Slovenian Literature Research Articles

Strategien sozialen Verhaltens in der slowenischen historischen Erzählkunst

Several strategies for the national body’s behaviour in historical situations can be found in the Slovene historical novel since its beginnings in the 19th century: among others, these are the elimination of an enemy, the belief that there is no such thing as an enemy, and finally the recognition of a superior alien, as well as the acceptance and adoption of his values. Due to the fact that the Slovenes as a “non-historical nation” did not possess a military of their own, the first option has rarely been advised to literary heroes. On the contrary, the pretention that an alternative (hence hostile) culture does not exist at all is symptomatic for popular fiction, while the major works of the national canon propose the most risky attitude towards the dominant Other: its adjustment to the specific needs of one’s own. The option of accepting a foreign force and subordinating to it remained beyond the scope of Slovene literature, and so did a potential assimilation of the Other. The paper discusses the variety of metaphors in dealing with the national historical destiny, and includes France Preseren’s Krst pri Savici (1836), Jožef Žemlja’s Sedem sinov (1843), Fran Levstik’s Martin Krpan, Ferdo Kocevar’s Mlinarjev Janez (both 1859), Josip Juric’s Jurij Kozjak (1864), Ivan Tavcar’s Visoska kronika (1919), and Vladimir Bartol’s Alamut (1938).

The image of ‘Turks’ in the slovene literature

Le theme des incursions ottomanes dans le genre de la povest en Slovenie. Comme partout en Europe centrale, le roman historique etait tres populaire en Slovenie au XIXe siecle. Bien que le territoire peuple par les Slovenes ne fut jamais part de l’Empire ottoman, le theme traitant des incursions des armees ottomanes, demeure vivant dans la tradition orale, devint le theme le plus frequent de la povest, sorte de court roman a sujet historique. A l'aide de differents personnages comme des garcons transformes en janissaires, des jeunes femmes emmenees dans le harem du sultan, etc., les auteurs essayaient de representer le passe national et de renforcer la cohesion de la nation. Dans ces œuvres les Turcs representent le mal et les Slovenes le bien, sans grandes nuances.

Tema Dajdala in Ikara v evropski književnosti

The article deals with the recurrence of the theme of Daedalus and Icarus within European and Slovene literature. It is possible to discern common characteristics in this theme in literary works belonging to various historical periods. Thus in Antiquity authors generally emphasised the relationship between father and son in the mythological tale of Daedalus and Icarus; in the Middle Ages, the character of Icarus was mainly seen in a moralizing light, as an allegory of human vanity and conceit, while the Renaissance bestowed upon Icarus the role of a hero in love songs. In the period between Baudelaire and Joyce, both Icarus and Daedalus were primarily associated with the idea of the modern artist, who contemplates questions of life with great intensity, while the period after 1945 brought about new contextualizations of the mythological tale. Just as in the original mythological tale, subsequent literary portrayals of Daedalus and Icarus generally portray the two characters independently from one another. The difference between them manifests itself primarily through the contrast between youth and old age, and the contrast between the creative nature of poetry, on the one hand, which brings emotions to the fore, and science, on the other hand, which is based on reason. From this perspective, then, the character of Icarus is endowed with enthusiasm, ambition, courage, impetuosity, irrationality and sometimes even madness. He represents an extraordinary individual, who strives for an exalted ideal, which in turn becomes the very reason for his physical demise. He has an ambivalent nature: one can perceive him either as an arrogant figure or a hero. In contrast to Icarus, his father Daedalus is a skilled craftsman and artisan. He represents prudence, balance and reason, while striving for freedom of creation. In Slovene literature, a portrayal of the theme of Daedalus can be found in the poem of Janez Mihelič from the period of Enlightenment, while the character of Icarus appears in the title of one of Kosovel’s poems. Later on, the theme is mainly treated by authors of the nineteen eighties. Thus, Vladimir Gajšek, by way of associations, enumerates the majority of known interpretations of the theme of Icarus; Tone Pavček relates to the character of Icarus through the theme of death and the memory of his dead son; Ciril Zlobec presents the identification of modern man with the negative aspects of the mythological hero’s fate; while Drago Jančar, who deals with the theme of Daedalus and Icarus in two of his plays and one novel, characteristically associates the figures from Antiquity with actual historic characters.

