Arts - Slovenia - page 471

FRANCE PREŠEREN: A POET FOR THE NATION

Slovenia's most beloved poet was born in Vrba near Bled in 1800. Most of his working life was spent as an art-
icled clerk in the office of a Ljubljana lawyer. By the time he had opened his own practice in Kranj in 1846 he
was already a sick and dispirited man. He died three years later.

Although Prešeren published only one volume of poetry in his lifetime ( Poezije , 1848), he left behind a legacy
of work printed in literary magazines. His verse set new standards for Slovenian poetry at a time when German
was the literary lingua franca, and his lyric poems, such as the masterpiece Sonetni Venec ( A Garland of Sonnets
, 1834), are among the most sensitive and original works in Slovene. In later poems, such as his epic Krst pri
Savici ( Baptism by the Savica Waterfall , 1836), he expressed a national consciousness that he tried to instil in his
compatriots.

Prešeren's life was one of sorrow and disappointment. The sudden death of his close friend and mentor, the lit-
erary historian Matija Čop, in 1835 and an unrequited love affair with an heiress called Julija Primic brought him
close to suicide. But this was when he produced his best poems.
Prešeren was the first to demonstrate the full literary potential of the Slovenian language, and his body of verse
- lyric poems, epics, satire, narrative verse - has inspired Slovenes at home and abroad for generations.

Contemporary Literature
The early 20th century was dominated by two men who single- handedly introduced mod-
ernism into Slovenian literature: the poet Oton Župančič (1878-1949) and the novelist
and playwright Ivan Cankar (1876-1918). The latter has been called 'the outstanding mas-
ter of Slovenian prose' and works like his Hlapec Jernej in Njegova Pravica ( The Bailiff
Yerney and His Rights , 1907), influenced a generation of young writers.
Slovenian literature immediately before and
after WWII was influenced by socialist realism
and the Partisan struggle as exemplified by the
novels of Lovro Kuhar-Prežihov Voranc
(1893-1950). Since then, however, Slovenia
has tended to follow Western European trends:
late expressionism, symbolism (poetry by Ed-
vard Kocbek, 1904-81) and existentialism (novels by Vitomil Zupan, 1914-87, and the
drama of Gregor Strniša, 1930-87).
The major figures of Slovenian post-modernism since 1980 are the novelist Drago
Jančar (1948-) and the poet Tomaž Šalamun (1941-). Young talent to watch out for today
includes authors dealing with very sensitive issues such as racism and relations with the
former Yugloslav republics. The first novel by Andrej E Skubic (1967-), Fužinski Bluz (
Fužine Blues , 2004), takes place on the day of the first football match between independ-

The leader of celebrated punk band Laibach, Tomaž
Hostnik, died tragically in 1982 when he hanged
himself from a kozolec, the traditional Slovenian
hayrack.