Slovene literature

The contemporary Central European and Slovene theatre of the last decades of the 20th century can therefore, probably very justifiably, be interpreted through several theoretical concepts. That is, Jacques Derrida’s and Philip Auslander’s concepts of detheologization of the stage, Bonnie Marranca and her concept of the theatre of images and Richard Schechner’s anthropological theory of performance, and simultaneously to Lehmann’s concept of postdramatic, often overlapping with Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the theatre of energy. The interview abords these questions focusing on Mladinsko and independent theatre productions of the last four decades.

Just like other national markers that classify literary discourse, the term Yugoslav literature(s) functions as a prominent ideologeme of methodological nationalism. Historically, ethno-lingual markers delineated the subject area of literary history, shaped its research methods and interpretative narratives, while the discipline – mediated through education – reinforced the ideological impact of ethno-lingual denominations upon the society. Connected to the earlier and related term Illyrian, the attribute Yugoslav belongs to variegated phenomena of Slavism. In the era of modern nationalism, various kinds of Slavism emerged in the Habsburg Empire. They expressed the tendency of the subordinate Slavic peoples to create actual or imaginary alliances that relied on the ethnonationalist notion of kinship. By calling for such reciprocity, minoritarian national movements believed to strengthen their position in the Empire in which the national movements of the German and Hungarian bourgeoisie prevailed.
In the Yugoslav kingdom, established after the nationalist-driven collapse of Austria-Hungary, and in the Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia, a winner over WWII Nazism and Fascism, the term Yugoslav literature supported integralism and unitarism. It suited the official state ideologies that attempted to master particularisms of the constitutive nations. The plural variant of the term, Yugoslav literatures, is a more recent compromise concept. Stemming from Leninist idea of the self-determination of nations, the plural term enabled to recognise and foster the existence of an interliterary community composed of individual literatures of Yugoslav nations and nationalities.
Surprisingly, a preliminary survey has shown that, in its fundamental works created in the first and second Yugoslavia (from Ocvirk’s Theory of Comparative Literary History of 1936 to Kos’s 1987 Comparative History of Slovenian Literature), the Slovene comparative literature avoids discussing Yugoslav literature(s), whereas it freely uses the expressions European or world literature in singular. The reasons why Slovene comparative studies persistently neglected the closest neighbourhood of Slovene literature are manifold. They range from methodological concerns (a break with the tradition of Slavic philology and a reorientation to cultural and spiritual history) through disciplinary divisions of labour with Slavic studies to ideological underpinnings (the affiliation of Slovene literature to the Western and Central Europe and distancing from the South or East). The paper will explore why the concept of Yugoslav literature(s) figured as a blind spot of Slovenian comparativism. Why it was not studied either as the closest other of the national literature nor as its historical-political context or, at least, a typological analogy?

This contribution focuses on the question of the moral imperative in the novella Balada o trobenti in oblaku by Ciril
Kosmač and the film adaptation of the same name by France Štiglic. First, there is a brief presentation of the elements in
the literary work that suggest to the protagonist Temnikar a moral imperative. The second part of the contribution analyses
the film adaptation, discussing primarily the filmic elements that present the theme of moral necessity.

Keywords: Balada o trobenti in oblaku, moral imperative, trumpet, shadow

http://www.centerslo.net/l3.asp?L1_ID=5&L2_ID=37&L3_ID=390&LANG=slo

The Nation Between the Epic and the Novel: Prešeren’s The Baptism on the Savica As a Compromise “World Text”

Nineteenth-century literature witnessed the move from classical to modern writing: while peripheral European literatures seek to establish national identity with the aid of the epic as a privileged form of classical writing, the central and well-established national literatures demonstrate their identity with the novel as a popular form of modern writing. In Slovenian culture, Prešeren’s narrative poem Baptism on the Savica (1836), which thematises the involuntary compromise of an epic hero and his renouncement of the national cause, was paradoxically canonised as a sacred text that defines “Slovenianness” and as such gives rise to ever new reinterpretations. This is in contrast to Jurčič’s The Tenth Brother (1866), the first Slovenian novel, which– according to Moretti’s formula – comes across as an (unhappy) compromise between a foreign genre form imported from the centre and the local Slovenian subject matter and perspective. This is why, in the 19th century, a peripheral nation was constituting itself on the “sacred text” of a compromise but singular epic, rather than merely on the mass printing of compromise novels.

