A
Cohabitation of Styles and Generations
Matej BogatajI. The Birth of a Nation
Last year, in the year 2000, cultural attention in Slovenia focused
on the celebration of the 200 years since the birth of the foremost
and greatest Slovenian poet, France Preseren, the founder and epitome
of Slovenian romantic poetry; he introduced a number of poetic forms
into the Slovene language, and honed to perfection the Petrarchan
sonnet. The year-long celebration, which included many public readings
of Preseren’s poetry, was by no means just another incidental
project to rekindle interest in or uphold the literary tradition.
On the contrary, Preseren and literature in general form the foundation
of Slovenian national identity; as is frequently stressed, the Slovenian
nation-state stemmed from cultural activity. The attention bestowed
on Preseren more than 150 years after his death is not attention paid
to poetry as a literary form, but derives from the awareness that
the significance of Preseren’s and all subsequent poetry far
surpasses its literary import.
One of the greatest Slovenian thinkers of the 20th century, the philosopher
and literary historian Dusan Pirjevec, wrote in his brilliant study
from the mid-seventies about our reception of poetry that literature
was a privileged and representative field for the articulation of
the Slovenian national interest owing also to the fact that few Slovenian
scientists had ever worked in Slovenia, that there had been practically
no successful Slovenian generals, while the politicians had been doomed
to pragmatism and compromise. With the exception of the first writings
in Slovenian, the Freising Fragments (Brizinski spomeniki) from the
9th century, literature did more than serve merely as a tool for preserving
the language as a basis for national identity: it was also a vehicle
of protest against desperate circumstances and a promise of a brighter
future. Like the mythological Orpheus, a poet is literature’s
supreme organ upon whom the power has been bestowed to foretell the
future oracularly and unite people into a community. Few nations can
– like the Slovenians – claim without irony to have arisen
and been preserved thanks to poetic visions.
Preseren’s "Zdravljica" ("A Toast"), more
than 150 years old, technically a drinking-song, that is to say an
easygoing, merry poem - and since the declaration of independence
and sovereignty in the 1990’s also the Slovenian national anthem
– already contains allusions to the notion of the Slovenians
united as a nation equal to other European nations, integrated in
a community nowadays known as the European Union. Soon, presumably
in two years’ time, Slovenia will join the Union as a full member,
as well as the defence formation NATO.
The verses from the anthem "Let’s drink that every nation/
Will live to see that bright day’s birth/ When ’neath the
sun’s rotation/ Dissent is banished from the earth,/ All will
be/ Kinfolk free/ With neighbours none in enmity"* were in the
first half of the 19th century above all utopian, but at the same
time also politically provocative enough to be censored and banned
in the Austro-Hungarian empire. That the vision has nevertheless come
true is above all due to the belief of the most far-sighted thinkers
of all the generations since then.*(translated from the Slovenian
by Tom Priestly and Henry Cooper)
II.
Waiting for Statehood
With the exception of the Carinthian period in the 6th century, when
our ancestors voted for and instated their own princes in a manner
similar to that followed by Thomas Jefferson in writing the Declaration
of Independence, Slovenians were politically not sovereign. This implied
a position on the southernmost edge of Europe, exposed to Turkish
invasions and the encroachment of Islam, and consequently particularly
fragile and sensitive to the Germanic and Romance influences which
converged in this part of Europe. Slovenians were divided between
several countries, often involved in hostilities; during the First
World War, one of the most important and bloody frontlines went along
the Soca (Isonzo) River valley, with conscripted Slovenian soldiers
fighting on both sides.
After the end of the First World War, Slovenians joined Serbians,
Croatians, Macedonians and other southern Slav peoples to form –
the then kingdom of – Yugoslavia, which ultimately disintegrated
in the 1990’s, a decade after the death of Josip Broz Tito, its
leader in the post-Second World War period. The 1990’s were a
time of perestroika and of countries formerly part of the Soviet Union
gaining independence, which unquestionably also reduced and weakened
the position of the centralist forces in Yugoslavia, i.e. the hardened
communist core, which took the side of Serbian chauvinism. Subsequent
to the Memorandum of the Serbian Academicians, which demanded that
all Serbians be united within one state, and Slobodan Milosevic’s
coming to power, there followed a change of the Yugoslavian constitution
which deprived the Albanians in Kosovo of their autonomy. Although
the Albanians represented over 90 percent of the population in the
autonomous province of Kosovo, they were denied their political rights
and, when they protested, their basic human rights were violated.
