Vyhľadávanie
Miroslav Válek
Lastovička vo fraku
(Swallow in Tails)
Bratislava, Kalligram, 2006
When they first appeared, these poems by Miroslav Válek marked a departure in the understanding of children’s literature. This is the first complete edition. The collection has been enlarged by the heretofore unpublished poems and selected poems for the adults from the collections entitled: Matches, Touches, and Attraction. The illustrations by Marek Ormandík augment the charm and esthetic juggling with the verse. They don’t seem an addition, but an integral part of the work. A playful, non-didactic approach to the child readers was symptomatic of Valek’s work. It was the author’s intention to enhance children’s imagination. Verses hide allegories and other forms of entertainment. It is demanding to consider a child reader an equal partner. It means the author has to look at the world through the eyes of children. Child’s vision and soul are pure and they have a need to discover. Miroslav Válek made his debut in the children‘s literature with his Magic under the Table. He came with inventiveness. He relaxed the verse, lightened up the bookish style and molded it into a spoken form. Through child’s play he introduced the relationship of adults with children which did not go only one-way. He always respects children’s fantasy and their experience from it. Without a fairytale element, the fantasy would not work. While he relaxes the classical verse structure, he at the same suggests invention with a humorous understanding of the text. The collection The Great Travel Fever for Little Travelers is composed of eight poems about different kinds of transportation. Its genre and theme make it the most colourful of the collections. It plays with the child. It coats the reality in fantasy and poetry. The spoken style brings along suggestive metaphors that become more intense for the adult reader as well. Válek’s work for children is in opposition to the heretofore closed poetic tradition that followed didactic aims rather than worried about the quality. I was won over by Válek in my childhood by his poem “Panpulons,“ and came to the collection “Off to Neverland“ as an adult. I understood it as an adult, but could see it from a child’s point of view as well. I gladly accepted the illogical, and welcomed the unreal as a colourful enhancement of a reality gone pale. In the fairytale land the unreal becomes real and the illogical assumes its justified logic. All the collections have an original idea, wit, and magic with words. He builds his game on the basis of humour, and confronts it with pairs of opposites: logical and illogical, natural and unnatural. This well blended mixture is nonsense, satire, and irony for the world of adults lacking poetry. The Swallow in Tails is a valuable and impressively crafted little book.
Lucia Blažeková
Július Balco
Diablova trofej
(Devil‘s Trophy)
Bratislava, Regent, 2006
The prose writer Július Balco has been present in the literature since the 70s of the twentieth century. In the recent years he has been writing for children, but most recently came up with a collection of stories, Devil’s Trophy. Balco did not fundamentally change his manner of writing; he just developed further his own way of writing. He did not succumb to the temptation to adjust himself to the fashionable trend of postmodern textual games, as he is only too aware of his strong points. He is inventive in creating longer or shorter stories that seem inspired by reality, or personal experience, and at other times, they are pure fiction. But they are always original, surprising and thus interesting. Among the stories that seem to be based on personal experience of the author belongs the story “A Drop of Red Wine.” Its narrator and protagonist in one person is the writer. The first person narrative and some other realia allow the reader to assume the author of the text is the protagonist. Strange peregrination of the writer in the state of mild alcoholic intoxication to Pezinok, during which time he meets a young and attractive Gypsy woman twice, can be understood as a metaphor of the eternal unfulfillment of human desire. In the story “Cat,” the author takes the reader to the social periphery, to the place where the homeless, the alcoholics, and the losers live in a world of strange, difficult to understand relationships determined by their own rules. The evocation of this environment and the speech mannerisms of the characters are very persuasive, in Balco’s rendering. Two most extensive stories, “Yellow Roses,” and “Devil’s Trophy,” are connected with the character of clairvoyant, a “failed student of psychology,” but otherwise we are dealing with two separate narratives. However, both stories are trying to suggest the idea of the impossibility of entering into the mysterious world of human soul. There is a great deal of mystery in both texts.
There is no weaker or unsuccessful short story in this collection. The author knows exactly when his epic form needs an open ending and when he has to conclude with an expressive point. His dialogues are alive and persuasive. The few erotic scenes are presented here really seductively, but they are written tastefully and the sexuality here is within the logic of the story. No matter where we open the book, we always encounter a well-written text, and occasionally even passages that are excellent. Balco really knows how to create a good quality text. His book of short stories belongs among the best in the Slovak prose of 2006.
Igor Hochel
Gabriela Futová
Rozruch v škole na Kavuličovej ulici
(Disturbance at the School on Kavulič Street)
Illustrated by Viktor Csiba
Bratislava, Regent, 2006.