(Paper presented at the international conference "Novi razmisleki o evropskih središčih in obrobjih", Journal Dialogi, Univ. Maribor, 17 Sept. 2015)

Gregorčič was using traditional verse systems, traditional metrum and traditional stanzas. Most poems are accentual-syllabic, only few are written in strict-stress meter and there's no free verse. His most common metrum is iamb and, surprisingly, amphibrach (it originates from folksong, folk dance), whilest trochee is unusually rare. He uses traditional European stanza forms, mainly hymn stanzas such as: 8,7,8,7- syllable trochee, 9,8,9,8-syllable iamb, 9,8,9,8-syllable amphibrach, 11,9,11,9-syllable amphibrach and 8,6,8,6-syllable iamb. Besides, there are some new forms such as 6,7,7,6,4,6-syllable iamb. Lots of poems have either free stanzaic form or ungrouped lines (stichic) of same feet (amfhibrach, for example) but various line lenghts (for example: 12, 8, 11, 9, 12, 5, 8, 11, 12, 9 …).

The identity and relevance of literary studies require a conceptual and institutional reconstruction in response to the global reshaping and commodification of knowledge. The author thus proposes a theory of literary discourse and literary history that take into account literariness as an important socio-cultural phenomenon and revisits several critical concepts, such as literary text, genre, style, fiction, literary space, and cultural memory.

Contents: Theory of Literary Discourse – Literary History between Narrative and Hypertext – Postmodern Textology and Electronic Media – The Structure of Literary Text and the Event of Meaning – The Text and Genre – The Text and Style – Fiction, Reality, and Laws – Textual and Contextual Spaces – Cultural Memory and Literature

S prenovljenimi učnimi načrti za pouk slovenskega jezika in književnosti naj bi dosegli privlačnejši pouk književnosti, uporabnejše jezikovno znanje in predvsem uresničljiv obseg obvezne snovi. Menim, da sta v obravnavanem učnem načrtu prva dva cilja ustrezno upoštevana, bojim pa se, da se pri jezikovnem pouku širi obseg snovi v primerjavi s prejšnjimi učnimi načrti. Čeprav v sestavu Predmetne kurikularne komisije za slovenski jezik pogrešam več učiteljev praktikov iz štiriletnih srednjih šol, menim, da je opravljeno obsežno in zelo solidno delo, predvsem pa moram pohvaliti sistematičnost, snovne in didaktične novosti ter demokratičen pristop pri obravnavi osnutkov. V jezikovnem delu učnega načrta je opazno, da težišče obravnave ni več jezikovni sistem, pač pa sporočanje z besediloslovjem. Ta sprememba omogoča večjo oz. kar nenehno aktivnost učencev, prepletanje seznanjanja učencev z različnimi besedilnimi vrstami in jezikovnega pouka pa je tudi didaktično domišljeno in v učnem načrtu ustrezno predstavljeno. V učnem načrtu pri pouku književnosti ni takih revolucionarnih sprememb, pač pa je pri obveznih besedilih in predvsem besedilih za domače branje opazna usmeritev v izbirnost. To je lahko dobra rešitev, ki pomeni večjo učiteljevo svobodo in s tem učinkovitejšo obravnavo v šoli, če je povezana z jasno predstavo o tem, kako bo v prenovljenih katalogih za maturo izgledal ustni del izpita. Sam predlagam, da dobi učitelj v posameznem kompletu vse listke z izbirnimi besedili, on pa pred ustnim preizkusom izbere tista besedila, ki so jih obravnavali v razredu.

Didaktična predstavitev besedil Rošlin in Verjanko, Slovo od mladosti, Sonetje nesreče, Sonetni venec, Pevcu, Zdravljica, Romeo in Julija, Gospa Bovary, Plašč, Matkova Tina, Dogodek v mestu Gogi, Režonja na svojem in Tujec. Priročnik za učitelje (urednik Vinko Cuderman).

