Slovenska Literatura (Jun 2000)
Self-censorship of second and subsequent book editions in the fifties (Chapter from literary life after 1948)
Abstract
One of tlie side effects of the new cultural situation after the coup d'etat in February 1948 was a return of some authors to their own texts in book editions published after 1945 or a little bit earlier. These returns resulted in changed parts of these texts. These authors either shortened theme or they cut them altogether or else they re-wrote Ihem totally. In this contribution the first and later editions of the subesquent books are compared from the point of view of their editorial preparation: Fraňo Kráľ: Verše (Verses), František Hečko: Červené víno (Red Wine), Margita Figuli: Tri gaštanové kone (Three Brown Horses), Babylon, and Dominik Tatarka: Farská republika (The Republic of Priests). Authorial changes of the texts were connected with the religious motifs, erotical scenes, pessimism and individualism. After 1948 the tendencies approaching atheism were welcomed. Eroticism was regarded as an expression of the bourgeois decadence. The intellectual-like individualism and pessimism should have been replaced with the expressions of the team spirit and historical optimism. In the spirit of these demands the authors changed the original editions. They were changes from the outside without taking itno account the inherent rules of art. One can say they impoverished and deformed the texts of the first editions. The mentioned works have been published deformed like this until this day. In the future we shall have to return to the original version even if it is against the editorial principles.
