From notes on the poem by Milan Rúfus “Tak [So]”

The paper presents a reading (lektúra) of the poem by Milan Rúfus (1928 – 2009) “Tak [So]” from the end of his key collection of poetry Zvony (Bells, 1968). The text chosen as its summary and generalization provides insights into the poet’s world and his poetics. The reading records the lexical semantics, syntactic and verse structure of the poem, and potential correspondences with the poetry of the Czech poet František Halas (1901 – 1949). The result of this interplay is the transposition of the evoked facts and synecdoches of the disappearing pastoral-peasant world into a cipher of human existence in life and death. The anaphorically emphatized “hunger” becomes an existentially poetic key to the fatal deficiency of human functioning in the world.