K podobám priestoru v cestopisoch Jozefa Miloslava Hurbana a Terézie Vansovej

Abstract

The article compares the travelogues of Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817 – 1888) with those written by Terézia Vansová (1857 – 1942). The author treats the texts as examples of (1) the romantic national revivalist travelogue with an ideological (national) focus (Hurban’s travelogues Cesta Slováka k bratrům slavenským na Moravě a v Čechách 1839 [The journey of a Slovak to his Slavic brothers in Moravia and Bohemia 1839], 1841; Prechádzka po považskom svete [A walk in the world of Považie], 1844) and (2) its later, programmatically much sober and down to earth variation associated with the woman’s viewpoint and entertainment function (Vansová’s prose Pani Georgiadesová na cestách. Veselý cestopis do Prahy na národopisnú výstavu [Mrs Georgiadesová on the road. A cheerful travelogue to Prague to an ethnographic exhibition], 1896 – 1897). The core of the analysis is the representation of space and the nature of movement in space. While in the Romantic travelogues, there is a tendency to highlight the immaterial spiritual principle of space and to “tone down” the physicality of the traveller himself, in Vansová’s work, the body of the characters (their hunger, thirst, and fatigue) comes intentionally to the fore and clashes with the “higher” (mostly national revivalist) motives and ideals, without, however, denying them. It is a practice that is typologically very close to the strategies of post-Romantic authors who sought to break away from the poetics of the Romantics and their epigones.