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9783631668405 Intro 004.Pdf Introduction This book is a contribution to the mosaic of knowledge about the develop- ment of culture, literature and artistic and sociopolitical thinking in Central Europe1, (Busek, Brix) part of which is the Slovak Republic2. Little is known in the world about Slovak literature and culture, largely because this small but interesting country has been a part of other states for much of its history with its artistic achievements and leading fi gures often subsumed beneath another fl ag than the Slovak one. Its culture is a distinc- tive one, however, paradoxically preserved thanks to the long-lasting hegem- onies it survived under. In this respect, Slovakia is unique within Central Europe; together with its offi cial culture, there has always existed on its soil an alternative culture. This culture existed from the Middle Ages onwards on the crossroads of various trade routes and has endured, despite various kinds of linguistic and ideological pressure from outside, resistant to violence, universally and ecumenically Christian with a large measure of artistic inven- tiveness and warm sense of humour. This book, translated into English, today’s Esperanto, deals with the complex developments of the 20th century and the sociopolitical processes much refl ected in its art. The subject of analysis here is the life and work of the important Slovak author, Dominik Tatarka, signatory of Charter 77 – a Slovak Václav Havel. The English translation is the fi rst monograph about him, a writer whose work was groundbreaking in several ways: in his essay Démon súhlasu (Kultúrny život, 1956) Tatarka was the fi rst writer in Czecho- 1. Busek, E., Brix, E.: Projekt Mitteleuropa. Wien: Ueberreuter, 1986. 2. The Slovak Republic regained its statehood in 1993. Efforts at establishing an independent Slovak state had begun in 1848; these were exploited by Germany in 1939 when, in accordance with Hitler’s wishes, Czechoslovakia was divided into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic (1939-1945), which was a satellite of Germany. In 1944, Slovak citizens revolted against Fascism as well as against their own “schizophrenic“ government in what was a carefully planned and armed uprising. 12 MÁRIA BÁTOROVÁ: DOMINIK TATARKA: THE SLOVAK DON QUIXOTE slovakia to expose the mechanism of thought control of citizens during the times of Stalinist schematism (this essay serves as a complement to Czeslaw Milosz’s essay, The Captive Mind, published in England in 1953). In his essay Slovo k súčasníkom o literatúre (Kultúrny život, 1955), he was the fi rst to defend the artist’s right to individuality, a view which ran counter to the cultural and political tendencies from above in which the party determined the rules for creative work (art meeting the criteria of socialist realism had to be ideologi- cal, partisan and ‘for the people‘; a writer had to be an “engineer of human souls“). Tatarka’s studies at Charles University in Prague and the Sorbonne in Paris gave him an affi nity with these two cities and the countries they are capitals of. At the same time he became one of the best-known advocates of Slovak independence in 1968. In that traumatic year for Czecholoslova- kia, following the invasion of Warsaw pact forces, military occupation and establishment of a servile government, Tatarka returned his state honours and abjured all advantages and honours the government granted him. This “performer of Slovak literature“ then lived and worked in internal emigration in Slovakia for nineteen years until his death shortly before the Velvet Revo- lution of 1989. During that time he signed Charter 77, was forbidden to leave Bratislava and lived under police surveillance. His books were translated into Czech and published abroad. As well as analysing Tatarka’s works and their artistic context, especially French and Czech, the author has gathered hitherto unprocessed and little known source texts from three archives of dissenting material: the Libri prohibiti in Prague, the Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen (the dissident archive of the V4 and Soviet Russia) and the Památník národního písemnictví in Prague (the unprocessed estate of Dominik Tatarka, who in the 1970s sold his work to the institution in order to improve his bad fi nancial situation). In the original Slovak version there are fi fty pages of appendices from these archives. Although in the English version these pages are absent, there are references to them throughout the monograph. This book gives insight into a culture and literature which fi rst under- pinned the anti-Fascist resistance of 1944 and later opposed the Communist consolidation process in Central Europe. The author Bratislava, December 2014.
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