Slovakness in the Making: The Concept of “Nation” and “National Literature” in the Works of 1930s Literary Critics

A journal and portal for history and related disciplines Forum Historiae, 2022, vol. 16, no. 1, published a study by our colleague Viliam Nádaskay, Slovakness in the Making: The Concept of “Nation” and “National Literature” in the Works of 1930s Literary Critics.

The articles presented in this issue of Forum Historiae examine the ideas and concepts of “nation,” national existence, national history and national art in the writings of influential intellectuals active in a variety of fields—historians, literary critics, artists and art critics, and a philosopher—in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and their successor states throughout the 20th century. The theme of this issue is The Intellectuals and the “National Question” in Post-1918 Central and Eastern Europe.

Read the full article here.

Abstract:

The study outlines the opinions on and sources of the so-called Slovak question in the interwar Czechoslovak republic amongst the writings of three Slovak literary critics: Stanislav Mečiar, Andrej Kostolný and Michal Chorváth. Each author stood for a different contemporary ideology; nationalist/autonomist, Czechoslovakist and communist, respectively. The current article details the ways and reasons these critics legitimised national self-determination, whether by invoking the legacy of the national awakening and those stereotypical historical narratives of Slovak oppression, equality and fulfilment within a common Czechoslovak state, or through the idea of social revolution and stark opposition to tradition deriving from modernist distrust and a general fragmentation of the world and society. Opinions on the problem with the Slovakness of national literature are also illustrated, as well as its place within the context of world literature, including an analysis of how these ideological rivals shared certain attitudes towards the national self-determination of Slovaks, yet differed greatly in their ideas on its manifestation. On the one hand, cooperation among literary intelligentsia may be seen as an effort to remain internally united while facing an impending world war; on the other hand, it could be interpreted as another part of the ideological struggle, as the case of the famous Congress of Slovak Writers seems to demonstrate.