Published: 2021-12-18

Dreams in the house of loneliness. A reconnaissance (Janko Silan, Dom opustenosti)

Joanna Goszczyńska
Zeszyty Łużyckie
Section: Articles
DOI https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.809

Abstract

The article provides two different perspectives on the book authored by Jan Silan, a Catholic priest, one of the most important representatives of Slovak “Catholic modernism”. The first part of the article is devoted to genological issues. The main context of these considerations is Philipe Lejeune’s theory of autobiography. In the second part of the article, the author analyses a selection of dream narratives (constituting the main part of the book) in an attempt on decoding their sym­bolic. These narratives are a reflection of the trauma lived by a Catholic priest under the totalitarian, oppressive system of the 1950s and 60s. Although written in the 1960s, the book remained unpublished until 1991 as any attempt at earlier publication was prevented by censorship. Following 1948, Silan had been among banned authors.

Keywords:

autobiography, genology, persecution, the human condition

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Goszczyńska, J. (2021). Dreams in the house of loneliness. A reconnaissance (Janko Silan, Dom opustenosti). Zeszyty Łużyckie, 55(1), 111–124. https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.809

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