The establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic from the ruins of Austro-Hungary was generally felt to be national salvation at the twelfth hour. Slovaks, who in Hungary had only dreamed (in vain) of "a region" - an administrative area where they could, if not decide, then at least "discuss" about their own affairs, became the cofounders of a state: they entered it as an equal with the Czech nation. Slovak, an important attribute of the nation, became the official language in Slovakia. (The idea of a single Czechoslovak nation accepted two languages, Slovak and Czech. However, it did not consider them to be two separate languages, but two versions of a non-existent Czechoslovak language.) A Slovak education system started to be built on a national basis, from primary schools to universities. Because Slovakia - for objective reasons - did not have the necessary teaching staff, Czech teachers filled the places at Slovak schools. Thanks to them, Slovak culture and civilisation quickly started to advance. The cultural equalisation of Slovakia and the Czech lands was meant to lead to the reinforcement of reciprocity. In 1931, Štefan Krčméry wrote the following on this issue: "The greatest misunderstanding between the Czechs and Slovaks, also in cultural and literary affairs, came from the imbalance of powers they met with in the common state following the great historical event of emancipation. This imbalance had mainly grown since the 1870s. It is enough to know that at that time, when Prague received a Czech university and the Czechs had a developed education system from elementary schools upwards, the Slovaks' cultural institution Matica slovenská was abolished (1875), their secondary schools were taken away (there were three) and they were gradually deprived of elementary schools by the Hungarian government. Because of this, independence found the Czechs in full bloom, while supressed Slovak life was at its lowest point. This imbalance best explained the misunderstandings of the post-independence years. Slovakia was not equal to developing the necessary and manifested pressure to counter natural Czech pressure. But by breathing freely and with a Slovak education and the good help of Czech intellectuals in every field, Slovakia will become stronger and thereby achieve a Czechoslovak balance in a natural process." In an imbalance of powers like there was, it was difficult to talk about reciprocity. Reality, however, did not really confirm Krčméry's prediction. By the end of the 30s the schools had produced so many Slovak graduates that they could have saturated Slovakia's needs, but many could not find work, because the jobs were occupied by Czechs. Tension increased between members of both nations.
           The issue of Slovak autonomy was also sensitive from the outset. The Czechoslovak Republic was a democratic state, but at the same time centralist, governed from Prague. Slovakia did have a minister with full power for Slovakia (and he was a Slovak, Vavro Šrobár), and later a president, but with almost no powers. The greater part of Slovak society was therefore willing to identify with those parties whose manifestos included autonomy for Slovakia (Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, the Slovak National Party). Autonomy for Slovakia was mentioned in one document (the Pittsburgh Agreement) of May 1918, which arose from T. G. Masaryk's discussions with emigre associations of Czechs and Slovaks in the USA. This point of the agreement was not realised and this caused problems within the state. Slovakia gained autonomy after the dramatic events of 1938 (Munich Diktat, Vienna Arbitrage), as a result of which the Czechoslovak Republic lost its border regions (the Czechs Sudetenland, Slovakia its whole south border area, which fell to Hungary). Slovak autonomy (with a government and parliament in Bratislava) only lasted a few months. A Slovak state was established on 14^th March 1939. A day later the Czech lands became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The existence of a Slovak state fulfilled or even exceeded national expectations in the long-range historical perspective, but since this state was established in extraordinary circumstances (it was actually forced on the Slovaks by A. Hitler, who used it to pursue his own aims) it carried an element of failure from the outset. And it happened six years later. The anti-fascist Slovak National Uprising spoke up for the Czechoslovak Republic in 1944. On 1^st September, the Slovak National Council in Banská Bystrica released a Declaration, in which it made public and substantiated this. The re-established Czechoslovak Republic began to function again when the members of the exiled government in London led by president E. Beneš moved to Košice and leaders of the communist party (K. Gottwald and others) joined them from Moscow. The new Czechoslovak government was created from both of these groups on 4^th April 1945. Another chapter in Slovak history started to be written.
           But let us return to 1918 and the subsequent years. There was clear development throughout cultural and literary life. Cultural institutions were created or the abolished ones reformed (Matica slovenská, Slovenské narodné divadlo - Slovak National Theatre, etc.), artistic unions and organisations were founded (Spolok slovenských spisovateľov - Association of Slovak Writers, Umelecká beseda - Artistic Society), artistic and literary periodicals started to appear (Mladé Slovensko, Svojeť, Vatra, Elán, Slovenské smery, etc.). Literature became differentiated because it had lost its function of saving the nation. This function had a contradictory effect. On one hand it galvanised national awareness and maintained Slovak society on the level of a nationally homogenous whole. It took on non-literary tasks because there was no-one else to do them in hostile conditions. On the other hand this supplementation was at the expense of its internal development. It was a collective voice, the individual sphere was only reflected fragmentarily. Its presence in works of literature even aroused anger among national ideologists. Since Štúrite times (let us only mention Sládkovič's Marína), the tendency had been to return strayed literary "sheep" back to the collective national fold. Asignificant part of foreign literature also succumbed to national "censorship", especially that which pursued goals other than national. And this led to the isolation of Slovak literature. Ján Hrušovský, a leading prose writer of the interwar period, later pointed out this isolation: "And outside the Martin school (the author means the work of Vajanský and Kukučín), which represented basically all pre-independence Slovak literature, the great European spiritual life with all of its wonders and confusions, with all of its vigour, was flooded by a huge expansion. But we in Slovakia knew little of this gigantic flood, learnt almost nothing of it, our souls remained untouched, unimproved by it, we lived in the world that the hermetically sealed Martin school created for us, and we did not know that it was a very narrow world and unreal, ungenuine to boot. Practically all of Slovakia was one large kotlín and those who dared to open a door or window a little, so that some of the flood outside the kotlín could come inside, were energetically implored to quickly close it by the kotlinians, because this flood was unhealthy, a danger to both the body and soul. And may God preserve us from a leak from the kotlín. A revolution had to come to open the kotlínians' eyes and show them that it was beautiful outside, much more beautiful than in the kotlín, and that it was gratifying to walk in this world outside the kotlín." Kotlín is - as we know - the title of the novel in which Vajanský settled a score with the "foreign" hlasists (incidentally this title relates to the noun "kotol" (boiler) and J. Hrušovský used it here as a symbol for the whole of pre -independence Slovakia, especially cultural. Hrušovský is essentially right, although as for literary creation, Kotlín was "worn out" even before independence. We could not imagine e.g. Slovak modern without a connection to the European literary flood. But it is true that there was a national literary "filter", more precisely an ideological filter, which was also used in the case of Slovak modern.
