Ján Poničan

Ján Poničan (pseudonym Ján Rob Poničan) (June 15, 1902, Očová – February 25, 1978, Bratislava) was a Slovak poet, novelist, lawyer, playwright and translator.

Biography

Poničan was born in to a peasant family, his parents died when he was a child and Ján was raised by his relatives. He received his education in a Hungarian classical grammar school in Banská Bystrica and received his diploma in Lučenec. He later continued at the Technical University in Prague, but after two years he transferred to law, which he graduated from in 1927.

In 1924 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and became a member of the Davisti, a group of left-wing intellectuals and was among the founders of the DAV magazine.

Poničan began to work in Bratislava as a trainee lawyer and gave lectures on the Soviet Union. He was the head of the International Red Aid delegation and visited Moscow and Siberia. After his return to Banská Bystrica he was convicted and imprisoned for illegal Communist activities.

The following year he was a practicing lawyer with Vladimír Clementis and a year later he opened his own law firm and represented mainly workers and communists. He practiced law until 1947, later he was secretary of the Bar Association, a public and state notary.

Works In his poems he expressed his political opinions, revolutionary and proletarian enthusiasms, but also his personal restlessness, erotic and affective motives, impressions from urban environments and also social issues. He used the melody of images, the poetic search for rhymes. In addition to poetry, prose and theater, he translated playwrights of foreign literatures, such as the Russians Sergei Yesenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hungarians Endre Ady and Sándor Petőfi, and also works of Bulgarian literature.

Poetry

1923 – Som, myslím, cítim a vidím, milujem všetko, len temno nenávidím 1929 – Demontáž 1932 – Večerné svetlá 1934 – Angara 1937 – Póly 1941 – Divný Janko 1942 – Sen na medzi 1946 – Ivan Klas 1946 – Povstanie 1947 – Mesto 1949 – Na tepne čias 1954 – Básne 1958 – Riava neutícha 1962 – Ohne nad riekou 1967 – Držím sa zeme, drží ma zem 1972 – Špirála ľúbosť 1973 – Hĺbky a diaľky

Prose

1935 – Stroje sa pohli 1945 – Sám 1945 – Pavučina 1945 – Hôrny kvet 1946 – Treba žiť 1949 – Z čias-nečias 1959 – Po horách-dolinách 1960 – A svet sa hýbe 1964 – Červená sedma 1973 – Jánošíkovci 1975 – Búrlivá mladosť 1979 – Dobyvateľ

Drama

1924 – Dva svety 1935 – Iskry bez ohňa 1936 – Bačov žart 1936 – Vzbura na rozkaz 1941 – Jánošík 1944 – Básnik a kráľ 1945 – Vzbura žien 1949 – Čistá hra 1958 – Štyria 1962 – Všetkostroj Máje

Children's literature

1953 – Deti, deti, pozrite 1979 – Skaza hradu