1 2 © Miha Fras 1971 Primo` ^u~nik Primo` ^u~nik is a poet and translator of Polish and American poetry (Miron Białoszewsky; Adam Wiedemann, Marcin Swietlicki, Piotr Sommer; Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery) who makes no attempt to conceal his poetic idols and who has opened his own, authentic space of language at the intersection of foreign languages as a polyphony of voices. His resounding fi rst work Dve zimi/Two winters, was followed by Ritem v rokah/Rhythm in hands, Zlata ptica 2002, Akordi/Chords and Nova okna/New Windows, nominated for Veronika 2005. He wrote the collection of poems Oda na Manhattanski aveniji/Ode to Manhattan Avenue together with poet Gregor Podlogar. His poems have been published in journals in English, French, Macedonian and Polish (Zapach herbaty). ^u~nik’s poetry is like bicycling through city streets. His is the urban environment: movement, rhythm, polyphony and – lightness. The relaxed, apparently unforced speech departs from the conjuring dark modernism of Zajc or Strni{a, and from the modernism of [alamun, and since 1999 has pioneered a new current in Slovene poetry. He is inspired in this by Polish poetry and by the New York poets and brings together various poetic strategies: from experimental to socially committed poetry and to the poem »Akordi« (Chords), which is presented here. There is sometimes a metaphysical theme concealed behind the relaxed surface, but Bach’s fugue is here transposed into a pop song, into jamming. ^u~nik’s poetry can be read as a double palimpsest. His poems are more than vulgar postmodern citations; they are efforts at polyphony of poetry. Polyphony also appears with ^u~nik when »something different« begins to shine through the urban veil. Skating through the city is a light, playful movement, there is joie de vivre. At the same time, skating over the frozen plates of the world, the skater knows that he can at any moment slip. And precisely this contrapunct, this transcendent urban aspect, is one of the most exciting features of his poetry.

3 Primo` ^u~nik

Chords à Reverdy 1.

Pick up castaway skates and glide across frozen pavements.

Point-blank honed, cut into the surface and let the legs with the skates be one.

Skate away quickly, alone, as though it were a race, pay no attention to shouts: “Where is he skating?”

It’s good to skate this way, no bounds under skates everything is allowed.

You’re the lone skater down here, you see neither marks nor shadows the skates cast.

You glide among the city lights, you hold your balance, you don’t fall over backwards.

The skates leave a sharp trace of lines, grooves in the shimmering surface under them.

So, take a dusty old pair and skate away into a skidding substance, there you’ll feel whole.

Skate by yourself and under you, ice will turn to a quickened liquid.

Don’t tell people about your skating. Skate as though you weren’t skating alone.

4 Primo` ^u~nik

2.

Boy, where are you skating, in your anger you have lost your bearings.

There is a universe attracting you and your skates take leave of the ground.

Do dancers dance on their heads here or do they simply fall and are deep in their fast falling.

Tiny dots are planets and the skates every so often slide off the curved surface.

Is this a dance of dancing or has the earth danced for all time and your skating is only a wish.

If you move with such haste, can anyone ever stop you, see you take off your skates.

You are a fine skater, your skating the flight of a comet’s shards through the cosmos.

Did you ever see a shooting star, catch sight of lightning, suddenly, hear big banging.

Did your inner human voice burst or close-lipped voice for the first time.

Ah, you tremble (gliding into the void), the skates groan: regret nothing.

5 Primo` ^u~nik

3.

Will you always skate alone. Will your skating pay off.

Skater, the music blusters out of silence stronger, your heart keeps balance with the skates.

The giant shapes of cities want you melancholy, but you can’t stop to catch the open talk.

And you skate alone (as if someone was skating beside you), in a crowd of skaters (and yet you skate alone).

How you change, you know what’s under the sky, how skilled your skates are!

Even the first skater wants to show you how to be the fastest skater in the rink of the universe!

That you are not the only one, that there are those more competitive, but not everyone can be in the wonderful thicket of the void.

Are you following the sky, follow it, follow it, there’s always something momentous there.

Just don’t tell people about your skating. They wouldn’t believe you kept your balance on your own.