           The first endeavour of the post-revolution writer was therefore to escape from the local kotlín and taste the "forbidden fruit" of foreign literature and the modern European flood. Expressionism was the writing on the wall and this really influenced the young generation of prose writers. But there were also remnants of past periods and these were also realised after 1918. We have spoken of naturalism and this found a representative in the interwar period. He was Ladislav Nádaši-Jégé (1966 - 1940), a doctor from Dolný Kubín , onetime member of the Prague association Detvan, where he reviewed Zola's novel Therese Raquin and later (in 1891) he wrote an article on another of Zola's novels - Money - for Slovenské pohľady. In it he vindicated Zola as a serious writer (not a pornographer), who was deserving of the reader's attention in Slovakia. It was a diametrically different opinion to that which e.g. Vajanský held about Zola. E. Zola also influenced Jégé's work. Jégé adopted Zola's biological concept of man and applied it in his work. He understood man as "the king of the animal kingdom", i.e. as the last link in evolution. He was convinced that instinct prevailed over rational behaviour in human acts. L. Nádaši started to publish at the turn of the 1880s and 90s, but then became silent for a quarter of a century and entered literature for the second time after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. The critic Štefan Krčméry ranked him in the group of authors with "loosened tongues", i.e. those who the arrival of freedom returned to literature. Ladislav Nádaši (after 1918 he took the pseudonym Jégé, the initials of his pre-war pseudonym Ján Grob) surprised the reader in that for a whole decade he published historical novellas (Wieniawského legenda - Wieniawski Legend, 1922) and novels (Adam Šangala, 1924; Svätopluk, 1928). Other authors from the realist generation took their themes from history, but their aims were different. Jégé wanted to express his personal opinion on mankind through it and demonstrated it using characters from history. In doing this he deheroised the past. He more fully expressed his scepticism of mankind and the base motivations of its actions in the novel Cesta životom (Road of Life, 1930). It is a novel mercilessly analysing the pre-independence society of the gentry and petit bourgeoisie as experienced by the author in his forty years of medical practice in Orava. Unlike Zola and French naturalism per se, which wanted to be a "science", Jégé brought a strong layer of moralisation into literature.
           In post-independence Slovak prose (but also poetry) developments were through the work of the younger generation. It became so acquainted with Europe that its members went to the front as soldiers in the first world war. Their appalling experience on the front was also projected in their work.
           It took up the most space in the work of Ján Hrušovský (1892 - 1975). He sent stylised reports from the front on everything that engaged him to Živena. He assembled these reports, which radiate freshness and sincerity, into a book and gave it the title Zo svetovej vojny (From the World War, 1919). The theme of the war also continues in Hrušovský's novella Muž s protézou (Man with a Prosthesis, 1925) and dominates in the novel Peter Pavel na prahu nového sveta (P. P. on the Threshold of a New World, 1930). In the first case the author suggestively demonstrated the destructive power of war on the human character: Lieutenant Seeborn has a wooden prosthesis instead of a heart and treats his surroundings (two women) and himself in accordance with this. In the second case Hrušovský filled the war story with patriotic ideology, which - brought into the story from outside - weakened the impact of the brutal reality of war. J. Hrušovský went out into the "world" after the first world war ended, as he became press attache at the Czechoslovak embassy in Rome. He took a number of noteworthy novellas from his stay in Italy in the collections Pompiliova Madona (Pompilius's Madonna, 1923), Zmok a iné poviedky (The Magic Cockerel and Other Tales, 1925) and Dolorosa (1925). These foreign motifs were a welcome change in Slovak 20^th century prose. J. Hrušovský became a popular prose writer through his series of historical adventure novels (Jánošík, František Ferdinand, etc.) He first published them in instalments in newspapers (journalism can also be felt in his serious literature) and then later as books. The aim was to draw the mass reader towards literature.
           Tido J. Gašpar (1893 - 1972) went to the frontlines of the first world war as a student at the marine academy in Vienna. Other experiences and inspirations pushed his wartime experience into the background in his work. Despite this, Gašpar's novellas with a war theme (Červený koráb - Red Ship, 1931; Námorníci - Sailors, 1933) are among his best prose. Real life lies behind his dramatic stories (in Červený koráb he depicts a rebellion by Yugoslavian sailors). This can not be said of the majority of his work (Hana a iné novely (H. and other novellas), 1920; Deputácia mŕtvych (Deputation of the Dead), 1922; Karambol (Crash), 1925; Pri Kráľovej studni (At the King's Well), 1929; etc.), where verbal fabulation and bombastic stylisation concealed fragments of emotional experiences. Gašpar was also an adroit journalist; he had a regular magazine column called O čom je reč? (What's the talk about?). It is a series of feuilletons, which he later published in a book of the same name (1938). In the period of the wartime Slovak state he entered politics (he was head of the propaganda office) and so his pen scraped with sharpened nationalism. Gašpar's former Bohemian past (he caught it colourfully in the book of memoirs Zlatá fantázia (Golden Fantasy), 1969) did not at all suggest that he would end up in the services of a totalitarian state.
           Two other authors from the first post-revolution generation, Janko Alexy (1894 - 1970) and Gejza Vámoš (1901 - 1956), came into contact with the first world war, but their experience of war did not enter their prose. Janko Alexy was an academic painter. His literary activity puts the finishes touches to the colour of Slovak prose of the twenties. In motif, his work is closely linked to his own autobiography, from his childhood, which he spent as the son of a master chimney sweep, through his education (a significant part consists of stories from the Prague academy of arts), to the profession of secondary school drawing teacher, activities related to the establishment of the art colony in Piešťany, and his travels around Slovakia, during which he and his two companions, the painters Miloš Bazovský and Zolo Palugyay, "taught" their audiences to appreciate art and sold them their paintings. The author realised this "centripetal force" of motifs (childhood, birth, family, neighbours, teachers, students, students' parents, teaching staff, painter friends) in short genres (Jarmilka, 1924; Grétka; Na voľnej vôľuške - Happy-Go-Lucky, 1932, but also the lengthy novel Hurá! - Hurray!, 1935; after the war he reworked it and published it under the new title Profesor Klopačka, 1949). Alexy's prose is characterised by a light narrative style (all of his work is based on narration). All of his work emanates an affectionate relationship to his characters, which he depicts with understanding and empathy.

