Maruša Krese Authors Catalogue

Maruša Krese Authors Catalogue Maruša Krese 1 Maruša Krese Authors Catalogue 2 Maruša Krese 3 BIOGRAPHY The poet, writer, journalist, world traveller and humanitarian aid worker Maruša Krese was born in 1947 in Ljubljana. She studied art history, comparative literature and psychotherapy in Slovenia, the USA, Great Britain and the Netherlands. Between 1990 and 2012, she lived and worked in Berlin and Graz as a free-lance journalist and writer. In 2012 she moved to Ljubljana. She wrote several radio plays and radio features, mostly for the German and Austrian nation- al radios. Her articles were published in magazines and newspapers, such as Die Zeit, Berliner Zeitung, NZZ, TAZ, Lettre International, Manuskripte and others. She received several awards, including the Slovenian literary award Fabula for her collection of short stories Vsi moji božici / All My Christmases (2008) and Milena Jesenská Fellowship for Journalists (2008). Her play Der Wind geht gen Mittag und kommt herum zur Mitternacht / The Wind Blows to the Midday and Turns to the Midnight was selected the best radio play of the year (1993). When she lived in Germany and the war was raging in former Yugoslavia, she organized several initiatives to support independent media and peace movements in the region. In 1996, her humanitarian and cultural commitment and the establishment of ties between Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina won her the German Federal Cross of Merit, while in 2007 the female authors of the European project “Women with a Vision” listed her among 100 most influential women in Europe. Maruša Krese 5 Following a grave illness, Maruša Krese passed away on 7 January 2013 in Ljubljana, soon after the publication of her first novel Me? Scared? Her literature is characterized by autobiographical fragments from her daily life, shock and indigna- tion at violence and destruction sparked by the war, high ethical standards and sensitivity, yearning, dis- illusionment and resignation, cosmopolitanism, displacement, and exile. She is an exceptionally direct and fierce portrayer of women’s destiny and reality marked by pain, sacrifice for others, compassion, in- dignation, fury at the ruthless world, ageing and loneliness. Her emotional impulse is clearly expressed in her free verse and her characteristic melodic prose. 6 Maruša Krese 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY POETRY 2009 Heute nicht / Danes ne / Not Today 2003 Yorkshire Tasche / Yorkshire torba / Yorkshire Bag 2001 Selbst das Testament ging verloren / Even the Testament Got Lost 1994 Beseda / Word Sarajevo, ljubavi moja / Sarajevo, My Love 1992 Postaje / Stations 1989 Danes / Today Maruša Krese 9 Heute nicht / Danes ne / Not Today Selbst das Testament ging verloren / Even the Testament Got Lost in Slovenian and German (translated by Fabjan Hafner), Drava, Klagenfurt, Austria 2009 in German (translated by Klaus Detlef Olof), Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna, Austria 2001 The most suggestive motif is a ruined and aban- doned city symbolizing not only great loneliness but To put it mildly, the poems evoke images of the also a shelter for someone who can find more peace monstrous. They are poetic shorthand notes on a in ruins than in beautiful, yet fake cities that know deeply moving life, which even if suffused with no suffering. Walking along “the boundary between pain and despair still gently sparkles with capacity heaven and hell”, the poet remembers painful things for happiness, for which the Slovenian poet had to from her past and ruminates about wandering souls, struggle bravely. In this collection of poems, she says thus expressing her diverse experiences in a unique goodbye to a land that used to be great. Once upon a manner. time in the Balkans … Yorkshire Tasche / Yorkshire torba Beseda / Word / Yorkshire Bag Drava, Klagenfurt, Austria 1994 in Slovenian and German (translated by Brigitte Struzyk), Wieser, Klagenfurt, Austria 2003 The collection is characterized by three topics related to the author’s humanitarian engagement in Whoever has lived for more than several dec- wartime Sarajevo. The poet writes about her expe- ades carries their baggage around with them. The rience of Sarajevo where people are very open and Yorkshire bag is a bag for one’s life journey – it car- their relations genuine. The city gave her new female ries not only one’s favourite items but also a num- friends with whom she shared a special affinity. Their ber of things that surprise the bag’s owner when she friendship is contrasted with the developed and un- rummages through it. Letters, perfumes, stockings, occupied Western world where people are reserved, certificates and dictionaries may bring to the surface do not show their feelings and often say one thing pain or pleasure; and it is only in the Yorkshire bag and mean another. The reflection on this duality that Chinese ointment lies next to hope. gives birth to motifs of loneliness and displacement. 