У статті розглянуто взаємозв'язок між словацькою й українською літературами та культурами
ХІХ – ХХ ст. у Східнокарпатській прикордонній області. Цю виразно багатонаціональну зону автор
уважає одним із найбільш незалежних культурних регіонів у Центральній Європі. Словацька
література, починаючи із середини ХІХ ст., показує, що цей простір – гетеротопний. Наративні
перспективи чужинця, вигнанця, мігранта в поєднанні з темами кордону та конфлікту між
місцевими і чужинцями характерні для літературних образів Східнокарпатського прикордонного
регіону у ХХ ст.
The paper deals with relationship between Slovak and Ukrainian literatures and cultures of the
19th and 20th centuries in the Eastern Carpathian border area. The author considers this particularly
multiethnic region as one of the relatively independent cultural areas of the Central Europe. The Slovak
literature since the mid-19th century shows this space as a heterotopia. Narrative perspectives of a
stranger, outcast, migrant in combination with the themes of border and conflict between local and
strangers are characteristic for the literary image of the Eastern Carpathian border area in the 20th
century.
The paper explores the issue of parallel processes of ‘national revival’ (such as Slovak, Ruthenian,
Ukrainian, Hungarian) in the ethnically heterogeneous area of eastern Slovakia where the process
of cultural and ethnic self-identification followed a much more complex trajectory compared to the
‘core’ areas inhabited by the respective ethnic groups. The Slavonic ethnic groups failed to conclude
this process in the course of the 19th century or, indeed, even in the first half of the 20th century.
Following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the establishment of Czechoslovakia,
the new state’s liberal national policies encouraged greater competition between certain cultural and
linguistic orientations among the inhabitants of eastern Slovakia (pro-Ukrainian, pro-Russian and
pro-Ruthenian orientation). This situation was also reflected in works of Slovak and especially Czech
literature. Slovak-Ukrainian cultural contacts are currently receiving many new ideas and their research
can be based on theoretical background of postcolonialism, selfcolonization theory and geopoetics.
