SLOVENE POETS
SIR,—It was a great and unexpected pleasure to read the a on Slovene poets in last week's issue of The Spectator. You publi one of those rare articles which have a lasting value ; and I am sure time will come when these beautiful translations will be read in my country. I should like to add one or two observations and draw attention to them.
a. Mr. Matthews says that the Slovenes number "about a mil This is only true of the Slovenes in Yugoslavia. If we add the million of Slovenes who lived under Italian and German domination. the quarter-million Slovene emigrants in America, we reach a total two million people of pure Slovene blood and speaking the Ski language.
2. A great deal of Austrian propaganda has been put about rec to the effect that the Austrians are not really Germans. Mr. Maub translations of Preseren prove that the Slovenes a hundred years were quite clear on this point! What the Slovenes objected to and what they still continue to object to, is being Germanised, no ma whether by Austrians or anyone else.
3. No article on the Slovene poets could be complete without
tioning Zupancic. No one in England knows this better thin Matthews himself ; he tells me now that he made a translation Zupancic which had to be excluded owing to lack of space. May I that you will be able to publish it later, since Zupancic has a double c on your readers, both as the greatest of our modern poets and as the who has done most to interpret England to the Slovene people.—Y.-
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Deputy Prime Minister Kingstdn House, Princes Gate, London, S.W.7.
Me have been able to adopt this suggestion. A translation Jr
Zupancic is appended.—Ed., The Spectator.]
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