The poet, translator, literary critic and Evangelical priest, Andrej Sládkovič, born Andrej Braxatoris, established himself in Slovak culture as “the first poet” of the Romantic generation and the author of two key poems of Slovak literary Romanticism – Marína (a love poem, first published in 1846, which celebrates the love of a woman, beauty, youth and Slovakia) and Detvan/The Man from Detva (an idyllic epos from 1853 which celebrates Slovak people and the countryside). At the same time, Marína was the first and only book of poetry published in the 1840s in standard Slovak. Both poems reflected a turning point in...