Slovenska Literatura (Sep 2017)
Left Foot Forward. The First Volume of the DAV magazine (1924 – 1925)
Abstract
The goal of the paper is to show the special place of the DAV magazine in the context of interwar Slovak literature, culture and society, and especially with regard to its avant-garde identifications and profile. The paper follows the formation and the forms of the avant-garde gesture of the DAV magazine in the times of its beginning and the initial process of establishing its profile. The DAV magazine is from the start defined as a platform of the left-wing literary avant-garde with an active revolutionary stance on society. The aesthetic efforts of the DAV always have a social and political character, they do not limit their impact to the literary and artistic context. The critical and analytical articles in the field of political journalism and art theory are complemented with aggressive rhetoric and offensive gestures, which are typical of artistic avant-garde. The DAV defines itself aesthetically (new art vs traditionalism) and politically (communism vs conservativism and bourgeois outlook, internationalism vs nationalism). The original and translated poetry and prose production as well as fine art build on the context of European avant-garde (Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism) and Proletarian poetry. The core of the DAV´s avant-garde stance is most clearly revealed within cultural journalism in its political attacks and provocations aimed at cultural tradition, bourgeois conservativism and bourgeois society. The paper is supposed to make a contribution to clarifying how the avant-garde gesture of the DAV magazine was developed in the situation when it was founded and its profile was being established, especially with regard to the historical social and literary context.
