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Josip Murn

Selection of poems of Slovene poet Josip Murn with the introduction of Jože Snoj.

In the Lines and Between Them

This is a selection of critiques of national and foreign belletristic literature. Here the author explains his modernistic criteria about style and ideas in literature and his critical philosophical criteria about Christian existentialism. He is explaining all that "in the lines" and (to hide them from the censorship of the regime) "between the lines", too.

Printing Chronicle

Also a selection of leading articles in the years 1970-72 for a weekly magazine "Tedenska tribuna" in the same "interline" style.

 

Josip Murn

This is a literary-historical study, which deals with the poetic growth of Josip Murn who was misunderstood until now and who is an unacknowledged originator of modern Slovene poetry. The Slovene poet who lived at the beginning of the 20th century died very young but was "father" of Slovene poetical modernism ("Slovene Rimbaud"); he was the "inventor" of paradox, sound symbols, distanced lyrical objectivisation, and free verse as prosodically liberated verse line.

The Killing of Soil

This examination of the extensive prose opus of a traditionalist realistic "partisan writer" Karel Grabeljsek proves, that under his surface apology for revolution hides a tragically divided registration (written by an honest writer) of its criminal excessiveness. The Killing of Soil is a metaphor for the irreconcilability of the peasant's primary (proprietorial, individual) link with nature and of the construct of "proletarian unproprietorial" collectivization. The soil only - and not the factory - unmasks its inhumanity and life non-viability.

Handke's Paradox

It is not the intention of this study to adopt the German writer Peter Handke in whatever way "nationalistically", but to remind us of a certainly unique phenomenon in world literature.  The hero of Handke's novel "Die Wiederholung"/ "Repetition"- in the metaphorical meaning - is his forgotten Slovene language; but the reaching by calling it from the depths of his child's memory is written in German! This "paradox", caused by Handke’s being deeply moved by Slovene language into which he was born, opens to the secret of language as the house of being; tracing this circulating "bilingualism" it opens even beyond - in the house of the language of languages, which is the Spirit.

In Between Word and God

In these essays the author starts to develop his "theological poetics" or "poetical theology", the basis of which is the relationship between God and the word in the sense of theological presumption that God and man re-establish each other as well as in the poetical sense that the bearer of their interacting "re-establishments" is WORD. The word is the call and the outcry of the self-conscious, cosmically lonely man for the sense of existence. More specifically, God "would not exist", if there were no Godlike creature to think and feel it. And vice versa: man as a thinking being "would not exist", if he was not awakened (according to John's gospel) from unconsciousness (of blind and deaf world) by the creative Word/Logos/Christ as the triad God's son and at the same time the incarnate Son of M”an. Each word in all languages (the house of the language of languages is SPIRIT) is - as the ontologically inexpressible naming of objects and phenomena of the world - in itself the "tiniest" poem. As such "poem unit", the word is the creator of the sparingwords lyrics, denselywords epics and word concentrated dramatics; it is the generator of emotion (as the outcry and the call to the Unknown), of description (as the description of man's existential situation) and of confrontation (as morally ethical conflicting between man's materially instinct and his spiritual nature). The word, which is more artistic the more there is in it the original ontological power, is the link between man and God - there are poets between word and God.

Metamorphosis of Horror

The collection of these essays is again the author's reflection of the bolshevist revolution in Slovenia during the Second World War, its causes as well as its consequences after the war and finally in the time of independent state. The title comes from the fragments of the poem “Metamorphosis of Horror”, written in the years 1957/59 (it was not possible in that time to publish it), which deals with the theme of the slaughter of the "home-guards" at the territory of Rog southeast from Ljubljana in June 1945, when the war was already over. This military formation, "home-guards" or “white guards”, was nationalistic and in its basis politically oriented towards the Western Europe . However - and here lies the tragic paradox - in the conditions of civil war it operated with the consent and support of the occupant; after the war the Anglo-American forces turned the "home-guards" as collaborates with Nazism over to the communist regime as the then their formal ally. In such a form, it is the first publication of this poem. The main subject of this book is the Roman Catholic Church. The author is describing how the Church emerged from the martyrdoms of revolution and he is asking at the same time, whether it wrung out the cramps of clericalism, which godfathered in no small measure the criminal reactions of the opposite revolutionary side. The author states, that the Church did not wring out the clamps of traditionalistic worship of God and dogmatism and that it is still deaf for the intellectual discourse about itself. The two essays are pendant to the above treated theme: one about "The Cannibals" of Gregor Strnisa, a dramatic parable about Rog "cannibalism" and another about poet France Balantic, who in his poetry predicted his death in flames and so became hero of a modern myth, which mythforming force is still going on.

The Name of the Story

This book is a collection of the author's latest essays. In the essay »Name of the Story« the author is researching the roots of the mythology and comes to the conclusion, that there is nothing in a myth which surpasses the rationality of human perceptions; but nevertheless, there is still something shrouded in mystery in the mythical images. The man's »story«, starting with his selfconsciousness, is a story of a person, that has a name, but no one knows, what it is.

 

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