The literary work of Peter Gregor is very varied in terms of genre. However, it is dominated mainly by poetry and the radio play. At the outset of his literary career he wrote lyric poetry and in the public eye he has remained chiefly a poet. He published his verse from the middle Sixties in the literary magazines
Slovenské pohľady (Slovak Review),
Kultúrny život (Cultural Life) and
Mladá tvorba (Young Creation). His first collection of poems,
The Necessity to Hang appeared in 1968, immediately followed by
The Heavenly Policeman. Through their aims and artistic methods both works conform with that part of Slovak literature, which during the whole of the Sixties tried to emancipate poetry from the conventional thematic orientation on the home, native region and traditionally stressed family values. This poetry was reflective and addressed itself to universal questions of existence, stressing the uniqueness of the human subject. He also reflects on various aspects of the intellectual dimension of existence, even if his poems are also characterized by a certain measure of provocation, demonstrated by the insertion of motifs of bohemian life, drinking and prostitution. From the point of literary methods we already find the typical irony, especially a self-reflecting irony, a humorous observation even of tragic matters and a stress on an imaginative, indirect expression of reality. Gregor's metaphor is often expanded into considerable breadth. His poetic composition
Dialogue has the subtitle
The Whipping Boy and the Water Nymph. It is written in a free and unrhymed verse (although occasionally to vary his text the author uses internal rhyme) and has the form of a dialogue. The speeches alternate a lyrical (male) subject and the responses (direct speech) of the water nymph. As a whole it could be described as a metaphorical statement concerning the chief attributes of human existence, such as love and death, the emotional dimension of consciousness, the tragic perception of the passing of youth, love and life. But the tragic elements here are lightened by a stress on an aesthetically effective metaphor and the cult of beauty. Gregor's collection
Delta, too, is devoted to the analysis of various circumstances in life in which people find themselves and to the search for a sense to life. At the forefront are the feelings of the futility of life, thoughts on the biological end of man, and some poems express an almost existential
angst. After this book Gregor published no poetry for ten years, pursuing work in other genres and then returned to poetry with the collection
To Bring a Fire from a Burning House. By means of stylized maxims the author brings the portraits of the famous and less famous personalities in world history, transforming the conventional message connected with their names and offering in this manner a comment on present conditions. Paradox is a major element in this collection. A less successful book within the context of Gregor's poetry is
The Collector of Clocks, where many texts have an aphoristic character, poems are often built on a single idea, but lack a deeper meaningful message. They also lack aesthetically effective poetic imagery. The book is neither expressively striking nor original in thought. The poetic composition
A Man Called Job is a poetic retelling of the biblical story with direct reference to the present. Gregor is one of the most prolific and successful Slovak writers of radio plays. He is interested in themes of contemporary life, centering on emotional problems, crises in interpersonal relationships and questions of morality, sometimes drawing his subjects from the classical antiquity and transforming the stories so as to find a moral valid for the present. Satirical tone, irony and in some places also sarcasm are typical for Gregor's literary style also in his radio plays. Consequently they often become a sharp critique of the present-day hypocritical society. Most plays have a prominent philosophical subtext. Gregor also produced radio dramatizations of the prosaic works of other writers, both Slovak and foreign (Dostojevsky, London, Saint-Exupéry, Unamuno, Čapek, Kukučín,and others). To complete the list of his works we should mention
Diary of the Deceased, a prose work bringing an ironical valuation of present times, further a book of aphorisms, micro-stories and modern, parodic animal fables with a satirical direction, entitled
Little Troubles, and a number of short humorous proses published in magazines over dozens of years.
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