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Milan Hamada, obituary

By comparing two versions of Ján Ondruš´s poem A Hat of Wine and critically reading the version in his debut book, the paper arrives at the characterstics of the selected piece of writing, which is an intersection of different types of poetics relevant for interpretation of Slovak poetry written in the 1960s in general: sadness, or Baudelairesque „spleen“ and its projection into physical base being lived, a rural genre featuring characteristic details, expressivization and metaphorization of physical gestures, excessiveness of the mental state of the poetic „self“ also suggested through the magic of lunatism, employing surrealist imagery, the author´s individual poetics of fatal returnability and repetitivenss, text enigmatization as a result of abridging the text, the archetypal lyric „nox et solitudo“ situation. At the end of the paper the question that arises is what results from these findings and what it means for the impression of Ján Ondruš´s poetic writing in terms of semantics and values.

The subject of the paper is Šialený mesiac /The Mad Moon/ by J. Ondruš as a key poetic text of Slovak lyric written in the 1960s – placing the accent on the aspects of his poetics and the ways of identifying them. The paper evolves in several steps. 1. It takes notice of the updates of surreal inspirations namely in the 1960s. 2. It confronts the versions of the poem published in a magazine and in his book debut, it takes notice of certain corrections of excentricity of the subject-character. 3. It presents an attempt at mythological and philosophical, and intertextual placing of the lunar and lunatic motifs with regard to The Mad Moon. 4. It shows (in reference to P. Ricoeur) the progression of „stain“, „mistake“ and „guilt“ as the indices of fatal human deficitness. 5. The actual critical reading of the poem follows the oscillation between the factual physical everyday dimension of the course of events, and the emphatic, „lunatically“ excessive one,: the „mad moon“ as a cipher of human and poetic existence, as a cipher of poetry itself, its magic power and deficitness.

The paper features the writer´s memory of his first meeting with Peter Zajac as a reader and interpreter of poetry in the late 1970s and of his work on Štefan Strážay´s poetry being both initiation and inspiration. The paper then advances in several steps: it records Zajac´s initial generational vitality of developing theories, his inclination towards existentialism in the last quarter-century; this represents the framework of „shivering aesthetics“ being currently developed by P. Zajac – also in relation to the 20th century modern poetry; what proves to be fundamental for him is the phenomenon and notion of the „noble“. It can be exemplified by the writer´s brief excursion into the „country“ in Ivan Laučík´s poetry. The actual „shivering“ of the lyric text in its making and reading is demonstrated by the last sketch of Ján Ondruš´s poem Radosť (Joy, the introductory idyll, natural-musical melancholy, the interior of solitude, the final melancholy freeze and a possible lyric catharsis, their discreet oscillations).

The present paper dealing with Ivan Laučík´s (1944 – 2004) poetry is organized into several steps. – It was inspired by M. Merleau-Ponty´s ideas about the chiasmus of corporeity and the world, about perceiving elements and things, about the functioning of the living language, fragmentarily known in the Czechoslovak context since the 1960s and probably marginally noticed by I. Laučík. The paper refines cave motifs, or topoi as a synecdoche of nature in Laučík´s poetry – it is done by confronting his own poems with Rudolf Těsnohlídek´s book of documentary essays Demänová published in the year 1926. An attempt at defining the semantics of the motifs is made by referring to Laučík´s essay about speleologist J. Volko-Starohorský, where there are a poetically inspiring designation crisis and a crisis situation of existential corporeal commitment projected into the relation between language and cave experience. The paper highlights as an interpretation problem the transition of Laučík´s poetry from an excessively „open“ way of writing of the late 1960s to relating his poetry of the 1980s to natural and cultural landmarks of the Liptov region, biographically well-know to the poet. These ideas are further exemplified by critical reading of three poems. The poem Jahoda (Strawberry, collection Vzdušnou čiarou, As the crow flies, 1991) shows Laučík´s participation in a latent discussion of the 1980s about ecology, the critical reading documents the biographical context of the poem, notices irony and a commemoration gesture. The poem Alexy´s pastel (from the same collection) moves on from the visual work of art to reviving its model – a sacred architectural monument falling into ruin at that time and shows so far unnoticed possibility or form of Laučík´s poetry – a „quasi-geographical recording of history“ (M. Merleau-Ponty´s formulation). In the case of the poem Milí priatelia! (Dear Friends!, end of the collection Na prahu počuteľnosti, On the Threshold of Audibility, 1988) brief fragmentary critical reading uses the motif of a hat to refine the chiasmus between communication and anonymous loneliness, as well as the motif of avalanche in the sense of liberating risk and disaster. The paper situates Laučík´s poetry, which is difficult to read and sometimes even hermetic, as well as work on it into the perspective predestined by one of the poet´s lines: „...krypty jazyka čakajú na zmŕtvychvstanie...“ („… the tombs of the language await resurrection“).

