Belated notes on Fedor Matejov’s triptych

The review essay investigates three books by Fedor Matejov published in close succession: Tri texty o poézii J. Ondruša (Three texts on the poetry of J. Ondruš, 2018), Lekcie (z) poézie (Lessons [from] poetry, 2019), and Matuška, Tatarka, Hamada (2020). Drawing selectively on the first two books, the essay focuses primarily on Matejov’s interpretation of the early poetry of Ján Ondruš, which the poet published in journals beginning in 1956 and later in his first collection of poems Šialený mesiac (Insane moon, 1965). Matejov approaches interpretation analogously to Ondruš’s own poetic strategy, breaking the poems down into smaller fragments. A similar method is applied to the work of literary critic Alexander Matuška (in connection with the preparation of a new book edition), prose writer Dominik Tatarka (in examining his intra- and intertextual as well as intercultural contexts), and literary scholar Milan Hamada (through a new reading of essays written in the aftermath of the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, considered within the broader Czecho-Slovak cultural and intellectual context). Matejov oscillates between detail and broader contextual perspectives, revealing multiple and multidimensional literary relations among the authors. His interpretations draw on literary-historical and literary-theoretical knowledge, while also demonstrating broad intellectual scope in philosophy, aesthetics, art theory, and linguistics.