The City and Syntax of the Movement. An Outline of Flaneurship as a Factor in Textual Composition in Contemporary Slovak Literature

Abstract

The article takes a look at four literary texts and analyses them from the perspective of literary flaneurship. In doing so, the study accentuates the category of subject and space of the city from the point of view of their mutually given constitution and the parameters of media fixation of the flaneur act. Textual analysis is based on the understanding of flaneurship as a way of reorganising of the objective city space. The article looks at Ján Rozner’s autobiographical novels Sedem dní do pohrebu ([Seven days to the funeral] 2009) and Noc po fronte ([Night after the front] 2010) in the context of textual creation of Bratislava as a palimpsest, uncovering layers of city’s history in the intersection between personal memory and history. Stanislav Rakús’ novel Temporálne poznámky ([Temporal notes] 1993) is read primarily through the prism of literary flaneurship seen as a way of resisting disciplinary mechanisms of totalitarian power attempting at utilitarian structuration of space and time. The analysis of Peter Macsovszky’s Mykať kostlivcami ([Making skeletons dance] 2010) accentuates the intertextual handling of the space.

Keywords

• literary space
• city
• flaneur
• walker
• palimpsest