(Slovak title: Autor a jeho kritici: dve desatrocia (Porovnanie kritickej reflexie diela Vincenta Sikulu v sestdesiatych a sedemdesiatych rokoch)). The article compares critical reflexions of Slovak prose writer Vincent Sikula´s production written in two periods of his creative work. It is an attempt to write a preliminary typology of the 1960s and 1970s literary reflexions based on partial resources. It seeks similarities and differences between literary criticism´s discourses of the time in question. The 1960s, especially the second half, saw liberating tendencies in the Czechoslovak society, which also affected literature and its reflexion. The outcome of the changes was gradually emancipating criticism and its separation from the ideology. The process can be tracked through the dominant means of expression of critical reflexion: in comparison with the previous period of time there is no historical interpretation of a literary work of art based on the historical materialism of the Marxist provenance and what gets to the forefront is the individual - 'a human'. In the following decade, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, under radically different social and cultural conditions, which are nowadays called Normalization, the reflexion of literature returns to the previous concepts (1950s) and tries to adjust them to the new situation. The article builds on one type of 'evidence' - the voice used by the criticism of the time in question. Wider cultural-political and historical contexts have been deliberately avoided in the article: original organization of the material based on meaning similarities and differences have been preferred to uncovering reasons, while contrast and similarity have been used to shape the two chosen periods of time. An attempt to track certain words appearing and disappearing or their meaning transformations has been made: the absence of 'history' or aversion to it in the 1960s, its strong presence in the following decade; dominance of 'human' in the former period and his subsequent dilution in history or in the concept of 'people' in the latter; hypertrophy of art´s cognitive function (noetic) in the 1960s and its withdrawal from the literary discourse in the 1970s; as well as an attempt to revive certain concepts (socialist realism) connected with the inability to fill them with a meaning and functional definition.
The article is focused on interpretation of the most popular and known fiction by Slovak author Vincent Sikula. His novelette S Rozarkou (With Rozarka 1966) belongs to the early and the most productive period of his work (fictions from the 60-tieth) and represents one of two significant creative tendencies of the writer - he was focused more on the private problems, on a single relationship, destiny. Concurrently to that in a polyphonic narration with the book Nebyva na kazdom vrsku hostinec (There is not an Inn on Every Top Hill) he began to develop other socially - historical line, culminating in his collection of fictions Tazisko (The Locus). The study is an attempt to depict a narrative concept of the fiction, determining by two contra dictionary intentions. The narrator and the protagonist of the story took cares for an adult but mentally retarded sister Rozarka. Her condition cannot be (is not intentionally) determined. The empty space of silence is to be filled by something else not corresponding to the problem; almost half of the narration is filled with stories. Simple, private space, localized story of a brother and a sister´s sharing lives together became a source of themes which are foundational for the formatting principles of the narration; the fiction With Rozarka is in that way also a story about birth of a narrator who shares his experience coming from the difficult circumstances. Vincent Sikula developed in that novelette a unique variant of sentimentalism. His work is one of his creative climaxes and also it could be determined as regionally distinctive contribution to a Slovak version of 'sentimental maturing'. It is tendency putting together Sikula´s works with fictions of some of younger writers, e.g. Rudolf Sloboda, Pavol Vilikovsky, Dusan Kuzel, and Pavol Hruz.
The paper deals with the first of two collection of short stories written by Vincent Sikula 'Na koncertoch sa netlieska' (It Is Not To Clap During The Concert) and 'Mozno si postavim bungalow' (I May Build Up A Bungallow). Both of them were published in 1964. The analysis of the category of narrator is a core of the work. The narrator is a key element in Sikula's fiction. It is mainly about a position of the narrator in the narrative, about his attitude to the event he talks about. In the early period of Sikula's fiction we can determine both divergent and co-operative lines of narration. The first one is focused on depiction about itself, on expression, prosaic objectification of the inner condition ('Me expanding to the world': depiction of the world by the subject) for which the feeling of injustice is characteristic: subjective hypostasis in major way makes an influence in the plan of depiction of the outward setting as well as the plan of the plot. Similarly with that line Sikula develops also a contradictory approach, in which the narrator pays attention to the others, mainly to the people representing social majority ('humiliated and offended'): subject of the narrator - without being excluded - makes a space for others ('Me is opened to the world'). There are not only two contradictory concepts of narration, but also of the subject. The second one becomes similar to characteristics, which was in regard with subject said by a French philosopher Remi Brague: 'I am nothing, I am not more than that movement of disappearing, which makes a free space for integration of that what it is'.
The study is dedicated to the first literary critical book by Vladmir Petrik, an edition of the selected studies and reviews 'Hladanie pritomneho casu' (Looking For the Present Time, 1970). It is an attempt to depict the characteristic elements of Petrik´s critical gesture through several stated criteria. His literary critical domain was a fiction, and not only that one with primary aesthetic ambitions. He kept understanding for social function of literature, he dealt with non fiction, too, and also with science fiction, criminal stories etc. His approach was (and also is) receptive; he is a type of critic, who is sensitive for a reader. In the horizon of his thinking he always pays attention to the process of development in literature. The studies of the history of literature are an integral part of his book. They are aimed at peripety of Slovak literature after 1945. His reflection of the fiction is dateless. He was not a type of a generational critic; he had no ambition to make 'directions' for an actual literature. His approach was always quite naive and it helped him to see things from the top and even a little farther away than his contemporaries did overwhelmed by the situation. The negative experience from the first half of the 50s determined his way of seeing things. It was a period of extremes. For several years the substance of critical function disappeared (both fine literature and critique became instruments of propaganda) as well as 'measure of things' (not only in arts). Later Vladimir Petrik applied it in fullness in his literary critical works and works on the history of literature.
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