František Malík is an extremely busy man. Just over the past few months, he has organized several book festivals; the Martinus Literature Tent at Slovakia’s largest music festival, Pohoda; and several episodes of the literature review podcast, LQ (Literárny kvocient)—to name just a few. Editor-at-Large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood has managed to catch him in a rare moment of respite, and in the following interview, they discuss various facets of arts and literature in Slovakia today.
Julia Sherwood (JS): For a country of five million, Slovakia has a quite an astonishing number of literary festivals taking place throughout the year. You have been associated with several of them, most notably the BRaK Literature Festival. How did this festival start, and what makes it different from all the others?
František Malík (FM): Eight years ago, when we started BRaK, the Slovak literary scene was far less diversified than it is today. While it is true that we now have more literary festivals than we used to, I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that it’s a disproportionate amount for a country of five million. Not long ago, I visited Iceland with a group of Slovak writers; Iceland’s population is less than one-tenth the size of Slovakia’s, and yet its cultural and literature policies are much more advanced and the arts receive far more funding. They also have quite a few literary festivals. This is just one example; a similar trend can be seen in all developed countries.
If I may correct you slightly—what we have emphasized right from the start is that BRaK is a book festival. This is not just a terminological difference, it also has to do with the content. We try to see a book—an aggregate of various artistic approaches—in a holistic way, rather than focusing solely on the literary element. At BRaK, we highlight all the constituent parts of the book—from publishers at the centre of the festival, graphic designers and illustrators who often host workshops, to copyeditors and translators, as well as writers. BRaK has always striven to be international and to showcase the greatest names throughout the book world, not just from Slovakia and the neighbouring countries.
JS: Of the various festivals you have organized, which do you regard as the most successful and which were the most fun?
FM: In the course of eleven years on the scene, I’ve helped to launch several festivals, and I’ve also been fortunate to work with some great teams. I like your question—having fun, and enjoying something in the broadest sense is what really matters, although the COVID-19 pandemic has taken some of the fun out of it.
I enjoy organizing everything I’m involved in. For example, I really enjoyed the first edition of the Slovak/Czech festival Cez prah/Přes práh (Over the Doorstep), an apartment festival now in its fifth year. It’s held in actual homes in the centre of the capital, Bratislava, but also in apartments that have since gained the status of institutions, as there is a growing trend to hold cultural events in flats. In the previous regime, flats played a specific cultural role. They served as educational and cultural institutions, as venues for lectures in philosophy, theatre performances, exhibitions . . . People were driven out of official venues and into their homes. Over the Doorstep aims to commemorate these flats and the role they played.
JS: For nearly two years, creative industries around the globe have been severely affected by the pandemic, yet the arts have generally received less financial support from governments than other sectors. What struck me about this was the public response—which ranged from indifference and lack of sympathy to outright hostility. Do you feel that people in Slovakia have less appreciation of the arts than people in other countries? And if so, what do you think is the cause of this and what can be done to change these attitudes?
FM: The COP 26 climate conference just ended in Glasgow, but despite growing and indisputable evidence that the situation is getting worse—that humankind might be wiped out by climate change—we as a global community have been unable to take radical decisions, although the COVID-19 crisis has shown us that the world can be paused for a while. But what really concerns me in relation to my country, Slovakia, is the widespread distrust of vaccination. On TV, we see doctors begging people to get vaccinated, explaining that they are at the end of their ropes and that this is the only way out; these are professionals, yet people don’t believe them, because having read a single article on the internet, they suddenly believe that they are entitled to their own opinion on facts.
The reason I mention this is if—despite clinical tests and statements by the world’s top experts—the majority of Slovaks can’t be convinced of something as objectively proven as vaccination, it would be absurd to expect these people to not be similarly disparaging about the arts. To see people rail against artists and arts funding, whether they are driven by right-wing beliefs or purely nationalist considerations based on their own ideological position, is something to be expected. It does not surprise me in the least. But despite this attitude being so widespread in Slovakia, I think that some institutions were able to mobilize and that things could have been much worse.
JS: In this atmosphere, what has helped you continue your organizational work, when many of the events had to be scaled down or moved online?
FM: I don’t think that we should wallow in self-pity about how hard things are for us. Sometimes it helps to remember other professions that have found themselves in a far more difficult situation—doctors, or labourers who have to work out in the open during the winter months. They could also moan that people don’t appreciate their situation and contribution to society. I would like to avoid turning the arts into something untouchable that has been subjected to a special form of oppression. That really isn’t appropriate these days, when the pandemic has really cut across all walks of life and affected everyone without exception.
What motivates me personally to stick with the arts, despite being occasionally at the receiving end of hostility, is the hope of cultivating our “bubble.” Of course, sometimes we wish that our activities were more widely known, but on the other hand, we don’t want to adapt our programming to this. When we discuss audience development with other arts workers, we often agree that what’s really important is to cultivate social bubbles. We are based in Bratislava and most of our activities take place in the city centre because that’s where our target audience is concentrated, whether we like it or not.