The other republics faced a long, painful and often unproductive process
of asserting their interests, which after many unsuccessful talks
and attempts to protect human rights ended with declarations of independence
on the part of Slovenia and Croatia. The federal army intervened;
there followed a brief, ten-day war in Slovenia, after which Slovenia
was recognised as a sovereign state. The later grisly ethnical clashes
in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo revealed the depth and strength of interethnic
hatred and chauvinism in the region, which had simmered unabated all
the time just beneath the surface of communist internationalism, and
now acquired bestial proportions.
III:
Mythology and Literature
The absence of political sovereignty demanded a great deal of pragmatism
and suspended decision-making if the Slovenians were to survive as
a nation, as is also apparent in the repressed character of the great
Slovenian myths. To this day they remain subject to various adaptations
and interpretations, which clearly indicates that the myths still
present a challenge for our sense of self-understanding and justification.
They all point to a fundamental inactivity, or inability to act, reflecting
the unbearable plight into which the central characters are forced.
The myth of Crtomir, the defeated Slovenian pagan warlord, who embraces
Christian faith out of love for his already Christianised beloved
and goes off to convert his people, is in general the most frequently
exploited motif in contemporary Slovenian literature, even in the
work of the present-day generation of young authors. A possible explanation
for its (continued) topicality would seem to be the fact that it is
open-ended and has conversion as its main theme. Generally speaking,
mythology, also classical, is frequent in post-war drama, in particular
in poetic drama, whose creator during modernism was Ivan Cankar, who
combined various fin-de-siecle trends. Also some of the most prominent
Slovenian post-war dramatists and poets wrote poetic dramas, which
were basically poetic language spun around the frame of a myth or
mythological story: Dane Zajc, Gregor Strnisa and Veno Taufer. The
use of language and choice of topic differ to a certain extent in
the works of authors representative of the so-called political drama,
e.g. Rudi Seligo and Drago Jancar. The theatre has always been a degree
more political than other literary forms, therefore it is not surprising
that in the mid-1970’s there existed a very strong branch of
socially-involved drama which nevertheless preserved a high level
of linguistic articulation.
Dominik Smole’s adaptation of Antigone is unquestionably the
most salient and paradigmatic work of this genre. It is about a soldier
killed in a civil war while fighting for the defeated side, and consequently
denied the right to burial, which is in conflict with the timeless
law of burying the dead. In this, Antigone alludes to the events in
recent Slovenian history: exacting an incredibly cruel revenge, the
winning side executed over ten thousand people after the end of the
Second World War. The Communist Party - which during the national
liberation struggle against the Nazi occupying forces gradually carried
out a social revolution and after the war instated a one-party political
system - made any discussion of this particular or all other errors
and instances of self-will impossible, and also generally thwarted
any attempts at oppositional political activities. Authors and literary
interpreters who gathered around such prominent literary magazines
as Beseda, Perspektive and Revija 57 were the only ones to broach
the never-referred-to, forbidden subjects, thus embodying the important
voices of social conscience. They were often persecuted for their
efforts, some of them even incarcerated and their books banned, while
the magazines were discontinued; despite all this there were few real
dissidents in the sense known in Eastern Europe, since the Yugoslavian
regime was more permissive than those in Eastern European countries,
placed somehow "in between" the East and the West. This
was primarily a consequence of 1948, when the communist leadership
stood up to Stalinism. All this notwithstanding, we cannot speak of
any degree of democracy until the mid-70’s, since all political
activities were prevented, while cultural activities were strictly
controlled and subjected to political threats in the cases of transgression.
Only in the light of the absence of political pluralism can the importance
of certain post-war poetic phenomena be understood and evaluated,
including those which spoke of existential angst, of intimate emotions,
without explicitly referring to social reality; writing was per se
oppositional in its role and significance, because it represented
the only medium of truth, even when its purpose was primarily literary.
Poets and authors were among the first to voice demands for the democratisation
of the society and, as soon as this became possible, themselves formed
and headed political parties. Some of them have remained in politics,
participating in the writing of the constitution and similar activities,
while others have returned to writing. But even today, with the achieved
level of democracy, the notion is still alive that writers’ organisations
and magazines should take a more active role in political life; it
seems, on the other hand, that given the range and disparity of the
articulated political views, this would sooner or later lead to divisions
and profound discord between writers.
