Slovenska Literatura (Jul 2016)
Milan Zelinka - a Late Debut Author
Abstract
The goal of the paper is to deal with the issue of a generation representative and to answer the question how the affiliation to a generation was applied to selected authors in the line of Slovak prose written in the 1960s. At the same time there is an attempt to find out whether Milan Zelinka as a late debut author belongs or not to the line mentioned above. The paper is built on the dictionary entries defining „generation“, the history of Slovak literature, critical memoirs, contemporary research into Slovak literature written in the 1960s as well as the literary reflection on Zelinka´s debut of those times. The basic tendencies of the literary trends in the 1960s have been described. Then new concpets became the centre of attention – authenticity , estrangement, absurdity, experiment, everyday life elements, chance, anxiety, loneliness or dehumanization. While looking for a single generational line, having support in the survey named „Hľadanie prózy“/Finding Prose, which was carried out in Kultúrny život (1967), two lines of literature have been found. On the one hand finding and testing new techniques and methods of writing and on the other hand turning to the inner world of a human, authenticity or subjectivization. The book debut Dych/Breath by Milan Zelinka has been classified in the same generation line (Peter Jaroš, Rudolf Sloboda, Pavel Vilikovský, Pavel Hrúz, Ladislav Ballek, Dušan Kužel, Vlado Bednár) for several reasons. His short stories feature notable experiment, grotesque elements, absurdity, bizarre elements, parody, comic situations in order to describe the characters, their estranged, lonely individualities, manifested in the author´s own creative gesture.
