A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka)
In an essay like article Kúpeľňa („Hygienická láska“ u Tatarku)/ A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“ in the Works of Tatarka)/ we explore a motive of bathroom in the prosaic work of a Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka (1913 – 1989). This motive occurs for the first time in his novel Farská republika (Parochial...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | ces |
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Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slovak Literature
2006-04-01
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| Series: | Slovenska Literatura |
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| Online Access: | https://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/01081230--SL-2006-2-mikula-89-99.pdf |
| _version_ | 1797257924986273792 |
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| author | Valér Mikula |
| author_facet | Valér Mikula |
| author_sort | Valér Mikula |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In an essay like article Kúpeľňa („Hygienická láska“ u Tatarku)/ A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“ in the Works of Tatarka)/ we explore a motive of bathroom in the prosaic work of a Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka (1913 – 1989). This motive occurs for the first time in his novel Farská republika (Parochial Republic, 1948) in relation to so called “hygienic love“: a protagonist of the novel, Tomáš Menkin, realized a “hygienic“ sexual relationship with a married woman Achinka – their first sexual intercourse was in the bathroom. The term “hygienic “here means without emotional involvement and it is also an expression of ethic anaesthesia of a narrator in the political context of the war regime of the Slovak Republic, he does not agree with. In the affective structure and an author’s system of values the bathroom becomes topoi of a misappropriated life. The passage from Tatarka΄s reminiscences Navrávačky (1987) retrospectively reveals another semantic connection of the motive of bathroom: it represents a “strange“city world of wealthy social circles contrary to “our” world of poverty and nature. Nature is also a setting of a “true“love: erotic sceneries of the narrator’s love in the scenery of nature, he and Ula made a positive opposite pole of the “scenes in the bathroom “with Achinka. Negative attributes of bathroom after the Communist upheaval in 1948, strengthen its “class“characteristics as an attribute of bourgeois and it interiorly outlasts in several titles of Slovak authors. In the works of Tatarka the bathroom is not a strange, antagonistic space anymore. This new characteristics starts with a novelette Ešte s vami pobudnúť (To Stay with You for a While Yet ) from a book Rozhovory bez konca (Never-Ending Discussions 1959), where an autobiographic narrator ritually baths his mother in the city bathroom. She is a simple village woman and she came to see him just before she dies. Through this intimate and emotionally deep experience the bathroom becomes positively owned space – a space of ours. This spectacle is also to consider for an experiential starting point of the author’s construction of an archaically –mythic conception of “culture as commune life“, with an idol of mother in the centre. Eternism, seeking of mythically “eternal“ patterns of everyday rituals and gestures, is also a dominant tendency of the last phase of Tatarka´s artistic work and his ideological respond to socially-political reality (previous phases were made by nihilistic reaction in the 40th and civic activism in the 50th and 60th ). Sexual intercourse belongs to the very elementary acts, with a seal of “eternity“– this is why so many erotic scenes occur in his samizdat trilogy Písačky (Writings). It may be received not as an obscenity (it was an opinion of the literary critic M. Hamada), but as a part of worth following rituals of initiation into a new rite of love, respectively as acts founding a community (municipality), which will be really “ours“. That way the bathroom could happen several times in these texts a place of love – now not “hygienic “, misappropriate, but almost sacred. Two nearly identical spectacles from Písačiek pre milovanú Lutéciu (Writings for Beloved Lutécia, 1984) point out the fact that Tatarka´s “domestification“ of the bathroom was not definite: the first version was done in the bathroom, but the second one in the open nature– and only there this act become like sealed by “eternity“. If Tatarka as a creator of voluntarily ideological systems was able to include the bathroom into “our“ world, the area of art, where instead of a doctrine author spontaneously allows his symbolism to speak and he reveals us that his perception of world and a person is more natural than cultural. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T22:45:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-076ae15f43924dfcb0b240ad0a0a5c01 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 0037-6973 |
| language | ces |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T22:45:22Z |
| publishDate | 2006-04-01 |
| publisher | Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slovak Literature |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Slovenska Literatura |
