Eric Jakub Groch: To Express the Indefinable
– Slovakia
He was born in 1957 in Košice, where he worked in groups of the artistic and intellectual underground. Together they published samizdat literary anthologies and participated in the activities of November 1989, representing the Civic Forum in their native Košice. In the same year, he officially made his debut with the collection of poems Súkromné hodiny smútku [Private Mourning Lessons], where he reflects the thought and feeling attitude of a young man. After the Gentle Revolution, he changed several editorial positions, and in 1992 he founded his own publishing house, Knižná dielňa Timotej, which was unique in translating philosophical and theological literature. In his author’s work we can observe elements of Christian lyricism, overlaps with the philosophy leading to the issues of human existance, but he also uses, for example, dream reflection. An important work is the emerging tetralogy, which begins with a collection nil, úvod [nil, introduction] (2018) and continues with melancholia neviem [melancholy I don’t know] (2019).