IV.
Opening up to the World
Today Slovenia is a country of 20,000 square kilometres, with a population
of approximately 2 million, ranking highest among the lower half of
European countries in terms of economic development; it has completed
the process of transition, i.e. the transformation of socially-owned
property into private property, and has in this respect been one of
the most successful countries in Eastern Europe. It is about to conclude
negotiations for its full membership in the European Union. The decision
in favour of the European integration processes seems to be consensual.
Slovenian statehood has altered the role of literature to a certain
degree; after the profound interest in literature which peaked in
the 1980’s, when attending a literary reading often had a political
connotation and expressed support for the demands for the democratic
transformation of the society, achievements in other domains, like
the economy, sports and science, have also become significant for
the identity of the Slovenians. This has enabled literature to turn
back to itself, to its own procedures, and as a result the interest
in it has flagged; literature is currently losing its privileged position
to other media, particularly the visual ones. In a similar way to
other, larger European nations, Slovenia is awakening to the reality
that the national and regional specific features need to be protected
from disappearing in the global melting pot of the penetrating world
entertainment industry.
A defensive stance focusing only on national identity can of course
be dangerous and lead to a hermetic and self-sufficient culture, a
thing that has not happened in the past. The cultural flow in this
part of Europe has always been very strong; ever since the Enlightenment,
all European literary trends have reverberated in the works of Slovenian
artists who equally produced first-rate works. There exist Slovenian
translations of virtually all the crucial works of the major European
and Anglo-American literatures, a considerably detailed insight into
smaller national literatures, while literary magazines follow closely
all the new phenomena world-wide. There are also many institutionalised
international exchanges. The post-war PEN congresses in Bled, in which
numerous world-renowned literary guests took part, were among the
first to host authors from both the East and the West, which was possible
only in Slovenia as a space in-between. The PEN played a very important
part later on as well, with its reflections on the carnage in the
Balkans, with the discussions always broaching the most problematic
subjects and having far-reaching echoes. One of the merits of the
Slovenian PEN is that it called attention to the humanitarian needs
of all the victims of the war on the territory of Yugoslavia and openly
pointed to the crimes deliberately perpetrated in the name of ethnic
cleansing.
Extensive exchanges take place between Slovenian and foreign literary
magazines, encompassing all literary generations to the same extent.
The Slovene Writers’ Association issues a periodic publication
Litterae Slovenicae, which presents the most representative Slovenian
authors in translations into major foreign languages in order to give
at least a rough idea of their work and arouse further interest. The
Slovene Writers’ Association is the founder and organiser of
the annual international meeting in Vilenica, where every year an
award is given to an European author, while during the debate the
authors and essayists present address the most pressing problems in
Central Europe; the Vilenica festival was also founded with the objective
of emphasising Slovenia’s long-standing alliance with Central
European culture and establish the characteristics and differences
of the region. The main activity of the Centre for Slovenian Literature
is international co-operation; so far, the Centre has organised and
co-ordinated several important tours by Slovenian authors abroad,
in particular in countries with which Slovenia has not yet established
channels of exchange.
Last year a national program for culture was adopted, whose goal is
to unite the more or less scattered funds and institutions involved
in the international exchange of artistic production into a single
body: the Primoz Trubar Agency, named after the author of the first
books in Slovene, a Protestant who had to leave his homeland during
the Counter-Reformation and work in Germany. Both directly and on
the basis of international exchange and bilateral agreements, the
Agency will increase the extent and ensure the highest possible quality
of the presentation of Slovenian authors abroad and compile a clear
and integral database. A two-million strong nation must take an active
part in cultural trends if it is to survive and preserve its right
to being different. We can take courage from the fact that, parallel
to globalisation, the reverse process is also in progress, nurturing
specificity and difference, focusing on local and regional traits.
It aims to establish a model of cultural life which would enable valuable
marginal phenomena to survive and at the same time create the conditions
for the best possible achievements in art.
V.
Publishing
Despite the redistribution of capital, widespread sponsoring of art
is not yet an established practice in Slovenia, with the exception
of a small number of big corporations which, however, are finding
the taxation system adverse to this type of investment. The main source
of financing thus remains the national budget, distributed by the
Ministry of Culture and its committees.
