Jože Javoršek

Jože Javoršek was the pen name of Jože Brejc (October 20, 1920 – September 2, 1990), a Slovenian playwright, writer, poet, translator and essayist.

Between 1961 and 1967, Javoršek worked as an assistant at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and between 1967 and 1982 as secretary in the office of the Academy's president Josip Vidmar.^[2]

He died in Ljubljana in 1990 and was buried in his hometown of Velike Lašče. A memorial plaque, designed by the Slovene sculptor Stojan Batič, was placed on his birthplace in the 1990s.

Work

Javoršek wrote poetry, plays, novels and essays. He started as a poet. Already as a teenager, he published several poems in the left-wing Slovenian magazines of the time, such as Mladina and Kocbek's Dejanje. After World War II, a collection of his wartime poems, entitled Partizanska lirika ("Partisan Lyrics"), was issued in 1947. After his experience in jail, he turned mostly to plays, essays and prose. During his lifetime, he published another collection of poems under the title Usoda poezije ("The Fate of Poetry", 1972), which he himself edited with extensive critical and biographical commentary.

Javoršek gained recognition foremost as a playwright. His early plays, based on existential concerns, but filled with irony, playfulness and artistic use of

He wrote several novels, the most notable being Hvalnica zemlji ("An Ode to the Earth", 1971) and Nevarna razmerja ("

In his last works, La Memoire Dangereuse ("The Dangerouse Memory"), which was published in French by a Parisian editing house and translated into several European languages, and Spomini na Slovence ("Memories of the Slovenes"), published shortly before his death, he explored his memory and gave a sometimes extremely critical accounts of his contemporaries.

He wrote influential essays on

He also translated several important authors into Slovene, mostly from French and Serbo-Croatian, among them Corneille, Molière, Hippolyte Taine, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Anouilh, Edmond Rostand, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Meša Selimović.

Personality

During his lifetime, Javoršek was considered a controversial and unique personality. His dubious relationship with the establishment, as well as his sometimes extremely acrimonious attacks on the contemporary literary circles, both Slovene and French, gained him the nickname The Lonely Rider.

If Shakespeare had been a slightly more important person during his lifetime, at least as important as Ben Jonson, history would have provided us with more details about his life. But Shakespeare was not at the top of the social ladder, he was little more than a parasite of contemporary magnates. Nor did he belong to the great minds of his time. He was too uneducated to achieve such a position, as it is known. The romantic ideas according to which Shakespeare was a great wit, a great historian or a great thinker, are nowadays completely rejected […]. Today, it is evident that Shakespeare was first of all a true dodger of his era. He used the various materials from history or from the contemporary circumstances in England to create attractive theatrical masterpieces. First of all, we have to understand that Shakespeare never thought of theatre as literature. The theatre was a dangerous and slightly indecent institution, which every respectful and truly honored member of the society would rather avoid.^[15]

This is a description of Javoršek's perception of his own role in the society.

Influence and legacy

Although he tried to avoid direct clashes with the Communist establishment after his release from jail, Javoršek was one of the main driving force behind the establishment of the Stage '57, an alternative theatre created in 1957 by the younger generations of Slovene artists, which had a crucial role in shaping their generation against the pressures of the repressive cultural policies of the Communist regime. Already during his lifetime, he gained recognition in other parts of Yugoslavia, especially in Serbia. Some consider him to be one of the best essayists in Slovene, together with Ivan Cankar, Marjan Rožanc and Drago Jančar.^[16] His book La Memoire Dangereuse, published in the 1980s by the French publishing house Arléa, gained him an important recognition beyond Yugoslav borders. The book has been translated also to German and Serbo-Croatian.

Personal life

Javoršek's first wife died while he was in prison. Their only son, Svit, committed suicide in 1969, at the age of 23.^[17] He later married the translator Marija Kiauta.^[18]

Essential bibliography

Poetry

• Partizanska lirika ("Partisan Lyrics", 1947)
• Usoda poezije ("The Fate of Poetry", 1972)

Plays

• Odločitev ("The Decision", 1953)
• Kriminalna zgodba ("Criminal Story", 1955)
• Konec hrepenenja ("The End of Yearning", 1955)
• Povečevalno steklo ("Amplifying Glass", 1956)
• Veselje do življenja ("Joy of Life", 1958)
• Manevri ("Maneuvers", 1960)
• Dežela gasilcev ("A Land of Firemen", 1973)
• Improvizacija v Ljubljani ("An Improvisation in Ljubljana", 1977)

Essays

• Srečanja ("Encounters", 1958)
• Okus sveta ("The Flavour of the World", 1961)
• Indija Koromandija ("The Neverland", 1962)
• Vodnik po Ljubljani ("A Guide to Ljubljana", 1965)
• Shakespeare in politika ("
  Shakespeare
  and Politics", 1965)
• Kako je mogoče? ("How Is It Possible", 1969)
• Esej o Molieru ("An Essay on Molière", 1974)
• Primož Trubar (1977)
• Lili Novy (1984)
• La Memoire Dangereuse ("The Dangerous Memory", 1987)
• Spomini na Slovence ("Memories of the Slovenes", 1989)

Prose

• Obsedena tehtnica ("An Obsessed Scales", 1961)
• Spremembe ("Changes", 1967)
• Hvalnica zemlji ("An Ode to the Earth", 1971)
• Nevarna razmerja ("Dangerous Liaisons", 1978)

See also

• Slovenian literature
• Culture of Slovenia
• Liberation Front of the Slovenian People

References