Slovene Poetry Research Articles

Devovi epigrami v Pisanicah

Parallel to its development in German Enlightenment literature epigram appeared also in Slovene poetry of the period. Between the years 1779 and 1781, Janez Damascen Dev published four epigrams in the first Slovene poetry almanac Pisanice, while six remained in manuscript form for the fourth volume. The article discusses structural features and the character of epigrams.

Prozaist Kajetan Kovič

The article points out that Kajetan Kovič is far too frequently researched “only” as an outstanding poet, who provides contemporary Slovene poetry with classic, harmonious beauty, colour and tone. Unfortunately, more frequently than not, his interesting prose work is neglected, although it can undoubtedly be considered among the best prose written at the end of the 20th century.

Генеалогија свакодневице: словеначка поезија у транзицији

The article attempts to detect and describe the change of the paradigm in contemporary Slovene poetry. If most of the Slovene poetry after the Second World War, or to be more precise, from the late 1950s onwards, was written in the modernist key, with the “serious” existential themes and often dark and hermetic speech as prominent features, we may assume that in the 1980s this kind of poetry was slowly beginning to disintegrate. Although in this decade the so-called Neo avant-garde (or ultramodernist) poetry, which surfaced in the 1960s, became almost obsolete, the poetry of Tomaž Salamun, the leading voice of the Slovene Neo avant-garde poetry, functioned as some sort of the major catalyst for the new poetry. If we may borrow the distinction between the “cooked” and “raw poetry”, first used by Robert Lowell with regard to the new American poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, we can detect such new poetological tendencies which focus on the mundane themes of the everyday urban life, often written in a spontaneous and sometimes colloquial language, free of formal and metaphysical maneuvers of the so-called “academic”, “cooked”, or “moderate” modernism. To illuminate this poetological transition, the article focuses on the year 1991, which coincides with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the formation of Slovenia as a new national state. In this year, many of the new young poets started their poetical careers. The brief analysis of the poetical debuts of the poets such as Brane Senegacnik, Vid Snoj, Miklavž Komelj, Jurij Hudolin, Peter Semolic, and Uros Zupan attempts to demonstrate that most of the poets are still indebted to the modernist paradigm (with Dane Zajc and Niko Grafenauer as its main representatives), but nonetheless, in some cases, the traces of the new, “cooked” urban and narrative poetry can be observed on the margins of these debuts. These elements, however, are the most prominent in the book Sutre, written by Uros Zupan, who also happens to be most influenced by the poetry of Tomaž Salmun on the one hand and the American poetry of the beat generation and New York School on the other. These influences were of the utmost importance in the first stage of the new poetic paradigm that at the beginning of the 1990s strove to overcome the modernist literary tradition. The poetry of Uros Zupan thus paved the way for the new mainstream of contemporary Slovene poetry that appeared in the new millennium.

Auto-stereotypes and Hetero-stereotypes in Slovene and Italian Poetry About Trieste From the First Half of the 20th Century

This article brings to light the socio-political conditions in the Triestine region, at the end of the 19th century and in the fi rst half of the 20th century. Th ese conditions infl uenced the formation of stereotypical, regionally coloured perceptions of Slovenes and Italians in the Slovene and Italian poetry about Trieste from the fi rst half of the 20th century, which were specific to the Triestine area or rather the wider region around Trieste, where the Slovene and Italian communities cohabited. This article also points out that these stereotypes are constructs. The Italian Triestine literature most frequently depicted the Italians (native culture) before the First World War, in accordance to the needs of the non-literary irredentist disposition. In this light, it depicted them as the inheritors of the Roman culture, wherein it highlights their combativeness and burning desire to “free” Trieste from its Austro-Hungarian prison. An increase in auto-stereotypes among the Slovene poetry is noticeable after the First World War and is most likely a consequence of the socio-political changes in Trieste. The Slovene Triestine literature depicted the Slovenes (native culture) after the First World War as “slaves” and simultaneously as the determined defenders of their land, who are also fully aware of their powerlessness against the immoral aggressor and cruel master (Italian hetero-stereotype) and so often call upon the help of imaginary forces (mythical heroes and personified nature in the Trieste region) and God. The Italian Triestine literature mostly depicted the Slovenes before the First World War as an inferior people, often referred to by the word “ščavi”. After the First World War, the Slovenes are depicted merely as the residents of the former Austro-Hungarian Trieste, meaning they were part of the narrative surrounding Trieste, only in when the narrative was set before the First World War. In this case, pre-war Slovene stereotypes appear, also depicted as part of the literary myth of the “Habsburg” Trieste, namely as the folkloric characters from the surrounding countryside.

