Stanislav Mečiar a jeho polonofilstvo na pozadí archívnych dokumentov
Stanislav Mečiar and his Polonophileness on the Background of Archive Documents

Summary/Abstract: The goal of the paper is to show the manifestations and forms of polonophileness ofliterary historian Stanislav Mečiar (1910 – 1971) in and 1930s. The interwar relationsbetween Czechoslovakia and Poland were tense for almost twenty years. Problemswere mainly caused by border disputes in Teschen Silesia, Spiš, Orava and Kysuce,different interests in foreign policy, power competition in the Central European areaand attitude towards minorities. In this situation, the interest of young Slovak intelligencein Polish culture and science began to increase in the early 1920s, which wassupported by Warsaw, in its efforts to undermine the position of Prague. StanislavMečiar, an important literary historian and representative of Matica Slovenska, wasone of the young Polonophillic oriented Slovaks. His journey to Polish literature andculture began in the early 1930s, when he went through Professor of JagiellonianUniversity Władysław Semkowicz, a well-known Slovakophile, on his first scholarshipin Zakopane and Krakow. His study trips to Poland continued in the following years,resulting in literary-historical texts and translations published in Slovak periodicals.Later, there was more extensive work on it: Tatras in Slovak and Polish poetry, Hviezdoslavand Kasprowicz and last but not least Poetry and Life. Since the mid-1930s Mečiar,as a representative of Matica slovenská, has maintained close contacts with severalpersonalities of Polish literature and has been intensively involved in the developmentof Slovak-Polish cultural cooperation. His Polonophillic orientation was not disturbedeven by the defeat and occupation of Poland, even though he was an exponent of theregime of the war Slovak Republic, a satellite of Nazi Germany. The paper built onarchive materials shows development and forms of Stanislav Mečiar polonophileness.

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