Stanislav Rakús’s book Pieseň o studničnej vode / Song of Spring Water follows the short novel Žobráci / Beggars after an interval of three years, but in contrast it offers five short prose works on a social theme and with balladic overtones. The tonality of these prose works is already familiar from Slovak novel writing; in certain motifs a likeness could be found with many modern Slovak prose works (Jilemnický, Hronský, the naturalists, Jašík, Šikula), but nevertheless the author remains true to himself and his works offer original descriptions of people, the times and society. Why is this so? We think the secret lies in his original grasp of social topics that have already been so frequently discussed in literature. Stanislav Rakús, that is, goes beyond the level of sharply outlined social relations in that he tends to reveal their psychic and moral consequences. Rakús’s narration is saturated with folk legends, myths, with various interpretations, but not in a continuous flow, but rather in individual requisites, realia, hints and moods. In this way the author creates a mysterious impression. Throughout this book he shows himself to be a master of atmosphere. The author’s work is marked by a considerable degree of imaginative abandon, which is not common in Slovak prose. Stanislav Rakús relies more on the associative than on the logical or chronological motivation. Numerous often unidentified voices speak up in his prose. All of these together attempt to create at least an approximately true picture of the chosen stretch of reality.
Albín Bagin
When reading Temporálne poznámky / Temporal Notes I had a strong feeling I had come into contact with an important prose work – important not only from the literary-historical, but also noetic point of view – and at the same time I felt irritated by my own inability to identify the elements that make up this importance. And it is no doubt a good reference for the author that even at a second reading the flow of the author’s narration gripped me again and again.
Pavol Vilikovský
Stanislav Rakús is neither the first nor the only writer to direct his creative activity almost equally towards prose and literary science. However, it is remarkable that he manages to create very high quality and challenging works in both fields. After the unusual novella Temporálne poznámky / Temporal Notes he published a little book of essays and studies Medzi mnohoznačnosťou a presnosťou / Between Polysemy and Precision, which draws attention, apart from other things, on account of the range of the problems it deals with, which he tried to define using the terms polysemy and precision. Rakús clarifies and understands these two concepts as possibilities for intuitive (polysemic) and scientific (precise) interpretation of artistic – in the case of this book mainly literary – processes and phenomena. In Rakús’s works of literary criticism the role played by his own experience with prose is by no means negligible, as it offers or enables him to be aware of such nuances and problems that the literary scholar without this experience may not discover, or he may not be fully aware of all the relevant connections of the prose phenomenon being examined.
Jozef Špaček
Rakús is one of the innovators and perfectors of one important phase in our literary development, which in a non-declarative fashion set out to find the lost soul, and took almost half a century to find him, in spite of the fact that its search had all the parameters of talent and artistic ingeniousness. Rakús above all answers the question: where did the lost soul spring from? Four protagonists of four stories in the book Telegram are intellectuals who in their real lives have risen neither to their own intellectuality, nor to their ambition not to be intellectuals, but something quite different, let’s say exponents and tasters of life, flag-bearers of love, understanding and participation. These traces exist in them all the time, but if they move anything at all, they usually produce comic effects. (...) The second question is how these lost souls afflicted with communication defects are to live. Rakús’s answer to this is perhaps most unlike that of other prose writers with protagonists who have similar fates, but whose prosaic existence consists of exceptionality that could not be developed because society, the regime or politics have not allowed it and have destroyed it... and so on. Rakús does not ascribe any exceptionality to his heroes; he doesn’t make them models of unfulfilled human ambitions for any reason. He does not believe that with prescience of their existence they would in any way go beyond the reality in which they live. Their state is more the status quo of the world and these characters with antiheroic properties are atoms seeking a place in global uncertainty. (...) Rakús’s characters, unable to communicate in real situations, create from their inability to communicate a kind of platform for communication in non-communication, which, it seems, is the basic message of the stories in this book. Rakús’s answer to the question of what the lost soul is like and what possibilities he has, is the art of narration. Through a bravura regrouping of aspects of narration the author is able to capture rampant intersubjectivity, but at the same time to reach the most intimate places in the individual situation of the characters and their behaviour. The chance Rakús’s lost human being has is to tell all. Democratically and plurally to tell all his griefs and pleasures, to shout at the top of his voice all his attitudes, to attempt to express the inexpressible. Although in this process of retelling the protagonists become ridiculous, they cease to be lost and at least temporarily become self-forming or even world-creating. But just at this moment the author offers them solidarity as a reward for their courage in expressing themselves. And that is also the author’s reward to the reader for kindly reading his work, which in the end does sound comical, although laughter is only one of the many traps of his enchanting language. Humour and irony are perhaps the most convincing elements of the stories, which in comparison with his last three novels is no surprise. They not only reveal the author’s inherent character, but also his distinctive view of the world and of life, in which meaningful caricature is one of the most noble products of the being known as Man, trying to comprehend a world where ideas and ideals have ceased to operate as driving forces behind any movement whatsoever, including the literary.
Alexander Halvoník
