Unknown Hungarian first fruits of the Slovak poet Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav

Abstract

The Slovak (as well as non-national) history of literature, dedicated to heuristic research and gradual archival and interpretive disclosure of both well-known and unknown texts of the Slovak poet P. O. Hviezdoslav, followed up in its early stages the interest of the Czech literary historian, Albert Pražak, who in his biographical memoir publication S Hviezdoslavom (With Hviezdoslav) offered a portrait of that poet on the basis of the authentic manuscript material and recollections. The discovery of P. O. Hviezdoslav’s early Hungarian poetic composition of approximately 500 verses entitled Tompakő comes from that part of the Slovacica estate from Albert Pražak that was not passed over in the 1950s to the editors of the poet’s works in Slovakia, followed by the archival processing and keeping in the Literary Archives of the Matica slovenska national foundation. In the volume of poems Tompakő, originating in the first half of the 1860s, the poet presented some of the Orava region themes, which reflected his close links with the nature. In this paper, we will focus on the interpretation of a literary historical and comparative grasp of Hviezdoslav’s newly discovered manuscripts of Hungarian poems. Of course, we are aware that this unexpected discovery of the Hungarian first fruits of Hviezdoslav will not principally alter the picture of the poet’s early work, but in addition to its very heuristic-biographical value, it will expand the view of both Slovak and Hungarian literary history on the thematic and genre variability of Hviezdoslav’s early work.