Penetrations into the Poetics of Originality and the Form of Dramatization Work in Radio Plays Based on The Bride of the Moutains by František Švantner

Abstract

František Švantner’s The Bride of the Mountains is conventionally regarded as the key prose work of the so-called Slovak Naturism. It belongs to the golden pool of classic works of Slovak literature. Its literary context defines the possible ways of adaptation into the genre of a radio play. The balladic nature of the work, the specifics of the author’s rich imagery, and the degree and manner of connection to specific concepts – all these are moments that provide the dramatist with clearly marked and at the same time still sufficiently generous contours of the way in which the original can be approached in its transformation into the subject of a radio play. The archive of Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava and later the archive of Slovak Radio have two radio plays conceived as dramatisations of František Švantner’s prose play The Bride of the Mountains. The first of them was written in 1967. The second dates from 2022. The challenge for reflecting on their dominances is to answer the question of the degree of conformity to Švantner’s original mode of storytelling, with its emphasis on contrasts and the nature of narration, reflecting various forms of spontaneity or mysteries bordering on the irrational.

 

Key words 

Direction. Dramatization. Imagination. Music. Origin. Perceptual Psychology. Radio Play. Sound Design.