Radically Transforming Bratislava (in Poetry Published Between 1945 and 1960s)

Abstract

After the Second World War, Bratislava underwent a radical spatial and ideological reconstruction. The reconstruction of the city was projected into poetry and its imagery in the socialist semantic code. The article focuses on the analysis and evaluation of the new meanings Bratislava as a symbolic space of historical events (and their influence on the daily life of its inhabitants) acquired during the post-war reconstruction process. The article builds on Henri Lefebvre’s thesis that states that every revolution must also alter and create its own space, otherwise it does not fully utilise its potential. Investigations into the artistic representations of Bratislava are complemented by urbanist and sociological reflections on socialist urban space, as well as semiotic works of Vladimír Macura and Daniela Hodrová. In this respect, poetic representations of Slovakia’s capital city may be divided according to three aspects: historical, reconstruction and private. These polarise the space into the city centre and periphery and recode their meanings. The image of the city is thus inclined towards a certain type of utopia – in the specific case of Bratislava it is a utopia in mid-(re)construction. Capturing the period image of the city as outlined in the 1950s poetry aims at contributing to the more complex picture of the symbolic meaning of Bratislava in the cultural memory of the 20th century.

Keywords

• 20th century slovak literature
• 1950s poetry
• socialist realism
• urban literature
• utopia