Slovenska Literatura (Mar 2018)
Slavic Heaven – the Idyll in Hurban´s Work Slovakia and Its Literary Life
Abstract
The paper focuses on tracking the idyllic topoi in historiosophical work by Jozef Miloslav Hurban Slovensko a jeho život literárny /Slovakia and its Literary Life/, in which Slovak literary science emphasized the idea of continuity of the development of Slovak culture and literature. The deconstruction of the idyllic topoi shows that it is the idyll that is the important part of the ideological construction of Hurban´s work. The idyllic topoi in connection with mystification of the past enabled him to create the idea of continuity between the present times and the Great Moravian cultural legacy. The idyllic codes can be found in Hurban´s depiction of the Slovak territory, Slovak nation, and its cultural evolution. The ethic and esthetic values of the idyll became the base of Slovaks´ created collective identity. The idyllic language is part of the Romantic national myths, especially the myth of folksiness, the Great Moravian myth and the myth of the thousand-year-old yoke. Hurban´s idea of continuity of national culture, the connection between the „cradle of Slavs“ and the writer´s present times, and especially the utopia of Slavic future in the form of „Slavic heaven“ is based on idyllic topoi and Slovak Romantic myths .