Gejza Vámoš

           Gejza Vámoš, a spa doctor by profession he also had a doctorate of arts for the dissertation Princíp krutosti (The Principle of Cruelty; published in book form in 1996), who in 1939 emigrated to China for racial reasons and then to Brazil, where he died after the war, modelled himself on a completely different type of prose. Vámoš' life philosophy was similar to Jégé's. He, too, regarded mankind as merely the last link of evolution and had no illusions about it. He was a materialist, determinist, naturalist, but also an expressionistic visionary and romantic in the emotional sphere. At the same time, he was an old testament zealot, harshly scolding people, but trying to teach them how to live rationally. He made his debut with the collection of cultivated novellas Editino očko (Edita's Little Eye, 1925), which were clealy influenced by German expressionism. He depicts and explores his characters as pathological cases. All of Vámoš' characteristic traits are to be found to an amplified extent in the two volume novel set in a medical environment Atómy boha (Atoms of God, 1928). Naturalistic descriptions and popular scientific passages are intermingled with melodramatic sequences (the novel's hero Doctor Zurian works at a venereal diseases department, where he tries to discover a serum for a sexually transmitted disease; he tries it on himself, infects himself and commits suicide with his lover.) Štefan Krčméry called this novel "the most nihilistic work of Slovak litarature". (Two years later he characterised Jégé's novel Cesta životom as "the most pessimistic work of Slovak literature".) The critics had reservations about Vámoš novel because the author did not master the genre. "He lacks constructive-creative abilities. He cut the story of his novel into pieces, fragmentised it with many situations which go beyond the whole and work almost like independent stories in the novel." (Andrej Mráz) The compositional destruction and wide range of approaches in the novel Atómy boha are mainly attractive to supporters of postmodernism. From the standpoint of construction, another of Vámoš' novels Odlomená haluz (Broken Bough, 1934) is more integrated. In it, the author addresses the issue of the integration of Jews into society. His solution is based on the idea of the biological unity of all people. He is against caste systems, and racial or religious classification. The Jewish community in Piešťany took offence at the flippancy with which Vámoš, himself of Jewish origin, treated Jewish religious rites and cast him out. The comic novella about military exercises Jazdecká legenda (Cavalry Legend, 1932) is an intermezzo in Vámoš' work.
           Ján Hrušovský called his prose writing generation a bridge "from pre-independence Slovak literature to modern literature, to a literature of the young and youngest. Our middle generation was never young and modern enough, not because we lacked good will at the time, but because it was first necessary to come to terms with neglected affairs." Military and foreign motifs (Hrušovský, Gašpar), idyllic impressions (Alexy) and naturalistic revelations in a medical environment (Vámoš) were thematic innovations. An attempt to exceed the boundaries of traditional realism prevailed here, although there was no new paradigm in this generation. Hrušovský and Vámoš had a fascination with expressionism (although only in the form of sense of life), Gašpar's prose features lyricisation and ornamentalisation of language. Alexy was close to impressionism.
           The somewhat younger Ivan Horváth (1904 - 1960) modernised his work through exotic subjects and eloquent poeticism. The "true" prosaic story does not matter to him; he cares about its interpretation, the tools he uses. In Horváth's work we find modernist elements such as association, dreaminess, impressiveness, etc. Horváth is at home in an urban environment (the novella Laco a Bratislava from the collection Človek na ulici - Man in the Street), 1928), and this is unusual because the town was an alien environment for the Slovak prose writer for a long time yet, a morally depraved world, from which authors fled to the virginally pure countryside. The novella's hero sees Bratislava as a world of civilisation and technology, but also a benevolent place for human relationships. Every chapter of the novella has a motto and the names of their authors clearly show Horváth's orientation on modern world literature: Ph. Soupault, P. Girard, O. Wilde, K. Hamsun, G. Apollinaire, Lautreámont... The novella is close to the author's experience and can be considered his "emotional autobiography". The little love story about two young people corresponds with the atmosphere of the town, which is also a subject of the hero's emotional interest. The title of Horváth's next book (Vízum do Európy - Visa to Europe), 1930) characterises the majority of writers' endeavours (and not only writers') between the two wars, when the doors of the "kotlín" were opened and Slovak authors could (and wanted to) run out into the world so that they could be blown by modern winds. The five novellas' stories take place in five European cities in the 20s and their heroes (of different nationalities) move in bohemian environments and experience life in different ways. The author is not concerned with expressing eternal truths about life, nor with the social side of life. It is more of a capricious intellectual game in which the reader also participates. The essayist style book Návrat do Paríža (Return to Paris; it was not published until 1946) observes the cultural atmosphere of prewar Paris. He returns to the theme of bohemian artists in the novella Život s Laurou (Life with Laura, 1948).

Milo Urban

           Paradoxically, the most successful authors in the interwar period were those who stayed "at home" with their work, who did not go abroad, but rediscovered the roots of Slovak life in the countryside, already depicted so many times in the era of realism. However, it was a different countryside because it was seen through different eyes. Milo Urban (1904 - 1982) saw the countryside as an ancient chorus which compels the criminal to confess his crime (the novella Za Vyšným mlynom - Beyond the Upper Mill), 1926). Laws of morality and justice clearly from the Bible apply in his countryside. A high ethos also resounds in the novellas in his book Výkriky bez ozveny (Calls without Echo, 1928) such as Rozprávka o Labudovi (Tale about Labuda), Tajomstvo Pavla Hrona (Pavel Hron's Secret), Svedomie (Conscience), Staroba (Old Age), etc. In the novel Živý bič (The Living Whip, 1928), which was a great victory of postwar Slovak prose, the collective hero is a whole village. It is a village in times of war, which bring suffering, hunger, death, moral decay. The villager, a victim of war, meekly submits himself to his fate for a long time, but eventually rebels. The rebellion is represented by Adam Hlavaj, a soldier who has deserted from the front and is hiding in the village. The village's rebellion is motivated by a desire for the fairer and more humane world which was meant to come after the war. But the postwar reality was different, as Milo Urban points out in his next novel Hmly na úsvite (Fog at Dawn, 1930). In it the author renounces the revolutionary solution of social problems. The working-class Sedmík, who is buried under a collapsed new building in Prague, rediscovers religion and from this position searches for a way out of the social and moral crisis. The author's retreat from the revolutionary solution of social issues at the same time signified a greater attachment to the national issue. Many aspects of interwar life are reflected in a panoramic view in the novel Hmly na úsvite. Urban's third novel V osídlach (In the Snares, 1939) confirmed his transfer from a social to national pole. Milo Urban stopped writing prose in the period of the Slovak state (1939 - 1945). He worked as a publicist (editor-in-chief of the newspaper Gardista) in the spirit of the nationalist regime. He was not allowed to publish for a whole decade after the war, but then the communist regime accepted him although it did not trust him. In three novels (Zhasnuté svetlá - Lights Off), 1957; Kto seje vietor (Who Sows the Wind), 1964; Železom po železe (Iron on Iron, 1996) he depicted - often in a publicist style - the period of Slovak history in which he also officiated: from the end of the 30s to 1945. The whole trilogy is "à clef", with the majority of characters, particularly politicians (beginning with the president and ministers) based on real people. Milo Urban went down this track again in four books of memoirs (Zelená krv - Green Blood, 1970; Kade-tade po Halinde - Here and There Around Halinda, 1992; Na brehu krvavej rieky - On the Bank of a River of Blood, 1994; Sloboda nie je špás - Freedom is No Joke, 1995), of which only the first (Urban's childhood and school years) came out under socialism; the others had to wait for its fall.

