Slovenska Literatura (Dec 2012)
The Concept ofThe Human And The World In Ján Smrek's Poetry: The Conclusions And The Prospects
Abstract
The goal of the study is a selected reconstruction of the concept of the human and the world in Ján Smrek´s poetry written in the 1920s and 1930s in relation to his identifications and transformations in the following period. The philosophy of life, the return to spirituality, to the forces of instincts and nature, mythologism and traditionalism as a part of the artistic-aesthetic manifesto of the Modern and Vitalism of the early 20th century paradoxically leads into mass Vitalist movements and totalitarian ideologies in the following decades, which turned the original ideals of beauty, freedom, youth, human naturality and dynamics of life into its very opposite, into destruction, death and totalitarianism. Smrek´s Vitalist concept of the human and the world with regard to the particular period of history and its aesthetic-philosophical and social-political identifications is found in a risky position. The utopian vision of the new Humanism, the transformations of the world and the revitalization of Creation is not a part of ideological movements in Smrek´s work; he keeps developing the concept which regards poetry as an active and dynamic way of cultivating the people and society. The restoration of the human soul as the purpose of the art – this is how the hidden struggles of Smrek´s situation as a poet can be read, not only during the period of freedom in the 1920s and 1930s but also in the changed cultural-social conditions of the 1940s and 1950s. Smrek´s poem in the times of the war and totalitarianism keeps pursuing its fundamental artistic-aesthetic credo as well as its moral and ethical identifications. The contribution of the study can mainly be found in demonstrating the wider cultural-historical motion and transformations of Vitalism with regard to the aesthetic-philosophical principles and the social-political consequences – in this context the form and meaning of Smrek´s poetry can be defined anew.
