Ján Kollár

Ján Kollár (29 July 1793 in Mošovce (Mosóc) – 24 January 1852 in Vienna) was a Slovak writer (mainly poet), archaeologist, scientist and politician, main ideologist of Pan-Slavism.

Life

He studied at the Lutheran Lyceum in Pressburg (today Bratislava). He acted as a pastor in Budapest, since 1849 as a professor of the University of Vienna, and several times as a counsellor to the Austrian government for issues around the Slovaks. He entered the Slovak national movement in its first phase.

His museum (since 1974) in Mošovce is installed in the former granary, which was the only masoned part of Kollár's otherwise wooden birth-house. The rest of the house burned down in a fire on 16 August 1863.

Views

He worked out a conception of Slav reciprocity. He admitted 4 standard languages - Russian, Polish, Czechoslovak and Serbo-Croatian.

Works

Besides writing poetry he wrote also technical literature.

Slávy Dcera (The daughter of Sláva), collection of two (37 and 39 sonnets) cycles

In this work he worked out the conception of Slavic reciprocity. He expressed his feelings to a woman but this love had transformed to a love to his homeland. The main tematics of this work are: •love •patriotism

It is divided into 5 chapters and it has a foreword. Předspev The author expressed his fears that the Slovaks will disappear from Europe like other Slavic tribes did it before. He asked the Slovaks to ask for help from the Russian nation. 1. Sála This part contains love sonnets. He glorified his love and made from her an idol of Slovak women. From this time the girl is Mína,the daughter of goddess Sláva. 2. Labe, Rén, Vltava In these parts the author took us to places where Slavic tribes lived before. He is disappointed because these areas belong to foreign countries now. 3. Dunaj The author arrived to Slovakia. He had to see the poverty of this area. He is highly disappointed and he longed for death. 4. Léthé 5. Acheron Mína, the daughter of goddess Sláva (the author's love), turned into a fairy and took the author to the heaven and to the hell of Slovaks.