Rudolf Sloboda

Pavel Vilikovský

Dušan Mitana

Dušan Dušek

Ján Johanides

Pavel Hrúz

Ivan Kadlečík

Authors obviously needed to come to terms with the immediate past - at least to a certain extent this helped to call the things of the recent past by their true name, to take an aloof and critical stance. But not even the thematisation of past injustices meant the beginning of a new literary era, because the present, with all its chaos of transformation, tensions and contradictions, still awaited literary treatment. Here again, it is necessary to mention that authors have become insecure, which tied their hands and prevented them from drawing from the contemporary reality. This insecurity arose from the fact, which we have already mentioned, that the status of writer had radically changed. While in the 19^th century (and, in Slovakia, long into the 20^th century) he was regarded as the conscience of the nation, while under socialism he boasted the title of "the engineer of human souls", after 1989 he became a private person who writes, a solitary individual (he had previously been protected by the nation or the working class, embodied by the communist party), from whom no-one demanded a "universal" message. His ties with society had been hopelessly slackened, even undone. He was left alone, to himself, and had to search for a new identity. As a result, in the 90s, authors of lengthy frescoes with social significance (the above mentioned Vincent Šikula, Ladislav Ballek, Peter Jaroš, Ivan Habaj, Anton Baláž, and others) had more difficulty gaining prominence than those writers who had always focused on the fate of the individual, on the subjective emotional life of people of their generation, mainly drawing from their own emotional and intellectual experience (Rufolf Sloboda, Pavel Vilikovský, Dušan Mitana, Pavel Hrúz, Ján Johanides, Dušan Dušek and others), and who refused to confront their heroes with history - or if they did, then only on the level of parody (Pavel Vilikovský: Večne je zelený... [Forever Green Is..., 1989]) - in the same way that they refused to write complete and conceptually closed wholes, focusing instead on detail of life promoted to characterisation. Instead of ideologising, they introduced liberating laughter, the bizarre or poetry. They stayed true to this poetics and attitude to life after 1989, and so there is a continuity of literary and cultural development in their work despite the gap in social and political history, which split the usually seamless flow of time into two contradictory eras. 
            All of the above-mentioned writers entered Slovak literature as clear-cut individuals with their own approach to experience, and each of them dealt with difficult issues in their work, for which they created effective poetological approaches. From the outset, Rudolf Sloboda (1938 - 1995) wrestled with his own fate (Narcis [Narcissus, 1965], Britva [Razor, 1967]) and the search for the meaning of life. The problems he raised most often concerned the relationship between the sexes (cohabitation in marriage, including sex), man's relationship to religion, more precisely to God, to family, nature, and the compelling problem of suicide (Sloboda ultimately took his own life), etc. These issues return in all of his works, including those that appeared after 1989 (Krv [Blood, 1991], Jeseň [Autumn, 1994], Herečky [Actresses, 1995], Pamäti [Memoirs, 1996], and others), compounded by the author's reflection and imperative will to provide a solution. 
            Pavel Vilikovský (1941) is almost the antithesis of Sloboda, completely rational, ironic and self-ironic, factual, and precise (Citová výchova v marci [Sentimental Education in March, 1965], Prvá veta spánku [The First Sentence of Sleep, 1983], Kôň na poschodí, slepec vo Vrábľoch [A Horse Upstairs, A Blind Man in Vráble, 1989], Krutý strojvodca [The Cruel Engineer, 1996], Posledný kôň Pompejí [The Last Horse of Pompeii, 2001] and others). He is blatantly horrified by grand words, pathos, myths and legends. All of his prose is characterised by an intellectual approach to the subject and is close to model literature. He often utilises lower literary genres (the detective novel) or news reports. Irony, parody and persiflage are his favourite techniques. His belief that literature is not constructed from an image of reality, but from sentences created by the author's power, although determined by his intention and experience, places him close to postmodernism. 
            Dušan Mitana (1946) introduced the grotesque, secrecy, chance, and irrationality into his work. His books of stories Psie dni (Dog Days, 1970) and Nočné správy (Night News, 1976) have become cult books among young readers. His playfulness, poetry, comedy, mixing of the ordinary, bizarre, normal with pathological or at least morbid, all caught the intellectual mood of young people. His mastery of the art of storytelling immersed the reader in a world of unusual experiences and revealed to him the dimensions of his own interior. These components are also the foundations of Mitana's more recent novels (Slovenský poker [Slovak Poker, 1993], Môj rodný cintorín [My Native Cemetery, 2000], Krst ohňom [Baptism of Fire, 2001]). 
