On the chronological list of the foremost comparatists — after Curtius, Auerbach and ahead of Guillén, Casanova, Moretti, Damrosch — one comes across the name of the Slovak scholar Dionýz Ďurišin (1929–1996). On this list he represents the 1970s–1980s. He has been widely translated into European languages since the publication of his early Theory of Literary Comparatistics (1975). ‘Theory’ was not the word that readily agreed with comparative study from its positivist beginning, but after its ‘crisis’ in the 1950s, comparatistics was in search for theory. Ďurišin’s book was received as the first attempt in this direction. From the scholar based in socialist Slovakia it was natural to expect good acquaintance with the Russian tradition of literary study. Ďurišin lavishly drew on Viktor Zhirmunsky and via his work on Aleksandr Veselovsky’s historical poetics. This basis allowed him to move towards building up a comparative theory looked for in his time. Thus, Ďurišin’s achievement is considered important as a lead to problematize such notions as ‘world literature,’ and to make a pioneering attempt to classify and systematize comparative study.