The Ballad as an Intermedial Rhythm. The Manifestation of the Genre as the Erosion of the Socialist Realist Chronotope

The goal of the paper is research into applying one of the key genres of the 19th and 20th centuries, which found its way to Slovak literature after year 1945. The balladic structure principle as well as the balladic tone were not only employed in literature, but it can also be noticed in the research into the intermedial connections with the other forms of art. While researching the chosen subject, the author applied the methods and terminology of the grant project named VEGA Poetika slovenskej literatúry po roku 1945. The project uses terms such as figuration and reconfiguration when working with historical material, reconstruction and historical process records. Although the author seeks support in Alfonz Bednár´s works, particularly the novel Sklený vrch (The Glass Hill, 1954) and the literary screenplay of the film Tri dcéry (The Three Daughters, 1967), the hermeneutic interpretation of them is not the goal. After a brief outline of the evolution of assessing the relationships between the arts within the development of the current research into intermediality, the author considers the balladic principle to be a transmedial concept, which is – in the context of the research into modern Slovak art and culture – essetnial. She drew inspiration from literary historian Štefan Krčméry and his essays on Slovak folk songs, especially ballads. The terms such as rhythm, translation and transfusion in relation with music and melody correspond with the current terms of intermediality, while regarding the chosen subject, rhythm is the key one. The author´s most important anticipation marker directed at a later reconfiguration is the position of the ballad and the balladic principle in the 1950s and 1960s in Slovakia is Bednár´s dissertation on European ballad, which was inspired by folklore expert professor Horák during his Prague studies. Bednár´s writing featured an apparent aspect of tragedy and fatefulness, which comes from the Ancient inspirations. The paper is a contribution to the research into the mechanisms and modes that were disintegrating the strict norms of Socialist Realism in the 1950s. Alongside the manifested genre forms of „happiness“ the latent Slovak dispositions of balladic elements such as tragic tone and sadness were gradually legitimized and in the context of contemporary literarture and art they became a form of manifestation.