Ján Poničan

Poničan was born in to a peasant family, his parents died when he was a child and Ján was raised by his relatives.

[1] In 1924 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and became a member of the Davisti, a group of left-wing intellectuals and was among the founders of the DAV magazine.

[2] Poničan began to work in Bratislava as a trainee lawyer and gave lectures on the Soviet Union.

[3] In his poems he expressed his political opinions, revolutionary and proletarian enthusiasms, but also his personal restlessness, erotic and affective motives, impressions from urban environments and also social issues.

In addition to poetry, prose and theater, he translated playwrights of foreign literatures, such as the Russians Sergei Yesenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hungarians Endre Ady and Sándor Petőfi, and also works of Bulgarian literature.