Slovenia has some beautiful alpine mountains and Slavoj Zizek. It’s a small country. 57% of the people there self-identify as Catholic, but, interestingly enough, 23% choose not to specify any particular religion, and 10% proudly identify as either atheist or “no religion at all.” The current president is Danilo Turk.
When WWI ended, so did the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Borders, famously, were redrawn. Some got what they hoped for. Others didn’t. The Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes, eventually, figured they would create the country of Yugoslavia, which they did in 1929.
Originally Slovenia was a republic of Yugoslavia. In 1991, the Slovenes won their independence from the Serbs. They did so violently, and the memory of the brief (10 days) war has not faded.
Today, the tone of Slovenia’s culture is characterized by a robust democracy that boasts a deeply engaged, well-informed electorate.
Slovenia has been a member state of both the European Union and NATO since late 2004.
France Prešeren and 18th and 19th century Slovenian literature—the patrimony of our anthologized poets
Still widely read and deeply influential to many contemporary Slovene poets are Josip Murn Aleksandrov (b.1879), Oton Župančič (b. 1878) and Alojz Gradnik (b. 1882).
France Prešeren, though, seems to be regarded as the greatest Slovene poet, or at least the most written about. Here’s a lecture by a literary historian who works at Zizek’s university in the Slovene capital. At the bottom there are links to poems by Preseren, who appears to be interesting indeed. Here’s a characteristic stanza
Live, oh live all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o'er earth's habitations
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all men free,
No more shall foes, but neighbours be.
Modernism, or “Moderna”
Apparently what we call Modernism, the Slovenian critics call “Moderna,” and “the damned poets movement,” which seems to not be pajorative at all. Dragotin Kette (b. 1876) is a name that pops up quite a bit.
Here one of our anthologized poets, Boris Novak, comments on the difficulties of translating Kette’s work. The essay also serves as a useful education in Slovene poetry.
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I'm wondering if anyone can weigh in on (or explain) the use of "silence" in the Slovenian poems we read for this week. It was the word that came up most frequently across my reading of them, and I know that Ales Debeljak (I apologize for the missing accent marker there) has an entire book called "Dictionary of Silence."
ReplyDeleteDoes this have to do with a kind of modernist/moderna distrust of language to accurately convey meaning/subjective self?
Examples of silence from this week's reading:
"...a voice, and yet a silence of everything, / the silence and yet a praise to everything..."
~ Boris A. Novak
"not even a minute to think, she was the one / with the courage to disobey silence..."
~ Ales Debeljak
"Your mouth, which taught me while I was in your arms to listen / To how the golden flowering grain keeps silent, as it crumbles in my / Veins. How the rain keeps silent, raising temples of water on / Shoulders of air. How the torch keeps silent in wind's forests, / How your silence keeps silent, teaching me a dialect // Wherein between wheat and the mouths of clouds I melt into the sky." ~Ales Steger
(Of course, silence occurs outside the Slovenian section, as well, but I'm familiar atleast with Ales' outside book, and so wanted to ask this specifically of the Slovenian poetry.)
ReplyDeleteZizek, yes, but the poet Tomaž Šalamun too!
ReplyDeletemy personl favorites:
(2001) "A Ballad for Metka Krašovec" Twisted Spoon Press, Prague
(2000)"Feast," Harcourt, New York, edited by Charles Simic, introduction by Edward Hirsch
http://tomazsalamun.com/