Jozef Cíger Hronský

           The prose writer Jozef Cíger Hronský (1896 - 1960) had a much longer road to success than Milo Urban. His first works (U nás - At Ours', 1923; Domov - Home, 1925; Medové srdce - Gingerbread Heart, 1929) do not digress beyond the boundaries of traditional Kukučín-like stories. But from this starting point, Hronský became a completely modern, European format prose writer within a decade. Various works set in both the town and countryside, such as the novels Žltý dom v Klokoči (Yellow House in Klokoč, 1927) and Proroctvo doktora Stankovského (Doctor Stankovský's Prophecy, 1930), were milestones on this road in which his talent was not yet fully revealed. This happened in subsequent books: Chlieb (Bread, 1931), Podpolianske rozprávky (Tales from below Poľana, 1932) and Jozef Mak (1933). A clear shift from the traditional realism of rural prose to expressionism can be seen in these works. It could be said that of all the interwar prose writers, Hronský was the most influenced by German expressionism. For Hronský, the countryside meant certainty; it had survived despite such upheavals as war, famine or emigration. The countryside is rooted in the soil and is therefore eternal. Hronský's rural characters are rooted in the land and ruled by their instincts. The mythisation of the countryside which is evident here, intensified the artistic effect of Hronský's prose and led straight to the next phase of Slovak prose's development - naturism. In Podpolianske rozprávky, Hronský revived the myth of the Slovak bandit. In the novel Jozef Mak, the hero personifies the "man in a million". He is characterised by passivity, fatedness, which predetermines his suffering. But suffering - according to the author - humanises man, therefore he implores his hero: "Suffer, Jozef Mak!". The philosophy of suffering (it also fills some of Hronský's other books) as a journey to humanism has an unquestionably religious origin. The novel Pisár Gráč (Gráč, the Scrivener, 1940) has a different nature. Through a complex subject, the author resolves the problem of the emotional relationship of a man who is not able to get over the trauma of war even many years after experiencing it. This trauma makes it difficult for him to communicate with people and only the woman he loves frees him from this. (All of Hronský's female characters are portrayed very convincingly. This is also the case in the collection of novellas Sedem sŕdc (Seven Hearts), 1934.) Of Hronský's other work, his novel in exile Andreas Búr Majster (A. B., the Master, 1948 in the USA; 1970 in Slovakia) should be mentioned. The author set the novel's story in the past (beginning of the 19^th century), but history is just a necessary backdrop. The theme is the integration of strong individuality into a collective. This theme has two poles: on one hand criticism of titanism (Andreas talks to God as if they are equals) and on the other a call for humility. Hronský's relationship to God was strengthened in exile - the novella Predavač talizmanov Liberius Gaius, (L. G., Seller of Talismans, 1947) shows this. Hronský's last novel Svet na Trasovisku (World in a Quagmire, 1960) is in a way the author's testament (it was published after his death), in which he indirectly justifies his emigration. He condemned the Slovak National Uprising (incidentally, partisans put him in prison for 24 hours), because it "annulled" the Slovak state. In the novel - for the first time in Hronský's work - all the characters are ideologically predetermined. This destroyed the artistic value of the novel, which aimed to be truly great.

Ján Smrek

           What was the situation in Slovak poetry after 1918? The establishment of a common state of the Czechs and Slovaks (this was due to the Slovak M. R. Štefánik, who was tragically killed on 4^th May 1919, as well as T. G. Masaryk and E. Beneš) was registered earliest in poetry, by all generations beginning with Hviezdoslav. Martin Rázus (Hoj, zem drahá) and Štefan Krčméry (Keď sa sloboda rodila) published independent anthologies on this historic milestone. However, older poets gradually stopped writing (Hviezdoslav died in 1921) and the youngsters took up the baton of progress. The initial festive pathos gradually vanished from poetry, but the feeling that a wide space was opening up for Slovakia and its future existence remained and this filled poets with optimism. Ján Smrek (real name Ján Čietek, 1898 - 1982) expressed the most convincing feeling of optimism in his poetry. After a slightly tearfull debut (Odsúdený k večitej žízni - Condemned to Eternal Thirst), 1922) Smrek "found himself" in poems full of youthful elan, vitality, optimism and pleasure in the small things of life (Cválajúce dni - Galloping Days, 1925; Božské uzly - Divine Knots, 1929; Iba oči - Nothing but Eyes, 1933). Motifs of the sea, sailing boats, port pubs, exotic countries express awareness of freedom, independence, undreamt-of possibilities. Smrek's second powerful source of inspiration was love, a relationship to a woman, constantly repeated in different variations and giving Smrek's poems a gentle eroticism (Básnik a žena - The Poet and the Woman), 1934). When the clouds of war started to move over Europe, Smrek (with other poets spread around the world) returned home and searched for beauty in nature and his homeland (Zrno - Grain, 1935). And when military conflict really broke out, the poet of youth and love and drifter around the world became a passionate supporter of humanism and culture (Hostina - Feast, 1944; Studňa - Well, 1945). In the times of real socialism Smrek was the only Slovak poet who could not be deceived by slogans about a better future and clear-sightedly discerned that socialism meant the end of freedom (including creative freedom) and democracy. This part of his work was published in the collection Proti noci (Night Falling) in 1993.
           Ján Smrek was also an important publicist (he established and edited the cultural monthly Elán, 1930 - 1947) and translator, mainly of Hungarian poetry.

Emil Boleslav Lukáč

           Smrek's contemporary and antipode Emil Boleslav Lukáč (1900 - 1979) brought completely different tones to post-independence Slovak poetry. If Smrek was inspired by exotic countries and sang of female beauty, Lukáč was worried by various problems and dilemmas of the modern intellectual, faith and scepticism, the contradictions of reason and emotion. A protestant pastor by profession, he verged on blasphemy in his doubt, but he then managed to reach new heights on the wings of his faith in mankind Spoveď (Confession), 1922; Dunaj a Seina (The Danube and the Seine), 1925; Hymny k sláve Hosudarovej (Hymns to the Fame of the Lord, 1926). The doubter and believer E. B. Lukáč was also troubled by love, because he realised that the relationship between a man and a woman is complicated and that everyone is alone even in love (O láske neláskavej - On Unloving Love, 1928). The war and dictatorship roused the citizen (he had already engaged himself in this sense in the collection wolf's song, 1929), democrat and upholder of freedom and humanity in Lukáč (Elixír, 1934; Moloch, 1938; Bábel, 1944). Lukáč replaced Smrek's light songlike verses, which were often recited, with heavy (sometimes melancholy) choking verse, full of dichotomies and pulpit rhetoric. His poetic reflection, however, went deep and caught all that was relevant in the 20^th century (Stĺp hanby - Pillar of Shame, 1961).
           Lukáč also established and ran a literary monthly (Tvorba, 1940 - 1950) to which he contributed religious-reflective articles (Kam ho položili - Where they put him, 1943). He translated from French and Hungarian. The communist regime persecuted both Smrek and Lukáč; they were allowed to publish later, but their work stayed on the fringe of development.
           Valentín Beniak (1894 - 1973), whose journey to the highest summits of poetry lasted longer, belonged to Smrek and Lukáč's generation. He entered poetry with the collection Tiahnime ďalej oblaky (Clouds, Let's Move On, 1928), with the traditional theme of the countryside and home and poetic neosymbolism. In his next anthologies Ozveny krokov (The Echoes of the Steps, 1931), Kráľovská reťaz (Royal Chain, 1933) and Lunapark (Fairground, 1936) he mainly depicts his experiences of travelling to Italy and France. The collection Poštový holub (Carrier Pigeon, 1936) marked a certain divide in Beniak's poetry. His light poetic verse was replaced by serious reflection of life and social conflict. Bukvica (Beechnut, 1938) bears all the drama of the period leading up to the military conflict and German nazism's threat to the Czechoslovak Republic.

