Slovenska Literatura (Sep 2015)
Between the Living Whip and the Gardista (Comments on Milo Urban’s Memoirs, Fiction and Journalism)
Abstract
The present study is a way of contemplating about the forms of the author´s subject who occurs differently in memoirs, fiction and journalism written by Slovak prose writer Milo Urban. What stands out here is creating different images of the creator. In the first case it is the recalling subject present in the second book of Urban´s memoirs Kade-tade po Halinde. Neveselé spomienky na veselé roky (All around Halinda. Cheerless Memories of Cheerful Years, 1992). Similar features can be found in the image of the author´s subject of the prose Živý bič (The Living Whip, 1927),which includes the author´s memories of the First World War organized in a literary way. These images are confronted with the author´s subject presented in Urban´s magazine and newspaper articles. This is where the progression of the author´s journalism career is revealed as its ideological aspects only show later when he becomes the editor-in-chief of the daily Gardista. The outcome of the analysis of the different ways of Milo Urban´s writing is ambivalnce of the author´s subject depicted by himself.
