Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

In November we celebrated the centenary of the death of Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav, one of Slovakia’s greatest literary figures, and today we repeat a story from back then focused on his so-called ‘Bloody Sonnets’ – a series of short but passionate anti-war poems written in 1914 during the early months of the First World War, but which were impossible to publish as long as the war lasted. Jonathan speaks with John Minahane, whose English translation of the Bloody Sonnets was published in 2018, about this remarkable work by one of Slovakia’s most renowned figures. The existence of species of bacteria on earth that are nearly impossible to kill have suggested to scientists that there may be similar forms of life present in the extremely harsh environments of nearby planets like Mars. Jonathan speaks with astrobiologist Tomáš Paulech of the Astronomical and Geophysical Observatory in Modra.