Typology of Slovenian Drama in the Period Between the Two World Wars

Abstract

The following attempted typology of Slovenian drama from period between two World Wars is both structural and thematic in perspective, classifying works according to their form and their content. These principles of classification were reached on basis of two points of departure: on one hand subject's positioning vis-a-vis world in a conflict, and on other nature of conflict itself, in other words, on conflict's essential attributes. Plays considered were those published and/or staged in above mentioned period, and these provided a comprehensive and adequate body of works that also reflects level of recognition of authors. The primary intention of this classification is to penetrate a large, although necessarily still limited, body of dramatic texts written in Slovenia between two World wars and to try to unveil specific consolidating principles among them. Such a typology represents an attempt to clarify these relations in two ways: how particular works fit into a totality, how they correspond to esprit du temps, as well as to what extent such a totality adequately represents corpus of national dramatic texts. The aim of this typology is thus simply to find works' common traits, if any, and to establish whether they represent a rather unified whole. The main novelty of typology presents itself in that its primary criterion is essence and intensity of protagonist's presence in text, that is, subject as such, in its self assertion. The German idealistic philosophy, especially that of Hegel, tried to conceptualize all human endeavours and to arrange them into one large philosophical system. According to its idealistic provenance this system was based on concepts, of which weightiest in field of drama with which Hegel works became interlacing of subject and substance. The subject in Hegelian aesthetic theory plays most important role by being defined through major moments of dramatic action: both as substance' (the exterior, which is of divine nature and gives texture to eternal content of a dramatic subject and which appears in form of goals, that is, desires) as well as individual character (subjective interior-singularity-in its freedom, that is, free will).2 Nevertheless, subject and substance are not in absolute opposition, but can be brought together on level of transcendence since subject, by being substance's opposing element, is defined by it and, consequently, substance is a broader concept in terms that it gives to subject's ideals their substantial, that is, absolute, content. Without a state of conflict, transcendence (or absolute as totality) is only a neutral and almost imperceptible idea. In order to disclose itself, to exit from this imperceptibility, it needs precisely this singularity, that is, subject. It is subject as individual who by his/her imperfect understanding and, hence, rejection of and rebellion against transcendence, only serves to underline godly totality. Without subject there is no absolute.3 In Antiquity this transcendence was basis of true and absolute godliness and, because of that, also element of necessity. Thus it is the true theme of primitive tragedy....4 The subject in its essence, in its own unlimited self assertion, is placed against this transcendence. The substance is one that determines subject as an opposing entity; in other words subject itself, while firmly believing in his/her own right, cannot fulfill this right without standing up against substance. Being on one hand eternal establishing force, this substance is, on other hand, also a moment of freedom. In his Asthetik Hegel defines it with following words: Without doubt, essential and explicit truth is asserted in dramatic poetry; it matters not in what form it may be manifested from time to time in human action. …