The title of Gabriela Futová’s work suggests that the narrative will be about adventures from school, comical and serious ones, including thrilling and horrifying, that concern a first-year pupil Monika. On her first day in school, her two faithful friends – Andy and Amor – two big, black Great Danes, accompany her. The simple, humorous story captures the first day of school that is so significant in the life of the pupil. Many minor characters – pupils, parents, the school janitor, and cooks – pepper the story. On that small stage, the author manages to bring to life brilliant episodes that are full of tension and humour. The theme, composition, and the choice of stylistic means make it truly a model book that might help a child to adapt to the life in school, as well as to help start its emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual development with its playful approach. A child might spontaneously identify with the behaviour of the characters of the book and that might later support the child’s effort to learn how to read independently as soon as possible. The lovely illustrations of Viktor Csiba stress the dominant situations of the literary work and enhance its value and attractiveness for the beginning readers. Masterly work by the graphic designer Pavel Blažo, the choice of the fonts and their size complement the harmoniousness of the book.
Eva Hornišová
Veronika Šikulová
To mlieko má horúčku
(Feverish Milk)
Bratislava, Slovart, 2006
Veronika Šikulová has shown in the previous works for the adults that she can continue in the narrative style established by Vincent Šikula, but in her case, it is based mostly on a female experience and comes from a female perspective.
Her texts are full of ideas, unexpected associations that—at first sight humorously—reach eventually to less joyful, difficult parts of human existence. These are, at the same time, texts where the author performs an original, fresh play with language, revealing new possibilities of such a playful approach to the word without lessening poetic strictures.
In her newest book, Feverish Milk, Veronika Šikulová turns to the child reader while her characteristic prose narrative developed for the adults finds its niche also in the work for children in a specific way, allowing for the perceptual possibilities of the target audience. Šikulová’s child characters, whether it is Dorotka, her best friend Shermen, Vecanko, Jurko, and others are endowed with lively imagination and thanks to it, they see the world completely differently than the adults. There are no differences among the human beings, animals, flowers, or even things: they all understand each other, can wonderfully communicate with each other, create alliances and find joy in their common life. Šikulová’s heroines, for example, can catch fog in their hats, make themselves invisible, talk to stray dogs, trees and vegetation. In her stories, things come alive, the windows know hot to be sad and joyful and express that by squeaking, the envelopes and postage stamps can be cheerful, and milk can become sick and even get a fever!
Texts with the illustrations by Saša Švolíková, besides showing a playful imagination, also evoke something very important: an atmosphere of family warmth, friendliness and rare kinship. Šikulová’s world is is a world where people trust in human beings, believe in family, it is a world of silent joy and beauty of everyday life experienced, for example, in a kitchen of an ordinary apartment. It is a world where a person is close to nature, to other people and to inanimate things. It is a world where one wants to live.
Etela Farkašová
Ján Juríček
Milan Rastislav Štefánik.
Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Q111, 2006
An old Latin saying, “habent sua fata libeli,“ or “books, too, have their fate,“ is fully applicable to Ján Juríček’s book Milan Rastislav Štefánik. During some forty years since its publication, the book has experienced highs and deep lows. It appeared on the book market in 1968 and created a sensation. After many years of calumny against one of the greatest personalities of our history, an honest biography of Milan Rastislav Štefánik has appeared as an answer to silence or suspicious pamphlets denigrating his role and significance. It was quite symbolic that the book was authored by Juríček who was born in Brezová pod Bradlom, a few kilometers from Štefánik’s birthplace, Košariská. At the time, the work has attracted attention for good reason. It was destined for a young reader who had distorted information about this great personality of our modern history. A modest dedication in the introduction to the book spoke more eloquently than would long articles and studies:
“To Jana, my daughter, who never learned at school about Milan Rastislav Štefánik.“
After a moment of glory, the book, together with it its author, experienced a period of fall. The third edition was destroyed, pulled out of libraries, as it was found to be in disagreement with the official interpretation of history pushed by the communist regime. After the fall of the regime, the book experienced a glorious comeback in 1990 and brought complete satisfaction to its author at least for the short time he had left to live (he died in 1992). It is praiseworthy that Vydavateľstvo Q 111 again reached for this title and published thus a fourth (not counting the destroyed one) edition of this work. It is not only that the book represents a significant breakthrough in the Slovak biographical literature, but it belongs among the most valuable ones ever written in the genre of artistic biographies. The author has gathered an incredible amount of documentary material that he processed in an attractive and accessible manner. The book is a unique look at the figure of Milan Rastislav Štefánik and offers witness to his manifold activities—as a scholar, soldier, and politician, but also as a human being and a tireless fighter for the rights of the Slovak nation.
Ján Bábik
Peter Bilý
Posledná siesta milencov
(Lovers’s Last Siesta)
Slovenský spisovateľ, Bratislava, 2006
The release of Bilý’s collection of poems is always an invitation to a fiesta. It is a celebration of poetry, different and celebrated differently each time. The young poet toasts to its fame with his own wine, his sort of lyricism, from which the reader has not yet had the time to sober up, in order to savor the riper verses of the next one.
