Východokarpatský magický realizmus?
Carpathian magic realism?

Reconstruction of the journey of “magic realism” into Slovak Literature from the East

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning, the paper explains the relation between the concepts of socialist realism and magic realism in Slovak literature during the period of Perestroika occurring in the second half of the 1980s. The author claims that the ideologically biased criticism of the period war¬ned of the increasing interest in magic realism among writers, critics and readers because magic realism was regarded as one of the tools of the “destruction” of socialist realism. Many of the new ideas that overcame the conservative thinking of socialist realism in Czechoslova¬kia then came from the East, i.e., from the Soviet Union. Slovak critics and writers, however, did not just follow theoretical works but also translated works of prose, e.g., those from Ukra¬inian literature, which had been inspired by reading Latin American prose as well as by the indigenous folk sources and specific cultural situation in the multi-ethnic environment of the Eastern Carpathians. In addition to that, the 1960s saw translations of the “original” magic realism of Latin American provenance penetrating the Slovak cultural space. The individual national literatures from the territory of the Eastern Carpathians have also kept developing upon the inspirations from magic realism of Latin American literature, from the 1990s until now. Selected works of prose from this particular cultural region clearly reflect the phenomena of myth and magic, operate with natural circular time and relatively closed, isolated spaces, and they are strongly influenced by folk oral culture. All of these elements bring the cultural space in question closer to the premises of Latin American magic realism.

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