Valentín Beniak

The poet welcomed the establishment of the Slovak state with the series of topical poems Vigília (Vigil, 1939) and Druhá vigília (Second Vigil, 1942). The collections Žofia (Sophia, 1941), Popolec (Ash Wednesday, 1942) and Igric (Minstrel, 1944) form the pinnacle of Beniak's poetry. His reflection of the world and history deepen in them in an effective form. He directly absorbed the nation's fate, its troubled past and present, and inserted his passionate mediation into wide breathing dactylic verse (other poets: J. Kostra, P. Horov, surrealists, also used this type of verse). In all three books the poet works with ambiguous symbolism (Sofia does not just represent womankind, but also life, its meaning and the wisdom of age). In the third collection Beniak identifies with an old Slavic minstrel, singer and poet, and his song is a song about love. After 1945 Beniak mainly translated world poetry. Collections of his original poetry only started to appear since the late 60s (Hrachor - Vetch, 1967; Plačúci amor - Weeping Amor, 1969; Sonety podvečerné - Twilight Sonnets, 1970, etc.) His poetic virtuosity increased even more in them as he presented the motifs of love, experience and wisdom in independent poetic forms.
           While Martin Rázus fought for national autonomy (the young poet Andrej Žarnov, real name MUDr. František Šubík, had an even more radical nationalist position; the censor confiscated his debut Stráž pri Morave - Guard on the Morava in 1925), a group of leftwing authors, concentrated around the magazine DAV (1924) and inspired by the Russian revolution, started a struggle in literature for a just social order. The group was created in Prague, where the Slovak youth went to university en masse and crystallised ideologically and artistically in a culturally developed and differentiated environment. Czech left-wing poets (especially J. Wolker, J. Hora, J. Seifert, V. Nezval, etc.) and literati as a whole had a stimulative influence on our davists. And for many they did not stop being an example even after they renounced "proletarian poetry" and became poetist (V. Nezval) and surrealist poets.
           The first "proletarian poet" in Slovakia was Ján Rob Poničan (1902 - 1978), a solicitor and public notary by profession, whose debut Som, myslím, cítim a vidím, milujem všetko, len temno nenávidím (I am, I think, I feel and see, I love everything, I only hate darkness, 1923) shook off old social certainties, religion and nationality, and developed a revolutionary agenda. The quite unskilful verse drew attention because of the author's revolutionary stance, which smacked of heresy. Š. Krčméry rejected such art as "foreign feathers". He noticed that it had roots outside Slovakia. In later anthologies Poničan moderated his rebellious tone (Demontáž - Disassembly, 1929; Večerné svetlá - Evening Lights, 1932; Angara, 1934; Póly - Poles, 1937), and paid more attention to the formal side of verse, but in Večerné svetlá he, too, succumbed to poetism. Poničan was also a productive prose writer (Stroje sa pohli - The Machines Stirred, 1935; Pavučina - The Web, 1945, etc.) and the author of several dramas.

Laco Novomeský

The rudimnetary Ján Poničan was followed by the cultivated poet Laco Novomeský (1904 - 1976), editor of DAV and other communist newspapers, a politician after 1945, accused and convicted as a "bourgeous nationalist" in the 50s but rehabilitated in 1963 and again present in Slovak cultural life. He debuted with the poetry collection Nedeľa (Sunday, 1927). Without superficial revolutionary pathos and emotions, he depicted the contradictions and inconsistencies of the world, which does not give the common man much of a chance at lifelong happiness. Another collection, Romboid (1932), influenced by poetism, introduced free metaphor and association. Novomeský dedicated it to the memory of revolutionary romantic Janko Kráľ and so joined the local tradition of revolting poets. In Otvorené okná (Open Windows, 1935), he could no longer associate the social reality with concrete images and considered the world's fate in the chaotic 20^th century. In the poem Aeroplán nad mestom (Aeroplane over the Town) he challenged the world's constancy and stability. Laco Novomeský's best work is the anthology Svätý za dedinou (The Saint beyond the Village, 1939). In the second half of the 30s, conflicts grew into armed encounters, civil war broke out in Spain, Europe shook with convulsions and a "dance of death" and the poet started to wonder if the word could do anything to change the uncertainties of the world in this "time of rifles, daggers and lament". Novomeský published another three collections (Vila Tereza - The Villa Theresa), 1963; Do mesta 30 minút (30 Minutes to Town), 1963; Stamodtiaľ a iné - Out from There and other Poems, 1964) after his rehabilitation. The last anthology presents verses he wrote in prison. Despite everything he endured there, Novomeský stayed true to his convictions. Novomeský's publicist articles helped to clarify the issue of socialist literature. His opinions did not coincide with the dogmatic positions of official party ideologists.
           So-called socialist literature had a wider base in Slovakia. Fraňo Kráľ (1903 - 1955) entered poetry at the beginning of the 30s. (Čerň na palete - Black on the Palette, 1930; Balt - The Baltic, 1931; Pohľadnice - Postcards, 1936). Tones of defiance alternate with motifs of social privation, TB, and prostitution, in his poems. This image of the world was not just bleak; it was unconvincing, flowing into empty verbalism. They became aware of this danger first in the Czech lands, where proletarian propaganda replaced poetism. In Slovakia, poetism only influenced a few books of poetry (for Fraňo Kráľ it was Balt). In the second half of the 30s almost every author of socialist literature returned to involvement. The change of tone undoubtedly related to the instructions which came from the Soviet Union (Charkov 1932; Moscow 1936). The prose writer Peter Jilemnický (1901 - 1949), whose novels Pole neorané (Unploughed Field, 1932), Kus cukru (A Piece of Sugar, 1934), Kompas v nás (The Compass in Us, 1937) and Kronika (Chronicles, 1947) were regarded as cornerstones of socialist-realist literature and examples worthy of imitation, was inspired by his stay in the Soviet Union. His best novel is undisputedly Víťazný pád (Triumphant Fall, 1929), arising from the Slovak bandit tradition, which appeared before Jilemnický's journey to the Soviet Union. The social theme is presented here through the ballad genre. Fraňo Kráľ was also a socialist prose writer (Cesta zarúbaná - The Blocked Road, Stretnutie - Encounter), but did not achieve the goals set by Peter Jilemnický in his work.
           Several noteworthy initiatives appeared in Slovak literature in the mid 30s, signalling the stability and at the same time differentiation of the literary scene. In poetry, these were surrealism and catholic modern. The group of surrealist poets (Rudolf Fabry, Vladimír Reisel, Štefan Žáry, Ján Rak, Július Lenko, Pavel Bunčák, Ján Brezina), inspired by V. Nezval and French poets, assumed the function of progressive avant-garde. Rudolf Fabry laid the foundations of surrealism with his anthology Uťaté ruky (Severed Hands, 1935). The surrealists' work was initially received with confusion and regarded as an import. Surrealist critics and theoriticians (M. Bakoš, M. Považan, K. Šimončič), who searched for and found roots of this avant-garde poetry in the work of romantic rebel Janko Kráľ, tried to show its legitimacy and originality. The second initiative in the sphere of poetry is connected with the cultivation of Slovak Catholicism. The catholic modern poets (R. Dilong, Janko Silan, P. Gašparovič-Hlbina, J. Haranta, etc.) were mostly priests. Their source of inspiration became Henri Bremond's reflections of the poetic experience as mystic (Pure Poetry, Poetry and Prayer) and the work of French and Czech catholic poets. The contradiction between spirituality and worldliness was at the centre of their poetry. In prose, lyricising tendencies gave rise to Slovak naturism, inspired by French and German regionalism (J. Giono, H. Pourrat, C. F. Ramus, E. Wiechert), Scandinavian family sagas, etc., which conceived modernity in prose as a return to archaic forms of folk tales, ballads, folklore myths, and biblical stories. The authors (D. Chrobák, M. Figuli, F. Švantner) placed emphasis on narration (inspired by folk storytelling) or the emotional connotation of language, which occasionally did not lack biblical pathos. The rudimentary hero, who the authors placed in the co-ordinates of nature (and not society), reacting to the world around him through primary passion and instinct, corresponded with the works' reduced epic basis. "Although at a glance this person only vegetated on the edges of the disconnected problems of times of conflict, his elementary existence with nature and in nature was presented as a final bastion of "natural" humankind" (Oskár Čepan). Constant values in interpersonal relationships were emphasised: love, friendship, trust, understanding, virtue (Dobroslav Chrobák: Kamarát Jašek - Comrade Jašek, Drak sa vracia - Dragon's Return; Margita Figuli: Pokušenie - Temptation, Tri gaštanové kone - Three Chestnut Horses; František Švantner: Malka, Nevesta hôľ - The Bride of the Ridge). The prose of Ľudo Ondrejov (Zbojnícka mladosť - Bandit Youth, Jerguš Lapin), who also searched for the natural world in the world of nature, was close to the naturists, but placed emphasis on the myth of freedom and justice. Readers generally approved of the Slovak naturists' work and considered it an authentic expression of the national character. But it was far from nationalism (or "patriotism"), although it culminated in the wartime Slovak state, when the coefficient of national awareness increased sharply: "Even at the crossroad of history, naturist prose was not defeated by the conjuctural interpretation of national traditions. Its immersion in the original roots of slovacity in no way conflicted with its endeavour not to cut off communication with the world... The dualist statement "us and the world" was resolved by identifying both elements in the formulation "the world in us". (Oskar Čepan).
           But naturism became artistically obselete in the 40s. The work of the so-called poets of of the plot (Dominik Tatarka, Ján Červeň, Peter Karvaš, Július Barč-Ivan) was a reaction to the "magic of language", to lyricism, which became ornamentalism. They aimed to make their prose distinct by developing the subject rather than language and attempted to intellectualise their work in an expressive way. In the late 30s and 40s, Slovak drama, traditionally the weakest link in the chain of development, was also modernised. Playwrights broke away from concrete social problems and their comic treatment (the prototype was Ivan Stodola) and paid attention to existential and universal issues (Július Barč-Ivan, Peter Zvon, Štefan Králik).
          

