Slovenská Lenóra (Ján Botto: Žltá ľalia)
Slovak Lenore (Ján Botto: Žltá ľalia [Yellow lily])

Summary/Abstract: The article is a contribution towards interpretations of Ján Botto’s (1829 – 1881) ballad Žltá ľalia ([Yellow lily] 1849, published in a magazine in 1860). It tackles the resonances between the Slovak Romantic poet’s poem with Lenore (1774), a ballad written by the German Pre-Romantic poet Gottfried August Bürger (1747 – 1794). It draws on comparatist works of the Slovak literary historian Zlatko Klátik and the Polish researcher Marie Janion, but also on literary-historical research that takes into account the specifics of Slavic versions of the motive of Lenore. The article dwells mainly on the female persona, primarily on the model set by Bürger, but also on other intertextual variants in Slavic poetry. Based on Botto’s ballad, the author identifies the Slovak variant of the motive of Lenore. This variation derives from folk literature, but simultaneously draws on some of the basic features of the Romantic imagination – the intertwining of the world of the living with the world of the dead and the presence of mysterious elements in everyday worldly life experience. Intertextual relations between the Slovak poem and Bürger’s Lenore, textual development of the female persona in the two texts and the position which female personas attain in Romanticism by way of accentuating feminine otherness are the central themes tackled in the article.

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