery”

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Dušan Mitana’s book My Home Cemetery (Môj rodný cintorín, 2000) is centred on banal scenes from everyday life that could happen in any Slovak village in the 1960s, such as family relations, village gossips, political and theological disputes in pubs and at home, building homes, working in a local cooperative, supporting a local football team, etc. However, the narration denies any similarity with Realism. Instead, the story is bizarre, hyperbolized, and grotesque; very much along the tradition of Magic Realism. Mitana’s writing is Postmodern; he uses different languages, genres, approaches and quotations in his book. Cemetery in Mitana’s story is both space and place; it is both pars and totum; it is one (real/fictional) cemetery and entire Slovakia. Even though this cemetery is situated on the outskirts of the village, it is the centre (navel); its eccentric location is a song of human disrespect towards eternity. Besides being the centre, the cemetery is also a middle world where reality meets fi ction, banal meets high, fl esh meets spirit, Christianity meets paganism, banal everyday routines mix with dreams, visions and prophecies, and those who are alive coexist happily with those who are dead. It is also a nodal point between past and (Messianic) future, since it is the home place of the writer himself, and this writer is a Slovak writer. Whereas the writer has a mission to revive the dead by weaving stories about them, his nation’s mission is to spread the Slovak word in the world. In this way, Mitana’s book also mocks manifestations of Slovak nationalism in the 1990s, which was still partially using concepts and rhetoric of Romantic Messianism.

Keywords

PL

literatura słowacka; Dušan Mitana; postmodernizm; groteska; mitologia narodowa

EN

Dušan Mitana; Slovak literature; postmodernism; grotesque; national mythology

• Publisher: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
• Journal: Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo
• Year: 2012
• Issue: 2(5)
• Pages: 271-281

Dates

published

2019-10-16

Contributors

author

Dagmar Kročanová Roberts

• Uniwersytet Komeńskiego w Bratysławie