Slovenska Literatura (Apr 2002)
An ascetic hero of Botto
Abstract
The study is from the manuscript inheritance of Oskár Čepan (1925 – 1992) – an important Slovak historian of literature. The author deals with Ján Botto – a Slovak poet, a representative of so called Levoča circle. (The Levoča circle was after the Bratislava’s Lutheran lyceum leading by Ľudovít Štúr the second most important centre for Slovak Romanticism.)Levoča was a place of generation struggle for a new type of Romanticism initiated by a poet Ján Francisci. The new, more radical version of the Slovak Romanticism in poetry was the most adequate expressed by Ján Botto. He was the youngest among the founders of Slovak poetry of Romanticism. Čepan points out the co-existence of messianic opinions and radically-political thinking. He shows the importance of revaluation of a Hegel´s term ”word spirit” in the Levoča circle. He focuses on Botto´s conception of a romantic hero in his poem Svetský víťaz (The World victor). He defines this poem as an allegorical composition in which heroically-balladic pathos has its semantic affinities in a redemptive myth from Slovak folk tale about Popolvár. Also his next poem Smrť Jánošíkova (Jánošík´s death) has the similar character in modified form. The same is for unfinished Čachtická pani (The lady of Čachtice) and for some other Botto´s epic poems. The author varies stress on so called heroic, redemptive and satanic myth (through the characters of a hero, martyr, criminal). Čepan proves that they are types of people characteristic for some periods in which the Slovak Romanticism was born, developed and declined.
