He came from Vyšný Kubín in Orava, where he was born in a peasant family on 2 February 1849. After studies at the grammar school in Miškovec and Kežmarok, he graduated from the law academy of the Evangelical College in Prešov between 1870 and 1872. Together with Koloman Banšell, they founded the Kolo association and published the literary almanac Forward. He passed the bar exam in 1875 in Budapest. He worked as a lawyer and judge in his native Orava. From 1902 he devoted himself only to literary activity. At the end of his life he welcomed the establishment of Czechoslovakia and became one of the presidents of the reopened Slovak Matrix in 1919. He died on 8 November 1921 in Dolný Kubín.
He published his first poems as a student. Later he decided to use the pseudonym Hviezdoslav. He wrote mostly reflective, nature and social lyrics. He is known for his Sonnets, Psalms and Hymns, three cycles of Letorostov, Walks in Spring, Walks in Summer and Blood Sonnets, which have been translated into both French and English. Of the epic works, the epics Ežo Vlkolinský and Gábor Vlkolinský, Hájnik's Wife and the drama Herodes and Herodias still resonate. He has translated the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz and Petöfi into Slovak. Hviezdoslav's work is not only varied in genre, but also unusually rich in motifs and ideas, ranging from intimate and family motifs to national and world problems, deepened by social relations and a desire to achieve a high degree of universality. He is rightly regarded as an exceptional personality of Slovak literature.
In Prešov, a street and the regional library are named after him.
Buildings:
Hlavná 16, Prešov - the house where Hviezdoslav lived as a student, today the seat of the children's library Slniečko
Hlavná 137, Prešov - Evangelical College, where Hviezdoslav studied
Slovenská 18, Prešov - Regional library P. O. Hviezdoslav (formerly Levočská 1)
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=741471
He was born on 30 December 1874 in Martin. After graduating from high school in Kežmarok, he graduated from the law academy at the Evangelical College in Prešov (1893 - 1896). He received his doctorate in law in Cluj, Romania, and passed the bar exam in 1905 in Budapest. He worked as a lawyer in Bánovce nad Bebravou.
After the outbreak of World War I he was on the Russian front, where he joined the Czechoslovak legions. In 1922 he was a mayor in Rimavská Sobota and then a grand-mayor in Nitra. From 1929 he was a government councillor in Bratislava and later vice-president of the Regional Office. From 1930 to 1939 he was vice-president of the Slovak Writers' Association and from 1933 editor-in-chief of the journal Slovenské smery umelecké a kritické (Slovak Directions of Art and Criticism). In November 1945, he was the first Slovak to receive the title of national artist. He died on 27 December 1945 in Bratislava.
He began to devote himself to literary work during his studies in Kežmarok. He was both a poet and a prose writer. During his stay in Prešov he wrote 60 poems, among others Na shohu Torysy, Na rumoch Šariša, Na Kapušianskom hrade, and two hilarious plays, Kisses of Struggle and Medicine Works. Later he also wrote a novella Karol Ketzer. In poetry he came up with themes of personally experienced love emotion and published several collections of Verses.
As an intellectual type of poet, he also responded to social issues in the collections Our Hero, Black Days, and On the Wickedness of the Day. In his prose work, he began with satirical and humorous anecdotal stories from the small-town environment, which he published under the title Small-Town Tales. The culmination of Jesenský's prose work is the extensive novel The Democrats, in which he put his lifelong experience of public engagement in the political-administrative sphere. His works have been published in several languages and some have been the subject of film and television adaptations. He has also translated Russian poetry by Pushkin, Yesenin and Blok, and written literary and cultural journalism. His work made him an important representative of modern Slovak literature.
Jesensky's stay in Prešov is commemorated by a commemorative plaque on the Evangelical College and one of the streets.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author Slovak Bookshop, Prague - The Pictures of Slovak Writers Serie, vol. 1 (The Pictures of Slovak Writers Series, Series 1), Free Works, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10680412