Today there are approximately 150 publishing houses in Slovenia, which
annually bring out about 4000 titles. Due to the smallness of the
literary market, original Slovenian literature – with very few
exceptions – cannot appear in editions which could cover the
costs of authors’ fees and printing. For this reason the state
subsidises about 250 titles per year, more than half of which are
original Slovenian literary works, while the rest are humanities studies
and essays. For the subsidised books, the state bears most of the
publishing costs; the publishers need to cover less than half with
the sale of the books, but are obliged to pay fees fixed by the state
and are restricted in setting the price. Subsidies increase the number
of books published and ensure reader-friendly prices, thus boosting
the accessibility of books.
It was characteristic of the 1980’s that small, penetrating publishing
houses temporarily took the initiative; however, they have been unable
to survive, due to inadequate or difficult distribution and small
editions (collections of verse sell on the average 500 copies). There
are still numerous non-profit publishing houses and book collections
published by literary magazines, which seems to indicate that the
state is responsive to financial initiatives. But also the reverse,
basically negative trend, is present in Slovenian publishing: a certain
segment of capital is taking over and controlling all the major publishing
houses, without possessing a vision for their future activities. This
can lead to less concern for books and lower standards of production
in the future.
The relatively small editions do not mean that the reading culture
in Slovenia is not highly developed: one of the key ways in which
books reach their readers is via libraries. There exists a dense network
of libraries which are virtually free of charge and open to the general
public, and all under the obligation of buying original Slovenian
literature; thus successful Slovenian authors are well known to the
reading public, and their books frequently borrowed.
The state also financially supports approximately 70 cultural and
scientific magazines. Some of these are teeming centres of literary
life; Nova revija, Literatura and Sodobnost represent three different
orientations. Nova revija unites between its covers predominantly
the modernist generation, which established itself on the literary
scene in the 1960’s and then became, together with its theoretical
companions, most actively involved in the process of democratisation;
its theoretical background is primarily Heidegger’s philosophy
and phenomenology. Literatura unites those who began writing in the
1980’s and 1990’s and are often classified as postmodernist,
despite their diverse literary approaches. Until three years ago,
Sodobnost, the oldest Slovenian literary magazine, founded in 1933,
hosted predominantly traditional writers, but its new editor, Evald
Flisar, has now opened it up and turned it into a sophisticated, cosmopolitan
journal for literature and the arts. Generally speaking, one of the
main characteristics of Slovenian literary life seems to be a considerable
degree of mutual tolerance between and cohabitation of diverse literary
practices; rather than being competitive and exclusive, literary trends
intertwine and coexist. Of course, literary magazines need at the
same time to cultivate their specific identities and seek out phenomena
at home and abroad with which to underscore them. We believe that
the literary climate in Slovenia is favourable and productive, and
that there are representative works of art created here, which we
gladly offer to others to read.
VI.
Cohabitation of Diversities
In post-war Slovenian literature one of the first turning-points was
"intimism" in the mid-1950’s, which already represented
a revolt against the doctrine of socialist realism as the imposed
literary trend. A little later, toward the end of the 1950’s,
poets who, traumatised by the horrors of war, describing a world in
ruins and human relations at daggers drawn, with everyone against
everyone else and the individual existentially exposed, vulnerable,
alone, entered the poetic arena: an elevated mixture of existentialism
and modern lyricism, which freed the verse and syntax. A part of contemporaneous
Slovenian literature was characterised by cosmopolitanism, often set
in some foreign country, nonetheless frequently with a recognisable
viewpoint which linked it to the Slovenian literary tradition.
Among the first to make a declarative poetic gesture which swept away
the dusty, anachronistic and self-absorbed comprehension of poetry,
was Tomaz Salamun; the first verses of
his first book of poems, Poker, published in 1966, were: "I grew
tired of the image of my tribe/ and moved out."** Salamun’s
poetry consistently eludes having a single meaning read into it; it
is a passionate chronicle by a laid-back, self-confident globe-trotter,
equally at home in Mexico and the United States, among Christian mystics
and avant-garde conceptual artists, addressing and flirting with his
brothers in verse and predecessors from all periods and parts of the
world. At the same time he lets mundane tasks enter poetry and expands
the boundaries of poetic vocabulary, a thing that was not customary
before him. Salamun has loosened and de-canonised the reception of
poetic language; every word is poetic if it is uttered by a Poet from
his lucid position, poetic reality effortlessly slips into poetry,
which is a record of the unrelenting and ecstatic poetic absorption
of the world. As it no longer focuses on nihilism, Salamun’s
poetry seems light-hearted, unrestrained and full of vitality. Today
Salamun is the most extensively translated Slovenian poet; his oeuvre
consists of more than thirty collections of verse and as many books
translated, both into the languages of the other ex-Yugoslavian nations
and into English.
