Black Romanticism: Slovak Case. Reconnaissance

The interest in Black Romanticism has been experiencing a kind of renaissance in the last years. Black Romanticism is no longer seen as just one of the Romantic movements. Its connection to the particular historical moment is becoming looser and looser and the set of its distinctive features, which can be easily recognized, makes it possible to see it as the sui generis category. The increasing number of various scientific works confirms the fact that in the case of fascination by the mysterious, unchained and dark side of being we face a weightier phenomenon than just a fashion in culture. The Black Romanticism category enables to grasp and reveal a number of cultural, literary and linguistic phenomena which have been resistant to all the attempts to systematize Slovak artistic production stemming from the spiritual and aesthetical atmosphere of Romanticism. The material of the Slovak resources makes it possible to almost completely reconstruct the imaginarium of Black Romanticism including the vampires, who inhabit it, the frenetic concept of man, the demonic face of nature and history, the Gothic scenery, the original evil principle, which has infected the world, the inexpressibility problem and the subsequent language experiment, the artistic outsidership or weird folkiness.