Novel
Suchá ratolesť
Not translated into English
Svetozár Hurban Vajanský · 1884
Synopsis
Stanislav Rudopoľský, a young and wealthy landowner, returns from abroad as a cosmopolitan to the declining village of Rudopolie, where a petty nobility in decline lives. He becomes acquainted with the gentleman Karol Vanovský and his wife Mária, with the patriotic schoolmaster Albert Tichý, who lends him Slovak books and urges him to serve his people, with the young servant Anna, who secretly reads the books of the manor, and with Adela Rybárička, an eccentric young widow. A brawl between Hungarians and Slovaks at the inn and entangled love affairs gradually awaken in him the awareness of his origins.
Context
Published in 1884, the novel is built on places he knows: Rudopolie has as its prototype Senica, in the Záhorie of his youth, and Rudopoľský has a model in the Nyári family. The Store norske leksikon ranks it among the great society novels that make Vajanský the founder of the Slovak realist novel. A character says in it: “We, the gentlemen, are the dry branch of your people.” Jozef Škultéty saw in Rudopoľský an ideal for the future; Alexander Matuška, waxwork figures.
Who it is for
A novel rich in conversations about nation and art, to be read with the Hungary of Magyarisation in mind.
Prizes and reception
A novel of the nobility and of the nation, counted among the founding texts of Slovak realism.
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