Slovenska Literatura (Jun 2013)
On the Self-Portrait of a Literary Critic in Changing Times (Literary Critic Ján Rozner in the years 1954 – 1963)
Abstract
The study is focused on the literary-critical writings by Ján Rozner published between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s, which are compiled in the collection of his reviews called Pohľad v zrkadlách (A Look in the Mirrors, 1969). They have all the attributes of the situation in (Czecho)Slovak culture and society cautiously but still moving from the normative paradigm set by the Socialist Realism doctrine to more spontaneous and more pluralist forms. As regards the arts and culture, the liberalization of the social situation was manifested in diagnosing and criticizing the acts of „schematism“ and in gradually undermining the Socialist Realism doctrine, in growing tendencies to see the concept of Socialist literature within a wider context, accenting the independence of the arts from the political power. The latest research into the period of time in question suggests that the process was not homogeneous and linear, but rather discontinuous and heterogeneous, containing obvious relapses, controversies and paradoxes, which is significantly proved in the analyzed Rozner´s writings. Rozner there carries out a consistent analysis of the notions used in the contemporary cultural discourse, because he sees them as the world structure processing medium. His goal is then to restore critical-analytical thinking and to point at the dynamic nature of the cognitive process. One of the central notions related to the immediate present, which makes it different from the past at the same time, is the „multidimensional“, „multifarious“, „multi-individual“ nature of each approach, which helps spread „the freedom of open possibilities“. However, establishing the framework for making the individual processes and attitudes more dynamic, individualistic, heterogeneous is unquestioned in Rozner´s atricles from this period, and presenting the richness and variety eventually refers to the whole of „the Socialist Realist arts“, more or less accented, yet undoubted.
