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IVANA TARANENKOVÁ
and poetry of Vajansky). Another important aspect of the aforementioned
attitude towards Modernity was a discreet and melancholic distance, which is
present, most prominently, in the work of Kukucin. His short stories, novellas
and novels offered an idyllic representation of the traditional and archaic
values of rural communities. They also showed that this world belonged to
the past and was disappearing due to the irreversible forces of progress. This
awareness of unavoidable changes to individual lives but also to the life of
societies was accompanied by a pronounced melancholy and nostalgia.
Keywords: Slovak culture and literature of the nineteenth century, National
Revival, Modernity, Utopia, Idyll, Nostalgia, Melancholia
In the course of the nineteenth century, Slovak culture was shaped by the
ongoing process of the National Awakening. Various currents within this
process aimed to transform the Slovaks from a mere ethnic group into
a modern nation and establish its culture within the European context. The
emergent culture evolved gradually, asserting its identity, complexity and
continuity. Its beginnings date back to the 1840s, specifically the year 1843,
which marks a seminal event, that of the codification of the written form of
the Slovak language. Henceforth the language would be used to produce works
of literature and culture. While other European cultures had undergone the
same process earlier, in Slovakia it started later and lasted almost until the
early years of the twentieth century.
Slovak culture in the nineteenth century — characterised as it was by a
discontinuity in efforts and achievements as well as a continuity that emerged
only slowly, indeed sometimes as an arbitrary artefact — is perfectly aligned
with the concept of revivalist cultures, as developed by Czech literature scholar
Vladimir Macura in his book Signs of Birth (Znameni zrodu, first published
in 1985). The book explores the relatively new cultures of small nations whose
evolution may be regarded as “hobbled and complex”? and whose main aim
was achieving the “ideal of an undivided, ‘full’ national culture”.*
Writing about the National Revival, Macura speaks of “miraculousness”
and “implausibility”.* He points to a feature of the National Revival process
occurring in the awareness of its main actors right from its outset, namely
the fact that the very event of the National Revival, as manifested in the
codification of Slovak as a written language and resulting in a series of further
literary, cultural and social initiatives, is a historic moment which appears
out of the blue from the given paradigm of reality, resisting the established
? Vladimir Macura: Zuameni zrodu, Praha, H&H, 1995, 13.
Ibidem, 14.
* Ibid., 5.
* 430 +