Birth date

02. 10. 1909  [en] Vyšný Kubín

Death date

26. 03. 1995  [en] Bratislava

Fields of interest

próza, dráma, literatúra pre deti a mládež, preklad

Briefly about author

Figuli's first book came into being in co-operation with the artist Koloman Sokol who illustrated her short story A Little Knot Of Warmth, as a bibliophile supplement to the anthology Hollar's Graphic Art. In the following year she published a book of ten short stories, Temptation where she makes specific her own individual effort to diversify the romantic tendencies of the naturism era in Slovak literature attaining
a rhythmical affinity with epic surface composed of lyrical feeling tinged with impressionism. The novella Three Chestnut Horses expressed most completely the key motifs of Slovak naturism, the standards implicit in nature in conflict with those dictated by civilisation, the ambivalent ethic of natural mankind, an epic search for significant possibilities of natural fatalism (primitive and pagan) in contrast with Christian civilisation. After Bird of Lead Figuli had limited opportunity to publish for
a certain time and so she concentrated on her work on large historical canvas, the novel Babylon, which is also exceptionally contemporary today with its conception of investigation, epic, the significant burden of questions about the destruction of
a certain type of absolute power and historical reconstruction. It is not merely an analogy with the present but also a broad fictional picture of a biblical era.
The novel reaches contemporary audiences through its perception and poetry. Her books for young people have a chronological-documentary character bordering on the genres of journalism, essay and belle-lettre. Margita Figuli has gained fame during her long life and her novella Three Chestnut Horses has become one of the most important and most read books written by Slovak writers in the 20 th century.

Briefly about production

prose:
A Little Knot of Warmth (Uzlík tepla, 1936, novella), Temptation (Pokušenie 1937, novellas), Three Chestnut Horses (Tri gaštanové kone, 1940, novella), Three Nights and Three Dreams (Tri noci a tri sny, 1942), Babylon (Babylon, 1946, historical novel), Suzanne (Zuzana, 1949), Youth (Mladosť, 1956, novel chronicle), Ariadna's Thread (Ariadnina niť, 1964, essays, memoirs), Biographical Legends (Životopisné legendy, 1969, memoirs), Rebecca (Rebeka, 1973), The Gale Within Us (Víchor v nás, 1974)

radio work:
A Dream of Life (Sen o živote, 1942, a dramatic reflection on P. B. Shelley)

children's books:
My First Letter (Môj prvý list,1963), A Ballad on Juro Janošik (Balada o Jurovi Jánošíkovi, 1980)

works translated:
Three Chestnut Horses (1942, 1971 Czech, 1960 Hungarian, 1962 Polish, 1965 Russian, 1973 Slovenian, 1979 Bulgarian, 1983 Kazakhian, 1989 Latvian)
Youth (1961 Czech)
Babylon (1968, 1972 German, 1971 Czech, 1983 Ukraine, 1989 Belorussian)
A Triptych on Love (1987 Lithuanian)
Selected Works (1987 Russian)

Biography for author

Born 2 October 1909 in Vyšný Kubín. She matriculated from the Commercial Academy in Banská Bystrica in 1928. Then she worked as an English language correspondent with the Tatra Bank in Bratislava where she remained until 1941.
In 1941 she was dismissed from the bank for political reasons as a literary magazine published her anti-war story Bird of Lead. From then she devoted herself to literary work. Figuli died on the 27th March 1995 in Bratislava.

about author

If we look at the work of Margita Figuli as a whole we can't avoid noticing two separate phases. In the first, which is represented by her short stories up to her fortieth ear, the conflict of the principle of natural life with a hidden moral law is predominant. These short stories are concentrated in expression and style. The more the pole of moral law is withdrawn, the more precise, refined and artistic her style becomes (short stories from 1939 to 1940). The second half of her work is characterised by a deepening of its moral base (the tale The Mountain People, the novella Three Chestnut Horses).

Figuli's novel Babylon, romanticising and historicizing epic, a little bit of Kuprin intertwined with Flaubert, mixes biblical philosophy with Eros, love rhetoric with romantic pathos… The author is renowned for great narrative skill and sense for style.

Sample

THREE CHESTNUT HORSES (extract)