JS: Is it possible that that the pandemic actually enabled you to reach wider audiences than before—so this might be a kind of silver lining?
FM: The transition to online spaces happened quite naturally. I feel that streaming is something that will be a part of our lives in the foreseeable future, and we’ll have to look for various, attractive ways of using it in our events. The internet has certainly enabled us to reach much wider audiences, but not everything, in my mind, is transferable. Sometimes streaming is not a real substitute—as in the cases of live concerts, poetry readings, or theatre performances. But it is an option and, first and foremost, a completely new line of activity. You need to involve audiovisual arts professionals, to take into account the specific requirements of the online space, and you need a certain level of technical quality. Ironically, this is actually more costly, which is something that everyone involved should bear in mind, both in economic terms (charging for tickets) and in terms of more profound conceptual changes.
We moved online as early as a week into the first hard lockdown. During those first events, audience figures soared, and there was a huge amount of solidarity. Books and literature were featured in prime time—suddenly everyone was reading. Online bookstores and publishers had record sales, and our audiences were several times larger than the number of people we could squeeze into a room. I think poetry was most successful in seizing this space.
JS: Do you think that at a time of rising anxieties and increasing polarization, people need the arts—and literature in particular? Do the arts have a special role to play in times like these?
FM: The arts, in all their forms, filled a huge gap opened by the pandemic. It brought a kind of comfort; people were able to connect with global cultural traditions, and share stories through art. I feel that it helped people to forget to some extent what was happening around them, but more importantly, art was often able to provide answers to the big questions about what was happening. Asking questions is essential. These huge shifts in our lives posed artistic as well as philosophical issues, and all sectors of the arts and society ought to seek answers—whether through science, history, or by setting our own philosophical goals. And of course, we need to acknowledge that the arts are indispensable as a way of sensitizing people, contributing to equality, pointing out what is truly important, and setting priorities.
JS: Let’s come back to BraK: it’s not only a book festival but also a publishing house, releasing original work by Slovak writers, children’s books, graphic novels, as well as translations of both classic and contemporary writers. When did the publishing house start, and what goals do you set yourselves?
FM: The publishing house grew quite naturally out of the festival, which had brought us into closer contact with publishers. As we became more acquainted with the industry, we started to take note of well-produced books that met the highest objectives, aesthetic as well as technical, and became aware of publishers who went about creating their lists and producing books in a responsible way. Eventually, the idea occurred to us, quite spontaneously, that we should ourselves give it a try.
Our way of building the list is quite straightforward, and I think it’s the way most publishers do it—that is, basing it on our own taste. We publish a mix of books that we like and those we feel are not sufficiently known here, ones that are easy to find in the bookstores of other countries. Our illustrated edition of Kafka’s short stories (translated by Milan Žitný) also features comics. We made a point of not using the colour black in the illustrations, as we wanted to show that Kafka need not be read only with deadly seriousness—that people should also see his humour. Later we focused on children’s picture books, which have become much more common than they were seven years ago. Besides translations, we also try to promote the creation of original Slovak picture books. As for comics, we were really starting from zero. Take RUDO, by Daniel Majling—ten years ago, no one would touch it, and he had to look for a publisher in the Czech Republic. When we decided to go into comic books, we were able to pick up the most iconic works, such as Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus (trans. Tomáš Hučko) and Persepolis (trans. Mária Ferenčuhová). We are the first Slovak publisher to have received a Creative Europe grant to publish six European graphic novels. There is also Lentikular, our Slovak poetry list, which we curate jointly with the poet Michal Tallo. In addition to poets, we also offer opportunities to contemporary photographers, with whom we produce great books with unique design. We try to approach each project responsibly and creatively.
JS: In choosing the authors and works you publish, are you deliberately aiming to broaden the horizons of Slovak readers? Can you mention some of the works in translation have you published?
FM: Some of our titles reach a wider audience, and with others we feel that we must persevere—that the readers will come back to them. This has recently happened with the collection of 1950s interviews from the Paris Review. I’ve been reading the journal for many years, and some of my friends are also aware of it, but judging by the response on social media, it was completely new to Slovak readers. It sold only dozens of copies at first, but this year, after we published another volume, of the 1960s, we’ve had to reprint volume one. We are very happy that we’ve been able to bring these key works to Slovak readers. A 1970s collection is due soon, and we plan to continue our cooperation with the Paris Review in the future.
Another writer I’d like to mention is Mircea Cărtărescu, whose name has been noted as a potential nominee for the Nobel Prize. His works represent some of the best writing in the world today, and we have published two of his books, Solenoid (trans. Eva Kenderessy) and Nostalgia (trans. Mária Miklušičáková and Eva Kenderessy). Another example is László Krasznahorkai, whose The Melancholy of Resistance we have published this year in a translation by Gabriela Magová, and whose key work, Satantango (trans. Tímea Krekovič Beck), is due out soon. Also, jointly with the translator and diplomat Marek Brieška, we have launched a list called “Dezorient Express,” which focuses on key works of contemporary Arab literature. We also publish Central European writers such as the Polish author Weronika Murek, and the Ukrainians Taras Prokhasko and Serhiy Zhadan, all translated by Patrik Oriešek.
