OBRAZ KULTÚRY V DIELACH JÁNA LAJČIAKA SLOVENSKO A KULTÚRA (1921) A IHNATA ABDZIRALOVIČA VEČNOU CESTOU (1921)

Ján Lajčiak (1875–1918) and Ihnat Kanchevsky (1896–1923, pseudonym Ihnat Abdziralovich) wrote works characterising elements of the Slovak and Belarusian cultural space around the same time. The environment in which Slovaks and Belarusians lived at that time was conducive to multilingualism and direct contact with other nationalities, contact with which left traces in the character of the national culture. Lajčiak, in his sociological and philosophical essay Slovakia and Culture (1921), takes a broad view of the cultural values of Slovaks and Slovakia and tries to anchor them in the value system of cultural thinking in general, so he creates a comparison with the cultural aspects of other communities, in which each nation has to take its own active position, but also emphasises the importance of culture for the individual, not only for the national community. Ihnat Kanchevsky‘s essay The Eternal Road (1921) is described as a genre of literary-philosophical lament, which embodies the national-identifying features of the Belarusians and at the same time is a text defining a different quality of national consciousness. The link between the texts, which motivates their analysis and subsequent comparison, is the emphasis of both authors on cultural-identifying elements such as the idea of the struggle for language as an integral part of culture, and, above all, the emphasis on art as an important and necessary factor of cultural life and cultural development.