Človek, zviera, Boh, stroj. Subverzia tela a telesnosti vo Válkovom Milovaní v husej koži
Human, animal, God, machine. On the subversion of body and corporeality in Miroslav Válek’s Milovanie v husej koži (Love making in a goose skin)

Summary/Abstract: In the context of Slovak poetry, Miroslav Válek’s collection Milovanie v husej koži ([Love making in a goose skin] 1965) represents an example of an extreme confrontation of man with the pressing questions of his own mortality. The author derives his doubts about the meaning of the world and of man from strictly material and rational observations, from which he excludes the presence and action of a transcendent force or being (God), and instead presents the world as a confluence of coincidences, a mechanical action at the level of physical objects and bodies, whose movement is machine-like and whose life, often reduced to the level of animals, remains enclosed in an impoverishing animal finality. The publication of the book was followed by a literary polemic which largely influenced the perception and evaluation of Válek’s human attitude and the applied philosophical concepts. However, the thematisation of the negation of the immanent transcendent principle and its replacement by a fatalistic materialistic structure of the world does not in itself degrade the artistic achievement, and in retrospect, Válek’s radical and absolute gesture expressed in the book can be understood as part of his autonomous lyric journey.

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