Political input in making poets cultural icons
Political input in making poets cultural icons

Summary/Abstract: This study analyzes the role and degree of political involvement in the process of constructingpoets as cultural icons in Polish and Slovak literature in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The main focus is on the Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert and Czesław Miłoszand the Slovak poet Laco Novomeský, but research also takes other Polish and Slovak poetsinto consideration (Wisława Szymborska, Ján Ondruš, and Ivan Štrpka). This examinationreveals an important political input behind constructing these poets as cultural icons usingthe symbolic potential that the poets accrued over the years and were able to represent. Thedynamic character of icons (accelerated by great geopolitical and social changes in East-CentralEurope), however, causes a constant re-semantization and partially diminishes theiriconic status, especially for upcoming generations. Despite a rearrangement of the hierarchyof layers in their iconic status, the poets are always associated with their poetic work, and thenotable quality of this work keeps their potential for remaining or becoming cultural iconsregardless of political circumstances.

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