Stop always saying what makes you happy. You’re not the only one with jagged skates.

Skate as if you were skating on your own. Skate as if you were skating alone.

Translated by Ana Jelnikar and W. Martin 6 © Gabriela Babnik 1977 J u r e J a k o b Jure Jakob is a post-graduate student of comparative literature in Ljubljana. His fi rst work Tri postaje/Three Stations, received the Zlata ptica Award. His poems have been translated into English, Slovakian, Serbian and into Hungarian, and he was included in the internet Hungarian anthology Spanyolnátha, young Slovene poetry. He has been invited to the International festival Days of Poetry and Wine (Slovenia), and to International literary meeting Vilenica (Slovenia). Jure Jakob was already included in the Anthology of Slovene Poetry 1992-2003 with his fi rst collection of verse. Two voices alternate in his poetry: the fi rst, which fl irts with the tradition of dark Slovene poetic modernism (Dane Zajc, Gregor Strni{a), has an archaic tune. It is no coincidence that this voice is in a sense rough hewn and that it corresponds to - and fi nds its highest expression in - the matching form of Bildgedichte. The root of the poet’s dark modernist language is embraced on the level of motif by the poet’s home – by exotic Pohorje, a rural forested region in the northeast of Slovenia. Jakob’s second voice is lighter and airier: bound to the experience of urban life. Although he observes this urban nature from the shelter of a closed room, it is enough to begin to loosen the darkness of the fi rst voice. This, though, does not imply farewell to Slavic melancholic meditativeness, but the urban aspect gives Jakob’s speech dynamic movement. There is thus a kind of electric tension between Jakob’s fi rst and second poetic voices, between home and non-home. Precisely for this reason, Jure Jakob is a name that will further illuminate Slovene poetry.

7 Jure Jakob

Flowers of 1st November It is usually foggy; when I wake up, I think of the flowers from the dreams, it is that time now. The scent of expensive wreaths coming from the garage, we eat bread and drink strong black coffee for breakfast. Do not go to see the neighbour, it is not appropriate today. Then I go out. A thick vein of living people stretches through the cemetery paths. In the trees up there crows are watching. The meadow is yellow with hidden flowers. The afternoon is waiting. Inside, among the walls, there are black rocks, and underneath bones are stored. The priest is always late. The altar boys feel cold in their hands. I watch their white foreheads and listen to the relatives whisper. Death is just beneath the surface. Then we go back home, we eat meat and horse radish, on our cheeks flowers are withering. Behind the door somebody sees Dane Zajc, playing like a child with the black and white keys of the accordion. There is no sound but the firewood cracking, in the range, like flowers burning. We do not speak much, grandmother is watching us in the corner, sometimes the yellow flowers of fear burst from our mouths, but we hang on. Cold is breaking out on the other side of the walls. It is already dark there, dogs’ barking runs across the street, public lights blossom dimly. Death is spread among us all, the sky is inclining slightly. Instead of the moon a large yellow flower rises above the night; in my sleep I keep fighting.

8 Jure Jakob

Silence in a dim summer night The moon is light. Dogs are barking. Souls have a cold even if it is mid summer.

The night has lain down quickly and completely naked, like a woman who opens the door and steps towards the bed with a pale dim body.

Somewhere from behind I can hear the train moving, probably though Vi~, like a skater, wrapped in a fur coat.

The fallings are inaudible.

I sit on a chair, I feel my breathing, in the corners spiders have spread their webs like white tablecloths on the Sunday table. The glasses have not been emptied, the wine is drying out.

I do not know which direction to face. I do not know if I can reach myself. The night is such, I do not think of emergency exits, the telephone is turned off. To sit down, watch, bear the time, devoted and dependant, that is how blood travels through the body.

Of course I can hear steps approaching. The day is breaking, the town is awaking, on the market in the morning they will be selling fresh solutions.

I am accustomed and silent.

