Milo Urban Biography

The writing of Milo Urban has been acknowledged by many literary critics and historians as a unique type of expressionism and the highlight of literary realism. His works are among the most frequently read and published Slovak literature of the twentieth century. His major books have been translated into many languages (but none into English), and his influence on later Slovak prose writers is significant.

Milan August Urban was born on 24 August 1904 in the village of Rabcice in Orava, a region in northern Slovakia near the border with Poland. Urban's father, also named Milan, was a forester; his mother, Anna, née Lachová, was the father's second wife. There were two children from the father's first marriage: Jozef, who became a Catholic priest and died during World War I, and Ilona. Urban also had a younger brother and sister, Frantisek and Mária. He knew little of city life: the closest town, Námestovo, was about twelve miles away. In the first volume of his memoirs, Zelená krv: Spomíenky hájníkvho syna (The Green Blood: Memories of a Forester's Son, 1970), he recalled his reaction when he was first enrolled in primary school in Zázrivá, a village in a distant part of Orava where his maternal grandparents lived: "School? What is it? . . . I have never known a pupil or a teacher. I have never seen a blackboard, a pencil, a textbook, or a school building."

Urban attended lower high school in Trstená and started upper high school in Ruzomberok. In January 1920 his father drowned during an unexpected thaw in the mountains. His mother remarried in September--much too soon, according to Slovak tradition. Urban dropped out of school at that time.

Urban published his first short stories in Vatra , a nationalistic Catholic-oriented student journal, when he was sixteen. They were clearly influenced by his reading of such writers as the realists Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, Martin Kukucín, and Svetozár Hurban Vajansky; the symbolist Ivan Krasko; the Czech poets Petr Bezruc and Jirí Wolker; and the Magyar poet Endre Ady. The same is true of his novel Tiene (Shadows), written in Ruzomberok several months after his father's death and published in the daily Slovak from October 1922 to March 1923. At the same time, he was contributing pieces to other literary magazines and newspapers, and--using the pseudonym Milko U--he published his first book, Jasek Kutliak spod Bucinky (Crta zo zivota oravskych horalov) (Jasek Kutliak from under Bucinka [Sketches from the Life of Orava Foresters], 1922). Although written early in his career, this novella incorporates many of the principles he developed in his later works. For Urban, plot was less important than the inner conflicts and psychological motivations of his characters. Jasek is physically strong but, like Urban's later protagonists, emotionally pliable and, consequently, defenseless.

In 1921-1922 Urban was employed as an assistant editor at the magazine Slovák and then as a clerk in the Catholic St. Vojtech Union in Trnava. In September 1922 he began studies at the secondary school for foresters in Banská Stiavnica. He left after two years and worked for the magazine Slovensky národ until it went bankrupt. Unemployed, Urban devoted his full energies to writing. In 1926 he published the novella Za vysnym mlynom (Behind the Upper Mill); seven shorter works were collected in Vykriky bez ozveny (Shrieks with No Echo, 1928).

Za vysnym mlynom takes place in the village of Malkov, where Jano Stetina, the lover of Katrena Zalcíková, is found murdered. Ondrej Zimon is accused of the crime but is released for lack of evidence. Zimon marries Katrena, and they have a son in whose features Zimon sees his murdered rival. The novella concentrates on the psychological duel between Zimon and Peter Stetina, the dead man's father, and ends with Zimon admitting his guilt. Zimon's inner struggle is similar to that of Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866): neither character is able to keep the secret of his "perfect crime."

Psychology is also dominant in the novellas collected in Vykriky bez ozveny. In "Svedomie" (Conscience), for example, a village priest refuses to give last rites to a dying girl because she is unmarried and pregnant. He is shunned for his action by the other villagers. In "Staroba" (Old Age) the elderly Pavol Duchaj's use of a walking stick is interpreted by the villagers as a sign of his impending death; they, and even the old man's closest relatives, are offended when he does not die. His lonely death finally provides satisfaction to the village.

In 1927 Urban published the long novel Zivy bic: Román vo dvoch dieloch (The Living Scourge: A Novel in Two Sections); it went through sixteen editions and has been translated into German, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Magyar, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Russian. (The German translation was one of the books that were burned by the Nazis.) In the poor mountain village of Ráztoky, Eva Hlavajová, whose husband, Adam Hlavaj, is away fighting in World War I, has an affair with a lawyer named Okolicky. The villagers discover her sin, and the pregnant Eva commits suicide. When Adam returns home, his decision not to seek revenge against Okolicky gains him the respect of the villagers, and he becomes their leader in the struggle for a better way of life.

The success of Zivy bic led Urban to write, at his publisher's instigation, Hmly na úsvite (Fog at Dawn, 1930), in which Adam is again the main character. The episodic plot is set not only in a rural milieu but also in small Slovak towns and in the capital, Prague, which is full of political intrigue. Even there Adam continues to believe in archetypal country truths. Another character, the worker Sedmik, is a revolutionary; but a building collapses on him, and he has a vision of Christ shortly before his death. Urban rewrote the novel in 1941 and again in 1970.

In 1935 Urban married Zofia Panáková, who was also from Orava. They had three children: Ol'ga, born in 1935; Cyril, born in 1940; and Katarina, born in 1944. In October 1938 Urban signed an antifascist manifesto, but in 1940 he accepted the post of editor in chief of the fascist daily Gardista; he held the position until 1945. A few days before the end of World War II he moved his family to Austria, where he was imprisoned by the American armed forces. In 1947 he was taken back to Czechoslovakia and put on trial. Thanks to the testimony of people he had helped during the war and to the intervention of the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, he was freed on 16 December 1947; but a year later he was sentenced to "public condemnation." At that time he moved to Chorvátsky Grob, a village in southwest Slovakia.

Urban's next novel, Zhasnuté svetlá (Turned-off Lights), was published in 1957; it was the first part of a trilogy, which also included Kto seje vietor (Who Sows the Wind) in 1964 and Zelezom po zeleze (To Beta Iron by Iron), which appeared posthumously in 1996. Zhasnuté svetlá depicts the time between the great mobilization in Czechoslovakia in autumn 1938 and the creation of the Slovak state in March 1939; Kto seje vietor deals with events up to the antifascist Slovak national uprising in August 1944; and Zelezom po zeleze describes the social and political chaos in Czechoslovakia during the final months of World War II. Slovak critics generally contend that the trilogy has more documentary than artistic value.

While living in Chorvátsky Grob, Urban wrote his four-volume memoirs. The first volume, Zelená krv: Spomíenky hájníkovho syna, published during the Czechoslovak political thaw in 1970, is an impressionistic picture of the author's childhood. In 1974 Urban moved to Bratislava, where he lived until his death on 10 March 1982. The Communist government did not allow the other volumes of the memoirs to be published; they appeared only after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and, therefore, posthumously: Kade-tade po Halinde: Neveselé spomienky na veselé roky (Walking about Halinda: Unhappy Memories of Happy Years) in 1992, Na brehu krvavej rieky: Spomienky novinara (On the Bank of a Bloody River: Memories of a Journalist) in 1994, and Sloboda nie je spás: Spomienky dôchodcu (Freedom Is No Fun: Memories of a Pensioner) in 1995. The memoirs depict the same events as Urban's later novels, and they do so more vividly. A noteworthy feature of the memoirs is Urban's account of the diverse political and ideological streams in twentieth-century Slovakia.

Milo Urban is one of the most important prose writers in twentieth-century Slovak literature. His penetrating insights into the psychological makeup of his characters and his highly artistic style set high standards for Slovak fiction; in his major novels and novellas one can discover and appreciate the true character of the nation.