Two Beginnings: Slovak Surrealism and its European Context

The article focuses on the belated entry of surrealism into Slovak literature, its asynchronous development vis-a-vis Czech surrealism and on its perception as a foreign phenomenon that was followed by an effort for its incorporation into the system of national literature. The text disputes the established view that by the mid-1930s, surrealism was practically unfamiliar to the Slovak literary circles, and that what little was known passed through the filter of Czech literature. Particular attention is paid to the patterns of adaptation of surrealism into Slovak literature, dominated as it was by a sense of “chaos” generated by the proliferation of -isms in Europe at the time. The article argues that it was the resistance to this “chaos” that functioned as a key factor for the delay in the emergence of Slovak surrealist texts. The movement is examined as a creative tendency both on an individual and a generational level, with the corresponding collective gestures representing it.