**Tomaz Salamun’s verses from Poker appeared in English in The
Four Questions of Melancholy, edited by Christopher Merrill (New York:White
Pine Press 1997)
Salamun’s poetry preceded by more than a decade all the other
trends which deliberately upset the relation between the high-brow
and the low-brow in literature, and from the 1970’s onwards utilised
and parodied mass and trivial fiction genres: detective and mystery
novels, romances, horror novels and political thrillers. The mid-1970’s
saw an increase in the awareness of genre in Slovenian prose, and
also a closer connection with contemporary literary happenings in
the world.
Evald Flisar was the first in Slovenian
fiction to write serial, metafictional, Borgesesque short stories,
undermining in a novel way the certainty and non-ambiguity of the
fictional world. After two extensive novels, he, and a few other authors
of his generation, introduced considerable changes in Slovenian short
prose by adopting approaches from the Anglo-American tradition of
short-story writing, refining throughout the paradoxical and equivocal
impact his prose had on its readers. His communicative novels appeal
to several types of readers and are widely popular; Carovnikov vajenec
(The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) was an all-out best-seller, most
recently reprinted for the fifth time a few months ago, followed by
its equally successful sequel, Potovanje predalec (A Journey too Far),
serialised on TV last year. Fundamentally, these novels are travel
books, describing events occurring in environments with surprising
cultural, nutritional and other customs. His heroes are on a quest
for self-knowledge, revelation, meaning, remaining at the same time
acutely aware of the fact that they bear what they seek inside them,
and have done so all the time, that salvation is therefore always
internal, something that could be achieved anywhere, also in the West
– or nowhere. Their main problem is their incessant reflection;
they are afraid of making a clean break with their Western metaphysical
prejudice and letting themselves go, since their reason and distance
represent their only armour against the foreign, fascinating, incomprehensible,
and also dangerous world. The decision Flisar’s hero adopts in
the later novel, A Journey too Far, is telling and meaningful: instead
of opting for Eastern enlightenment, acceptance and passivity, he
opts for neuroticism as being more productive for him as a writer.
Flisar is also a master at travel journals, having travelled extensively
in over eighty countries and honed the skill of travel writing to
the degree which warranted its acceptance as a literary genre in Slovenian
literature. His latest collection of short stories Zgodbe s poti (Tales
of Wandering) is set all over the world, from Africa to south-east
Asia and Brazil, and yet the paradoxes which become apparent when
different cultures clash are nothing but an acute manifestation of
the extent to which reality always differs from human expectations,
and the degree to which people remain forever puzzling to others and
to themselves.
Flisar also writes drama; his radio and theatre plays are often produced
abroad, and some are even written originally in English. The subjects
of his plays vary considerably, all pertaining nonetheless to the
genre of tragicomedy, speaking with frequent abrupt about-faces about
the absurdity of human situations, about ideological projects inexorably
leading to totalitarianism and finally failing. The leitmotif appearing
throughout his drama is the question of just how much reality a human
being is capable of bearing; this makes his heroes often seek refuge
in mental illness or impose their visions and expectations on others.
Along with Svetlana Makarovic, who is considered the dark first lady
of modern Slovenian lyric poetry, Maja Vidmar
is the most prominent woman poet. Her collections of verse interweave
an ecstatic abandoning to eroticism with a search for contact and
union with the other into one, which is to bridge the sexual differences,
the separateness, as well as transcend mortality and transience. This
body-based lyricism is of course accompanied by the inherent awareness
that such aspirations are impossible, that devotion is doomed to failure
and disappointment, that the other and completeness remain forever
elusive, that existence and the inevitability of death are –
except in rare and brief moments – exposed and terrible. And
yet Vidmar does not succumb to heavy and dark existentialism; her
poetry is distilled, sensual, enabling consciousness to rid itself
of the surplus weight of the body for a short while, without ever
slipping into generalisations or sentimental clichés. Her male
fellow-poets see in the unusual openness, even primary quality of
her poetry, and also in its emphatic sensuality which seems to be
dictated by the body itself, above all a very specific female writing
which addresses the reader with an incredible directness and lyricism,
rather than reflection.