Colony Collapse Disaster

Colony Collapse Disaster Rachel Morgan (bio) The venom, he believed, was good for the heart.Like some strange astronaut crossing the yard,he confessed to the bees: the happiness of hismarriage, enabling his son’s alcoholism, the manhe shot in World War II, the almanac’s weather. The cause never matters, but the absence does:snaggle-toothed children on post office posters,Bermuda Triangle boats and planes, an aging woman’shope to conceive, whole colonies of bees can vanish. As a child Everette was taught to sprinklebees with flour and then follow the ghost trailto the hive. Now would the path stop mid-field? It wasn’t exactly his heart, but the anti-arrhythmia drugsthat drowned the hive of his lungs. Two years after,I open the last jar of honey my grandfather put up.A sweetness that aches astounds me. Papery bits of combstick to my teeth like what I still can’t speak of. [End Page 56] Rachel Morgan Rachel Morgan is the Assistant Poetry Editor for the North American Review and teaches creative writing at the University of Northern Iowa. She co-edited Fire Under the Moon: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovene Poetry (Black Dirt Press). Recently her work appears or is forthcoming in Fence, Denver Quarterly, Barely South, Volt, Hunger Mountain, South85, and DIAGRAM. Copyright © 2014 Berea College

„Literarische Scherze in August W. v. Schlegels Manier von Doktor-Dichter Presheren“

Abstract The study of the role of the Slovene national Poet France Prešeren (1800–1849) as mediator of intellectual-aesthetic concepts and literary models of German romantic and their reception in the Slovene literature from 1830 is based on the analysis of literary texts, that were published in chosen German speaking cultural periodics in Laibach (Ljubljana) – the centre of Slovene ethnic territory in the Austrian monarchy. The analysis includes also cultural (nonfictional) texts, which were participating in processes of cultural coding. The research focuses on the adaptation of A.W. Schlegel’s literary epigrammatic model by Prešeren as poet and as an influential actor in the Laibach Slovene and German cultural and literary field in the frame of his fundamental contribution to the constitution of the Slovene poetry and its idiom.

Risto Savin in slovenska identiteta: pot do Lepe Vide

Po poklicu profesionalni avstro-ogrski vojak Risto Savin je v svojem skadateljskem delu postopno razvil slovensko glasbeno identiteto. Sprva je pisal za glas, klavir in komorne zasedbe v nemškem slogu, potem je pa začel skladati na slovensko poezijo Antona Aškerca (1895) in napisal svojo prvo kratko opero, Poslednja straža (1904). Slog, ki ga je razvil pri tem, je predstavljal osnovo za njegovo prvo veliko opero Lepa Vida (1907).

Multiple im/person/aliz/ations: Four Attempts to 'get under the skin' of Poets

I have been actively translating for about twenty years. Looking back, I now realize that it made translation easier when I tried to ‘become’ the original writer: I was more successful when I asked myself, “what would they have written if they had had my knowledge of English?” and, for poetry, when faced with the clash between the demands of form and content, “which way would they bend?’
 Rather than attempt any theorizing, I propose to relate my efforts to get under the skin of a number of poets, for example: one, surviving the siege of Leningrad; another, pioneering multiple poetic genres in early 19th-century Central Europe; a third who (successfully? I am not sure) aimed to capture the horror of a Nazi atrocity in Vienna; a fourth who became the most popular author of Slovene poetry for children by temporarily shedding his own adulthood. Also, I will add my recent attempts to capture, in Slovene, the style of children in war-torn Northern Uganda who are writing to the sponsors who are paying their school fees in a charming but not always clear fractured English (which they are just learning): is it possible, is it expedient to pretend to be such a child in order to transfer their thoughts into Slovene?
 It certainly helps to have been a teacher. Teachers are, I believe, better teachers if they can act the roles of others, and translators can perhaps be better translators if they can ‘become’ other people. Anyway, it makes for a more interesting life.