JS: In a recent interview, another independent Slovak publisher said that “Slovakia is an extremely conservative country, so things which elsewhere are regarded as almost mainstream are, in this country, pigeonholed as alternative literature.” Has this also been your experience?
FM: Recently, as part of our long-term cooperation with ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network), we had the opportunity to host one of their participants in a residency. We have been working towards Bratislava joining the network of member cities, and our efforts will come to fruition later this year. Once we become a member, we can offer shelter to writers suffering persecution or under threat in their own countries. Most recently, we spoke with one of the ICORN residents, Bangaladeshi publisher and poet Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, who told us about attacks on his offices and the extent of censorship in his country. I don’t know if the publisher you quote would have said the same thing to him, too.
I say this only to show that everything depends on time and place. The Vatican still issues lists of banned books, and not so long ago we saw books being burned in even the more progressive Western countries because of their “immoral” contents—the kind our tabloids churn out on a daily basis. As for our catalogue, I don’t regard what BRaK publishes as “alternative” books. In fact, I’d say that the books I mentioned above are the real mainstream. When we speak of László Krasznahorkai, recipient of the International Booker Prize, or the most translated Romanian author, Mircea Cărtărescu, we are talking mainstream. But the impression of being alternative can arise, as they were published by a small independent publisher. Maybe the larger ones didn’t see their commercial potential, but these books are anything but wacky literary experimental oddities; they are works by virtuosos of literature, and I dare say that the translations do them justice. I am very proud to present them to the wider public.
JS: The label “alternative” could arguably be applied to another project you are involved with: Kapitál, a monthly cultural and political journal with an unabashedly left-leaning agenda. What made you think that a journal of this kind was needed, and how do you assess its impact now?
FM: I would agree with this assessment. When people describe Kapitál as a left-wing journal, I feel as if we’re part of some alternative bubble. We launched the journal four years ago precisely because a monthly like this had been missing in this country for a long time, but of course we are aware of—and building on—many previous initiatives, such as various historic journals from the interwar period, as well as some more recent, post-1989 ones. We aim for a mix of cultural left-oriented themes that highlight the lives of those who are excluded and pushed to the margins of society, as well as trade unionist, feminist, and environmental ideas—basically all the issues at the attention of the present-day Left. We try to apply these optics to the perception of art in order to sensitize people, broaden their horizons, and be more critical of the aspects of life that are taken for granted. In the past thirty years, the Left has been seen in this country as a kind of perversion, a symbol of injustice, because the term has been hijacked by plutocratic, oligarchic organizations and political parties. We still have a long way to go before we can rid the term of these connotations, while raising issues that the Left in the West has been raising for a long time.
JS: Do you see your role as challenging the mainstream, complementing it, or being a part of it—where do you position yourself along this spectrum?
FM: I suppose it is one thing for me to say where I position myself and another where other people see me. For me, what matters is your starting point of reference. From the perspective of contributors to “zines,” I am thoroughly mainstream, while from the point of view of the publisher of Slovenka—the mass circulation women’s weekly—I am decidedly alternative. To be honest, I feel more at home on the periphery than in the centre; I grew up on a housing estate in Rimavská Sobota, and deep down I am still a boy from a provincial town. This is what gave me the idea to call another of the series we publish “Outsideria.” It will feature books that have remained—unjustifiably—on the margins. The first title in the series is John Fante’s Ask the Dust (translated by Tomáš Hučko), and Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book is also in the pipeline. Who knows, maybe I’m a perennial outsider. Twenty-five years ago, when Balla published a book called Outsideria, he was a marginal author, and look at him now—he is one of the most acclaimed Slovak writers, and his work was also featured in Asymptote!
František Malík is a literary organizer, publisher, and tireless promoter of books and literature. He studied cultural studies at Comenius University in Bratislava, and in 2014 established the international book festival BRaK held in Bratislava, setting up the eponymous publishing house a year later. He also heads the NGO literarnyklub.sk that produces a variety of cultural events—such as a Slovak and Czech poetry competition, author readings, a festival of Slovak contemporary literature, the apartment festival Over the Doorstep, and is in charge of literary dramaturgy at the Pohoda Festival. In 2017 he co-founded the cultural magazine Kapitál. He lives in Bratislava with his wife and daughter.
Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Since 2008 she has been working as a freelance translator of fiction and non-fiction from Slovak, Czech, Polish, German, and Russian. She is based in London and is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Slovakia.
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Read more on the Asymptote blog:
- Raising the Profile of Slovak Translation: An Interview with the Founders of DoSlov
- Translation Tuesday: “A Sentimental Education in March” by Pavel Vilikovský
- Editors in Slovak Publishing Houses: An Endangered Species?