POVZETEK
Slovenska književnost v angleških prevodih: kdo sestavlja antologije, komu so namenjene?
Pričujoča razprava si zastavlja osnovno vprašanje o možnostih za vidljivost in mednarodno prisotnost izrazito majhne kulture, kakršna je slovenska, v angleško govorečem okolju. Osredotoča se predvsem na antologijske predstavitve sodobnejše slovenske književnosti, s poudarkom na dveh publikacijah. Pod uredniškim vodstvom Aleša Debeljaka je leta 1997 v ZDA izšla knjiga z naslovom The imagination of Terra Incognita: Slovenian writing 1945-1995, namenjena promociji slovenskih esejistov, pesnikov in pisateljev, ki pa se ni prebila v ameriški prostor. Že leta 1999, tudi v ZDA, ji je sledila knjiga Afterwards: Slovenian writing, 1945-1995, ki jo je na le delno spremenjeni osnovi in s podobnim gradivom uredil Andrew Zawacki in zanjo prejel več kritiških ocen. Kljub podobnim promocijskih naporom se zdi, da do objave sodobnih slovenskih romanov ali pesniških zbirk v angleškem prevodu prihaja v precejšnji meri po zaslugi prevajalcev in ne nazadnje tudi samih avtorjev.

WITH ALOJZIJA ZUPAN-SOSIC

250 novels were published in Slovene between 1873 and 1918 as a feuilleton, near one half of them among the Slovene emigrants in the U. S. A. The production grew constantly, the newspapers, novelists and translators were clearly labeled as liberal (Slovenski narod, Edinost, Clevelandska Amerika) or catholic (Slovenec, Soča, Domoljub, Amerikanski Slovenec), so were the messages of their novels; only one was somewhere inbetween, the American newspaper Glas naroda. The share of the genuine novelistic production was one fourth (due to the liberal press in Slovenia) and was growing, among the source languages French was in the first place, followed by English, German, Russian etc.; the preference for Slavic literatures diminished with time. The first serialized novel in Slovenia was written in German (Jakob Alešovec, Laibacher Mysterien, Laibacher Zeitung 1868), the first Slovene one appeared in 1873 (Josip Jurčič, Ivan Erazem Tatanbah, Slovenski narod). The most prolific author was Miroslav Malovrh, the house author of Slovenski narod, writing predominantly chivalric historical novels, Henryk Sienkiewicz as the most translated author was ranked second, followed by Karl May, Alexandre Dumas, and August Šenoa. After the publication in newspaper, novels were regularly reprinted in a book form. Seldom this was not the case, hence the novels slipped into oblivion (Anton Mahnič, Josip Vandot, Zofka Kveder). In Slovene American press original novels were an exception (it serialized just Slovene popular classics), however, it published a lot of new translations (thanks to the editors Janez Trček, who was the most productive among translators, Louis J. Pirc, and Bert P. Lakner), which haven't been catalogized by Slovene bibliographers yet and were therefore more or less unknown: travelogue novels by Karl May, social novels by Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, anti-war novel by Bertha von Suttner etc. In Slovenia, Peter Miklavec was the most effective translator. Next to the title, the names of authors and translators were often not mentioned, or were replaced by the abbreviations or pseudonyms. The repertoir of the authors of the serialized novels in Slovene newspapers is unique and just partly comparable with literatures in other languages. The paper includes figures and charts, and is concluded with the chronological list of all novels published as feuilleton in Slovene newspapers, along with the names of identifiable authors, original titles, and the deciphred names of the translators.

