I. 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 Prešeren, 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 Prešeren's poetry, was by no means just another incidental project to rekindle interest in or uphold the literary tradition. On the contrary, Prešeren 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 Prešeren 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 Prešeren'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 Dušan 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 (Brižinski 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.
Prešeren'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 Soča (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 Milošević'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 Črtomir, 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 Strniša 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 Šeligo and Drago Jančar. 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 Primož 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 Tomaž Šalamun; 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."** Šalamun'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. Šalamun 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, Šalamun's poetry seems light-hearted, unrestrained and full of vitality. Today Šalamun 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.

**Tomaž Šalamun's verses from Poker appeared in English in The Four Questions of Melancholy, edited by Christopher Merrill (New York:White Pine Press 1997)

Šalamun'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; Čarovnikov 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 predaleč (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 Makarovič, 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 kož (Skinswaps) and Zakon želje (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