The text is an act of reading the poem The City from the collection The Interier (1992) by Štefan Strážay. The motif of covered sculptures is a poem set at the turn of the years 1989 – 1990. The article tracks the motifs of bad signs, spectres, revenants. It relates them to the theme of history and problematic future. The associated background to the reading is provided by the poems by L. Novomeský, M. Válek a I. Kupec written in the 1960s featuring sculptures, i.e. funeral monuments – as the witnesses, opponents, objects of historical changes. The interconnections between sculptures and lyric texts occurring in the article were inspired the works of R. Jakobson and Z. Mathauser. The article takes notice of the 1960s reflections on sculpture by D. Tatarka and J. Patočka. It confronts sculptures and city as such in Strážay´s work with the poem by F. Halas written in the troubled late 1930s. The Strážay´s ascetic, minimalist poem is situated amongst other lyric texts giving historical accounts of the late 1980s (I. Laučík, I. Kupec) and on the distant horizon of the emphatic possibilities of poetry opened up in the 1960s (M. Válek, J. Ondruš).

The article maps in a synecdochical manner the poetic journey made by Ján Ondruš (1932 – 2000) from the elementary lyric situation and mood – The Sonnet to the constellation of dream, natural elements or cycles and poetic imagination – A Drop of Dream to the vivisections, textual-physical exercises typical of the author – From Hospital. The main focus is on analytical reading of the text From Hospital (collection Šialený mesiac /The Mad Moon, 1965): the genre, the semantics of the names and motifs, the constitutive duality of „agent“ and „patient“. The article also maps how the debutant poet´s initial lyric melancholy transforms and becomes more problematic: from the discreetly present traditional iconography to the poetics of corporeality in the sense of „patient“.

The article deals with the argument over Milovanie v husej koži /Lovemaking With Goose Pimples On/ by Miroslav Válek. The collection of poems published in 1965 became in 1966 the subject of the argument between M. Hamada and S. Šmatlák. M. Červenka of the Czech side got involved in it as well. The polemic was seen as one of the key literary events of the decade right in the 1960s. The presented text reconstructs it as a chiasmus of poetry and criticism, structuralism-inspired analysis and interpretation of a poetic text and its radicalizing, existentially appealing finalization of the thinking process. The protagonist of the polemic M. Hamada deliberately situated it on the boundary between literary and moral-critical social debates. What M. Hamada vehemently identified in Válek´s „fourth book of restlessness“ was Nihilism and related amorphous, fragmentary, and cliché lyric messages. The other participant of the argument S. Šmatlák defended M. Válek in the name of everlasting Humanism including the negative moments of the human and the world using – in his opinion – Válek´s provably structured poetry. The argument is contextualized in the article as an argument over moderating the form of the poetry in the 1960s (on the one hand analytical unmasking of the human situation and on the other hand his cathartic poetic saviour), the nature of criticism (work at the service of the text as opposed to the efforts to autonomously reflect on literature and the state of the world), as the confrontation between the traditional and ideological reflections of Humanism and the related contemporary issues (the philosophy of existence, M. Heidegger, Structuralism of the 1960s, literature itself ranging from S. Beckett to J.-P. Sartre). The argument anticipated the schism of Slovak literature in the 1970s and 1980s, namely Šmatlák´s ideological viewpoints in the 1970s and 1980s and Hamada´s moralizing gestures as of the 1990s. The article records the impact of the argument on the interpretations of poetic texts in Slovak writing about poetry, its methodical dimensions as well as the still open issues of reading Válek´s poetry itself. Finally, it takes notice of potential connections with F. Halas´s poetry updated from the mid-1950s (necro-motifs, the motif of fall and questioning of poetry as such).

This preliminary communication presents the first record of predaceous thrips Scolothrips longicornis Priesner, 1926 (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) in Slovakia. As a well known predator of numerous spider mites, e.g. Tetranychus urticae or Eutetranychus orientalis it has been considered as a suitable biological control agent recently. Tetranychids mites are harmful agriculture pests, causing damage on a variety of greenhouse and field crops (e.g. cucumber, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, strawberries) and are difficult to control chemically. Scolothrips longicornis was recorded in soil and a tree photoeclector samples from Babsky les wood, a natural oak-hornbeamforest Fageto Quercetum, situated in the district of Nitra (SW Slovakia).

