Slovenska Literatura (Jun 2012)
Stranger on the border (The Eastern Carpathians as ideological space in the Central European literatures of the 20th century
Abstract
The study focuses on selected texts by Central European writers which are thematically set in the Eastern Carpathians. This radically multiethnic and multinational region is considered by the author to be one of the relatively independent cultural areas of Central Europe. Using examples such as Ivan Olbracht, Karel Čapek or Sándor Márai, the author shows that the narrative perspectives of a stranger, outcast, migrant in combination with the themes of border and conflict between vernacular and alien are characteristic for the literary image of the Eastern Carpathian border region in the 20th century. The author looks at the way the literary appearance of this area is ideologically deformed in the works of individual authors. The Eastern European writers who do not come from the Eastern Carpathian border region use characters of strangers to reflect on the relationship between the modern and the traditional. Autochthonous authors often make use of the stranger characters to depict the area´s self-colonial efforts (Kiossev) in relation to the referential dominant cultures. We can follow how this cultural referentiality has been changing during the region´s history from the original Austrian-Hungarian cultural framework through the frameworks of individual national cultures to Central European or European cultural framework accented by the current cultural policy.
