Slovenska Literatura (Feb 2006)
Between Ideology and Adventure (Rudolf Jašík: Mŕtvi nespievajú – Died Do not Sing)
Abstract
The text is a scholarly, expository commentary of the war novel Mŕtvi nespievajú (Died Do not Sing) written by Rudolf Jašík in 1961. The study is a part of a wide conceived collective grant Kľúčové diela slovenskej literatúry 20.storočia (The 20th Century Key Slovak Literary Works) focused on the explanation of a literary work within a specific context of the national literature. The aim and the reason of the study is to characterise qualities of the Jašík’s work, a key work in the context of close and farther literary environment, from the aspect of the history of literature, typology as well as its narrow defined poetological features. The base of interpretation is a classification of the novel according to historically generic circumstances, typical for a part of Slovak prosaic texts, depicting WWII and the national resistance, written per order, but in fact exceeding literary quality or at least relativising ideological demands to write under the plain-colour optic. This kind of literature includes works of D. Tatarka, A. Bednár or L. Lahola. They are symptomatically influenced by dramatically irritated, tragic even absurd war experience (Tatarka´s Kohútik v agónii/The Cock in Agony/, Lahola´s Posledná vec/The Last Thing/). Some of the war testimonies or the war resistance experiences are literary patterned through parallel literary techniques and strategies (interpolation of the balladic structure into composition and narration of Bednár’s Sklený vrch /The Mount of Glass/). Jašík’s novel in the figured coherence connects techniques of autobiography and expressive existential involvement of the narrator with unusual toposes of subject-composition intervention of the adventurous genre in ideologically stressed narration about relative character of heroism or a heroic act. Jašík’s strong point is a hero modelled at the edge of a type and character. In his novel Mŕtvi nespievajú (Died Do not Sing) it is presented by a young guardian, later partisan J. Kľako. From the literary aspect he does not fit with the scheme of an ideal character, but he is introduced as an adventurous easygoing figure. Only after a traumatized experience having faced unconditional choice in the extreme situation (life or death) he becomes a hero co-organizing dangerous liberating operation in an occupied city. In the novel Mŕtvi nespievajú (Died Do not Sing) Jašík introduces non-schematic picture of good and evil, brave and faint-hearted people. The war itself – apocalyptic, is a real “hero” of his unfinished trilogy - unable to bring any conditions for ideological decoration and an idle opinion, typical for schematic literature. Beside Lahola’ s short prose Jašík’ s novel as one of the few war theme texts, in Slovak literature only after 1945, fulfils European and worldly established concept of front line and war literature qualitatively comparable with the war texts of the Lost Generation authors.
