Dominik Tatarka: the Slovak Don Quixote
(Freedom and Dreams)
Series:
Mária Bátorová
4. Types of depiction
Extract
4.
Types of Depiction1
Tatarka’s work is close to visual art. He never painted but his decorated letters are well known. In his literary portraits he uses colours, perspective and atmosphere in similar ways to those of a visual artist (in paintings and sculptures).
If authenticity is the basis of Tatarka’s style, then the setting of his works is defined by his own vision of the world, by images stored in his memory and reflecting his experience. There is always something which appeals to his imagination and stimulates his creativity. This is the case with the images deeply ingrained in his memory and reworked in his novels in various modifications. These include his self-portrait, a portrait of his mother, visualizations of sexuality and of his inner world. His descriptions are never complete or exhaustive. In fact they are not external but instead capture characters through their inner qualities, movement, action…
The authenticity of the images which are consistently present in Tatarka’s work can be especially seen in the way they change over time: the image of ← 85 | 86 → the mother in the character of Margitka in Farská republika (Parish Republic), her image in the novella Ešte s vami pobudnúť (To Stay with You for a While).
Other images occur only once but leave a deep experiential mark which the author is unable to shake off. He develops these as poetic images (not novelistic), created (according to Bakhtin) using the...
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