Introduction

Abstract

This volume is the product of a conference on Slovak fiction since 1954 held at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in September 1987. 1954 was chosen because it saw the publication of Alfonz Bednár’s Sklený vrch,* which marked the beginning of the Thaw in Slovak literature, the beginning of a reaction against oversimplified, schematic, tub-thumping depictions of Communists heroic in war and peace such as written by the recently deceased ‘dissident’, Dominik Tatarka. On the face of it Sklený vrch is a construction novel with a female first-person narrator, Erna. Bednár, however, far from idealises the building site in an underdeveloped part of Slovakia which he describes; the site is plagued by absenteeism, accidents, badly drawn-up plans and a lack of worker solidarity, and one of the main themes in the novel is a racket with cement and other building materials. Bednár comes out strongly against the postwar expulsion of Hungarians. The intellectual Ema suffers from the consequences of hereditary sin, for, though she showed bravery in the Resistance, her father had been a pro-Fascist informer and, almost as bad in those days, her mother had been a Communist. Ema’s life is a tragedy: her background provides unrestrainable Fate; her tragic flaw is her belief in Communism and the working class. She has to die; she is electrocuted through the negligence of a labourer. She approaches the granite stature of a Social Realist ‘positive hero’ only when she stands before the site Party tribunal to defend herself against false accusations.

Translations of titles mentioned in this Introduction are given in the References which begin on p. 37. Writers’ dates of birth will be found in the Index.