| spelling | doaj.art-076ae15f43924dfcb0b240ad0a0a5c012024-03-18T11:53:11ZcesSlovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slovak LiteratureSlovenska Literatura0037-69732006-04-015328999A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka)Valér Mikula0FiF UK, BratislavaIn an essay like article Kúpeľňa („Hygienická láska“ u Tatarku)/ A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“ in the Works of Tatarka)/ we explore a motive of bathroom in the prosaic work of a Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka (1913 – 1989). This motive occurs for the first time in his novel Farská republika (Parochial Republic, 1948) in relation to so called “hygienic love“: a protagonist of the novel, Tomáš Menkin, realized a “hygienic“ sexual relationship with a married woman Achinka – their first sexual intercourse was in the bathroom. The term “hygienic “here means without emotional involvement and it is also an expression of ethic anaesthesia of a narrator in the political context of the war regime of the Slovak Republic, he does not agree with. In the affective structure and an author’s system of values the bathroom becomes topoi of a misappropriated life. The passage from Tatarka΄s reminiscences Navrávačky (1987) retrospectively reveals another semantic connection of the motive of bathroom: it represents a “strange“city world of wealthy social circles contrary to “our” world of poverty and nature. Nature is also a setting of a “true“love: erotic sceneries of the narrator’s love in the scenery of nature, he and Ula made a positive opposite pole of the “scenes in the bathroom “with Achinka. Negative attributes of bathroom after the Communist upheaval in 1948, strengthen its “class“characteristics as an attribute of bourgeois and it interiorly outlasts in several titles of Slovak authors. In the works of Tatarka the bathroom is not a strange, antagonistic space anymore. This new characteristics starts with a novelette Ešte s vami pobudnúť (To Stay with You for a While Yet ) from a book Rozhovory bez konca (Never-Ending Discussions 1959), where an autobiographic narrator ritually baths his mother in the city bathroom. She is a simple village woman and she came to see him just before she dies. Through this intimate and emotionally deep experience the bathroom becomes positively owned space – a space of ours. This spectacle is also to consider for an experiential starting point of the author’s construction of an archaically –mythic conception of “culture as commune life“, with an idol of mother in the centre. Eternism, seeking of mythically “eternal“ patterns of everyday rituals and gestures, is also a dominant tendency of the last phase of Tatarka´s artistic work and his ideological respond to socially-political reality (previous phases were made by nihilistic reaction in the 40th and civic activism in the 50th and 60th ). Sexual intercourse belongs to the very elementary acts, with a seal of “eternity“– this is why so many erotic scenes occur in his samizdat trilogy Písačky (Writings). It may be received not as an obscenity (it was an opinion of the literary critic M. Hamada), but as a part of worth following rituals of initiation into a new rite of love, respectively as acts founding a community (municipality), which will be really “ours“. That way the bathroom could happen several times in these texts a place of love – now not “hygienic “, misappropriate, but almost sacred. Two nearly identical spectacles from Písačiek pre milovanú Lutéciu (Writings for Beloved Lutécia, 1984) point out the fact that Tatarka´s “domestification“ of the bathroom was not definite: the first version was done in the bathroom, but the second one in the open nature– and only there this act become like sealed by “eternity“. If Tatarka as a creator of voluntarily ideological systems was able to include the bathroom into “our“ world, the area of art, where instead of a doctrine author spontaneously allows his symbolism to speak and he reveals us that his perception of world and a person is more natural than cultural.https://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/01081230--SL-2006-2-mikula-89-99.pdfslovak literaturedominik tatarkafarská republika (parochial republic)ešte s vami pobudnúť (to stay with you for a while yet)hygienic lovebathroom |
| spellingShingle | Valér Mikula A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) Slovenska Literatura slovak literature dominik tatarka farská republika (parochial republic) ešte s vami pobudnúť (to stay with you for a while yet) hygienic love bathroom |
| title | A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) |
| title_full | A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) |
| title_fullStr | A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) |
| title_short | A Bathroom (“Hygienic love“in the Works of Tatarka) |
| title_sort | bathroom hygienic love in the works of tatarka |
| topic | slovak literature dominik tatarka farská republika (parochial republic) ešte s vami pobudnúť (to stay with you for a while yet) hygienic love bathroom |
| url | https://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/01081230--SL-2006-2-mikula-89-99.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT valermikula abathroomhygienicloveintheworksoftatarka AT valermikula bathroomhygienicloveintheworksoftatarka |