The Demon of Consent

Dominik Tatarka

​A rudimentary work of slovak prose that deals with the period of stalinism. It is the confession about slavery agreeing with the power, about the after death cry of Bartolomej Boleraz, a socialist poet, who dies together with a communist officer in a helicopter.

The Demon of Consent was an important text in the time of its origin and publishing and is important nowadays as well. Because also nowadays the world is full of figures that, covered by the safety of the crowd and without the ability to predict and have principles, they agree with whatever. A figure is a dangerous person because they think that they are not responsible for anything, that there are important people up there, that think instead of them, speak and plan, take the responsibility for them... Well, and that is the road that leads straight to hell.

Dominik Tatarka (1913 — 1989)

Tatarka`s basic feelings are loneliness and anxiety face-to-face with himself, God and the world as a whole. Man is uprooted, he is no longer part of the community or the nation and therefore has no way of neutralizing his occasional feelings of lonelines Tatarka`s first books are collections of novellas expressing and reflecting his personal experiences during the late 1930`s and early 1940`s. The Miraculous Virgin is a surreal vision of love which is also a sound protest against Fascism. ... More.

Erik Jakub Groch

Poet, designer and publisher, author of several books for children He entered official literature in 1989 with a collection of poems Private Lessons in Sadness. Groch's poetics is based on the so-called Christian lyric in its more civil variation. Especially in the second book his poetry is expressed in a modern way ... More.