Slovenska Literatura (Jul 2017)
When Poetics Reflects on Politics (Prolegomenon on the Poetics of Slovak Post-War Novel: Genre, Narrative, Method)
Abstract
The paper is the first part of an intended essay on transformations (configurations and reconfigurations) of Slovak novel (in a wider sense novellas and short stories too) after year 1945. The centre of attention is genre and narrative reconfigurations in the system of poetics of artistic work in the given period of time. The paper is a part of a comprehensive team monograph project Poetika slovenskej literatúry po roku 1945 /The Poetics of Slovak Literature after 1945/. What is defining here is the optics focusing on the changed proportions in understanding of the events as a semiotic source as well as the purpose of artistic work. In the key sense, it is an extension and development of the concept of „text poetics“ (event) from its normative paradigm meaning to an ontological existenentially defined syntagm of plot, motion and sharing (reading) of a text not only in the historical time and horizon but also at the level of singular poetic (narrative, genre) event of the interpretation. In the first part basic mechanisms of artistic work are defined, then wider contexts of secondary reflection are to be dealt with, and finally an exemplary interpretation of selected works of prose production written after year 1945 is planned. The vanishing point of the present paper is seeking new connections and rules in the area of poetics preliminarily defined by the ´existential´ attribute, i.e. mainly open to dynamic and ontological research into basic co-shared emotions, frenzies and trauma which, transferred into aesthetic representations, contributed to the complex one-way form of literature and art after 1945.
