Birth date

27. 06. 1941  [en] Palúdzka  

Fields of interest

próza, publicistika, preklad

Briefly about author

In Vilikovský's work from his debut there has been a sceptical attitude to literature and possibilities for knowledge. Consequently he often pushes his telling to the level of absurd and grotesque humour. During the times when "normalised" socialist critics required from writers unambiguous attitudes to life and society in their work Vilikovský showed in the detective-like tone of his stories that truth was not unambiguous and the "most truthful" prooves can and must be questioned. Deliberately and courageously "he stretched his fictional hand" towards some of our national heroes (Štefánik, Jánošík) to help us cleanse our historical consciousness of the lyrical pseudoballast which hindered a real view of our history. Although with indisputable irony, self-irony and "unseriousness " Vilikovský in his recent stories and essays researches the meaning of the concept Middle European as a spiritual place in which "a small nation without imperial character" has a chance to survive with dignity and aid its own preservation. Vilikovský's deliberate and precise structuring of his stories augmented by elements of irony and gentle parody - so close to the feelings and perception of a modern human being - belong among the best works of contemporary Slovak literature.

Briefly about production

prose:
The Education of Feelings in March (Citová výchova v marci, 1965, short stories),
The First Sentence of Sleep (Prvá veta spánku, 1983, novella), Escalation of Feeling (Eskalácia citu, 1989, short stories), A Horse Upstairs, A Blind Man in Vrable (Kôň na poschodí, Slepec vo Vrábľoch, 1989, novellas), Forever Green Is … (Večne je zelený…, 1989, novella), A Slovak Casanova (Slovenský Casanova, 1991, with
L. Grendel, epistles), A Pedestrian Story (Peší príbeh, 1992, novella), The Cruel Engine Driver (Krutý strojvodca, 1996, short stories), The Last Horse of Pompeii (Posledný kôň Pompekí, 2001), Confessions of the Unworldly Lover (Vyznania naivného milovníka, 2004), The Magic Parrot and Other Kitch (Čarovný papagáj a iné gýče, 2005), Silberputzen. Polishing Old Silver., 2006), The Autobiography of Evil (Vlastný životopis zla, 2009), Dog on the Road (Pes na ceste, 2010) 

essays and social criticism:
The Winged Cage or from the Life of Young Slovakia and Old Slovaks (Okrídlená klietka alebo zo života mladého Slovenska a starých Slovákov, 1998, with T. Janovic)

translations by the author:
A wide range of translation from Anglo-American literature (J. Aldridge, J. Conrad, W. Faulkner, M. Lowry, T. Keneally, and others).

works translated:
Vilikovský's short stories and novellas were translated and published in dozens of literary magazines and anthologies abroad.
A Horse Upstairs, A Blind Man in Vrable (1997 French, Croatian, 2000 Romanian, Bulgarian)
The Cruel Engine Driver (1998 Slovenian, 2000 Croatian)
Forever Green is … (1999 Hungarian)

The Last Horse of Pompeii, 2002 Macedonian)

Forever Green Is... (2002 Polish)

Extracts from prose works (literary journal Tratti, 2011, Italian)

Biography for author

Born 27 June 1941 in Palúdzka. Since 1958 he studied to be a film director at FAMU in Prague changing after two years to the study of English and Slovak which he graduated in at Comenius University in Bratislava in 1965. He worked as an editor with the publishing house Tatran, and from 1976 to 1995 as a deputy chief editor of the literary monthly Romboid. He worked in the Slovak editorial department of Readers' Digest. At present he is a freelancer. Vilikovský lives in Bratislava.

about author

Irony, parody, persiflage are Vilikovský's favourite means with which he continues with what troubles him with the same intensity as ourselves. A large parody of history is used in his book Forever Green Is... Unheedingly he has poked fun at legendary mystifications of history uncovering everything as part of a false consciousness. He has not gained much understanding in a conservative environment, but he has delighted lovers of good art with his brilliant narration as much as with his sharp intellectual reflexes.

Vilikovský's modest sceptical, post-modern "realism" does not feign, but simply knows. It knows that experience of the world cannot be substituted although it can be invented. His stories are perhaps more warnings against the invention of illusory beauty to please the senses that somehow would like to gain its effect through its unambiguous speech. The manner of Vilikovský's word is manner of not going mad from scepticism and preserving the dignity of a human being despite the fact we have despoiled the world with tales where words say one thing and mean another and you walk upon it untouchable.

Vilikovský as usual does not try for a "pure story" at all. He plays with motifs so for
a while we are minded to believe in the sacrosanct nature of his stroll with existential mastery on a station platform only to glimpse suddenly a cloven of the author's licence. The protagonists in which the author tests the capacity of word or motif are repeated in all the stories of The Cruel Engine Driver and the result is an ironical scepticism. Not a scepticism that is heavy and depressed but knowing that the word spoken with tongue and written by hand can express a reality only based on conventions, which people have agreed among each other and which they are willing to accept.

Awards

The VÚB Award for the best prose work (1996, for The Cruel Engine Driver)

Slovenský spisovateľ Award (1996, for The Cruel Engine Driver)
Dominik Tatarka Award (1996, for The Cruel Engine Driver)
Central-European Prize (Vilenica, 1999)

Anasoft Litera Award for Slovak fiction, 2005

Literary Fund Award 2009 for The Autobiography of Evil (Cena Literárneho fondu za Vlastný životopis zla)

 

 

Sample

SIGMAN FRYAHD TO YUSSUF BROYAH