Kosovel, Srecko 1904-1926

views updated

KOSOVEL, Srecko 1904-1926

PERSONAL:

Born March 18, 1904, in Sezana, Slovenia; died May 27, 1926, in Tomaj, Slovenia; son of Anton and Katarina (Stres) Kosovel. Education: University of Ljubljana.

CAREER:

Poet, essayist, and editor.

MEMBER:

Cankar circle, co-founder.

WRITINGS:

Pesmi (title means "Poems"), edited by Alfonz Gspan (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 1927, published as Pesmi in konstrukcije, Mladinska knjiga (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 1978.

Izbrane pesmi (title means "Collected Works"), edited by Anton Ocvirk, Tiskovna zadruga (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 1931.

Zbrano delo (letters), 3 volumes in 4, edited by Anton Ocvirk, Drzavna zalozba (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 1946-1977, volume 1, revised, 1964.

Moja pesem, edited by Lino Legisa, Obzorja (Maribor, Slovenia), 1964.

Integrali '26, edited by Anton Ocvirk, Cankarjeva zalozba (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 1967, revised, 1984, translation by Wilhelm Heiliger published as Integrals, Mudborn Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1983. Moja pesem, edited by Anton Ocvirk, Lipa (Koper, Slovenia), 1976.

Also author of Zlati coln (poems). Work anthologized in Menschheitdämmerung, edited by Kurt Pinthus, 1920.

SIDELIGHTS:

Though he died at age twenty-two, Srecko Kosovel is recognized as one of the most important Slovene poets of the twentieth century. He integrated European social, political and cultural forces into his poetry and essays. Kosovel's work remained obscure for much of the twentieth century, because his complete oeuvre was not published until fifty years after his death. Though his poems have been translated individually into several languages, his complete works exist in only the original and in German and French translations.

Kosovel, born in the Slovene region of Karst, was the youngest of fifth children. The Kosovels moved to Tomaj, where Anton became known as a musician, teacher, and choir leader. Srecko's brother, Stano, gained a reputation as an author and journalist, their sister, Karmela, as a pianist. Until World War I, the Slovene region had been part of Austria; Italy held it after the war, and under Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, Slovene culture and political rights were suppressed. Later it became part of the republic of Yugoslavia; Kosovel, meanwhile, feared an independent Slovene state would be equally as totalitarian.

Kosovel's father sent him to school in Ljubljana during the war, because he wanted him to become a forestry engineer. Kosovel, however, enjoyed literature and began writing poetry. He contributed to a never-published anthology by the Kres circle, and to small publications such as Jadran ("Adriatic"), Preporod ("Rebirth"), and Mlado Jutro ("Young Morning"). When he began his studies in Romance and Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Ljubljana in 1922, he also wrote, published, and recited his works.

During this time Kosovel edited the journal Lepa Vida ("Beautiful Vida"), named in homage to the Slovene ballad and to Slovene writer Ivan Cankar, whose poetic 1912 drama Lepa Vida was the prototype for Kosovel's postwar generation. Kosovel also contributed to the journal Trije labodje ("Three Swans") and worked as an editor of the academic magazine Vidovdan. He quit in 1923 when he perceived the magazine's attitude as hostile toward Slovene students. Kosovel then attempted to publish a journal, "Slovenska revija," in Geneva, the League of Nations headquarters, to alert the world about repression of Slovenes. He accused the League of perpetrating the "European lie," implying that more powerful but amoral nations set the agenda, and repeated the slogans "Evropa umira"—"-Europe is dying"—and "drustvo narodov laz"—"the League of Nations is a lie"—throughout his work, diaries, and letters. Kosovel founded a club of young authors, Klub mladih, in 1924, although the group quickly disbanded.

