Poets as children. On works of the Slovak Trnava group and the Bulgarian ‘Poets of the city’

The aim of the proposed paper is to examine how the poetic text world embodies the idea of a return to the “naïve” perception of the world. The objects of the analysis are two groups of authors – representatives of 20th century Slovak and Bulgarian literature –, which are known in the history of their national literatures as Trnava group and “poets of the city.” The first poetic formation is made up of Ján Ondruš, Ján Stacho, Jozef Mihalkovič, and Ľubomír Feldek, known also as Concretists, the second one consists of Alexander Vutimski, Alexander Gerov, Ivan Peychev, and Valeri Petrov. While the Slovak authors manifested themselves as a poetic group by publishing three manifestos, one of which called We Will Talk about Children’s Literature, the Bulgarian authors were defined as poets of the city post factum by the Bulgarian critics. The selection of these poetry formations is based on typological affinities between the two specific literary phenomena and the similarities in their national political and social contexts during their genesis. Three basic topics can be found in the works of the representatives of both Trnava group and poets of the city – objective imagery, the motif of childhood, and the image of the city. In the present paper, we focus mainly on the use of objective imagery in the process of returning to childhood, which some of the poets’ texts depict. We also look at one of the main themes in their works, which both literary groups inherit from their antecedents in their literatures – everydayness. In this light, the poets of the city are related to the poetry of the Bulgarian writer Atanas Dalchev, while the Slovak authors follow the path chosen by the Czech poetry group Květen and their concept of “poetry of every day.” Through a close reading of selected works of the Slovak Trnava group and the Bulgarian “poets of the city”, we look at the process of engaging the senses in poetry. The main texts chosen for the analysis are A Play for Your Blue Eyes written by Ľubomír Feldek and Tom Thumb by Valeri Petrov. Their poems are based on a return to childhood and sensual concreteness. We examine how the writers stylize the perceived world in opposition to the “ready-made” ideas the socialist realism offers. Both groups of authors choose a new aesthetic formula that roots in portraying the objective world. The topic is represented in light of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the literary use of language.