Birth date

19. 02. 1894  [en] Chynorany

Death date

06. 11. 1973  [en] Bratislava

Fields of interest

poézia, esej, preklad

Briefly about author

Beniak is an exceptional figure among the Slovak poets. His life and work were marked considerably by the dramatic events of the 20 th century with its two world wars and revolutionary political changes that were the result of the war and post-war conditions. He was sentenced to isolation for twenty-five years, just when he was in the prime of his creative powers, thus prevented from taking an active part in the social and cultural life. Nevertheless, he found sufficient strength to continue in his work despite the prohibition to publish.
His poetic beginnings are marked by the influence of native and foreign poets that he was able to overcome already in his first collection of poetry, which sets out his own way. Here, the dominant element is the deep connection to his home, to the village life. The search for his own philosophy of a solitary poet weakens the idyllic character of his poetry. He surprises the reader with the metaphorical expressiveness of his sensual imagery that is a special feature of the Slovak poetism. He remains true to his philosophical principles and empathizes deeply with the tragic condition of the human life.
A separate group form the collections inspired by his journeys to Italy and France (The Echoes of the Steps, Royal Chain, Faifground). Through the prism of little incidents and impressions he humanizes great historical personages and cultural monuments. In his collection Mail Pigeon comes the transformation of his vision of the world and a reflection on the coming war events (Italy and Germany). Contemporary events are dealt more intensively in his collection Beechnut. The war events were reflected in his collections from 1939 - 1944. These are poems full of personal restlessness, worries about the danger (threatening the world, nation, people), dressed in a metaphorical robe of poetry.
The peak of his poetry was reached in the collections Sophia, Ash Wednesday, and Jester. They present the vortex of the world at war depicted poetically and resolved in an anxious vision of peace.
Here he opens spacious areas of emotional and intellectual dramas of the man of his time influenced by the historical events brought about by the high-power interests. As a solitary poet, he maintains his detachment and relies on the power and inviolability of the poetic statement about the dramatic shapes of his time, the inner struggles of the human beings, their tragedy, but also love.
His work after 1945 evidently surpasses his previous work with its quantity and quality, though he lived alone in isolation. His poetry surprises by its generic wealth and poetic richness. In the history of Slovak literature his place is among the major 20 th century poets.

Briefly about production

poetry:
Clouds, Let's Move On (Tiahnime ďalej oblaky, 1928), The Echoes of the Steps (Ozveny krokov, 1931), Royal Chain (Kráľovská reťaz, 1933), Fairground (Lunapark, 1936), Mail Pigeon (Poštový holub, 1936), Beechnut (Bukvica, 1938), Vigil (Vigília, 1939), Sophia (Žofia, 1941), Four Legends of the Holy Grail (Štyri legendy sv. Grála, 1941), Second Vigil (Druhá Vigília, 1942), Ash Wednesday (Popolec, 1942), Minstrel (Igric, 1944), Vetch (Hrachor, 1967), Little Ears from the Harvest (Klásky zo zberu, 1968), Weeping Amor (Plačúci amor, 1969), Twilight Sonnets (Sonety podvečerné, 1970), Medallions Big and Small (Medailóny a medailónky, 1971), Unfinished Symphony - Evening Sonnets (Nedokončená symfónia - Večerné sonety, 1994)

essays:
For Myself and for You (Sebe i vám, 1943)

children's books:
The Lost Child (Stratenko, 1994, Slovak folk tales in verse)

translations by the author:
Beniak translated major works of world literature, including those of J. W. Goethe,
H. Kleist, I. Madách, W. Shakespeare, and O. Wilde. He also translated an anthology of the 20 th century Hungarian poetry entitled Evening Storm (1957).

Biography for author

Born 19 February 1894 in Chynorany. After the gymnasium graduation in Nitra in 1916 he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Budapest. After returning home one year later he practiced as an apprentice notary and as a notary in several places of central Slovakia. From March 1939 he worked at the Ministry of Interior in Bratislava. Between 1940 and 1945 he chaired the Union of Slovak Writers. After the war he was in custody for several months. From the end of 1945 he worked at the Ministry of Education. He was pensioned off in 1947. For some twenty-five years he lived in isolation, not being allowed to publish until 1966. Beniak died on the 6th November 1973 in Bratislava.

about author

He was a solitary poet struggling to find his place in literature (…) without any support or aid from the declared association with some literary group or trend (…) tenaciously attempting to gain the respect of the literary authority; then, when this respect appeared, for a short time he became a leader, a great, perhaps the greatest phenomenon of the contemporary poetry and right afterwards for a long time an author who was socially cast out and not published.

One of the basic building principles of Beniak's poetry is metamorphosis as an expression of Prometheanism and the fantastic, which are the determining features of his poetic personality. Metamorphosis in poetry is an old device (…) but Beniak developed it in a manifold and unique manner as a principle of structuring the modern poem with the signs of poetistic, expressionist, and surrealist poetics. (…) Metamorphoses, polyphony, joining of different contexts, frequent use of paradox, rupture, montage are the expressions of the variability, flexibility of Beniak's poetry. (…) Even Beniak's metaphor has a dynamic character. This characteristic (…) merges with its explosiveness, massiveness, and earthy juiciness. At the same time this author's trope is the bearer of profound poetic knowledge, vision, feeling, and experience, and the sum of experiences ensorcelled in an apt, adequate and devastating verbal expression, an effective abbreviation that lodges itself in our consciousness.

Beniak's significance stems from his originality and classical selfufficiency, in which he stands apart from other poets. He remains arguably the greatest poet of his generation.

Awards

National Prize for Literature (1936)
Prize of the Mazáč publishing house (1938)
Prize of the Slovak World Congress (1973)

Sample

LEOPARD