9 Jure Jakob

An Ox from Pohorje Seeing an ox. They are becoming rare. Like a slave-power, lost in our gnarled hills. At holidays he comes into the valley. He drags a load behind, riddled by the cold winter winds, shouting raucously among the battalions of uniform dark pine trees. His round mountain eyes have been pricked by the dark green needles. When the farmer kicks him in his paunch, he is insensitive at first. After a while you can see a yellow lustre creeping into his brushy eyelashes. The children see him as an ox. If they dared, they would climb his back, broad as Pohorje. He would not feel them because he is used to the weight. He breathes like a steady infinite wind. In the bag of his body he carries complex bloody relations. From the mouth an always new saliva is seeping, which nobody wipes away. He is getting old from one inn to another and back winding up the hill and then down again effortless. There are no marks on him, except for the marks of the whip and dried crusts of mud. He doesn’t change. In any moment he could swing his wardrobe bulk into the wrong direction on the highway and remain the same. Very much like a ghost. He doesn’t have relatives, doesn’t have a female, like any other ox. He has the yoke and the burden, which can never be seen, and a path in front of him. He is meant to take one step after another. He is not afraid of anything. He is not mute, he has a motionless speech. If you step before him and block his way, something will grind in hidden sounds from his jaw. He’ll wait for the blow of order that will pull him into a tottering movement. If necessary, he’ll simply tread you down. Something is certain: he takes it very seriously when he has to persist. Only when he smells the snow, blind curtains of cold and slippery ground, he looks fixedly white, as if blood in his body was struggling with distant voices. Maybe the ice is as hard as a fist on Pohorje again and death will come with force like a burglar. But he doesn’t know whose death. When the world has whitened to invisibility, the ox’s contracted sinews will still drag it. But he doesn’t know where to.

Translated by Teja Pribac 10 © Tihomir Pinter 1967 Peter Semoli~ Peter Semoli~ constantly sets his own everyday life into his poetry, which often reads like a diary, although because of the intonation of his poetic voice it remains surprisingly soft and lyrical. He has been publishing collections of poetry since 1991 (Tamari{a/Tamarisha, Bizantinske ro`e/Byzantine Flowers, Hi{a iz besed/House of Words, Krogi na vodi/Circles in Water, Vpra{anja o poti/Questions about the Path, Meja/ Boundary, Barjanski ognji/Marsh Fires), and his poems have been included in various selections and anthologies of poetry. He has received the Jenko Award, the International Crystal of Vilenica and Pre{eren Fund Prize. The book of poems Marsh Fires has been nominated for the 2005 Veronika Award. His poems have been translated into German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Finnish and Polish (Wiersze wybrane), Hungarian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Unpretentiousness, simplicity and a striving for natural poetic language are the elements by which Semoli~, without great noise, but decisively, became one of the central Slovene poetic voices of the nineties, infl uencing authors born in the 70s. He avoids metaphor in his poetry and from the very start has tended towards disclosure of the everyday, with the intimate tones of diary notes. This basic intonation oscillates between melancholy and existentialism. Semoli~’s other asset is the distribution of the material within poems and the relation he sets between individual poems and an entire collection. His poetry is enduring, it clings to the reader like moisture. The collection Barjanski ognji/Marsh Fires is based on the principle of repetition. Articulating and re-articulating, settling and resettling in the former childhood home – all this refl ects an attempt to make the collection of poems ensnare home like a net. But the poems cannot capture home: the poetry transforms into a kind of womb-swamp (Marsh!), which inexorably drains and suffocates the speaking voice of the poems. The clear discordance between the lightness of the poetic language and the existential feeling fi nally deconstructs the desire for home, for solidity, for anchorage. Home is elsewhere, the poet’s home is un-homely. 11 Peter Semoli~

Morost, in Spring Fog’s milk spills over the marshes of Morost. The dark back of Mt. Krim. Above it, like an Aristotelean cloud, the moon, with the blue shining through it. Morning. We rinse our sleep-stuck eyes, we shiver in the spring chill, not yet fully awake. Pieces of dreams, drifting toward wakefulness, merge with tufts of mist. A moment in which we can’t be sure whether we are truly alive. Who is that lying next to me? Person or spirit? My sleeping bag is wet with dew. The firewood is damp. To start a fire, take a sharp flame and cut an opening to the sky, to see the everyday world. Shock! a blade of grass, just become visible, suddenly grows and bursts into clumps of grass, around me, wherever I look: grass grass grass. Somebody’s already made a fire. I hear the sad moaning of the logs. Someone has ordered the fog to disperse. High above me, high above Morost: azure sky. Somewhere inside, my joints resolve and aching muscles tighten: we must get up. Take on the world as our own. Get moving.