Tema Dajdala in Ikara v evropski književnosti

The article deals with the recurrence of the theme of Daedalus and Icarus within European and Slovene literature. It is possible to discern common characteristics in this theme in literary works belonging to various historical periods. Thus in Antiquity authors generally emphasised the relationship between father and son in the mythological tale of Daedalus and Icarus; in the Middle Ages, the character of Icarus was mainly seen in a moralizing light, as an allegory of human vanity and conceit, while the Renaissance bestowed upon Icarus the role of a hero in love songs. In the period between Baudelaire and Joyce, both Icarus and Daedalus were primarily associated with the idea of the modern artist, who contemplates questions of life with great intensity, while the period after 1945 brought about new contextualizations of the mythological tale. Just as in the original mythological tale, subsequent literary portrayals of Daedalus and Icarus generally portray the two characters independently from one another. The difference between them manifests itself primarily through the contrast between youth and old age, and the contrast between the creative nature of poetry, on the one hand, which brings emotions to the fore, and science, on the other hand, which is based on reason. From this perspective, then, the character of Icarus is endowed with enthusiasm, ambition, courage, impetuosity, irrationality and sometimes even madness. He represents an extraordinary individual, who strives for an exalted ideal, which in turn becomes the very reason for his physical demise. He has an ambivalent nature: one can perceive him either as an arrogant figure or a hero. In contrast to Icarus, his father Daedalus is a skilled craftsman and artisan. He represents prudence, balance and reason, while striving for freedom of creation. In Slovene literature, a portrayal of the theme of Daedalus can be found in the poem of Janez Mihelič from the period of Enlightenment, while the character of Icarus appears in the title of one of Kosovel’s poems. Later on, the theme is mainly treated by authors of the nineteen eighties. Thus, Vladimir Gajšek, by way of associations, enumerates the majority of known interpretations of the theme of Icarus; Tone Pavček relates to the character of Icarus through the theme of death and the memory of his dead son; Ciril Zlobec presents the identification of modern man with the negative aspects of the mythological hero’s fate; while Drago Jančar, who deals with the theme of Daedalus and Icarus in two of his plays and one novel, characteristically associates the figures from Antiquity with actual historic characters.

Sword, Priest and Conversion: On Religion and Apostasy in South Slav Literature in the Period of National Revival

This article examines the works of four writers of Croatian, Slovene, Serbian and Bosniak literature in the period of National Revival, in their literary, historical and discursive contexts: Prešern’s Krst pri Savici, Mažuranić’s Smrt Smail-age Čengića, Njegoš’s Gorski vijenac and Bašagić’s Abdullah Paša. Three of the four authors were also statesmen, and all four are considered canonical national writers. There is a striking similarity between their otherwise different works, resulting from speeches by priests who either demand and justify conversion, or vehemently oppose it and call for vengeance. In all four works, the enemy is not a foreign conqueror, but an apostate who sides with the conqueror by accepting his faith. Although in all four works the values of the epic and heroic world are pronounced dead, epic action — a ’sword’ — is still very much alive. Though the central act of conversion is accompanied by religious symbolism which gives rise to the impression of a clash of religions, in all four works conversion does not have a religious meaning, it is purely political.

Species identity of Gambusia (Pisces: Poeciliidae) introduced to Slovenia

On the basis of morphology of the gonopodium and fin ray counts it was determined that the introduced mosquitofish in Slovenia belong to the species Gambusia holbrooki Girard, 1859 rather than G. affinis (Baird & Girard, 1858). This finding is in accordance with European literature sources but not with Slovene literature, where both taxa are lumped together.

A Bilingual Anthology of Slovene Literature

A Bilingual Anthology of Slovene Literature

Fragments from Slovene Literature: An Anthology of Slovene Literature

Fragments from Slovene Literature: An Anthology of Slovene Literature

Nekatere značilnejše medbesedilne navezave slovenske postmoderne literature

The article presents some typical examples of representative intertextuality in post-modern Slovene literature, in particular in detective stories and (science) fiction. The study is limited to the period between the years 1980 and 2000, since it was during this time that major changes occurred in Slovene literature; on the one hand, Slovene literature seemingly remains part of the traditional dichotomy between canon literature and trivial literature, while, at the same time, already surpassing it with its intertextual relation to trivial genres (canon literature) and ambitions of the so-called trivial genres.

