Timrava

(pen name of Božena Slančíková). Born Oct. 2, 1867, in Polichno; died Nov. 27, 1951, in Lučenec. Slovak writer. People’s Artist of Czechoslovakia (1947).

Timrava had her first works published in 1893. Between 1896 and 1907 she wrote short stories and novellas drawn from the life of the provincial intelligentsia, including “It’s Late,” “The Ball,” “Life’s Lessons,” “The Struggle,” and “A Great Happiness.” Between 1907 and 1914 she wrote a series of short stories about peasants, including “Without Joy,” “The Kanatka Family,” “The Despot,” and “Tiapaki.” In all these stories and novellas, Timrava analyzed the powerful effect of bourgeois class relations and money on man’s fate and his conception of morality.

Timrava’s masterpiece is the topical novella Heroes (1918), which denounces the social evil of war. The contradictions of life in a bourgeois republic are reflected in the novellas All for the People and Two Eras. Timrava’s stories are noted for their psychological subtlety and laconic, forceful style.