The Bloody Sonnets
Hviezdoslav in English. Hviezdoslav about war. Sonnets calling for peace. Our past. Our future. What do we want to live now?
“A song of blood: – the thought is strange and wild?! – And which?” Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav’s cycle of thirty-two Bloody Sonnets begins with this sketch of a shocking reflection, in which he speaks prophetically not only about the facts and consequences of the First World War, but also about the times to come, which are incapable of learning from the horrors of the past.
It is precisely because of this inability to influence the course of history that we must once again amplify Hviezdoslav’s appeal to the cruelties of war, and thereby also purge it of its misuse under socialism.
