THE SLOVENE POETS

By KENNETH MATTHEWS III is believed that these are the first translations of Slovene poetry to be published in English.]

THE Slovenes number only about a million people all told— the smallest nation in Europe. They have occupied their European territory, between the Danube and the top of the Adriatic, for fourteen hundred years ; for nearly a thousand years they were ruled by Germans. After the last war they were

incorporated, according to their long-expressed wish, with the other South Slav nations in the new kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia).

The Slovene language is one of the nine or ten separate and independent languages of that great Slav group to which Russian belongs. It has several points of interest for etymologists: one in particular, that it possesses the rare, vestigial beauty of a dual number in noun and verb. Its poetry is mainly a lyric poetry, direct and tender. No poetry ever seemed more naturally distilled from the national consciousness. It is as though the Slovenes had said to themselves: "We are only a million people, poor and politically dependent ; but by our poetry we are proved a nation! "

"Your German name is disagreeable, but I love your Slovene

heart." So wrote Pregeren, the classical poet of Slovenia, in an epigram to a friend who was called (as far as I remember) Schmid. A contemporary of Byron (whom he read), Pregeren

settled once and for all the question whether the Slovene language should be abandoned in favour of the more widely spoken Serbo- Croat which had just been systematised. He wrote poems too precious to be lost, and he showed others how to write them. His work varies from simple folk-poetry to the most complex expressions of thought. Typical of the simple style is "The

Unmarried Mother." It is worth mentioning that this poem is learnt by heart in all Slovene schools, and has acquired the status of a national song. By such small signs shall the nations

be judged hereafter!

THE UNMARRIED MOTHER What was there need of you, Baby dear, pretty one ? What will your mother do, Young and unmarried too ? What was there need of you ?

My father beat and cursed me ; My mother cried who nursed me ; Friends would see me and turn ; Strangers pointed in scorn.

And he, my love, my one True love, through whom you were born, Goes in shame, God knows where, Somewhere under the sun.

What was there need of you, Baby dear, pretty one ? What was there need of you ? 0, all and all my heart Adores you, need or none.

It is like the lights of heaven Shining, when your eyes shine;

When they smile into mine, All, all I suffered's forgiven.

God keep you happy, who feeds Each small bird under the sky ; I shall love you, need or none, With my whole heart, till I die.

A love celebrated in Slovene history was that of Pregeren for Julija: an unhappy love, because Julija, with all her gentleness and beauty, was obviously a limited soul, timid and inclined to the prevailing pro-German snobbery, with no conception of the mental stature of the man who offered her his love. She ended by marrying a German civil servant. Yet she did enough to earn her immortality ; and four generations of Slovenes have visited the little church at Ternovo in Ljubljana, where Pregeren first saw her—the exact time and place were set down by Pregeren himself in a famous sonnet:

Since angels sang at Bethlehem and forthtold In glad hosannas over land and sea The scattering of man's darkness, thirty and three And twice three times three hundred years had rolled To Holy Week, the Saturday, when I strolled (As one whom Christ's death drew in piety) Ljubljana's churches, and came last to thee, Term:iv°, and the day was ten hours old . . .

Ternovo ! all misfortune in a name !

There, to my misery, at that tenth hour, Struck from two eyes a pure and single flame

When she to the lighted Easter image came. Deep now at heart I feel the fires devour,

Not to be quenched by any summoned power.

Slovene children also learn by heart the complex Petrarchian sonnet-sequence "Necklace of Sonnets," in which love of Julija and love of Slovenia mix and combine into a sort of apologia for Pregeren's own life and poetry. The following sonnet is chosen because it shows, in addition, the relative social status of the German and Slovene languages at the time:

No little wind of kindness ever fanned Those orphan songs which I for you have sung, And that sweet praise on which their bare life hung They never had, nor hoped for, at your hand ; They feared that you, dear, scornful maiden, and Your gifted friends who use the German tongue Might utterly despise them, being sprung From the Parnassus of our fatherland.

Poor, poor Slovene! whose poets all grow old Like spinsters left neglected and forlorn, Whose glories are in foreign verse extolled ; And, like the edelweiss in Alpine cold, The rare flowers of our poetry are born On glacier-tops, shut in by Crag and thorn.

Rudolf Maister (note the Germanised name) was the hero-poet who demanded the surrender of Maribor from the brigadier commanding the German garrison at the close of the last war. He then proceeded to organise a Slovene defence force to hold the northern Slovene frontier against the Germans. He was the first Slovene to hold the military rank of general. He published two volumes of poems, and when he was asked which of his poems he liked best, he said he himself preferred "Summer Night in Dolenjska," which he put at the head of his second published collection.

SUMMER NIGHT IN DOLENJSICA The sun says his last word — To the old men: "Keep your seats a bit longer, keep Your dry throats moistened, your pipes toasting, Then straight to sleep ! I'll be back tomorrow early, roasting."

To the old wives a last word: Begin telling your beads, locking your rooms, shaking Holy water on house and on shed, Then straight to bed ! I'll be back tomorrow early, baking."

And he's off, behind the hill. . . .

The hoarse night-watchman still Makes his round, calls the hours, calls Eleven, then sees the village boys and bawls: 'Hi there ! Waking the girls again ? Tomorrow there'll be trouble brewing ! Hi! home to bed !

I'll be back soon, did you hear what I said ? "

But nothing doing . . . . In the vineyards, under the moon, The white walls of the keeper's hut twinkle and peep ; The keeper's long since asleep. Only the happy grasshopper lies Awake, beats his thighs, Cries: "The sun's hot this year,

Might be three suns, three times three—

There'll be good wine again you'll see!"

Many Slovenes fought with great gallantry in the Austrian armies against Italy in the last war. The scene of some of the bitterest fighting was Mount Krn, in the Julian Alps, where the Italians actually erected a war memorial. But the better memorial was set up by the Slovenes in one of Maister's poems, and in language as spare as that of the immortal epitaph of Simonides.

The moon shines this way Over Mount Krn ; she gropes Forward with pale fingers Into fields, up the slopes: "I have seen the widows, the tears, But the graves of the dead, never yet — Where are their crosses set ? "

Search no more ! Shape of our loss Nor valley nor hilltop bears. Our dead lie buried in us ; Here, here is their living cross.

I have followed the originals faithfully in these translations. Except in the pedantic sense, nothing has been added, nothing taken away ; and the exact verse-form has been preserved in each case.