A YUGOSLAV SHAKESPEARE Caclamanos on Mr. Harold Nicolson is always
a literary event, but Mr. Nicolson needed rougher handling than this. Like many Englishmen, Mr. Nicolson says Yugoslav when he means Serb. For example, he says that the whole Yugoslav literary tradition is an epic tradition. On the contrary. The Slovene tradition (and I am told the same is true of the Croat) is purely lyrical ; and indeed I know nothing closer to the English lyric in modem Europe. And what gives Mr. Nicolson the idea that there are no good Yugoslav translations of Shakes- peare? Zupancic, a fine poet if there was ever one, has just completed his twelfth translation of a Shakespeare play with The Tempest. It may interest those of your readers who look for signs in occupied Europe to know how this great patriotic poet of the Slovenes has translated the title of the play. He has called it " Vihar," an old Slovene word, the exact significance of which will be lost on the invaders. It is the word which occurs in two famous lines of an old national poem, which declare the indestructibility of the national spirit:
Vse Jr viltar razd'fal
Narod pa fe trdno sta/.
(The tempest swept away everything ; but the nation stood like a rock.)
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