Rudolf Fabry

          Surrealism. Let us at least briefly note how the above trends were presented in individual authors's work. Rudolf Fabry's (1915 - 1982) anthology Uťaté ruky (1935) spelled the dynamic arrival of Slovak surrealism. R. Fabry became acquainted with Czech surrealism while studying in Prague and succumbed to its charm. Uťaté ruky is an instructive book, in which the poet intentionally demonstrates the various poetological principles and poetic practice of new poetry ("poetry of new vision") such as: free verse, association, alogical metaphor, automatic text, etc. Fabry put traditional poetry into the first part of the anthology, which he crossed out to to show that it was passe. The technique of automatic writing and free association prevails in Fabry's second collection Vodné hodiny hodiny piesočné (Water Clock Clock of Sand, 1938). The pinnacle of Fabry's surrealist phase poetry is the cyclical compostion Ja je niekto iný (I Is Somebody Else, 1946), in which the time of war is projected in apocalyptic visions. At the end of the anthology there are already signs of a return to traditional poetry, which the changed era clearly called for. The line through traditional poetry in Fabry's debut lost its validity. Vladimír Reisel (1919) debuted with the collection of poems Vidím všetky dni a noci (I See All Days and Nights, 1939). In it he used the stimuli of the subsconcious and dreams. Liberated fantasy is "materialised" through the motifs of childhood, erotica, the universe, dreamlike visions. Reisel's second book Neskutočné mesto (Unreal City, 1943) has a different character. It is a composition in which the poet paid homage to Prague as he experienced it at the end of the 30s. The writer used little poetic surrealism, it is more a Kind of nostalgic impression. The conclusion of Reisel's surrealist phase was the anthology Zrkadlo a za zrkadlom (The Mirror and Behind the Mirror, 1945). Pavel Bunčák (1915 - 2000) did not succumb to all the seduction of new poetry, nor did he resort to automatic text or recording subconscious states or dreamlike uphoria. Although he uses standard surrealist metaphors, the poems in his collections Neusínaj, zažni slnko (Don't Fall Asleep, Turn on the Sun, 1941) and S tebou a sám (With You and Alone, 1946) interpret concrete emotions and ideological stances. We find an even more distinct deviation from canonised surrealist poetry in the collection Zomierať zakázané (Dying Forbidden, 1948), in which the poet reacts to the horrors of war and postwar ruin.
           Like P. Bunčák, Július Lenko (1914 - 2000) used elements of surrealism, but did not let himself be bound by the subconscious. He wanted to express his attitude towards the world around him, particularly wartime brutality, as clearly as possible (V nás a mimo nás - In Us and Outside Us, 1941; Pohorie beznádeje - Mountains of Despair, 1946). His next collection, Hviezdy ukrutnice (The Tyrannical Stars, 1947) signalled the author's inclination towards neosymbolism. Therefore his surrealist period did not last long either. This can not really be said of Ján Brezina (1917 - 1997), whose anthologies Nikdy sa nestretnem (I Never Meet Myself, 1941) and Volanie miesto spánku (Call instead of Sleep, 1946) signified his selfimmersion through his dreams. He expressed his relationship to the external world through complicated metaphor. Štefan Žáry (1918) introduced fireworks of metaphor and unfettered imagery into his poetry (Zvieratník - Zodiac, 1941; Stigmatizovaný vek - Stigmatised Age, 1944), but war motifs (he was a soldier) also entered and influenced his work (Pečať plných amfor - The Seal of Full Amphorae), 1944; Pavúk pútnik - The Spider Pilgrim, 1946).
           Slovak surrealism disintegrated very quickly in the altered social situation after 1945 and particularly after 1948. It needs to be said that poets willingly renounced their original poetological conquests and voluntarily complied with the new ideological postulate. Their next phase of development (the 50s) is marked by an extreme simplification and primitivisation of creation. It took a long time for the former surrealists to overcome - each in his own way - the creative crisis.
          
          Catholic modern was initiated by the poet Rudolf Dilong (1905 - 1986), a Fransiscan monk. He was an unusually productive poet, elaborating a great many external initiatives (he published dozens of collections in emigration after 1945) and an organiser of poetic activities (he co-founded the young generation magazine Postup - Progress, 1938). The war (he was a military chaplain on the eastern front) awoke in him a yearning for his close family, for home. He returned to his childhood in poetic reminiscences, but at the time he also published regime poems in praise of the Slovak state. The second leading figure of catholic modern was the poet Pavol Gašparovič Hlbina (1908 - 1977). He translated a lot of French symbolist and catholic poetry (P. Valéry, P. Claudel), which he also drew on in his own work. He translated Bremond's book Poetry and Prayer, which became a bible for this group of poets. He came from symbolism and was not immune to light poetism and surrealism (Harmonika - Harmonica, 1935; Dúha - Rainbow, 1937). Spiritual and national issues marked his poetry with an ethical solemnity (Belasé výšky - Azure Heights, 1938). After the war he unsuccessfully attempted to adapt his work to the new conditions.

