Slzy si utřeme pěstí
We shall wipe the tears away with our fist

Discussion of “the poet’s right to be sad” in the Slovak literary environment in the latter half of the twentieth century and the Czech cultural context

Summary/Abstract: The study analyzes the transformations undergone by the topic of sadness in individual decades, paying particular attention to the discussion on “the poet’s right to be sad” in poetry reacting to the dogmatically asserted ideology of Socialist Realism in the first half of the 1950s. This discussion was initiated in Slovakia by Milan Rúfus’s poetry collection Až dozrieme (When we Grow Mature). During the 1960s the discussion over the poet’s right to be sad when confronted by civilizational threats gradually transformed into a dystopian alternative. The characteristic feature of melancholic modality during this period came to be irony. Within the Czech cultural context it is represented by Kundera’s novel Žert (The Joke), which is a reaction not only to the pioneering optimism of Socialist Realism, but also to the traditional understanding of humanism. Confronting current ecological threats, the author finds some overlap with the present in the period discussion over “the right to be sad”. In this respect he notes the term “environmental grief ”, which is now being used by the Czech sociologist Hana Librová.

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