12 Peter Semoli~

Lines A whole day’s ramble in town, socializing with the pigeons. Up in the blue sky two contrails unlace. In the emptiness of the computer screen a multi-coloured blossom spins – blossom of miracles. I am still writing by hand, into an old notebook whose calendar takes me back to the last century. One day – I hope not too soon – somebody will tell me that I am a man of the last century, a poet of the past. A slight tremble: the airplanes’ trails have completely vanished. From Primorska the bora has come and shakes the old apple tree. The blossoming is almost over, the fruit won’t come for a while yet. What are the pigeons doing? Are they going to bed? I cross out a badly written line and write a new one: the dark silhouette of Mt. Krim was my horizon for years and years. Now a cloud swims above it, scarlet from the setting sun. The evening light falls through the window, it falls on these lines and softens them.

Lavrica, 3 May, 2000

13 Peter Semoli~

Writing It Down When you wait for your bus, all the others come first, some more than once, before yours, always the last. It isn’t true that it’s always like this, but it’s often enough that your skepticism fades and before you know it, you’re studying the ecliptics of the sun, the moon and planets; you cast the cards; you’re trying to trace, in the dim light of a streetlamp, the uncountable hair-thin lines branching out from your lifeline.

I tremble – it isn’t true that in the years I wasn’t writing poems I wasn’t making poetry. I composed them in my head, some in prose, some in meter, verses, each one shorter, each more stripped, opaque, ever darker, ever closer to the spells of black magic. I forgot most of them right away, or within a few days, but some got nailed into my brain, pressing harder and harder on my thoughts, directing my actions. Nothing special – just the way I lace my shoes, yawn, how I should scratch my forehead, turn my palm when shaking hands, how I should cross my legs. Nothing special. But in each gesture, I saw again a stranger, a savage, a clumsy shaman who had cast a spell upon himself.

One day I muster the last ounce of my strength. I write with the tip of my shoe, in the snow, white as paper, my name. Drive out the demon of superstition.

Translated by Ana Jelnikar 14 © Tihomir Pinter 1970 Taja Kramberger The vitality of the poetry of Taja Kramberger puts it at the very peak of poetry production in Slovenia. Her life combines poetry, translating poetry and scientifi c work in the fi eld of historical anthropology. She has published fi ve poetry collections: Marcipan/Marzipan, Spregovori morje/The Sea Speaks, Gegenströmung/Protitok (in German), @ametni indigo/Velvet Indigo in Mobilizacije/Mobilisations (in Slovene, English, French and Italian). Taja Kramberger has taken part in the international poetry translation workshops Linguaggi di-versi/Different Languages/Langages di-vers and International Poetry Translation Workshop »Golden Boat« Lipica, Slovenia. Taja Kramberger’s poetic voice is loud and strong. It pierces the unrefl ected space of society and the individual’s subconscious, thus renewing its fl uidity. This voice was already observable in the poetess’s fi rst work, although it differs radically from her later collections. Kramberger’s poetry sets a high standard: she believes the act of writing is an intellectual act. It is simultaneously a socially committed act since, regardless of whether it affi rms or criticises, it is inevitably impressed on the social space. The social space can thus become stuffy because of this act – or fl uid and vital. In order for poetry to be more than a mere shell of empty words, it must set at its heart the act of self-refl ection. The latter is fi rst and foremost a dialogue with one’s own »otherness«; only then is it possible to have a dialogue with another as the intimate other, or with the public as the public other. Kramberger’s poetry constantly reveals the difference between »I« and »other«, constantly delineates the centre and the fringe in order to create a space of freedom between the two extremes, in order to actuate something vital there: the succulent fl esh of a peach. However, as one can read in Poem for Slavica, Giving It My Best, there is a living bond between diamond sharpness and the human softness of her speech.