10 Maruša Krese 11 Translations: Danes / Today Pjesme iz Sarajeva / Poems from Sarajevo Drava, Klagenfurt, Austria 1989 in Bosnian (translated by Josip Osti), Zid, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1994 Dealing with existential questions, the poet’s first book of poetry interweaves thoughts on inti- Sarajevo, ljubavi moja / Sarajevo, My Love mate relationships, parenthood, intergenerational re- in Bosnian (enlarged edition of the collection lationships, unprotectedness, fear and ageing, living Poems from Sarajevo, translated by Josip Osti), together, commitment to others, and displacement. Vodnikova domačija, Kulturni vikend djece iz BiH, The main emphasis is placed on the woman who biblioteka ”egzil-abc”, Ljubljana 1994 finds herself in different situations and relations. The collection features incredibly diverse poems, with the use of many rhetorical questions and an- swers bringing to the fore its dialogic nature. Postaje / Stations Translation: Drava, Klagenfurt, Austria 1992 Gestern, Heute, Morgen / Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow in German (translated by Fabjan Hafner), In Maruša Krese’s poems, the station is a multi-fac- Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1992 eted metaphor, a junction where roads leading in and out of town meet, a meeting and exchange place of people belonging to different cultures and traditions. The station can be understood as a point of connection between foreign places from which different people come from. It is also a starting point for departures to places all over the world, and therefore a place for taking decision in which direction one should go. 12 Maruša Krese 13 BIBLIOGRAPHY PROSE 2012 Da me je strah? / Me? Scared?, novel 2009 Vse moje vojne / All My Wars, short stories 2007 Gegenwelten – Rassismus, Kapitalismus & soziale Ausgrenzung / Counterworlds – Racism, Capitalism and Social Exclusion, essays 2006 Vsi moji božiči / All My Christmases, short stories 1998 Von der Bora verweht / Gone with the Bora 1993 Briefe von Frauen über Krieg und Nationalismus / Female Letters on War and Nationalism, letters Maruša Krese 15 Da me je strah? / Me? Scared? as well as the student movement and its ideology. The 20th century turned out to be a century of wars. novel, GOGA, Novo mesto 2012 Bosnia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda, Israel, Palestine … A family story that begins in 1941 in a country “Our century, the bestial century,” claims Maruša Krese sucked in the maelstrom of war and lasts more than who experienced several wars through TV or her half a century. This partly autobiographical narra- friends, and some of them first-hand, being a journalist tive interweaves three anonymous first-person voic- and humanitarian worker linking Bosnia and Germans. es, starting with the voices of a partisan couple and continuing with that of their daughter. This intimate Translation: reflection of the war and postwar years opens the questions that still divide the Slovenian nation (e.g. Alle meine Kriege oder Happiness is a Warm Gun fratricidal slaughter), with the daughter’s narrative (translated by Daniela Kocmut and Katja Lenič), painting a portrait of the generation that experienced Laykam, Graz, Austria student protests, the Vietnam War and the hippie movement. The key role in the novel is given to women who have to fight for their position in society and rights whose exercise is entirely self-evident to men, many times at the expense of their own womanliness. Gegenwelten – Rassismus, Kapitalismus & soziale Ausgrenzung / Counterworlds – Racism, Capitalism and Social Exclusion Vse moje vojne / All My Wars (co-authors: Robert Reithofer, Maruša Krese, Leo Kühberger), short stories, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana 2009 essays, Leykam, Graz, Austria 2007 Maruša Krese was born soon after the end of WWII, An anthology dealing with social inequality, in a time marked by renovation and optimistic belief racism, sexism and poverty from objective and at that war atrocities could not ever happen again. Her the same time extremely personal points of view. youth was full of victorious images of partisans at war. Personal experiences of more than sixty male and fe- Yet as early as in the 1960s, in her student years, the male authors shed light on mechanisms of exclusion Vietnam War left an indelible mark on her lifestyle, and their impact on individual people’s lives. 16 Maruša Krese 17 Vsi moji božiči / All My Christmases Von der Bora verweht / Gone with the Bora in German (translated by Barbara Antkowiak), short stories, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana 2006 Drava, Klagenfurt, Austria 1998 Maruša Krese’s Christmases are neither feast By taking into consideration the accounts of days brimming with posh commodities wrapped in three women from Ljubljana, Belgrade and Sarajevo, glittering paper nor meetings of shiny happy peo- the author reveals how hopes aroused during the ple. When recalling them, the female narrator ques- German occupation are suffocated by political in- tions the role of a woman who organizes a satisfac- trigues and the omnipresent heroic myth. Written tory family celebration, deconstructs the picture of in a literary style, this documentary text focuses on Christmas propagated by the media, travels to war personal experiences and reflections on war.

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