The short interpretation of Š. Strážay´s (born 1940) collection of poems Malinovského 96 (1985) is meant to be a contribution to the intended series of „microanalyses“ of the key works of art written for the History of Slovak literature after the year 1945. The text maps and characterizes the author´s subject matters: poetry, everyday life, female element, partnership, urban enviroment, suburban countryside, periphery... Overlapping life-authentic discreet self-portrait and fragmentary lyric image of the world has support in intricate literariness. The article identifies the intertextual sources and interconnections (J. Kostra, B. Brecht, J. Joyce, G. Flaubert, J. Hollý). Then it presents genre-style characteristics of Š. Strážay´s poetry: description, enumeration, part-taking in the events, frequently frozen, and finally a reflection on all the things the author has seen and experienced. Writing as understood by Š. Strážay´s is a clarifying, communication-open, cathartic part of the contemporary reflecting human´s living natural world seen and lived soberly, without illusions.

The present article deals with P.Vilikovský´s prose Eskalácia citu I (Emotion Escalation I, written in the mid 1970s, published in a magazin in 1982, in the collection of short stories Eskalácia citu in 1989) – in a latent discussion with P. Zajac´s interpretations and comments accompanying the edition P. Vilikovský: Prózy (2005). The study advances in four steps. 1. It makes the intertextual bonds with J. M. Hurban´s romantic historical prose Olejkár (Medicine man) more precise, raises a question of the book´s motifs, synonymic fictional prose in forming a story plot and its disillusioned reassessment, touches two potential intertextual traces more (I. Bunin, V. Holan). 2. It pays attention to the text´s lyric dimension (the handicapped heroine´s lyric sensibility, the exploiting of idiomatic expressions and key words, analogically with contemporary poetry) and its parallel rhetoric dimension (negotiations of the characters when facing misunderstandings), named ad hoc as „enthymeme“. 3. It outlines „Piešťany topos“ of Slovak literature in the early 1970s (D. Tatarka, P. Vilikovský) and „spa semantics“ in the plot of Eskalácia citu I. 4. It returns to the prose Olejkár and in discussion correlates its final scene of the trial with the culprits with the subject of „love“, excess, violence, rape in Eskalácia citu I, with the characters´ interpretations and assessment. – Notes on P. Vilikovský´s prose end in a statement that it is disturbingly „open“ in reading and interpreting of text.

This text, meant as a contribution to the subject of Slovak poetry in the 1960s, focuses on two key collections – Zvony (Bells, 1968) by M. Rúfus and Milovanie v husej koži (Making love with goose pimples on, 1965) by M. Válek. It tracks down their motifs such as corporeality, heart, bells in relation to emphatic-historical restoration of man´s broken relationship with the others, himself, the world – lyricism then functions as either melancholic (M. Rúfus), or farsically sarcastic (M. Válek) incomplete or disillusioned evidence of „the world condition“. Vitally experienced corporeality changes to remains and traces of a human – in the style of a symbolic relic (M. Rúfus), a degraded prop (M. Válek). In order to make contrast within synecdochic interpretations, J. Ondruš´s and I. Laučík´s texts are also given consideration. The interpretation procedure does not conceal it is always a paraphrase, synecdoche, elipsis and amplification of the discussed poem, too. However, what is centrally projected is the world evoked by the text. The present text can be perceived as a partial contribution to the „thematological poetics“ (a term coined by P. Zajac), interconnecting the motifs, tropology and a decently viewed historical context.

This reflection is a short summary of reading and partly a work experience with the texts devoted to Slovak literature. They come approximately from the half of the last century. This experience points the title of formulated thesis. It also vouched it by enumeration of the relevant key names from that aspect and gestures coming from the Modernism of the beginning century, mainly from the 30-tieth and the 40-tieth throughout the 60-tieth and after the 70-tieth and the 80-tieth. Writing about poetry was particularly focused on older line personalized (empathic or critically distant), and stressing more evocation of the work, dealing with the character of an author and methodically progressing a structural line. That is in inspirational confrontation with a transformation in poetry that happened in the end of the 50- tieth and the 60-tieth that evolved several interpretational initiatives concentrated semantically on complicated contemporary poetic texts. Fiction – in all transformations that modernized it – as it would correspondence more with all the more articulated constituted “worlds“ than contemporary poetry with intermediate self-understanding of society, with its official or alternative explanation if it is not considered naively only as an expression or a symptom with its the “world“ opening explosiveness, contemplativeness, fragmentariness, etc. Analogies of narrative fiction and historiography interpretation could help in a less conflicted transposed fiction into treating history of literature. An experience that makes rather problematic an usual work with literature of a strong poetry sort can serve as a reminder: history is not only stated by “subsequence “and “similarity “of facts (in all methodological travesties still always of Comte´s provenience), but it has non spectacular dimension “in actu“ evolving semantic ruptures, explosions, epiphanies, illuminations, or catastrophes – just a way of articulation, happening, “work“ of lyric text.