Posledná siesta milencov /Lovers’ Last Siesta/ took a longer time to ripen. Bilý wrote it while writing two novels, which he published following his two books of poems. This was not damaging for this work, though, just the opposite. The collection breathes the early works of Válek, later works of Urban and the more observant readers can sense the more exotic breeze of Borges. Any doubts are gone with the first taste.
It is Bilý. Undiluted and without additives. You can easily recognize his four essences: literary playfulness, light eroticism, broad intellectual view and precise form. He is far more authentic, though. Eroticism is present much more in his new texts, pulsating in every poem. The entire free verse cycle has the rhythm of love-making, each metaphor revealing lovers’ moans full of pleasure. The first sonnets are just a foreplay, so that after the repeated sexual act, which climaxes in a mastered tanka (and there are several), everything can quiet down into a siesta, which by no chance is the last one.
After the third reading, the poetry’s alcohol takes its effect. It is also due to the fact that one cannot get enough of playfulness and lightness of the words pouring one after another, in just one sitting.
Enjambments in the verses are innovative, rhyme is often replaced by assonance, the expected cliché by an unexpected paradox. The verse is not forced, it is as if the author rhymed about not rhyming. Just the opposite is the case with free verse. You have to pour a glass of the same poem over and over again in order to get the true taste of its purity. While in his last collection he (though with rough cheekiness) repeatedly only tried how much the poems would let him do, this time he dictates how far he wants to and can go. Never before in Bilý’s work has the content form fit so closely and a sonnet in Slovak contemporary poetry has never sounded so modern.
Delusional visions of the author’s images circle the blood stream after the last gulp. From these images the distance between pain and pleasure, between god and the devil, can be estimated. The author can be found somewhere there, making an occassional mistake but never with pathos and false sight. He gets us drunk with the best he has up until the fiesta ends. Then it is time to sober up. To put the book away on the shelf. But not for long. Because Bilý, year 2006, is really good.
Tomáš Hudák
Peter Glocko
Kliatba čierneho anjela alebo Diablov testament
(The Curse of the Black Angel or the Devil’s Testament)
Vydavateľstvo Matice slovenskej, Martin, 2006
Peter Glocko has been focusing on historical themes in his prose for some time now, be it following the footprints of Jules Verne and Hans Christian Andersen or retelling Dobšinský’s folk tales. He uses source literature and source research which influence his fabulation, resulting in books where facts meet the fullness of the epic word.
The theme, which Glocko uses in this book, years ago interested the writer Terézia Vansová. Vansová wrote the novel Kliatba /The Curse/ for which she was condemned but at the same time received a state award (1927). Both authors were drawn to the character of the maniacal seducer, killer and offender Ľudovít Fekete and his relationship with his beautiful, young and innocent wife Faninka. The stories of both writers are supported by the testimonies from archives and other documents, only their frames differ. While Vansová’s story is told at a spinning party presenting all the evil, mystery and horror so natural for the setting of the Slovak village, Glocko presents the story as a narrative of a town physicist by the name of Fontani, who despite having a serious occupation likes to drink. But even an imagination strengthened by alcohol cannot be enough for all the described atrocities.
Ľudovít Fekete is returning from abroad shrouded by myths of wealth, influential acquaintances and good social standing. His arrival is accompanied by talk about a serial killer of young women, whom he tickles before murdering (and it is revealed that during childhood Fekete liked to tickle his girl classmates and cut off their braids). The wealthy Veselovský family want him for a groom for their daughter. Glocko’s (as well as Vansová’s) Faninka is an innocent girl, with many nice things yet to experience. She has shy feelings for a student named Mikuláš, who too becomes the killer’s victim. Faninka is under complete control of her authoritative mother, who is blinded by Fekete’s lordly manners; the interaction between the dame and the killer is full of (barely) hidden eroticism and lust. Glocko elaborates on what the chaste Vansová only suggested – thus the relationship between the mother-in-law and her son-in-law is full of obscene implications, expressed mostly in gestures rather than words. The most interesting among the characters is Zuzka the little cripple – a legless girl about Faninka’s age, who comments and points out things with unique humor and at the appropriate moment picks songs which in short characterize and give details about the whole tragic situation. The main plot line of Fekete’s fury-driven action in his marriage is complemented by a court hearing with the seduced Madlena Skubíkova and it is clear that in this case as well as the others Fekete is guilty. Glocko’s story of the devil from Zvolen is a gripping prose. He adds to and polishes its historical frame along with its specific language. The author handles language very delicately, as it can be seen in the scene where Faninka is found dead – “a young woman, a mother-to-be…had her life slashed apart” (p 263).
Glocko’s book is for the fans of recreational genres (that is also how Vansová’s novel was categorized by critics) as well as anyone who is interested in good historical prose.
Viera Prokešová
