Ladislav (Laco) Novomeský foto 1
Foto © Anton Šmotlák (1967)

Ladislav (Laco) Novomeský

27. 12. 1904
Budapešť
—  4. 9. 1976
Bratislava
Pseudonym:
A. Krištof, Andrej Ogrod, Brkoslav, Gama, Pavel Havran, Pavel Hronec
Genre:
journalism, literary science, poetry
Novomesky`s orientation in the field of culture, arts and literature against the background of domestic and foreign politics is a remarkable and true picture of the era in which he lived. He is the initiator and founder of the modern line in Slovak poetry. His contribution to literature is based on new and unique literary qualities in his work. He created a new conception of poetry by synthesizing modern literary currents and innovating the relationship to a reality of high demands and ideas.
In his collections he absorbed a wide range of impulses from current European literature, impulses that he creatively transformed by developing new possibilities of poetic expression. By poetic hints, cut-offs and ellipses he improved the associative freedom of imagination and the dynamic flow of imagery.
Novomeský carries a deep consciousness of Slovak history - not by celebrating the memory, deeds but by meditating over their decayed form and confronting the past with the present. It is a poetry of learning the relationship between contradiction and continuity, between home and distance, present moment and centuries of space and time, between pain and beauty of objective reality. He reacted to the controversial and tragic conflicts of the era leading to the Second World War. By means of poetry he wishes to beat the rude attack, "a time of rifles, bayonets and laments". He thinks of the undeserved tragedy of thousands, of overturned cradles and graves with children under the ruins of demolished cities in a world "upside down" and he poses Hamlet`s question about the meaning of individual being in a time of mass tragedy. The undercurrents of thoughts in his poetry have a more significant role and place than the surface phenomena. Within this he formulates his vision of the future declaring his unbreakable human hope.
The final phase of Novomeský`s poetry (1960`s) is enriched by the poet`s tragic experience. In the collection Out from There and Other Poems he came to terms with the adversities of his own fate in the 1950`s. He projects his personal battles and experiences into significant super-individual gestures, he seeks real truth about events, things and people, also about himself. At the end he connects an uncommon humanity with the eternal search for truth and beauty.

 

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