174 roč. 70, 2023, č. 2 The article, applying the lens of pantheism and ecocriticism to the reading of the poetry of Ivan Štrpka (b. 1944), looks into ways in which the poet handles natural motifs, esp. the animal. With regards to Štrpka’s early collections, the authors look at the way the poet employed the fgure of the parrot in his critique of rhetorical emptiness of the socialist society. In the poetry published in the 1980s, on the other hand, it pertains that Štrpka used natural and animal motifs to portray erotic relationships and urban atmosphere. From his later poetry, the article focuses on the poems that demonstrate the poet’s pantheistic worldview and shows that Štrpka’s writing also ofers a fruitful ground for ecocritical reading. The last section of the paper looks at the collections he published after 1997. Nature is most often tied with civilizational contexts and dark, enigmatic, and sombre tones anticipating a catastrophic vision of the world prevail in these late poems. The article is thus both a contribution to the understanding of the development of the poet’s oeuvre and to the ways in which Slovak literature represents and constructs the animal and nature. Key words: Ivan Štrpka, Slovak poetry, natural motifs, animal in literature, ecocriticism, pantheism, animal studies RÁCOVÁ, V., HOSTOVÁ, I.: Animals indistinct, animals mute (Natural motifs in Ivan Štrpka’s poetry) SLOVENSKÁ LITERATÚRA, vol. 70, 2023, no. 2, pp. 174-195 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/slovlit.2023.70.2.5 Veronika Rácová ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7657-1473 Ivana Hostová ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0901-3759 Zvieratá neurčité, zvieratá nemé (Prírodné motívy v tvorbe Ivana Štrpku) Veronika Rácová, Ivana Hostová štúdie Kľúčové slová: Ivan Štrpka, slovenská poézia, prírodné motívy, zviera v literatúre, ekokritika, panteizmus, zvieracie štúdiá