PAVOL JANIK

 

PAVOL JANIK

 

Family Still Life

 

I say in vain

to my wife

that she can’t nag

genius.

So I’ve recorded this

in written form

for future generations

as advice for death and life, too.

 

A Dictionary Of Foreign Dreams

 

At the beginning it was like a dream.

She said:

“Have at least one dream with me.

You’ll see – it’ll be a dream

which you’ve never dreamt about before.”

 

Descend deeper with me,

dream from the back,

dream retrospectively

in a labyrinth of mirrors

which leads nowhere.

 

The moment you come to the beginning of nothing

you’ll dream an exciting dream.

 

Frame it

and hang it in your bedroom.

 

So it will always be before your eyes

because a dream which is removed from the eye

is removed from the mind

in the sense

of the ancient laws

of human forgetfulness.

 

Dream your own.

 

Dream your dream

which is reflected on the surface

of a frozen lake.

A dream smooth and freezing:

 

Grieving keys,

a downcast forest,

curved glass.

The tributes of mirrors.

 

The rising of the moon

in a dream of water.

 

Recoil from the bottom

of the mirror’s dream.

 

In the gallery of dreams

then you’ll see

a live broadcast from childhood

fragments of long-forgotten stories.

 

Because our obsolete dreams

remain with us.

 

Don’t be in a hurry, dream slowly, completely

until you see the crystalline construction

of your soul

in which dreams glitter.

- intentionally and comprehensibly like flame.

 

Perhaps you’ve already noticed

that new dreams always decrease.

They wane.

 

Soon we’ll light up

in the magical dusk

of the last dream

the despairing cry

of a starry night.

 

Pay a toll to the dream’s

deliverance from sense.

 

You repeat aloud

the intimacies of secret dreams,

with the dull gleam

of your persistent night eyes

you explicate a mysterious speech of darkness.

 

You dream, therefore you exist!

You Can Tell An Angel From His Feathers

(For my parents who are not yet - departed-)

 

In my innermost display cases

all my glassy memories tremble.

 

At the end of silence to hear last year’s rain

how it dictates whispering

its incomprehensible telegram

A pack of sad angels

howl in the light of the moon

 

The river falls from weariness,

the mortal spirit of water

in it falls with ease

to the bottom

 

I feel mercury in my veins

after the explosion of blood

- it’s in my guts

supersonic angels

rise from the dead.

 

Their deafening engines

start up in my head.

 

When they take off

the deepest silence begins

in which perhaps I’ll hear

distant pearls

how they pour on the parquets.

 

A morning confession of frozen tears

freezes me

in my yet more Autumn eyes.

 

PAVOL JANIK

 

Mgr. art. PAVOL JANIK, PhD., (magister artis et philosophiae doctor) was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU). He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983–1987), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003–2007), Secretary-General of the Slovak Writers’ Society (1998–2003, 2007–2013), Editor-in-Chief of the Slovak literary weekly Literarny tyzdennik (2010–2013). Honorary Member of the Union of Czech Writers (from 2000), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Obrys-Kmen (2004–2014), Member of the Editorial Board of the weekly of the UCW Literatura – Umeni – Kultura (from 2014). Member of the Writers Club International (from 2004). Member of the Poetas del Mundo (from 2015). Member of the World Poets Society (from 2016). Director of the Writers Capital International Foundation for Slovakia and the Czech Republic (2016–2017). Chief Representative of the World Nation Writers’ Union in Slovakia (from 2016). Ambassador of the Worldwide Peace Organization (Organizacion Para la Paz Mundial) in Slovakia (from 2018). Member of the Board of the International Writers Association (IWA BOGDANI) (from 2019). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad. This virtuoso of Slovak literature, Pavol Janik, is a poet, dramatist, prose writer, translator, publicist and copywriter. His literary activities focus mainly on poetry. Even his first book of poems Unconfirmed Reports (1981) attracted the attention of the leading authorities in Slovak literary circles. He presented himself as a plain-spoken poet with a spontaneous manner of poetic expression and an inclination for irony directed not only at others, but also at himself. This style has become typical of all his work, which in spite of its critical character has also acquired a humorous, even bizarre dimension. His manner of expression is becoming terse to the point of being aphoristic. It is thus perfectly natural that Pavol Janik's literary interests should come to embrace aphorisms founded on a shift of meaning in the form of puns. In his work he is gradually raising some very disturbing questions and pointing to serious problems concerning the further development of humankind, while all the time widening his range of themes and styles. Literary experts liken Janik's poetic virtuosity to that in the work of Miroslav Valek, while in the opinion of the Russian poet, translator and literary critic, Natalia Shvedova, Valek is more profound and Janik more inventive. He has translated in poetic form several collections of poetry and written works of drama with elements of the style of the Theatre of the Absurd. Pavol Janik’s literary works have been published not only in Slovakia, but also in Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland,  the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.