„Román bez hrdinu“ Ladislava Nádašiho Jégého
„A Novel without a Hero“ of Ladislav Nádaši Jégé

Summary/Abstract: The study focuses on the work of Slovak writer Ladislav Nádaši Jégé (1844 – 1940)who published his writings in the 1880s but then broke off his literary carrier untilthe 1920s. As a young aspiring author, Nádaši showed an exceptional overview of theWest European literature and culture that was rare among his contemporaries orientedtowards Russian literature. Contemporaneous literary critics as well as later Slovakliterary historians saw a link between Jégé´s writing of the 1920s and 1930s and thenaturalism of Emile Zola. They arrived at this conclusion because of an article aboutZola, which Nádaši published in 1891, in which he had argued against the widespreadimage of the French writer in Slovak cultural circles. Slovak intellectuals of the lastdecades of the19th Century regarded Zola and his literary method of naturalism asamoral and vulgar.This study explores broader links of Ladislav Nádaši Jégé’s literary texts with thetradition of European literature and culture that cannot be reduced to the influence ofa single poetics or author. In 1889, Nádaši published the novelette Výhody spoločenskéhoživota (The Benefits of Social Life), a satirical work with the subtitle “Another Storywithout a Hero”, in reference to the novel Vanity Fair by English writer William MakepeaceThackeray. Several elements of Thackeray´s novel can be identified not only inNádaši ´s novelette but also in his later works. This aspect hasn’t been considered inearlier analyses of his texts in Slovak literary history.Jégé´s novel Cesta životom (The Journey Through Life) published in 1930 tellsthe story of a renegade who denies his origins to climb the social ladder of the amoraland corrupt society at the end of the 19th Century. The novel depicts the tension ofnational attitude in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy – the subject of many novels of19th Century Slovak literature – from the perspective of a conformist antihero. In thisnovel, Nádaši Jégé also used literary archetypes as well as features of the Europeanlong literary tradition. They include elements of the picaresque novel and charactersrelated to the literary archetypes of Falstaff and Don Juan. The English philosopherThomas Hobbes and his reflections on the human nature also feature occasionally.The literary works of Nádaši Jége are not just the result of his appropriation of 19thCentury naturalism; they include many elements of the European cultural traditionthat were not frequently present in the works of his contemporaries.

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