15 Taja Kramberger

Optants and Metropolises of Ignorance III.

Of course it is not true. Except that, having spent my entire childhood by the sea, and among the rabbits in a stack of hay (as you did), I am lost for words. I don’t meet anybody. True, I haven’t met anybody here in a very long time now.

Borders aren’t elastic bands: and the centre is determined neither by its proximity or distance from an arbitrary point of a given period – the centre is! And it isn’t arbitrary. It is the only point from which words can push off, words not many write, but you do, Miha.

Borders, they say, exist, because two bodies can never be in the same place at the same time. But two bodies never are in the same place, that’s an illusion, a momentary make-belief, a doctrinal income, on account of which people no longer have any breathing room or room for love.

The fact that bodies of different consistencies, different sizes and different orientations can glide one after another, cancels the rigidity of any border. A border, even if it burns to the bone, can only sketch the outline of the ephemeral flicker of a flame shooting up and dying. But the memory seared into that flame will go on burning.

16 Taja Kramberger

IV.

And to be both centre and periphery, but not at once, and no less both, the pit and the hull of an unknown fruit, with flesh to put in between – content, touch, word, the taste of which is unique and stays in people’s memory long after they have cast away the pit and forgotten the colour of the hull.

No, ignorance does not emerge from a border, and neither does it grow from the centre, ignorance is the answer of weak links to the question of delimitation.

17 Taja Kramberger

A Poem for Slavica, giving it my Best The best poems are still to come. I feel it in my bones, in those same bones that five years ago wanted to fold into a shrine and sleep from exhaustion. Sleep on and on in no one’s memory.

The best poems are still to come, they collect like white blood cells round a cut, like puppies round the nipples, they seethe like new wine, they smell as babies smell of milk, of mother, of life, o, water, o earth, o, those who are thirsty« They return to the sea like old saliors.

The skyline is high today, says Jana, it’s as though I was watching it from the bottom of the well, but the air is clotting slowly, and I am glad we have that landing that isn’t slippery, those young doves to flap their wings. We have two small @ivas, born in the same year, to babble, dribble, and smack their little mouths over breakfast, and Vid, touching the floor with his head, gaving infinite fun.

You won’t find the sentence wunderbare melodische Gedichte if your book was turned down. People walk around like loaded cartridges with a broken lid and a rusty ability to judge, but there is someone whose eyes glitter, and who, as taut as a string, sent vibes through a place you once knew but had forgotten.

The bastard epistemology in the glocal: horrendous lead pellets and their flatulent promotion. Rewind! Reset! All the things you have to swallow before you set eyes on a patch of fertile land. An eyelid, weighted heavily with the tears of those who were silenced but didn’t bend under the burden.

There is no one who would dedicate such a beautiful poem to me, Slavica said. There is. The best poems are still to come.

Translated by Ana Jelnikar 18 © Tihomir Pinter 1951 Iztok Osojnik Iztok Osojnik has published eighteen books of poetry so far (including Klesani kamni/Hewn Stones, Razglednice za Darjo/Postcards for Darja, Neko~ je bila Amerika/There Was Once America, Iz novega sveta/From the New World, Gospod Danes/Mister Today), excellent essays on poetry and four novels. From 1998 to 2004 he was director of the Vilenica international poetry festival. He has received both the Slovene awards for poetry (Jenko Award, Veronika Award) and the @upan~i~ Award. He also won the Italian Friuli Poetry (2002) and Croatian Hanibal Luci~ (2004) awards. His poetry has mainly been translated into English (Shepherd of Silence, And Some Things Happen for the First Time: selected poems; Mister Today). From the fi rst collections onwards, the poetry of Iztok Osojnik has followed in the footsteps of Heidegger’s thought, and the ontological aspect is closely connected contextually with surrealist aspects and grotesque twists. From the nineties onwards, these three elements have been inextricably linked et le voilà: Gospod Danes (Mr Today), an ontological poem of dense green colours and fragments. »Mr Today, my invention.« says Osojnik. His poems are close to Herbert’s Mister Cogito and Hughes’ Crow and are dotted with semi-citations from the canon of modern poetry. Citations activate the reader’s awareness, the »I« becomes aware of its merely constructed nature and the reader laughs in the act of deliverance. Osojnik’s »invention«, something simultaneously funny and existentially important, is thus linked to laughter. But Osojnik says also: »Animals soar in the sky./But the sky is below,/fi rmly touching the ground, keeping the horizon agape.« The invention is therefore the fall to the ground, but this fall is essentially fl ight into the open sky. Osojnik’s poems open it by means of Bachtinian grotesque. Since insofar as the lyrical subject becomes an animal, a bird, a crow – even though only a chicken, it becomes that “Today”. “Today, my invention” is thus the moment of leap into the green fi eld of the pre-constructed. “Mr Today”, is the ontological core of speech, and Osojnik’s poetry constantly salutes this. 19 Iztok Osojnik