The literary-dramatic circle Kosovel helped establish, Ivan Cankar, lasted longer. Kosovel and his colleagues took over the editing of the Slovene Farmer's party magazine for young people, Mladina, in 1925, and began to shape its aesthetic and political platform. That year he also wrote a booklet of his poems, Zlati coln ("Golden Boat"); this was not published until long after his death. Through the winter of 1925-1926 the literary events of the Cankar circle began to attract attention in Ljubljana and Trbovlje. Meanwhile, Kosovel, always frail, became seriously ill. He returned to Tomaj but did not recover, and died at home of complications from meningitis. He had published only a smattering of poems, essays and reviews, and hardly any prose. Italian police attended his funeral because Slovene officials in Ljubljana suspected Kosovel of radical leftist leanings. Until World War II, only highly censored editions of his work were published. In 1927 friends edited and published his Pesmi, a collection of sixty-six poems which hardly represent Kosovel overall.

A larger collection, Izbrane pesmi, was published after brother Stano Kosovel handed Srecko's writings to Anton Ocvirk, later a professor of comparative literature. Fifteen years later, Kosovel's Zbrano delo was published. By then, Yugoslavia's cultural and political climate had changed, and Kosovel's poetry was seen as progressive. Ocvirk included only some of Kosovel's works, his so-called "Karst" poetry and some expressionistic works, and this was the only Kosovel work available in the early 1960s. At the chiding of critics, Ocvirk finally produced another Kosovel volume in 1964; this volume, however, introduced little new. Integrali '26, a collection of Kosovel's constructivist poems, stirred interest among post-avantgarde critics and authors. Ocvirk published the last edition of Kosovel's collected works in 1977. Whether more remains unpublished is unknown. His letters from this collection, meanwhile, have enlightened scholars about his literature.

Much of Kosovel's work deals with spatial and temporal dimensions. Peter Scherber, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, wrote that "in his works Kosovel returned again and again to the conflict between a regional model of the world and those of Yugoslavia and Europe." The regional served as the model against which Kosovel related other spatial concepts, such as Ljubljana, Yugoslavia or Europe. His homeland, Karst, represents in his poetry a kind of perfection, an exemplary microcosm: He wrote in his journal, "Potem je upati, da vstane ta Kras, ta cudno nerodoviti Kras, oaza sredi laznjive civilizacije Evrope, tako rekoc zatocisce romantikov" ("Then one can hope that this Karst, this strange unfertile Karst will rise, an oasis in the middle of the lying civilization of Europe, so to speak a refuge of romantics"). Kosovel thought humanizing Europe, Yugoslavia and Slovenia was necessary for peace. As did many European left-wing intellectuals, he saw Communism and Socialism as part of that solution.

Through Integrali '26 readers finally saw the evolution of Kosovel's style. Scholars have since determined three chronologically overlapping stylistic layers. The first consist of Kosovel's Karst poems, which contrast thematically the "sunny" Karst with the "foggy" Ljubljana. His poems written in response to European expressionism reflect the second style, particularly the works found in the 1920 Kurt Pinthus-edited anthology Menschheitsdämmerung ("Dawn of Humankind"). These poems, about political and social problems, use non-traditional poetic forms. The third style, constructivist, includes poetry Kosovel called "Konstrukcije" or "Constructions" and published in Integrali '26. Scherber described these as "short, graphically and typographically unconventional poems and his Lepljenke, or 'stick-on poems,' comprised of texts which Kosovel put together out of newspaper headlines."

Kosovel developed within the Yugoslavian and Slovene avant-garde from an active participant to a member of the loyal opposition, critical of those who used the movement merely to shock. His contribution was political and artistic, informed by the works of Friedreich Nietzsche and Rabindranath Tagore. Critics Franc Zadravec and Janez Vrecko said Kosovel created one of the few examples of European literary constructivism, seemingly without contact from international writers. His work is still under study, and scholarship is in its early stages. Scherber wrote that Kosovel's "Kons[trukcije] poems, his graphic poetry put together from newspaper headlines, as well as his—for the most part still-undeciphered—diaries promise many interesting discoveries."