Short prose by Daniel Okáli

Abstract

From 1925 to 1932, Daniel Okáli (1903 – 1987) was the leading literary critic and theoretician in the communist-leaning intellectuals’ journal DAV. He only published one collection of poetry, Ozveny krvi a zápasov ([Echoes of blood and struggles] 1932), but in the early 1920s, he also published short fiction in student magazines and left-wing periodicals. In his prose, he employed fragmentary composition and emphasised the subject’s inner experience characterised by an exaggerated sensitivity, hypertrophy of emotion, and nervous – even pathological – irritability. In addition to the leftist tendency, his writing also reflects features of modernist and avant-garde poetics and expressionism and – despite its self-proclaimed modernity – also elements tying it to tradition. D. Okáli thus joined the group of authors of proletarian literature and circles of such left-oriented fiction writers as Ján Poničan, Andrej Sirácky, Edo Urx, Peter Jilemnický, Laco Novomeský, Jozef Zindr, Jozef Tomášik-Dumín, and Jarko Elen. The characters in their fiction and the way they portray the world deviated significantly from the proclaimed social functionality and ideology, which brings them closer to the literary expression of the young, non-communist-oriented generation of writers (representatives of the second wave of Slovak literary modernism).

Keywords

• proletarian literature
• daniel okáli
• character
• subjectivity
• model of the world
• social functionality