Modernist Poetics and Aesthetics in Two Plays by Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov From the First Decade of the 20th Century (Keď sa schladí [When it gets colder], 1905; Boj [Fight], 1907)

The article provides a close reading of two one-act plays on love by Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov (1884 – 1950): Keď sa schladí (When it gets colder, 1905) and Boj (Fight, 1907). The plays were significantly influenced by Modernist poetics: they are markedly subjective (the same applies to Modernist Slovak poetry and fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), stylised as symbolic, the plot is pushed to the background, and psychological and emotional life of the heroes is foregrounded. Accentuating inner life in drama is intimately connected with the problem of the categories of the subject (internal dramatic subject) and time (temporal frame bearing meaning) and, on the level of composition, also with the degree of compactness and unity. The composition of the plays is fragmentary and discontinuous and they tend towards open endings. The dramatic potential of classical drama got distilled into the fragmentary genre of one-act play. Overlaps of artistic styles (Symbolism, Impressionism, Secession) and the technique of synaesthesia result in an overlap of various artistic methods and techniques which were used to achieve a nuanced realisation of prominent personal and subjective themes.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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