William Shakespeare and Slovene dramatists (II) : J. Jurčič, F. Levstik, I. Cankar, O. Župančič, B. Kreft : (the makers of myths)

purpose of this study is to explore the influence of William Shakespeare on Slovene playwrights in the period between 1876, which marks the appearance of Jurčič - Levstik's Tugomer, and the 1930s, when Oton Župančič published his tragedy Veronika Deseniška (Veronika of Desenice, 1924) and, a few years later, Bratko Kreft his history, Celjski grofje (The Counts of Celje, 1932). Together with Cankar's works all of the plays discussed in this study deal with one of the well-known Slovene myths. In the previous number of Acta Neophilologica I published my study on the first Slovene tragedy Miss Jenny Love, which was published in Augsburg in 1780.1 The Romantic period, which followed this publication, was in Slovenia and elsewhere in Europe mainly characterized by the appearance of poetry, with a few exceptions of plays which were primarily intended for reading and not for the stage (Closet Drama). Let me mention here that in the Romantic period some of the finest Slovene poetry was written by France Prešeren (1800-1849), and although some of his friends suggested he should also attempt to write a play, his closest achievement to drama was his epic poem Krst pri Savici (Baptism at the Savica River, 1836), which is also often considered by literary historians as a predecessor of later Slovene dramatic literature. Although many Slovene authors who wrote their works in the nineteenth century knew Shakespeare's plays, they still found it easier to express themselves in prose. The first Slovene novel is Josip Jurčič's Deseti brat (The Tenth Brother), which was published in 1866, ten years earlier than his play Tugomer (Tugomer). However,Jurčičʹs tragedy Tugomer was artistically very much improved by the adaptation made by Fran Levstik, whose text has been since considered as the ʺtrueʺ version of this play. Further editions and adaptations of this play definitely prove that several Slovene authors have found the subject-matter of this play worthy of new interpretations. By the end of the nineteenth century the list of Slovene translators of Shakespeareʹs plays (most of them chose only some acts or scenes) was quite long. But it was only in 1899, when Ivan Cankarʹs translation of Hamlet appeared on stage of the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana, that a real master of the Slovene language approached one of Shakespeare's plays. Cankar became enthusiastic about Shakespeare's work and this is best seen also in Shakespeare's influence on three plays written by Cankar: Kralj na Betajnovi (The King of Betajnova, 1901), Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorjanski (Scandal in the Valley of Saint Florian, 1907) and Lepa Vida (Beautiful Vida, 1911). The same kind of "enchantment" caught Oton Župančič, a Slovene poet, translator and dramatist, who had translated by 1924, when his Veronika Deseniška (Veronika of Desenice) appeared, several plays written by Shakespeare. A large number of echoes of Shakespeare's plays can be found in Župančič's play, not to mention the Bard's influence on Župančič's verse and style. Such influence can also be traced in Kreft's play. Many Slovene literary historians and critics mention in their studies Shakespeare's influence on Slovene dramatists but their reports are mainly seminal and rather generalizing. Therefore the purpose of this study is to provide a deeper analytical insight into this topic.

Literary Self-Referentiality and the Formation of the National Literary Canon

The author discusses the process of nationalizing literature, that is, the formation of a national literary canon in Slovene poetry from the Enlightenment to Post-Romanticism. The utopian projection and formation of a ‘Slovenised’ literary system has been intertwined with the successful establishment of a unified Slovene literary language. The use of images of Parnassus and Elysium, these topoi in the European cultural memory, was one of the self-regulatory strategies acquired by Slovene writers to mark the distinction between their own discourse and the norms of the ‘classics’ and a competitive comparison with other modern national literatures in order to achieve integration into the canon of ‘world literature’.

The Fire under the Moon: Contemporary Slovene Poetry

The Fire under the Moon: Contemporary Slovene Poetry

Slovene poetry in the U.S.A.: the case of Ivan Zorman

Ivan Zorman was both a musician and a poet, born in 1889 in Šmarje near Grosuplje and died in 1957 in Cleveland (Ohio). In 1893 his family emigrated to the United States of America, first to Ely, Calumet, Cleveland and then to some other American towns. After a brief return to Slovenia in 1898/9, where Zorman attended elementary school in Velesovo near Kranj, they finally settled down in 1904 in Cleveland. In 1907 Zorman took up the study of modern languages (English, French and Italian), history and music at Western Reserve University and graduated only in music in 1912. For a number of years, during 1908 and 1956, he was chief organist and choir leader (like his father) at the parish church of Sv. Lovrenc in Newburgh near Cleveland. During 1920 and 1925 he was professional director of the "Zorman Philharmonic". Not only was he known as a musician, he was very much present in the public life of the Slovene community living in Cleveland, as the enthusiastic teacher of Slovene literature in the Slovene school of the "Slovenski narodni dom", as a poet, translator and public speaker.