Janko Silan

           Janko Silan (real name Ján Ďurka, 1914 - 1984) is a sovereign and original catholic modern poet. His debut showed his origin (poverty in childhood) and illness (poor sight); these are the motifs of his first collection Kuvici (Owls, 1936). His later collections Rebrík do neba (Ladder to Heaven, 1939), Slávme to spoločne (Let's Celebrate it Together, 1941), Kým nebudeme doma (While We Are Not Home, 1943) are spiritual lyicism in the widest sense. The author sees the world around him from the point of view of eternity (home for him is the celestial home) and so he also looks at death, which is merely a passage to another life. On the formal side, Silan's poems were simple and songlike. This became even more pronounced in his later books, whose titles also contain the expression "song" (Piesne z Javoriny - Songs from Javorina, 1943; Piesne zo Ždiaru - Songs from Idiar, 1947; he later added Piesne z Važca - Songs from Važec, which could not be published until 1990). The first two have characteristic natural motifs (Javorina and Ždiar are settlements close to the High Tatras), but Silan also understands and perceives nature as God's above all. In Piesne zo Ždiaru he reacts to wartime suffering, which focuses his attention on the human soul. He continues along this line in his next book Úbohá duša na zemi (Wretched Soul on Earth, 1948). Silan stopped publishing for a long time after February 1948; a selection of his old poems and one new collection were released after the "thaw" at the end of the 60s and then the doors to his poetry were shut again for two decades. He published several poems in samizdat. Silan's novel Dom opustenosti (House of Desolation) appeared in 1991; it is a novel-diary, where using various genres (diary entries, observations, sermons, prayers, letters, incidents, etc.), the author presents the testimony of a poetpriest living in a totalitarian system.
          
          In the second half of the 30s or beginning of the 40s, two important figures whose work developed during and after the war entered Slovak poetry: Ján Kostra (1910 - 1975) and Pavol Horov (real name Horovčák, 1914 - 1975). Kostra's work has an affinity with neosymbolism. He started to write under the davists' influence (mainly L. Novomeský), but his social verse was not published in book form. His debut Hniezda (Nests, 1937) represented a turn away from social themes towards the subjective experience of love or reminiscences of childhood. The approaching wartime apocalypse, which ultimately arrived, changed Kostra's attitude to the world. In the

Ján Kostra

collections Moja rodná (My Home, 1939), Ozubený čas (Toothed Time, 1940; under the pseudonym Ján Medník), Puknutá váza (Cracked Vase, 1942), Všetko je dobre tak (Everything is Good Like That, 1942, under the pseudonym Ján Medník), Ave Eva (1943), Presila smútku (The Overwhelming Sorrow, 1946), the "main hero" is the war period, to which the poet reacts with a defensive stance and takes refuge either in the countryside, which is always itself, or in beauty (also female beauty: Ave Eva), which is eternal and whose power heals all destruction. The influence of surrealism can be felt in Pavol Horov's debut Zradné vody spodné (Treacherous Waters Underground, 1940), but only in the form of the poetic instruments which became a part of all his poetry. The book is an expression of the poet's participation in man's and humankind's suffering. This tendency gained an even more elevated form in his next anthology Nioba matka naša (Niobe, Our Mother, 1942), where the author was roused to protest against the murder of innocent people. Horov also returned to the theme of war and his active humanism in Defilé (1947), where with monumental-passionate verse he calculates the sacrifices of war, losses of human life ("who counts the number of losses") and suffering of millions. Both poets also played an important role in Slovak poetry after 1945. Kostra with the books: Za ten máj (That May), Javorový list (Maple Leaf), Šípky a slnečnice (Rosehips and Sunflowers), Báseň, dielo tvoje (Poem, Your Work), Každý deň (Every Day) etc., Pavol Horov with: Vysoké letné nebe (High Summer Sky), Koráby z Jánova (Ships from Genoa), Ponorná rieka (Subterranean River), Asonancie (Assonance), etc. 
          

Dobroslav Chrobák

          Naturists. Dobroslav Chrobák (1907 - 1951) was also a literary critic. Since he was not content with Slovak literature's level and character, he started to consider what form modern Slovak prose should take. He read the work of French regionalists (J. Giono, etc.) and it seemed to him that it contained elements which would also be suitable for us. When his book of novellas Kamarát Jašek (1937) came out, critics welcomed it as something new (one of them - J. Felix - later accused the author of plagiarising J. Giono). They especially praised the novellas with a rural subject (the title one and several others) and appreciated the fact that he dealt with the traditional theme, trailing the history of Slovak prose since M. Kukučín, in a completely untraditional way. He mixed the reality of the rural world with fantastic folk tales and so mythicised it. He continued these magical-mythical approaches in the short novel Drak sa vracia (1943). It is a story about searching for "lost emotions, love and trust", about a person a village cast out because he brought it bad luck. He returns, sacrifices himself for the village and it takes him back. The author told this simple story about a relationship between an individual and collective on a stylistic and compositional level. The principle of community has the form of manliness here, but a love motif of a woman and two male rivals is also unwound like a fine thread. Chrobák's work initiated a movement which critics subsequently called naturism.

Margita Figuli

Margita Figuli (1909 -1995) also contributed to the restructuring of the poetic system of Slovak prose with her work. In her debut Pokušenie (Temptation, 1937), the constant theme of her novellas is love in different forms (unrequited love, passion, love for a child), touching the limits of tradition and morality. At that time, a love affair depicted in this way seemed "daring", too erotic. The success of Figuli's book did not only lie in her daring to introduce "delicate" themes; the author mainly achieved it by using innovative linguistic and stylistic methods (metaphorisation of language, lyricisation of the story). In her next book, the novella Tri gaštanové kone (Three Chestnut Horses,1940), she gave the love story (a woman between two men) a strictly ethical dimension. She used the exalted language of the bible in this, giving the fable a corresponding pathos. One of the men represents the carnality and sensuality of love (but also male aggression and the arrogance of wealth), the other its spiritual form; the woman vacillates between them. Love based on morality and Christian principles wins in the end. It is the outcome of surviving tests. On this point, the book has traits in common with both the Bible and folk tale. The three horses are also "folk tale-like", but their symbolism is broader (sex, beauty, property). The historical novel Babylon (1946), written during the war, engaged the reader through its exotic historical setting, but its purpose was related to the presence of the war and brutality. It is again a story about love (a woman between two men), but also about patriotism, about morality and immorality in history, about the state, brutality and religion. Like Tri gaštanové kone, this novel received critical acclaim, but also a wide readership. 

