Understanding its history
As in many countries, literature is primarily a matter of oral tradition. In the Middle Ages, it is essentially marked by the biblical influence. However, it was not until the 18th century that the Bible was translated into Slovak (1756). This period is marked by writers such as Matthias Bel (1684-1789) and Adam František Kollár (1718-1753). The following decades saw the birth of authors such as Jan Kollar (1793-1852). He was an archaeologist, scientist, politician, author and poet. Some of his works can be found in theAnthology of Czech and Slovak Poetry (Messidor/Unesco, 1987). Slovak literature did not really begin to flourish until the middle of the nineteenth century, thanks to the codification of the language in 1843. Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795-1861), for example, is one of the founders of modern Slavicism (linguistic study of Slavic languages). It is Ľudovít Štúr (1815-1856) who made the second codification possible. The 19th century is also marked by the writer Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817-1886), who was also the leader of the Slovak uprising of 1848-1849.
Committed authors
Long overwhelmed by the influence of Prague and the Czech cultural movements, Slovak literature has followed two lines: expressing nationalist sentiment and denouncing oppressive power through the documentary genre. Under communism, exiled dissidents created strong works against the regime, such as Ladislav's book Mňačko (1919-1994) Late Reportage (Oneskornené Reportažé) about the trials under Stalin. Let us take a look at two national poets Pavol Országh (1849-1921) and Janko Jesensky (1874-1945). The former chose the artistic name Hviezdoslav to literally "glorify the stars". Hviezda, in Slovak, means "the star" and slávit, "to glorify". This lyrical, epic and dramatic poet breaks with romantic reverie, whipping the will of his compatriots oppressed materially, politically and intellectually by the Hungarians. In the absence of Slovak schools, Hviezdoslav was forced to study in Hungarian. At the university, he advocated the union of Slovaks with Czechs. He sympathized with Mazaryk and, during a trip to Prague in May 1918, he made a resounding speech for unity. In the early years of the first Czechoslovak Republic, he acted in the same way as a member of parliament. He also opened a window on the world to the Slovaks, translating the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Pushkin... In his work we find an influence of these authors and contemporary Czech poets, but his real master is Sládkovič, a Slovak poet from the Štúr group who laid the foundations of Slovak poetry. After the first romantic wanderings were abandoned, Hviezdoslav found a firm and disciplined expression of his feelings about nature, the cosmos and life in Palms (1885-1895), Sonnets (1886) and Nostalgia (1903), of his religious feeling in Psalms and Hymns (1885) and of his moral, national and humanistic convictions in his Bloody Sonnets (1919). His masterpiece is The Forester's Woman (1886), an exaltation of the splendour of Slovak nature and common people, without idealisation, except for his belief in the goodness of the people. Now let us talk about Janko Jesensky. This young, cultured lawyer began his career as a poet with elegant, slightly ironic, Pushkin-inspired verses, and then turned to more social and national concerns (after 1918). During the First World War, he spent time in a Hungarian prison and then led Czechoslovak troops into Russia on the side of the Allies. In the inter-war period, he published nostalgic and revolted poetry with The Way to Freedom. He became a high-ranking official of the Czechoslovak Republic and retained his lucidity and critical sense. Democrats testify to his keen sense of observation of social and national life. He was always an opponent of bureaucrats, Slovak separatists, fascists and communists, a firm and courageous defender of freedom, democracy and unity in Czechoslovakia, and he was not afraid to express, often with biting sarcasm, his revolt at the sight of the Slovak state "under German protection". His poems "Against the Night", "Black Days", "To the Wickedness of the Day" were smuggled during the war. He was promoted to national artist in 1945.
The new scene
Since the break-up of the Soviet bloc and the Velvet Revolution, the Slovak literary scene has had to recreate itself and think about the new role of the writer. The current trend is marked by a pronounced taste for creation mixing humour and lightness, creating absurd situations, mirroring a paradoxical and changing society. Who are these new authors? Their name is Peter Pišťanek (1960-1995), who was notably noticed for his work Rivers of Babylon published in 1991, the first volume of a much appreciated trilogy. Mila Haugova also, who depicts in her poems the relationship between men and women through the body. Erotic love, pain and suffering are among her favourite themes. In 2019 an anthology of her texts, Les Danubiennes, was published by Éditions Pétra. Also worthy of mention is the novelist Jana Beňová, who wrote her first collection of poems in 1993 and continued various publications, including her novel Parker in 1999, until she won the European Literature Prize for Slovakia with Plan odprevádzania . Last but not least, Uršuľa Kovalyk is a novelist and short story writer, but also a playwright and director. She is also the founder of the Homeless Theatre. She is involved in helping the homeless and defending women's rights. She is internationally successful. Her novel Femme de seconde main (2017), translated into French, tells the story of a woman who sells her friendship. In 2019, she publishes L'Écuyère, which tells the story of young teenage girls in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s, at the end of the Eastern Bloc, marking the arrival of a new world.
