Slovenska Literatura (Apr 2014)
The Poet in Time (of Oppression). The Inner Exile as a Subject Paradigm.
Abstract
The goal of the study is to show two lines of Smrek´s poetry in the context of the years 1948 – 1956 and the way they are put in opposition to the official view of the times and the ideological requirements of literature. Two of the collections of poems by Ján Smrek have been closely examined: Obraz sveta /The Image of the World/, which was published in 1958 and generally includes traditional love and nature poems as we know them from his pre-war period, and the selection of poems Proti noci /Towards the Night/, which was published in 1993 and puts together the part of Smrek´s work unknown to the public until then which strongly protests against the ruling regime destorting the arts and the people. On the one hand, Smrek attacks the regime and comments on its perverted character and the general moral decline (Towards the Night), on the other hand, he seeks the way how to preserve the values of humanity and the humanistic idea of poetry (The Image of the World) in the world where such behaviour was ruthlessly suppressed, excluded and eliminated. Insisting on the humanistic meaning of a poet´s message is proved by Smrek´s lyric subject in the existence of two parallel poetic worlds, which enter unexpected relations and confrontations despite being seemingly autonomous as regards poetology and aesthetics. Provided eliminating the human being as a subject was one of the significant forms of the system, then Smrek saves the subject and gives him/her an authentic and true face, yet necessarily split into two. The contribution of the study is mainly meant to be in clarifying the mutual relations between the two lines of Smrek´s poetry (civil, political poetry and intimite nature poetry), which prove Smrek´s brave efforts to restore the human being, morality, ethos, the values of Humanism and freedom.
