There is no Other Air Here, we are Alive With the Air of the Paltinsky Meadow…”

Abstract

Abstract The focus of this paper is an ecocritical examination of Ádám Bodor’s The Birds of Verhovina. The study begins with an introduction to Hubert Zapf ’s theory of sustainable texts and the ecocritical concept of Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism, and concludes with an interpretation of the chosen work along ecocritical tropes. The paper starts from the premise that Ádám Bodor’s work employs the rhetoric of ecocriticism, thereby closely linking literature to a wider web of discourses on nature and the environment. The hypothesis of the study is that the relationship between human and nature, nature and culture, and power and the individual are emphasised in the work. The inhabitants of Verhovina live in harmony with nature; wild and untamed nature not only provides the community with raw materials, but also creeps into the consciousness of the characters, determining their behaviour, their attitudes towards each other, as well as their way of thinking about life. However, the various signs of this shift of power suggest that a rupture has occurred in the hitherto harmonious relationship between the community and nature, the individual and nature.