Slovene poetry in the U.S.A.: the case of Ivan Zorman

Ivan Zorman was both a musician and a poet, born in 1889 in Šmarje near Grosuplje and died in 1957 in Cleveland (Ohio). In 1893 his family emigrated to the United States of America, first to Ely, Calumet, Cleveland and then to some other American towns. After a brief return to Slovenia in 1898/9, where Zorman attended elementary school in Velesovo near Kranj, they finally settled down in 1904 in Cleveland. In 1907 Zorman took up the study of modern languages (English, French and Italian), history and music at Western Reserve University and graduated only in music in 1912. For a number of years, during 1908 and 1956, he was chief organist and choir leader (like his father) at the parish church of Sv. Lovrenc in Newburgh near Cleveland. During 1920 and 1925 he was professional director of the "Zorman Philharmonic". Not only was he known as a musician, he was very much present in the public life of the Slovene community living in Cleveland, as the enthusiastic teacher of Slovene literature in the Slovene school of the "Slovenski narodni dom", as a poet, translator and public speaker.

Slovene poetry in English : challenges and problems

Perusing slim, often bilingual editions of Slovene poetry in English, published on both sides of the ocean between 1954 and 1993, one inevitably has to ask: who are these elegant books for, who will read them? Editors and translators seem to have anticipated this question, and some of them define the purpose of their endeavour in longer or shorter introductions to their selections and/or anthologies. The editors of the selection from Prešeren's poetry in 1954 clearly state:" ...until now only a few isolated poems by (Prešeren) have been accessible in English. Consequently, a publication of this kind may help to fill a distinct gap for lovers of poetry and for students of literature in general," thus defining their target audience as two distinct groups of readers: those who read poetry for nothing else but pleasure, and the scholars who would study Slovene poetry and assess it in the context of world literatures.

Slovene poetry in English : challenges and problems

Perusing slim, often bilingual editions of Slovene poetry in English, published on both sides of the ocean between 1954 and 1993, one inevitably has to ask: who are these elegant books for, who will read them? Editors and translators seem to have anticipated this question, and some of them define the purpose of their endeavour in longer or shorter introductions to their selections and/or anthologies. The editors of the selection from Prešeren's poetry in 1954 clearly state:" ...until now only a few isolated poems by (Prešeren) have been accessible in English. Consequently, a publication of this kind may help to fill a distinct gap for lovers of poetry and for students of literature in general," thus defining their target audience as two distinct groups of readers: those who read poetry for nothing else but pleasure, and the scholars who would study Slovene poetry and assess it in the context of world literatures.

From Albion's shore: Lord Byron' poetry in Slovene translations until 1945

The publication in 1830 of the early poems of the doyen of Slovene poetry - Dr France Prešeren in Kranjska čbelica (The Carniola Bee) - marks the beginning of Slovene Romanticism, which ends in 1848, -with the last of his poems published in the fifth volume of the same literary magazine. The period from 1830 to the »revolutionary« year of 1848 is thus committed to Romanticism as the leading movement of Slovene literature, artfully embodied in Prešeren's fine lyrical poetry that aimed at and considerably contributed to national unification and identification, as well as in the Europe-oriented literary criticism of Matija čop. Comparing the trends of the English and Slovene Romantic Revival, we can readily establish that the emergence of Romantic tenets expressed in poetry was somewhat late on Slovene ground. In England, of course, the crucial years are1789, when Lyrical Ballads were published by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the year 1832, which marks the death of Sir Walter Scott.

From Albion's shore: Lord Byron' poetry in Slovene translations until 1945

The publication in 1830 of the early poems of the doyen of Slovene poetry - Dr France Prešeren in Kranjska čbelica (The Carniola Bee) - marks the beginning of Slovene Romanticism, which ends in 1848, -with the last of his poems published in the fifth volume of the same literary magazine. The period from 1830 to the »revolutionary« year of 1848 is thus committed to Romanticism as the leading movement of Slovene literature, artfully embodied in Prešeren's fine lyrical poetry that aimed at and considerably contributed to national unification and identification, as well as in the Europe-oriented literary criticism of Matija čop. Comparing the trends of the English and Slovene Romantic Revival, we can readily establish that the emergence of Romantic tenets expressed in poetry was somewhat late on Slovene ground. In England, of course, the crucial years are1789, when Lyrical Ballads were published by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the year 1832, which marks the death of Sir Walter Scott.

In the Beginning was the Sign: Contemporary Slovene Poetry.

In the Beginning was the Sign: Contemporary Slovene Poetry.