Válkov Havran. Báseň Miroslava Válka Večer ako subverzia tradičného symbolistického modelu lyriky

The article reads Miroslav Válek’s (1927 – 1991) poem “Večer [Evening]” published in the poet’s first collection of verse Dotyky ([Touches], 1959) as a deconstructive subversion of lyric tradition – of Ivan Krasko’s (1876 – 1958) symbolist model of the lyric and Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809 – 1849) “The Raven” (1845). The author argues that Válek subverts the tradition by the specific way he tackles the motifs of the night, rain, and raven known in the Slovak poetry mainly from the writing of Ivan Krasko and by the way the poet updates the lyric situation of Poe’s notoriously well-known poem and its central motif. Another aspect that gets subverted is the tragic-elegiac melancholic modality of the poem. The analysis notices the first line of the poem where the night setting is outlined, then moves on to the key image of rain “without melancholy” and the updated motif of the raven. Finally, it discusses the detachment of the speaker from what goes on in the poem – the speaker in the poem is different from the subject affected by emotions and moods modelled in the lines. The reading grasps Válek’s poem and sophisticated subversive deconstruction of the traditional model of symbolic poem concerned with romantic love.