Historia, egzotyka i idylla w powieści Vansovej „Kliatba” (Klątwa)

Abstrakt

Terézia Vansová began to write Spell, a historical novel with elements of horror, in the late 19th century. Its fearsome story was based on real events. The novel was not published until thirty years after the author had finished it. The small town of Zvolen and its society are the setting for the story of a multiple murderer L’udovít Fekete. Fekete, with a relatively bohemian lifestyle and a mysterious past, has married into the noble family of Pavol Veselovsky´. His personality seemingly shows heterogeneous signs of Biedermeier and freneticism. Both of these trends participated in the crystallizing of Slovak realism. Fekete, who had participated in military expeditions in Turkey, embodies the negative barbaric Oriental type, for in Europe the Ottoman Empire is associated with visions of the Oriental enemy. It was a simplified picture of the personification of evil, which fits into the xenophobic sentiments of the late 19th century Slovakia. The exoticism of Vansova´’s novel proved capable of carrying an epic conflict − the author put in contrast exotic animalism and unpredictability with burgher rules and conventions. Although the novel Spell was written during the period of realism, it combines elements of Romanticism, Biedermeier, realistic detail and freneticism.