From Latin "Graecus"-"gray", today "Grigio,Griso" in plain Italian: http://etimo.it/?term=grigio&find=Cerca 7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashi-bazouk 8 There is also historical and linguistic evidence on the still later shifts from this millennial Slavicization doctrine toward the last politically-forged "Albanian" and "Greek" idioms (the latter process continuing in part of Albania and Northern Greece to this day). According to Ralph and Coop (2013:11), present-day inhabitants of "Greece" and "Albania" share the relatively recent common ancestry of all East Europeans. However, the Albanians also share a higher number of common ancestors of their own. These results Ralph and Coop interpret as "implying that these Albanian speakers have not been a particularly isolated population so much as a small one". The "Greek" language shift is very recent affair too. After few unsuccessful attempts it was finally introduced with law: "It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries and was finally resolved in 1976, when "Dimotiki" was made the official language."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language_question 9 https://core.ac.uk/display/159176646 10 A name used by foreigners to refer to a people or social group that the group itself does not use, as "Germans", "Albanians", "Greex", etc. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/exonym

The book directly opens possibilities for cross examination of the theatre theory status, the formations from the history of theatre and the potential contextualisations of theatre works (procedures, institutions, events) in Slovenian culture after the year 1950.  The author’s selection of examples (theatre works, contexts, author profiles, historical orientations) remains within the field of evolutions, revolutions and deconstructions of the theatre work, ranging from radical modernist existential theatre (such as Oder 57) and late-modernist or neo-avant-garde experimental groups (Pupilija Ferkeverk, Glej, Pekarna) to postmodern eclecticisms of the 80s (the directing practice of Jovanovič, Ristič, Pandur and Živadinov) and plural happenings of the conflict or non-conflict heterogeneities of the dramatic and postdramatic theatre in the 90s (Meta Hočevar, Pandur, Betontanc, Kušej, Berger, Hrvatin, Živadinov). That is history, but a history which is theoreticised in the sense that has been let through the interpretative filters of contemporary theories, which serve the examination of the thesis on the confrontation of textocentrism and scenocentrism. (Miško Šuvaković about the book)

– An anti-fascist scholar of Catholic faith and liberal ideals, Stanko Vuk was born in 1912 into a Slovenian family in Merna/Miren near Gorizia. He studied in Gorizia, Ljubljana and Venice. During the Fascist regime, together with Boris Pahor he was the founder and contributor of several Slovenian underground magazines, where he began his literary career. Vuk wrote poems and short stories, published only partially during his lifetime. His prose collection "Zemlja na zahodu" (Land in the West) came out posthumously in 1959. He served in the Christian social movement, but in 1940, a few months after marrying Danica, he was arrested by the fascist authorities and sentenced to 15 years for anti-national activities. While in prison he wrote almost 400 letters to his wife, all of them in Italian by order of the prison authorities. The central theme of this correspondence is the expression of love for Danica, but there are also descriptions of prison life and expression of hope for better days. In February 1944 he was released from prison and returned to Trieste where, together with his wife, he joined the resistance movement. He and his wife were murdered by unknown persons on 10 March 1944. In 1986 Fulvio Tomizza published a large selection of Vuk’s letters from prison (Scritture d’amore) introduced by a preface. In that same year Tomizza published his novel "Gli sposi di via Rossetti" in which the tragic story of the Vuks and more generally of the Slovenian minority under the fascist regime and the Nazi occupation is narrated. This contribution presents an initial linguistic and textual analysis of Vuk’s correspondence from prison, in which the author must express his feelings in Italian, a linguistic instrument which, although well mastered, is not his mother tongue, nor the voice of his lyrics and prose.

