Experimenting with life: New sincerity in contemporary Slovak poetry
Experimenting with life: New sincerity in contemporary Slovak poetry

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how sincerity operates in contemporary Slovak poetry within the experimental tradition, where irony, authenticity, and experimentation intersect rather than exclude one another. Against the backdrop of post-totalitarian history and global cultural transitions, Slovak poets have renegotiated sincerity beyond reductive binaries of irony versus authenticity. Drawing on “new sincerity” theory (Adam Kelly, Ellen Rutten, Mikhail Epstein) and focusing on Michal Habaj’s long poem “Yangtik”, it argues that sincerity in 21st-century Slovak poetry is a mediated and context-shaped articulation – necessarily “contaminated”. The Slovak case thus contributes to and nuances broader debates on post-postmodernism by showing that sincerity re-emerges from within experimental practice.

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