František Švantner

           Slovak naturism culminated through the work of František Švantner (1912 - 1950). He had already asserted himself with his first book Malka (1942) set in the central Slovak mountains and mountain villages. If Margita Figuli brought love into her stories and Dobroslav Chrobák friendship, Švantner added the theme of death and thereby lent a rare drama to every subject. His figures are linked with nature, but also carry nature, in which they are at home, within themselves. Their actions do not have rational motivations, they behave in the heat of passion and instinctively. Švantner penetrates their psyche in an excellent way and discovers the unexplored and irrational fields of their subsconcious. All of the novellas are based on mysteries which are not revealed until the end; the author merely indicates a number of possibilities. In all of the stories, the characters' awareness, not the actual, rationally recognisable reality, is decisive. This awareness more conceals than reveals what has actually happened. The stories' atmosphere is characterised by twilight or dusk, through which only some developments come to the surface. Švantner's second book Nevesta hôľ (The Bride of the Hills, 1946) not only represents the pinnacle of Švantner's work, but also the pinnacle of Slovak naturism. It also forms the end of the line for this method. In Nevesta hôľ, the author has already completely erased the differences between the human and natural world; a woman becomes a mountain and a mountain enters as one of the characters. In general, personification, an important instrument in Švantner's prose, celebrarates its orgy here and gives the work a polysemantic nature, which is only revealed in its entirety with difficulty. Man, nature, myth all merge together. Švantner's Nevesta hôľ was published after the war and found itself in a radically different social situation, which rejected it as untimely. The writer's response to criticism was "embodied" in a number of his novellas, but particularly in the lengthy novel Život bez konca (Life Without End, 1956). In it the author "returned" man to a historical-social environment. Not nature and mythical awareness, but a real historical time and concrete setting of a village, town or city, influencing the life of individual characters. The myth of "eternal" nature is replaced by the eternal cycle of life.

Ľudo Ondrejov

           Ľudo Ondrejov (1901 - 1962) started as a poet and author of noteworthy adventure stories from faraway lands for young people. The writer gained renown through two novels; Zbojnícka mladosť (Bandit Youth, 1937) and its sequel Jerguš Lapin (1939). The first novel was also regarded as reading for young people, but its parameters far exceeded the genre. It is a series of small chapters in the life of a boy growing up in a village under a forest. Two situations are alternated in the novel - real life in the village and the myth of the tradition of bandits in the rural person's awareness (shepherds in sheepcotes), which is still alive and enters the boy's awareness as the ideal of free life. This ideal is also linked with the motifs of social privation and oppression which young Jerguš experiences. Unlike naturist authors, who did not directly confront the rural (or natural) world with the urban world, this conflict is central in Ondrejov's work. The town and everything connected with it is hostile in Jerguš' awareness. In the second novel, where the author continues to portray Jerguš' experiences, the conflict between the town and traditional values of the free pastoral life is intensified. An alien world and its processes (factories, war) enter the novel's story. Young Jerguš, raised in the bandit tradition, rejects this world because it enslaves and makes people dependent. He goes home, but "enslaving" work awaits him in the village. In the third novel Na zemi sú tvoje hviezdy (Your Stars are on the Earth, 1950), the author's ideas of a free life clashed with historical reality (the Slovak National Uprising) and the novel ended as a fiasco.
          
           Poets of the plot. Naturism, however engaging aesthetically, meant the reduction of man and the world, left out whole areas of life, and so aroused dissatisfaction among critics and younger authors. This dissatisfaction was carried on a whole wave of lyricisation of prose and metaphorisation of language, starting with Tido J. Gašpar and Milo Urban through to Štefan Gráf, and appeared quite a while before the main works of Slovak naturism came out. The prose writer Dominik Tatarka wrote about this in 1940 and criticised lyricising authors because "they only emphasise the sentence", i.e. language and "the concept is not emphasised enough". In a similar vein, the young writer Ján Červeň wrote in a newspaer the same year: "What our literature needs: first throw out that old, terrible poetry of [folk costumes], which turns people into primitives and likeable fools. Search for untraditional themes; colourful, romantic, harsh, impregnated with nervousness, irony. Do not kill yourself with stupid lyrical tirades, which every airhead loves so much." That was the voice of a man sick of authors' mechanised linguistic manipulation as a cure-all, linked with "primitive" heroes to boot. And it was also a voice (together with Tatarka) signalling change. Both attempted this change in their work. Ján Červeň (1919 - 1942) in his collection of novellas Modrá katedrála (Blue Cathedral, 1942), which came out shortly after his untimely death. (Premonition of death also appears in Červeň's prose.) In it he successfully overcame such traditional realist models of prose as contemporary lyricism, alive in metaphorised language. At the same time he reintroduced an epic dimension, reduced to the minimum in naturism and lyrical prose. He paid increased attention to the choice of theme and especially subject, to which he also linked a dreamlike reality. His dreamlike imagination reinforced the romanticism of his work.

Dominik Tatarka

It was Dominik Tatarka (1913 - 1989) who in a review of Červeň's Modrá katedrála introduced the phrase which critics later used as an emblem to characterise the work of certain writers - poet of the plot. In the same year as Červeň's, Tatarka published a collection of novellas with the "Pascalian" title V úzkosti hľadania (In the Anguish of Searching, 1942). The expression "searching" means searching for another person. According to Tatarka, people are as distant from others as stars. In the novella Ľudia za priečkou (People Behind the Partition), he emphasised this "distance" with a wall separating person from person. This wall can be removed through love. The philosophy of love forms the cornerstone of Tatarka's relationship to the world. It is not just emotion (or sentiment), more everything influencing empathy, seeing eye to eye, which conceals a thirst for knowledge. The contribution made by Tatarka's book (and this also applies to Červeň) lies in its intellectualisation of the subject and its rich reflection directed at fundamental existential problems. On the formal side, Tatarka's novellas are complex and the core of their meaning is not clear at first glance. Tatarka's second book Panna zázračnica (The Miraculous Virgin, 1944) arose from a different spirit; the spirit of Slovak surrealism and the earlier bohemian spirit, which had its idol (Annabela) and lived in a sort of free enclave, not caring about the external drama of war. Tatarka's later work went through a dramatic development. In the novel Farská republika (The Clerical Republic, 1948) he decided for revolutionary ideology, he later fulfilled the postulate of socialist realism, after 1956 he rebelled (Démon súhlasu - The Demon of Conformism, 1964) and after 1968 he became a dissident.
           All of these trends in Slovak prose were continued after 1945. The trend towards lyricisation, most evident in František Hečko's "family saga" Červené víno (Red Wine, 1948), did not stop, but it also influenced other authors (Jozef Horák: Hory mlčia - The Mountains Fell Silent, 1947), although it was used in completely different material. Naturism's sphere of influence also expanded after the war. Hana Zelinová (1914) achieved great success with her trilogy Anjelská zem (The Angel Earth, 1946), Hora pokušenia (The Mountain of Temptation, 1948), Dievočka vstaň (Damsel, arise, 1948). We again need to add the talented prose writer Pavol Hrtus Jurina (1919 - 1994), who published his collection of novellas Preťaté ohnivá (Severed Links) in 1943 and synthetised his poetological aggression in the novel Kameň na kameni (Stone on Stone) in 1947, to the poets of the plot.

Július Bač-Ivan

Július Barč-Ivan (1909 - 1953), a playwright and prose writer with a strong tendency towards expressionism (Železné ruky - Iron Hands, 1948), and prose writer and playwright Peter Karvaš (1920 - 1999) in his stories Polohlasom (Undertone, 1947) and novellas Niet prístavov (No Ports, 1946), were also close to the poets of subject. However, the time which arrived after the end of the second world war most favoured realism; not static and narrative, but "magic realism" (Jozef Felix), which would not pluck man out of the social context and at the same time present him as a complex being with subjective awareness and consciousness.