Literatura in odpor, odpor v literaturi

The research project entitled Literatura in odpor, odpor v literaturi (Literature and Resistance, Resistance in Literature) was dedicated to the research of Slovene and German literature, the literary arts and journalism during the time of the national liberation in the Koroška region, and the analysis of this topic in post-war literary and journalistic discourse in Slovenia and Austria. The article focuses on those parts of Austrian and Slovene Koroška (Carinthia), where organised resistance against Nazism formed between the years 1941 and 1945; the authors of this paper distinguish between three or four perspectives concerning the resistance theme: the regional German perspective, the Carinthian Slovene perspective in the Austrian part of the Koroška region, the Slovene perspective, and the Austrian perspective. The topic of resistance was a constant theme in Slovene and Carinthian Slovene literature before Slovenia’s independence in 1991. Since the 1970ies it also found its place in German Austrian literature, where for a long time this topic was linked mainly to Austrian exile literature, while Carinthian literature as a rule did not touch upon this theme but rather left it to journalism.

Po sledeh jezikovnih travm v sodobni slovenski književnosti

Linguistic trauma is a frequent topic of contemporary Slovene literature. It is most notable when it concerns the question of a writer’s personal choice between the Slovene language and a foreign language. The linguistic distress of older writers, who in their youth had to survive the linguistic genocide of Fascism and Nazism, is demonstrated in the signs of great stress and trauma. At the time of democracy and globalisation, younger authors seem to demonstrate a phenomenon which is quite the opposite: opting freely for a foreign language, withdrawing from Slovene. In both cases of linguistic exposure, that of the genocide and that of globalisation, the writer’s linguistic sense is exposed to depression and stress. Typical of this is that a trauma caused by genocide can trigger off an increasing linguistic and stylistic creativity of the endangered language. This is illustrated through examples by the writers Florjan Lipuš, Lojze Kovačič and Brina Svit.

»Pozabljena« slovenska pričevanja iz vélike vojne

Ivan Pregelj's judgement of the Slovene literature during the First World War, claiming it provided few aesthetic values worth remembering in spite of a great theme, can be upgraded with recognition that during the wartime the relation between external literary experience and literary verbalisation altered so drastically that the literary styles known at the time proved to be insufficient. Juxtaposing the literary works of Fran Kozak, Zofka Kveder, Fran Saleški Finžgar and Ivan Cankar with testimonies in military diaries and memoirs shows that the new procedures are correlated to the intrusion of direct factography, a realistic expansion of experience and multiplication of extreme existential positions. Pathos, so typical of expressionism, is a reflection of a tendency to express linguistically complete uncertainty, the fear of dying, shaken religion and doubt in the sense of battle, which results in a decay of the civilisational, cultural and ethic norms and gives way to a need for renewal.

Об отношениях Августина Павела и Гиадора Стрипского

Hiador Sztripszky (1875-1946) is remembered as a Hungarian and Rusyn ethnographer, bibliographer and literary historian. He is also known for his linguistic achievements. During his years (1879-1908) in Kolozsvár (today Cluj, Romania) he shaped his scholarly interests at Franz Joseph University, offering excellent training in those years, and at the museums of the town. In his ethnographic and bibliographic works related to the Subcarpathian Rusyns, he directly utilized what he had studied in Kolozsvár. Hiador Sztripszky played a prominent role in the respective histories of Hungarian, Slovakian and Rusyn bibliographies. He produced an evaluation about the habilitation application submitted by Augustin Pável, Slovenian literary translator and philologist at the University of Szeged. Sztripszky also mentioned the activities of the applicant as a translator. Augustin Pável submitted his application for the position of university private lecturer entitled Southern Slavonic and Hungarian Literary Connections at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged. He delivered a habilitation lecture titled King Matthias in Slovenian Literature and Folklore. Sztripszky's evaluation, dated 1 May 1940, is published in full.

Najnovejša slovenska dramatika med platnicami in odrom

Contemporary Slovene playwriting is met with a unique phenomenon: it has an extremely diverse theatre production of high quality, while the production of Slovene plays is minimal, their book publications are rare, approximately one Slovene text is staged per Slovene theatre on average, while literary studies have shown considerably less interest in contemporary Slovene playwriting compared to that in poetry and prose; therefore it is justified to speak of a so-called crisis in national playwriting on various levels. This aim of this article is to provide some key reasons for the current state of affairs: on the one hand, Slovene literature does not have a tradition of writing plays, there are few Slovene plays of good quality, while on the other hand, many forms of contemporary stage activities that have won recognition are created parallel to the text, and mass commercial theatres favour international hits. Several festivals, competitions, and awards have been created with the intention of increasing interest of both writers and theatre people, as well as the wider public, with the Grum award being met with the widest response.

