ESTABLISHING A CONCEPTION:1879-1881 (ABOUT LITERARY AESTETIC OPINIONS OF SVETOZAR HURBAN VAJANSKY)

• Authors: Taranenkova-Liptakova I.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The study is a part of a research which through an analysis of Svetozár Hurban Vajanský's texts about culture, arts and literature published from 1879 to 1916 mostly in the 'Národné noviny' (The National Newspaper) and 'Slovenské pohlady' (The Slovak Views) tends to reconstruct the conception which stood behind the scene, stressing an organic unity of its elements - opinions of the nation, culture, or aesthetic opinions. The ideology of nationalism seems to be an important ideological platform. Summing up literary reception of the work as well as Vajanský's literary aesthetic opinions we are focused predominantly on the so called 'program' texts , that means articles and essays from the period of 1879 - 1881. In those texts he attempted to formulate a program for a new literary generation and he also set fundamental theses of his conception. More than a generational gesture of making a distance from the tradition of Slovak Romanticism - that was a common interpretation of these texts by the Slovak literary historiography - we stress different forms of Vajanský's relation to it. We explicate these texts embodying an 'initiator's gesture' of S. H. Vajanský towards stagnated contemporary literature as an attempt to fulfil a 'cultural task' (T. Walas) given by the Romantic nationally reviving generation to establish the national culture as a culture highly legitimated and representing Slovak nation in the European context. Evoking and persistent confirming already existing tradition is typical for Vajanský's conception. Any radical revaluation of the historical values should have damaged identity of a newly creating Slovak culture. That is why new solutions, with which Vajanský comes to lead out the Slovak literature from stagnation and isolation, leaving the traditional pattern. The connection between the 'initiator's gesture' and Vajanský's tradition of Slovak Romanticism does not prove only rhetoric and processes of myths creation referred to the ideology of nationalism, but also metaphoric model of thinking, by which O. Cepan characterised an approach of Romanticism towards reality, and mainly 'belonging to our people' - an abstract principle of collective self-identification expressing its cultural specific character, which comes out from Herder and Hegel philosophy. This central principle of Vajanský's conception in the context of his opinions of literature and arts significantly determine tendency to establish heteronymous model of arts. In terms of two basic European aesthetic systems he inclined more to Hegel's aesthetic. Significant role plays his national and cultural conception based on stratification of Slovak ethnic in two levels - 'people' functioning as conservators of the national identity and then nationally representative level.

Keywords

EN

CULTURAL TASK; CULTURE; NATION; NATIONALITY; TRADITION; VAJANSKY S.H.

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 24-48
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Taranenkova-Liptakova I.

• I.Taranenkova-Liptakova, Ustav slovenskej literatury SAV, Konventna 13, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06SKAAAA01172695