– Stanko Vuk, letterato antifascista di fede cattolica e ideali liberali, nacque nel 1912 da famiglia slovena a Merna/Miren presso Gorizia. Studiò a Gorizia, Lubiana e Venezia. Durante il regime fascista fu con Boris Pahor ideatore e collaboratore di alcune riviste clandestine slovene, con le quali ebbe inizio anche la sua attività letteraria. Vuk scrisse poesie e brevi racconti, pubblicati solo parzialmente in vita. La raccolta delle sue prose "Zemlja na zahodu" (Terra a Occidente) uscì postuma nel 1959. Militò nel movimento cristiano sociale, ma nel 1940 fu arrestato dalle autorità fasciste e condannato a 15 anni per attività antinazionali, pochi mesi dopo aver sposato Danica. Durante la prigionia scrisse quasi 400 lettere alla moglie, che per disposizione dell'autorità carceraria dovette redigere in lingua italiana. Il tema centrale di questa corrispondenza è l'espressione dell'amore per Danica, ma vi compaiono anche immagini della vita carceraria e la fiducia in tempi migliori. Nel febbraio del 1944 fu scarcerato e potè ritornare a Trieste dove, assieme alla moglie, aderì alla resistenza. Fu assassinato da ignoti assieme alla moglie il 10 marzo dello stesso anno. Nel 1986 Fulvio Tomizza pubblicò un'ampia scelta delle lettere di Vuk dal carcere (Scritture d'amore), accompagnandola da una sua prefazione. Nello stesso anno Tomizza pubblicò il suo romanzo Gli sposi di Via Rossetti in cui è narrata la tragica vicenda dei coniugi Vuk e più in generale della minoranza slovena sotto il regime fascista e l'occupazione nazista. In questo contributo viene presentata una prima analisi linguistica e testuale della corrispondenza di Vuk dal carcere, nella quale l'autore deve affidare l'espressione dei propri sentimenti a uno strumento linguistico-l'italiano-che, pur ben padroneggiato, non è la propria lingua materna, né la voce delle sue liriche e delle sue prose.

The Slovene avant-garde movements of the first three decades of the twentieth century can be clearly linked to Italian Futurism. All three generations of the Slovene historical avant-garde were familiar with Futurist activities from their very beginnings. The third generation Slovene avant-garde, represented by Ferdo Delak and Avgust Černigoj and his Triestine circle, adapted some Futurist innovations, but the complicated and controversial relation of Italian Futurism to Fascism made them turn away from Futurism and move into the realms of Constructivism. Ideologically and politically linked to Russian Constructivism as well as to its intermediaries at the Bauhaus, the manifestos of the Young Slovene Theatre were filled with Russian Constructivist terminology, but they also echoed the proclamations issued by Marinetti, Prampolini and other Futurists. In this essay, I outline the specific political circumstances of the Slovene reception of Italian Futurism and, on this basis, investigate its influence on the Slovene theatrical avant-garde of the 1920s. This evokes the specificity of the interrelation of the two movements that can be explained by an artistic and political game of liaisons dangereuses.

The ties of a literary text - Literariness - Intertextual figures - Intertextuality and influence // Intertextuality and tradition in baroque sermons - Literary text and national/cultural differerence - Jenko and the imaginary of ruins - (Parodic) sonets on sonets - Bartol's Alamut as encyclopedic novel - The grotesque and mythopoiea in Zajc's poetry - The emergence of ludism in Šalamun's Poker

On the case of the literary tale of Fran Levstik: Martin Krpan (1858), the article illuminates Levstik’s political agenda and his literary implementation of the outlaw hero, Martin Krpan, for the needs of Slovenia’s nation-building process, a phenomenon that was characteristic of almost all emerging European nations at the time. An analysis of Levstik’s Martin Krpan reveals a unique phenomenon that was tailored to a specific program: namely, the conscious desire to create a national literary character that would constitute both a foundation for further literary creation and for the national political struggle.
Levstik was the most prominent writer among the emerging Slovenian intellectual class in the second half of the 19th century. The value of Levstik’s tale resides in its merging of mythical and literary narrative into a functionally connected organism, the simultaneity of “historical” and “non-historical” elements, and the interaction between symbolic and real ambiguities. Levstik’s structure for both his literary-political program and for his tale about Martin Krpan originates in historical realities and cultural memory of the 15th and 16th centuries: economic (transportation), social (peasant revolts), and political (defense against the Ottoman Turks). Levstik combined these elements with the fundamentals of folkloric and ethno-symbolic cultural heritage of that period. In Martin Krpan, Levstik skillfully conceals “historical realities” behind metaphors and symbolism, which is typical of myths. In this way, he provides a path toward the realization of national political ambitions. But the “real” myth Levstik created was more than simply Martin Krpan and his adventures. It was more than an argument for the historical origin or vocation of a nation, the defense of the civilization, or the demand for political rights or mimetic narrative prose, i.e. the ability to create a virtual real world. The “real” myth of the literary tale was the elevation of the Slovenian language to the essential distinguishing and constitutive element of the Slovenian nation-building process in comparison with the "Other (s)".