A Historic Walk Well, I’m going to write one anyway, said Mister Today. Even if no one will bother to read it. I am going to watch the clouds. A straw between my teeth and the buzzing of flies around my ears. Some wind behind my shirt collar as I ride through the forest of maize. An electronic halo of afternoon and the Champs Elysees. A line of people, winding around sycamore trees, being devoured by the entrance of the house where Paul Gaugin’s paintings are on display. A TV gallery. Each painting trembles on its own TV screen (the originals are kept safely in the treasury of the National Bank). If you trace your finger across the screen, the image of the orange female body turns into green convolutions of a ficus. Interactive ara pacis from the virtual Haiti. Mister Today, however, manages to keep his head. The world is seven times bigger than everything one could possibly grasp, and Mister Today knows his human nature, so he transforms all the TV images of women into ficus convolutions, until the gallery is tied ninety times over into a Gordian knot of a greening Paul Gaugin. Then he walks into a bank and cashes a check.

20 Iztok Osojnik

Son Meeting his Father Mister Today watches his son in a cradle. Out of the river of time, he is looking at a moment of life, a dot of the universe sleeping, its shut eyes fluttering. Along the loop of the universe runs a river of gentleness.

Black water has eaten away his legs and lungs, his consciousness has sunk into his gullet. His little son is grinning happily in his dreams and between the two worlds incomprehensible chasms gape, the river of gentleness runs through them, a form of a little animal’s breathing.

He is embraced by black milk, the words have tired, like ravens they fly across a plowed field with rings of fog and October on their wings, the little son, asleep in his cradle, sunk to the bottom of the universe, in his dreams, watching his father, whose father is dying, his granddad, it’s all terribly confusing, and Mister Today closes the book silently, and his son is asleep and the river runs neither forwards nor backwards and it licks his animal feet and his little son is asleep.

21 Iztok Osojnik

A Long One An intrigue is what slams the earthly door in a man’s face. Huntsmen arrange themselves to the left and to the right.

Animals soar into the sky. But the sky is below, firmly touching the ground, keeping the horizon agape.

Mister Today takes a deep breath and it dawns on him: Poetic is that which emerges out of nothingness. A train appearing out of mist into a clear day. He is overwhelmed by wonder and chuckles. He who writes is used to the softness of grass and the hardness of earth.

The city is cleft into private suburbs and a public centre. Animals gather round the poem, people around the monument. In the suburbs man and animal are bound by earth and their mouths eat out of the blue sky. In the centre shackled animals break loose And tear a man’s heart, whose hands are bloodied, into shreds.

Man opens the earthly gate of nothingness. The city swallows him up, but that for which words exist digs out a den in his heart, the animal crawls out of its mortality and is stamped by man’s vomit and excrement, at night dawn shines forth and the day is asleep.

Man walks around, waited on, in each street, by a different animal, a master from the city watches over their movement and transformations, the animals are heading for a faraway place, in the centre, traffic lights keep going on and off, but the animals have flooded the streets and squares, and Mister Today chuckles, pondering that he has no special knowledge of these things, in autumn, rains wash away with all this and there is day and night again like yesterday.