            Dušan Dušek (1946) immersed himself in the past, selecting his childhood experiences and shaping them into old picture postcards, on which every detail is visible; in truth, his books of stories (Kalendár [Calendar, 1983], Náprstok [Thimble, 1984], Kufor na sny [A Suitcase for Dreams, 1993], Teplomer [Thermometer, 1996] and others) mainly consist of details. But a closer look convinces us that nothing important is missing. In this author's work, the factuality of description is combined with a remarkable imagination and deep insight into interpersonal relationships, resulting in an original and strongly poeticised reality induced by the magic of language. Dušek's prose evokes the enchantment by the world as conveyed by the memories of childhood. Concrete details give rise to something like a life philosophy based on good, empathy and love. 
            Ján Johanides (1934) at first accepted the influence of existentialism (Súkromie [Privacy, 1963]). He later shook off this influence, but deep down he remained close to it. It might be said that existentialism only offered a point of crystallisation to Johanides' attitude to life and philosophical orientation, because all of his abundant later work (Pochovávanie brata [Brother's Burial, 1987], Slony v Mauthausene [Elephants in Mauthausen, 1985], Zločin plachej lesbičky [The Crime of a Shy Lesbian, 1991], Krik drozdov pred spaním [The Noise of Blackbirds Before Sleep, 1992], Dedičný červotoč [Hereditary Woodworm, 1998], Dívaj sa do modrých očí Londýna [Look into the Blue Eyes of London, 2000], Nepriestrelná žena [The Bullet-proof Woman, 2001], and others) moves along these lines. In all of his prose, we constantly meet with feelings of guilt, fear, isolation, and alienation. He builds all of his subjects on these constants, merely varying them. He gradually developed his own style based on description and introspection. Johanides' description lies in the precise and detailed portrayal of aspects and facts of the external world, which contrasts sharply with the deliberate ambiguity (and imponderability) of the human actions of his heroes, almost never unequivocally motivated. The plot is always reduced to a minimum and actually insignificant. 
            Unlike a number of authors mentioned above, Pavel Hrúz (1941) had always been interested in the problems of the society in which he was forced to live. He treated them ironically (Dokumenty o výhľadoch [Documents on the Perspectives, 1966]), he noticed the gulf between the false social consciousness articulated by the official ideology and the reality. He increased his criticism of the regime in his next book of novellas Okultizmus (Occultism, 1968), which even has "cult" (i.e. cult of personality) in the title. Since he opposed normalisation, he was not allowed to publish and became a dissident. When he returned to literature after 1989, he published several books which reflected his experience as a person pushed not only to the fringe of culture, but also of society (Chliev a hry [freely Bribe and Circuses, 1990], Pereat [Pereat, 1991], Chlieb a kry [freely Bread and Citruses, 1996], Párenie samotárov [The Mating of Recluses, 1993] and others). He created his own autonomous literary world, populated by drifters, outcasts, deviants, alcoholics, petty criminals, etc., which is the antithesis of the "exalted" world ruled by "sense" and "ideas". He does not construct a coherent story, he interrupts the flow of the text by inserting segments of other fables, unfolding somewhere else or at a different time, or by writing two parallel stories. This clearly also relates to his love affair with games (and playing with words, names, terms) and to his rational prose-writing habit. To this day, he has kept his belief that the world has two forms, real and pretended, and he draws from this creatively. 
            Other authors can grouped together with those above, for example another dissident, Ivan Kadlečík (1938), who also opposed normalisation and was banned from publishing legally at home for two decades. Kadlečík was originally a literary critic (Z rečí v nížinách [From the Sermons in the Lowlands, samizdat, in book form 1993), which can also been seen in the nature of his prose, whose range of genres spans from essay to reflexive (subject-free) prose and from the problems of literature and culture to the problems of man in the contemporary world (Rapsódie a miniatúry [Rhapsodies and Miniatures, 1992], Vlastný horoskop [One's Own Horoscope, 1991], Vlani ako dnes [Yesteryear Like Today, 1997]; Taroky [Tarot, 1997], Malé prelúdiá [Small Preludes, 2002], and others). Kadlečík formulated his belief in the comment: You can only live autobiographically. However, at the same time this means that you can only create autobiographically. According to the author, only that has value, which is guaranteed by his own life, his fate, his attitudes arrived at by suffering. Kadlečík never came to terms with the past regime, which attempted to exclude him from society forever. His defiance (maybe scorn) broke through into other dimensions. He particularly emphasised his own entrenchment in Slovak life, in Slovak history and mainly in Slovak culture. He proudly affiliated himself with his forefathers in the wide area of Slovakia and Moravia with a cultural mission, and likewise his ideological predecessors. Kadlečík's awareness of solidarity, time and space contexts, succession down the generations, this is the basic axiom of his beliefs and therefore also his creation. With all of this he proved the communist regime guilty of being historically irrelevant, regarding it as a foreign fruit on a domestic tree.