Slovenska Literatura (Feb 2010)
DILEMMAS OF SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (ELENA MARÓTHY-ŠOLTÉSOVÁ: MY CHILDREN)
Abstract
Elena Maróthy-Šoltésová ’s book My children (Moje deti) was composed on the basis of authentic records. They are nates of a mother watching and commenting development and grow of her children and finally facing and dealing with their death. They were formally determined only for the close family circle. She published them after untimely passing of her children, first in the periodical (1885) and only much later in the book form (1st vol. in 1923, 2nd vol. in 1924). Just the definite form of the book confirmed that the author within a longer interval after her children’s death found a way how to shape her records into artistically accepted form. The critics evaluated the book My children (Moje deti) immediately after release as a unique, generally valid work. The book was soon subsequently translated into several languages. My children (Moje deti) is not like a work with didactic intention. Quite the reverse, the author states the limits of pedagogy; it is more like a testimony about the mother’s wonders, doubts, and worries concerning the future of her children. Existential situations, she experienced when the children were passing away, weaken her faith in “sensibly” working causality of life, typical for philosophical background of realism. She leans on the “higher“heavenly authority and that way she confirms limits in realistic form of writing. The book My children (Moje deti) is a unique syncretic genre. There are specifics of a diary genre connected with features of fictional texts, in which the theme of passing away and death introduces a secret of finality of the existence.
