Šikula, Vincent oldala, Angol Fogadtatás
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Recepció
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WRITINGŠikula entered literature with a collection of sketches and stories on army life. His first books based on natural tales in an attractive manner presented the authentic experiences of sensitive protagonists within which a warm relationship towards people, towards nature and towards the permanent values of life. There are free games of association, experiences, images and fantasy. The sensitivity, musicality, colour and a sense for poetic detail give Šikula’s prose a lyrical colouring. The story There Isn’t an Inn on Every Hill is composed like a musical work. Šikula’s style is not infused with music but musical motifs are present as a significant part of the meaning of his prose. The trilogy Masters has an individual significance in Šikula’s work. It is a view of the Slovak National Uprising and the Second World War seen through the prism of ordinary Slovaks. History flows through protagonists, both great and small. deeply rooted in their homes, which has taught them their values, a love of small joys and above everything the validity of human life. The events of war destroy these values but the tragedy of these people is only an appeal without pathos for a return to the humanism of human specificity.
In his tales and novellas Šikula has produced a storytelling style of perfection whose characteristic features are abbreviation of significance, tender humour and excellent dialogue. His short prose characteristically explores different areas, but their basis are human beings who unendingly affirm their relationship to others. In the novella The Weathercock, this relationship almost assumes a tragic form as the young hero must deal with the reality that he has not done everything required by natural feeling for humanity because he did not protect a priest against totalitarian power. Šikula shows through his psychological portraiture in miniature against a backdrop of the unmerciful practices of power not only how relationships between people are destroyed, but also how individual human personality is also destroyed.
ON THE AUTHOR
Šikula doesn’t resort to history to find easy lessons and models for his prose. History for him exists and doesn’t exist, it must be explored for what human beings have put into it, their energy however small. Šikula does not touch on the totality of life in a conforming view of the whole of social life and historical times, but penetrates through rifts and peep holes... (Vincent Šabík)
Šikula is the prose writer of the “unwritten” collective popular experience. Any historical (political) background is measured in his prose by the riff of simple untaught and unstudied empiria of the inhabitants of the sub-Carpathian countryside who have been taught by the land and long years of co-existence and the morality of unselfishness and help. (Ivan Sulík)
THE AUTHOR ON HIMSELF
A story can be so beautiful and interesting that it shouldn’t be written at all because the writer can only spoil it. A story can be suitable for an oboe, another for a bassoon; another for a wind quintet and another for a symphony orchestra.
Yes, my main theme is the theme of bonze. In fact I always write about horse. It can look as if this single theme has tied my bands, but I claim that it’s the reverse.
