Modernist Variations of the Ballad as a Genre

The ballad as a genre represents a relatively frequent lyric form in the poetry of the authors of Slovak literature. On the one hand it signals continuity of the Slovak Romantic tradition (J. Kráľ, J. Botto, S. Chalupka) and through the social ballad (in the works of V. Roy and M. Rázus) refers to the works of the previous Realist-Parnasist generation (S. H. Vajanský, P. O. Hviezdoslav), on the other hand it is the evidence of the Modernist way of understanding literary type syncretism and applying it to lyric poetry, with the emphasis put on the lyric element. The ballads of Slovak Modernist poets (I. Krasko, Š. Krčméry, Ľ. Groeblová) saw a meaning and function shift in seeing the traditional components of the genre, including innovations in semantics and poetics. The main innovation lay in reassessing the lyric-epic and subject-object nature of the ballad reinforcing the lyric and the subject aspects, and also in a different way of seeing literary type syncretism. The new approach also included the update of the motif catalogue (the motifs of a pilgrim, journey, guilt and punishment, solitude). The poem Balada (Ballad) by I. Krasko and the parallel expansion of the subject in the poem Balada by Š. Krčméry are examples of the fact that even seemingly objective poems carried a concentrated subjective message about the mental state of a human. Another kind of the Modernist ballad variation is then represented by the poem Balada by Ľ. Groeblová.