The city as a motif in Slovene youth literature

The article presents the city as motif of Slovenian youth literature in four different periods, beginning in the first period of original Slovenian youth literature in the second half of the 19. century, second period in the first half of the 20. century third period in the second half of the 20. century and after 1950, when siginificant books were produced in the field of short modern stories, emphasising on picture books and realistic narrative prose, and the fourth period after 1990. A discernable shift can be observed in the thirties of the 20. century during the times of socialist realism. The most significant change occurred after 1960, when massive migration from rural to urban environments caused by industrialisation began. The motif of urban environment especially marked modern realistic narrative, coined problematic narrative after 1990. with its focus on issues of growing up in such environments. The city as motif or theme doesn«t appear only in realistic narrative, but since the early 20. century also in fantastic narrative, thus it dichomtomically presents the image of real world in Slovenian youth realistic narrative.

Boris Pahor ou l'originalité de la littérature Slovène de Trieste

Boris Pahor or the originality of slovenian literature in Trieste. Like the cities of Italy, Central Europe and Balkans, the inhabitants of Trieste have in the past and still enjoy today a cosmopolitan culture. An important centre of Slovenian cultural and political life developed in Trieste during the 19th century. After 1918, when the city became Italian, the Slovenian minority suffered under the régime of Mussolini. One of the greatest exponents of Slovenian literature in Trieste is Boris Pahor (born in 1913). The article deals with his work, which is classical in style and largely based on personal expérience. Two events which marked the life of the writer are reflected in ail his work: the fire set by young Italian Fascists who burnt down the Slovenian cultural centre in Trieste in 1920 and the author's life in Nazi death camp during the Second World War where Pahor had been sent as a member of the résistance. In spite of this tragic background, Pahor's vision of life remains full an optimistic one, reflected in his writings.

Thirty-two years of Acta Neophilologica - with gratitude to its founder and editor Professor Janez Stanonik

In spring this year Professor Janez Stanonik decided to retire as the Editor of the scholarly journal Acta Neophilologica, which he founded in 1968 and edited for thirty-two years. I endeavoured to help him with the material side of the journal from the very beginning until1995; since then this task has been performed by the present Associate Editor.At the time when Janez Stanonik began publishing this journal, his main aim was to make our research work in Western European and American literature better known to scholars all over the world. However, in a few years' time the journal also became open to scholars from other countries and other fields, particularly in areas connected with Slovene literature and culture, Slovene immigrant literature, and linguistics. I believe that this approach gave the journal a new openness and that it enriched its quality, therefore I intend to follow this policy in the future too.

Prešernovi soneti in pesniška samorefleksija

France Prešeren made the sonnet fashionable in Slovenian literature as a representative poetic form and at the same time he revived it as a storehouse of cultural functions the influence of which could be felt up to postmodernism. Prešeren armed with the aesthetic postulate of the Schlegel brothers considered the sonnet a poetical form capable of cultivating the Slovenian poetical language and in this way raising it to the canons of clas-sical and modern literature. In the time of Romanticism poetics belonged to the fundamental values and therefore became an integral part in discussions concerning the questions of poetic creation. Prešeren wrote a lot of poems whose main topic is self-reflexion, eg. his sonnets with the most important one in them: The Wreath of Sonnets. Prešeren in these sonnets grouped the contexts, goals, structures and situations pointing out their critical reception, highlighting his own modern Petrarcism. He gave reasons for his choice of style, topic and language, showed the difference between pragmatic and poetic manifestation, revealed the common roots of his personal life and his poems (making a clearcut difference between the biographical and poetical ego) mythicized his own poetic and national mission. Finally we outline the developing stages of Prešeren's autoreflexive sonnets connected with him in an intertextual way in the time of modernism and postmodernism.

Juvenal, satira 7: Al' pri njih srce ledeno se ogreje, sam ne ve

Težave z razumevanjem literature, glede katerih se pevec v gornjem verzu pritožuje že nad lastnimi sodobniki, začnejo sorazmerno s časovno oddaljenostjo avtorja in bralca naraščati malodane eksponentno. Ravno zato literarna zgodovina znova in znova poudarja, kako je eden najbolj temeljnih pogojev za celostno razumevanje besedila prav poglobitev v kontekst, v katerem je nastalo. Nujnost tega početja se od izdelka do izdelka kajpak razlikuje: večino lahko bralec v zadostni meri razume že s pomočjo osnovnega pregleda nad svetovno zgodovino in literaturo, pri nekaterih pa je sporočilo jasno celo brez vsakršnega aparata. Juvenalov tekst ne spada v nobeno izmed tovrstnih enostavnih kategorij.

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.