The striking otherness of Ján Ondruš (Through the critics’ eyes then and now)

Abstract

This article aims to bring together the critical voices that have accumulated around the work and the figure of the Slovak author Ján Ondruš. The study focuses on the disputes that have arisen among researchers. The confrontational approaches can be grouped around several issues that emerge from the texts of the Slovak poet. These issues are as follows: rewriting his own literary texts, his “schizoid” and “schizophrenic” conditions in light of which critics write about him, and “the fragmentation” of the lyrical subject in his texts. The article aims to summarize the main problems of writing about the author and his poetry and thus facilitate their potential literary-critical solution.

Keywords

• slovak poetry
• bifurcation
• rewriting
• literary criticism