Tako kot v slovenskem kulturnem in narodnem življenju nasploh tudi v berilih besedni umetnik z Vrhnike zaseda položaj drugega kulturnega svetnika, takoj za Francetom Prešernom. Čeprav je zapustil Slovencem impozanten literarni opus, zajet v tridesetih knjigah zbranega dela, in je najpomembnejši slovenski pisatelj in še zlasti dramatik, Cankarjeve šolske objave tudi ob letošnji stoti obletnici zaostajajo za Prešernovimi. V prvih desetletjih dvajsetega stoletja so nekateri sestavljavci beril za šolsko rabo prezahtevna besedila krajšali, cenzurirali ali celo potvarjali (npr. Brinarjev poseg v konec črtice Mater je zatajil). Cankarjeva šolska besedila so še vedno presenetljivo aktualna, tako tista pozabljena (npr. črtice Majsko veselje, Istrski osel in Peter Klepec ter kratek roman Nina) kot tista, ki so še vedno prisotna v vseh učnih načrtih (npr. avtobiografski roman Na klancu). Vsekakor nam tematsko, žanrsko in slogovno izjemno pester Cankarjev opus ponuja mnogo možnosti za problemski pristop do leposlovnega besedila. Ob stoti obletnici se pojavljajo tudi nove priredbe (npr. stripovske izdaje cikla črtic Moje življenje, povesti Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica in drame Hlapci), ki nedvomno utrjujejo Cankarjev kanonski položaj, imajo pa tudi pomanjkljivosti in predvsem ne morejo nadomestiti poglobljenega branja izvirnika.

Glej, soba. Tri svetlobe bi jo mogoče raztrgale, če ne bi senca lepila ploskev in dajala oblike prostoru, predmetom in človeku v njej. Tako pa lega obnje in se zgošča v razdalje med njimi. Soba je sicer majhna in vse je pri roki, še stegniti jo je treba previdno, toda v tem trenutku dneva so stvari, padle v območjih svetlob, videti bližje, bolj tu, kot stvari, ki so nekaj centimetrov dlje, vendar zunaj teh zon in zato napol resnične, da jih ni mogoče videti naravnost, kakor da so tiste znotraj bolj mrtve. Kljub tej gotovo očitni razliki oko ne more vedno postaviti jasnih meja med njimi. Tri različne svetlobe terjajo isti prostor, vsaka ima svojega, med njimi je senca, kmalu bo mrak, ki bi mu morala slediti tema, toda verjetneje bo ostalo pri tem. Toliko se vsa mesta upravičeno imenujejo mesta.

Jameson’s concept of modern third-world literature as national allegory is also pertinent for the 19th-century peripheries of the first-world literature. Aware of their dependence on imperial powers, the protagonists of (semi)peripheral national movements longed for the recognition of their nascent collective identity by the lawgiving Other – the symbolic order of ‘universal’ tradition. The figures of “national poets” (Nemoianu) were invented to represent their respective nations to the gaze of the Other, symbolized by the emerging world literature and empowered through the inter-state system dominated by the core countries. In a secular parallel to the canonization of saints in the Catholic Church, “worlding” (Kadir) a national poet was crucial in the (unfulfilled) longing for his/her universal acknowledgment as belonging to the hyper-canon. While several national poets involved in national movements showed a “vernacular” tendency (Terian), Schiller and Goethe represented the more “cosmopolitan” model of a national classic. Such ‘affiliation’ to the universal aesthetic canon is also characteristic of the politics of Slovenian romantic movement and its poet, France Prešeren. Although Prešeren’s poetry, which was exposed to Austrian censorship, only sparsely employs an explicit political discourse, his imaginary worlding and intertextual transfer of universal aesthetic repertoires from the established literatures into a Habsburg periphery fashioned a cosmopolitan strategy of cultural nationalism. Prešeren has been venerated in Slovenia since the late 19th-century as the singular national classic whose oeuvre compensates for the apparent lack of classical and modern traditions in Slovenian and deserves to be recognized worldwide.