Andrej Blatnik is one of the leading
fiction writers of the postmodernist generation. His early short stories
– which are metafiction, that is to say an acutely alert and
deliberate mode of writing which alludes to the writing itself, with
a constant finger on the pulse of the uncertain status of the various
planes of reality – concentrate on a single, condensed, pivotal
moment at which the heroes’ existential fragility becomes apparent.
It is a prose unflaggingly aware of the literary tradition from which
it draws, unfailingly commenting upon it; generally it is also obvious
that Blatnik’s writing is finely honed and erudite, and that
he is one of the best connoisseurs of the postmodernist approach,
further proof of which is his extensive and detailed study Labirinti
iz papirja (Paper Labyrinths), which draws a comparison between American
metafiction and its European successors. In this he comes to the conclusion
that the prose techniques introduced by Borges are in European literatures
associated with parody and the imitation of crucial national texts.
His novel, Plamenice in solze (Torches and Tears) is also constructed
in this manner; the crux of the story is a quotation from literary
tradition, the chapters are humorous allusions to recognisable literary
works, imitating at the same time a textbook and a legend, the record
of a life and work of a great personage, while his hero is a witty
and ironic paraphrase of the yearning and passive hero so frequent
in traditional Slovenian novels. Blatnik’s next novel, Tao ljubezni
(Closer to Love) amusingly parodies the genre of a spiritual travel
book; the sceptical, cynical heroes, incidental tourists, as it were,
travelling through Asia, like Flisar’s heroes prove yet again
that rationalism is insurmountable even in the most obscure of circumstances.
Blatnik’s most recent collections of short stories, Menjave koz
(Skinswaps) and Zakon zelje (The Law of Desire), have turned to intimacy,
to dissecting the relationship between a man and a woman, or the generation
gap between children and parents. What is characteristic is the minimalist
use of language, sharp-witted and funny dialogues, and the dispassionateness
of the characters who deal with every possible conflict or passion
by talking, replacing any form of action with verbalisation. Blatnik
is one of the best Slovenian authorities on non-European literatures
and one of the most insightful literary editors, both for the magazine
Literatura and for the publishing house which brings out in translation
the most representative works of contemporary literature.
Nestrpnost (Intolerance) by Lela B. Njatin,
is a collection of prose fragments compiled into a novel, in a sequence
not based on the progression of cause and effect, but on the logic
of dreams. Njatin’s fiction presents a patchy, perplexing image
of the world, her cuts and editing are resolute and radical, deriving
from the modernist acceptance of the consciousness being the main
creator and ordering principle of the world – only that which
has been filtered through the heroine’s passionate presence,
exists. In a quick, delirious, and at times nightmarish rhythm this
prose mixes savage sexual practices of dominance, drastic eroticism,
overwhelming lusts and fetishisms, glamorous banquets, and deserted
urban environments. What strikes the eye are the brutal scenes of
war and violence; the individual’s exposure and vulnerability
are all-pervading, yet in a way also exciting, fascinating. All of
this notwithstanding, Njatin’s prose is extremely cultivated,
stylistically downright reserved and as it were indifferent, detached;
this stems from the conscious recognition that these are parallel,
imaginary worlds, artificial polygons where the unconscious can be
given completely free rein. And yet what is exposed is violence, undoubtedly
due to the rigid social hierarchy and the omnipresence of the Yugoslav
army troops in the 1980’s, to the latent antagonism between the
army and the civil society: this social tension was reflected in particular
in the works of Slovenian subculture and of the anarchist activism
of the alternative culture, to which Njatin is indebted for her iconography
as well as her radicalism. Her later stories continue to display recognisable
abrupt transitions, cracks in the narration which seems generated
by powerful, intense images, verbalised as precisely as possible.
Hopefully, this selection will serve as an incentive to search for
further information on Slovenian literature; only a more detailed
presentation can portray all of its variety and diversity, as well
as its effectiveness in other, different literary environments.
Translated by Tamara Soban
Extract from the 'from the Heart of Europe' Booklet
Copyright 2001 by Tomaz Salamun, Evald Flisar, Andrez Blatnik, Maja
Vidmar, Lela B Njatin.
ISBN 961-6036-29-7
2001
