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AGAINST PROGRESS: UTOPIA, IDYLL, NOSTALGIA AND MELANCHOLY
In fact, until the late nineteenth century Slovak literature remained a key
element of the National Revival movement, its scope transcending individual
poetics or literary periods. It took on a high-profile role in promoting and
implementing the idea of political, national and cultural identity, significantly
affecting the artistic autonomy of literature and foregrounding particular
genres as well as the preferences of the period as regards poetics.
A further issue that highlights the importance of art and literature in the
National Revival project is that at any given time leading cultural figures in
Slovakia tended to associate various facets of cultural modernity with the
work of specific authors. Whereas the Slovak Romantics (Stir, Hurban,
et al.) railed against “Byronism”, which for them represented Western¬
style Romanticism’, the next generation was critical of “Zolaism”, that is,
naturalism, and artistic currents of the fin de siécle. Not surprisingly, their
objections were articulated in similar terms.
The main argument against the trends they rejected was that art ought to
be a manifestation of the specific identity of the Slovak culture and nation,
of its “essence”, which came to be referred to as its “specific selfhood”. Key
themes reflected by the literary discourse of this period thus aimed to develop
and assert this principle and ensure its survival in confrontation with the
“Other” and the antagonistic forces that the “Other” represented. Such a
subordination of literature and art to the collective principle and social ideal
derived from a classical, that is, pre-modern, foundation: by such reasoning
art is an expression of the integration of community and society, articulating
its spirit.
The aesthetic ideal of the unity of Goodness, Truth and Beauty, which
defined the idea of “high” art until the end of the nineteenth century (authors
such as Svetozar Hurban Vajansky and Pavol Orszagh Hviezdoslav’’), also had
its origins in a classical model of art. It was used as an argument to expunge
(as understood in terms of Hegel’s aesthetics) from the art and literature of
the time everything perceived as ugly, low and extreme, failing to conform
to the prevailing moral conventions. Every presentation of everyday life that
did not aspire to the (national) ideal was also seen as problematic. Because
of this strategy, individual aspects of life were idealised and forms of literary
representation and genres promoting this approach were prioritised.
This is clearly shown in the model of literature established in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century (1880-1900), which in many respects formed the
* Matei Calinescu further points out that „at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
word romantic (is) a synonym for modern” (Matei Calinescu: Five Faces of Modernity.
Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, Durham, Duke University
Press, 1987, 37.
Svetozar Hurban Vajansky (1847-1916) writer, journalist, literary critic and politician, a key
figure of contemporary ideology; Pavol Orszägh Hviezdoslav (1849-1921) poet, playwright,
translator, regarded as the greatest Slovak poet.
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