From the point of viniculture the ethyl alcohol fermentation is the most important part of vine production. For the vine is ethyl alcohol very important, however for the yeast means very dangerous metabolic product. The growth of yeast cells, its viability and fermentation yield is limited by the ethyl alcohol. The study of the yeast toleration against the ethyl alcohol is very complicated, while the impact on yeast organismus have many inhibition influences at the same time. The strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae is commonly kept as tolerant one against ethyl alcohol. In this article authors describe different stress factors with the impact on yeast during fermentation and yeast defence factors.From the point of viniculture the ethyl alcohol fermentation is the most important part of vine production. For the vine is ethyl alcohol very important, however for the yeast means very dangerous metabolic product. The growth of yeast cells, its viability and fermentation yield is limited by the ethyl alcohol. The study of the yeast toleration against the ethyl alcohol is very complicated, while the impact on yeast organismus have many inhibition influences at the same time. The strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae is commonly kept as tolerant one against ethyl alcohol. In this article authors describe different stress factors with the impact on yeast during fermentation and yeast defence factors.

The proces of wine fermentation altogether with other factors have significant impact on the origin of broad bouquet and flavour spectrum of the wine, both used yeast strain and natural microflora of the grapes. The mechanism of the origin of sensoric most important groups of organic compounds - alcohols, esters, acetaldehydes, volatile acids, terpenoids, sulphuric compounds and volatile phenols and its composition are discussed in this article.The proces of wine fermentation altogether with other factors have significant impact on the origin of broad bouquet and flavour spectrum of the wine, both used yeast strain and natural microflora of the grapes. The mechanism of the origin of sensoric most important groups of organic compounds - alcohols, esters, acetaldehydes, volatile acids, terpenoids, sulphuric compounds and volatile phenols and its composition are discussed in this article.

Text deals with an interpretation of the poetry of J. Mihalkovič from the end of 60th and the beginning of 70th. The interpretation itself is preceded by an discursion about a situation in interpretation of after war and present, wide comprehended poetry. After more than four decades from the establishing and making a profile of a gesture of interpretation in the Slovak literary scholarship and critics, the discursion outlines briefly some of the current issues of such a work: recoming of biography and a context of life to work with a text in connections with completing of biographies and works of many key authors; necessity of culturally semiotic and ideologically critical reading in connection with social changes from the end of 80th ; necessity of making the work with a text more deeply due to a tradition of the Modernism and avant-garde as poetologically and historically supportive background. The poetic cycle Spôsob ticha (A way of Silence) written by J. Mihalkovič, which was formally published in his selection of poems called Albá (Albums, 1972) and then the same cycle was included in the collection of poems Kam sa náhlite (Where are you rushing, 1974), from literary historiographical aspect, it represents an example of unclear and non-reconstructed process of crossover of poetry of protagonists of 60th to a new, different decade. Interpretation of two chosen poems Smerom (In the Direction) and Prah (Treshold) is focused on following the plan of the author – bare “languageness” of the texts as well as tendency, which is based on including a poetic picture inside a designation, inside its possibilities to create new words and para-etymological possibilities (in the end there are like a parallel mentioned texts of L. Novomeský, M. Válka, Š. Moravčík). a certain view at contemporary poetic searching of Mihalkovič expresses his translation of a key poem written by a Soviet poet O. Mandeľštam Kto našiel podkovu (Who found a horse-shoe) Theoretical optics to an interpretation during a reading is supplied by an imagination about in advance uncertain interplay, alternation of different levels in the artistic text (a whole text, a sentence, a verse, a word, a morpheme, etc. in a sense of “a structure of an artistic text “ , J. Lotman). The end is dedicated to an open question how to put an potential aesthetic invariant of an author ´s texts between “life-theme” situation and poetological description. In a case of j. Mihalkovič the principle will probably call “mirroring” (in different type of meaning of a word).

The text deals with lyrical poetry as a „paradigm“ of interpretation reading in Slovak literary scholarship and criticism. It goes in four steps. I. It brings a short retrospective of authors and impulses from this field for the last fifty years on the background of aesthetic and poetological structuralism as a determining tradition. 2. It tries to list terms and criteria according to which they were defined which spontaneously and productively enters reflections on widely conceived contemporary poetry beyond usual, versological, stylistic and genological terms codified by various manuals. 3. The text sees a challenge for this domestic tradition in the deconstruction of P. de Man, especially in his reflections on non-self-evidence of subject in lyrical text, of its „voice" and gestures. 4. These matters are followed in detailed reading of debut poem of Slovak poet J. Ondruš Sobota (Saturday) from 1956. This reading is poetologically situated into the terrain of deconstruction of post-symbolism in Slovak poetry of the second half of the 20th century.