Birth date

13. 10. 1914  [en] Rožňová Neporadza

Death date

09. 11. 1989  [en] Bratislava

Fields of interest

próza, scenáristika, preklad

Briefly about author

The more than thirty years activity of Alfonz Bednár in Slovak literature has provided its prose with a fund of artistic treasures. Although he is placed by critics in the "prose of the National Uprising" he has been from the very beginning an exceptional writer who did not accept the schematisation required by party ideology, but from the beginning went his own creative way and thus always laid himself open to ill-will and misunderstanding on the part of the literary critics. So in the novel The Glass Hill, in the diary confession of a young woman whose struggle for reconciliation with her own past ends tragically, Bednár replaced the strictly socially determined heroine with a heroine with individuality - and a yet more tragic destiny. The novel gained an unusual readership response not merely because of Bednár's courage as an author but because he introduced a new means of construction into Slovak prose; a subject with "secrecy" altering some time sequences, the intimate diary in the form of notes, excellent speech and an authoritative ability to use different speech techniques and the methods of modern, mostly Anglo-Saxon prose. This was evident in a large proportion of the short stories Hours and Minutes. In spite of its significant artistic quality, a proportion of the critics described it as "without a class basis" and "abstractly humanistic" and censorship removed from the book the short story The Unfinished House. (The complete collection was published entire in 1962.) In his stories Bednár at first showed the "cursed" face of the National Uprising and the true social circumstances of the era of the Second World War, presenting in an effective manner the dark, instinctual side of humanity - including those on the "right" side of history. To sharp attacks he retorted, "I don't know about great historical events which are not accompanied by dirt, blood and horror from which an individual can emerge without unimaginable suffering very slowly and with great effort in order to be described as a human being". His novel The Tooth of Thunder is a modern epic of witness about a Slovak village over half a century. This novel can be described as innovatory because it depicts a Slovak village from within mapping its deep levels, artistically exploiting its historical and mythical memory.
In the late 1960's Bednár began - both in artistic and public terms - to ask uncomfortable questions about the "socialist" present. He chose mainly the form of allegory, parable and satire.

Briefly about production

novels:
The Glass Hill (Sklený vrch, 1954), Hours and Minutes (Hodiny a minúty, 1956, novellas), An Alien (Cudzí, 1960, novellas), The Tooth of Thunder (Hromový zub, 1964), The Balcony Was Too High (Balkón bol privysoko, 1968, novella), A Handful of Small Change I (Za hrsť drobných /v kazete z Péšévaru/, 1970), A Hand ful of Small Change II (Za hrsť drobných /v umelom Cézarovi/, 1974), A Handful of Small Change III (Za hrsť drobných /z rozvojovej planéty Tryfé/, 1981), a novel trilogy; We Dried the Linen (Ako sme sušili bielizeň, 1985), Testimony (Výpoveď, 1986), Ad Revidendum, Gemini (1988), The Lonesome Raven (Osamelý havran, 1989), The Wreath (Veniec, 1991), The Holey Ducat (Dutý dukát, 1992), The Fields I - II (Role I - II, 1995)

poetry for children:
A Tree (Strom, 1949), Useless Appetites for Delicacy (Márne chúťky na pochúťky, 1950), Two Trees (Dva stromy, 1963)

travelogues:
The Greek Still-life (Grécke zátišie, 1958)

screenplays:
The Sun in a Net, Organ, Three Daughters, Genius, Great Night, Great Day, Penelope, Girl Friends, A Morning under the Moon (TV script), My Black Horses (TV script)

translations by the author:
Bednár translated several novels of D. Defoe, A. C. Doyle, H. Fast, J. Galsworthy,
E. Hemingway, S. Heym, J. K. Jerome, S. Lewis, J. London, G. B. Shaw, M. Twain, and others.

works translated (selection):
The Glass Hill (1958 Czech, 1962 Hungarian, 1965 Serbo-Croatian)
Hours and Minutes (1971 Slovenian, 1974 German, 1986 Polish, Japanese)
An Alien (1960 Czech)
The Tooth of Thunder (1968 Czech)
The Balcony Was Too High (1970 Czech, 1979 Polish)
A Handful of Small Change II (1977 Czech) Polish, 1984 Lithuanian)
A Handful of Small Change II (1977 Czech) The Cradle (1964 Serbo-Croatian, 1975 Bulgarian; novellas)
House Nr. 4/B (1979 Russian, selected novels and novellas)

Biography for author

Born 13 October 1914 at Rožňová Neporadza. He studied Latin, Czech and Slovak at Charles University in Prague (1934 - 1938) and at Comenius University in Bratislava (1938 - 1940). Then he taught at gymnasia in Liptovský Mikuláš and Bardejov. After the Second World War he worked with the Ministry of Information in Bratislava, later became an editor and for almost twenty years a screenwriter and screenplay editor at Czechoslovak Film in Bratislava. Beside his extensive literary work he translated fiction from the English. Bednár died 9 November 1989 in Bratislava.

about author

The Glass Hill represented the beginning of the Thaw in Slovak literature and the beginning of the reaction to the simplified, schematic, blustering-demagogic descriptions of Communists' heroism.

We rarely find in Slovak and Czech literature such confident manipulation of fictive material, such a lyric-epic breath. It is the author's ability to combine such disparate creative procedures that form the framework of his vision and philosophical complexity.

Already in The Glass Hill the thinking of a non-simple, non-transparent human individual is introduced. From the start for Bednár "a human being is a mixture" and "a strange being". This characteristic not only applies to the exceptional central characters but also to peripheral characters in Bednár's work and also for the writer's conception of mankind generally. The subject and composition of Bednár's short stories indicates remarkable innovation in our prose. Through this element each of his works astonishes us: The Glass Hill through the device of a diary, Hours and Minutes through the structure of different levels of epic, The Tooth of Thunder through its gigantic scale.

Sample

THE CRADLE (extract)