Institute of World Literature SAS
Topic
The Translator Ján Štrasser, His Cultural Activism as One of the Determinants of His Social Status and a Factor Influencing Social Dynamics
PhD. program
Literature Studies
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
prof. PhDr. Mária Kusá, CSc.
Contact:
Receiving school
Filozofická fakulta UPJŠ
Annotation
In 1968, at the end of a review of Rúfus's The Bells, the literary critic J. Štrasser wrote: "At the end of that wise fairy tale by Andersen, a child cries out: ´The King is naked'. A child always has to tell us something like that. Or a fool. Or a poet." Literary critic and poet J. Štrasser mapped contemporary Slovak poetry of the 1960s – 1980s on a regular basis, and in 1999, Štrasser, who was also a literary critic, poet, translator and cultural activist, commented on social changes (?) in his reflection The Nineties: the Writer and the State: “... in the art of serving power, Slovak writers still play the first fiddle. Change is not in sight.” In a way, his translation and broader cultural activities throughout his creative period document his efforts as "a complex, situated agent, working within and across social spheres, conditioning intercultural, multilingual exchange." It is this phenomenon that should be at the heart of an examination of Strasser's translations as an activity rooted in the fabric of intercultural exchange and influenced by broader social dynamics.