Slovenska Literatura (Feb 2024)
The world is more effective in small doses. Poetry as well... Short poem and the meaning of reduction in the work of Rudolf Jurolek
Abstract
The historical form of minimalism which culminated in the Euro-American context in the 1960s – 1980s did not find its way into Slovak poetry. Nevertheless, several Slovak artists and poets adopted and creatively adapted individual features of minimalist poetics – conceptuality, aesthetics of the sublime, poetics of indications, ellipsis, short forms of narrative, the enunciative, intermediality, seriality, thematic minimalism, etc. They did so also under the influence of contacts with the work of foreign authors. Literary historian Peter Zajac connects the Slovak poets with the cultural paradigm of the minimal and perceives them also in contemporary cultural landscape as productive tendencies in the visual arts and literature. The article focuses on the work of Rudolf Jurolek (1956) whose poetry joins natural lyricism with subtle spiritual overtones. His inclination towards the short poetic form and reduction can be observed in various forms and modifications in his poetry over the years from his early writing published in journals in the 1970s to the most recent collection of poetry Bukolika ([Bucolics] 2021) which was awarded Zlatá vlna award in 2022. Jurolek’s manifestations of minimalism captivate with their conceptual character and variety of procedures, but also with their unique thought conception, in which minimalism is connected with complementary and harmonizing processes.
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