„Ako by som chodil vo filme“: Intermediálne referencovanie filmu v literárnej reportáži slovenského štátu
“As If I Were Walking through a Film”: Intermedial References to Film in Literary Reportage from the Slovak State

Summary/Abstract: The article elucidates the heightened literary cinematography of Karol Murgaš’ propagandistic reportage Pakt statočných povinností [The Pact of Courageous Duties, 1940] as a result of intermedial referencing of Nazi newsreels within the constraints of the literary reportage genre–specifically, the approximation of reportage textuality to film as the most effective propaganda medium. Complementarily, the study offers new impetus for exploring the hitherto unexamined genre of literary reportage in the Slovak State (1939–1945), identifying literary cinematography as its dominant and potentially central poetological feature. The introduction addresses the relationship between fascism and aesthetics, the specificities of fascist counter-aesthetics, and literary reportage as a thriving genre within the Slovak State. The second section establishes the theoretical framework for analyzing intermedial references, focusing on their relation to expressive equivalence within the processuality of intersemiotic (or intermedial) translation. The third section situates the motivations behind Murgaš’ intermedial strategies in their literary-historical context, particularly because of the compatibility between the dynamism and speed of film (its conventional aesthetics of disappearance) and fascism as an alternative modernism. The final section applies the concept of the literary-cinematographic text and Peter Torop’s typology of chronotopes to explain intermedial referencing as moments of expressive equivalence between Nazi newsreels and Murgaš’ reportage. The conclusion identifies the text as a case of alternatively modernist–and therefore fascist–aesthetic production, and reflects on its implications for future research on the literary reportage within the broader propagandistic and cultural context of the Slovak State.

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