Slovenska Literatura (Jul 2019)
The Human in front of and behind Literature (in Vladimír Petrík´s Conception)
Abstract
This paper characterizes Vladimír Petrík as a literary critic and a literary historian with a humanistic orientation. Petrík´s all-life interest in literature is predominantly seen here as an interest in the human who produces literature and who it is meant for. This is also why Petrík preferred human reader´s empathy to a strict scientific methodology in order to approach literature. The study searches for such manifestations of Petrík´s humanocentric conception of literature, especially for those in his book of memoir dialogues with Vladimír Barborík, which was published under the title of Hľadanie minulého času/In Search of the Past Time. In that book Petrík authentically depicts literature, men of letters and literary life of his times and that way also speaks indirectly of himself, especially as a perceptive, well-wishing as well as gently ironic observer of the literary world.