Translated by Ana Jelnikar 22 © Nada @gank/Memento 1963 Suzana Tratnik Suzana Tratnik is a writer with a masters degree in the anthropology of gender, an essayist, translator, lesbian activist and co-editor of L, Antologija lezbi~nega gibanja v Sloveniji/ Anthology of the Lesbian Movement in Slovenia (1984-1985). She is the author of two collections of short prose (Pod ni~lo/ Below Zero, Na svojem dvori{~u/In One’s Own Yard), and has also written an excellent novel Ime mi je Damjan/My Name is Damjan. Here she deals with the problem of the relation between society and an unadjusted individual, who changes sex and, at the same time, constantly shifts the boundary of the reader’s grasp of the literary hero. Suzana Tratnik’s prose has been published in literary reviews and magazines in Serbia, Poland, Austria and USA, and her short stories have been included in anthologies of European and world lesbian prose (Sappho küsst Europa, 1997; The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction, 1999). Tratnik is interested in her prose in the structure of the relation »I« - »other«, which is also normally given through the lens of »centre« - »margin«, »norm« (self-evident) – »deviation from the norm«. Because her prose is marked by the experience of homosexuality, it also reveals the difference between the heterosexual »centre« and the homosexual »margin«. Of course, all these relations depend on the viewer, so there are problematic relations between the poles only in the collision of different points of view, when unwillingness to enter into dialogue violently imposes a hierarchy on them. When the centre presses »the other« to the margin, it not only causes imbalance with the »other« but also with the self. Although at fi rst sight Tratnik’s stories read as the unpretentious telling of mere – though fascinating - fables, it must be born in mind that the short stories are distributed in a kind of net. Precisely this creates the narrative surplus! This theoretical structural framework is vivifi ed by a woman (girl, teenager, woman) from the extreme northeast of Slovenia who, with humour, rebellion or silence, rejects attempts by which the “normal” point of view tries to undermine her equilibrium. What is a struggle for inner balance, in socially unfavourable circumstances is forced into (lesbian) activism. In the story Zemljepisne razdalje/Geographic Positions, beneath the surface of an international conference on the rights of gays and lesbians, a completely human dialogue occurs, irrespective of the geographic distance of the points from which three women observe a map of the world. 23 Suzana Tratnik

Geographical Positions Studying maps has always been a very dear and mysterious activity for me. The first secret is that one does not look at a map, yet reads it. At the international conference for lesbian and gay rights, I shared a room with Krisa from Fiji. Never before had I even thought about what people from that island, which is its own country, looked like. Krisa was thin, had somewhat darker skin and slightly slanted eyes. When I asked her the meaning of the drawings, apart from the sea motifs tattooed on her upper arm and forearm, she said they were Chinese characters. Her father was Chinese, her mother, Fijian. “If you think that the inhabitants of my island look like me, you are very mistaken,” she explained to me. “They all have darker skin, more pronounced features and their eyes are straight, almost like you Europeans.” Reading, of course, is something you learn at school. Then you read a map and have to make out north and south, east and west. Why north should be up isn’t entirely obvious and it is in fact only »up» on the map. In reality, outer space, up and down don’t matter. But this is still ok. We know where south is, it’s down after all and we all say that everyone “looks down” on southerners. According to this, we could “look up” to people from the north, but I’m not sure if it works this way or not. Ok, east and west – right and left. Right is east, that’s where Russians and communism are; left is west, where Americans and other capitalists are. You can try to remember it all like this: On the right are communists, who are politically left-winged, on the left are capitalists, who are politically right-winged. This is more complicated, but I think it’s easier to remember. Of course, this also depends on your current political situation. Nowadays left and right aren’t what they used to be. It used to be much easier to read maps, when we weren’t in transition. Just the fact that time has something to do with all this is enough – on some points on a map, it can be an hour later or earlier than somewhere else – especially if you’re looking at it all from some sort of transition. Before using logic, one has to learn a bunch of facts which don’t seem to go together. It just doesn’t seem logical that east is east, so one need something else to remember its position. For example, that east is on the right side or that it is communist or retarded or that it reeks of garlic (even Dracula, who was always chased away with garlic, comes from the east). It seems to you that you’ve been cheating while learning all these positions. I am sometimes worried about what my (geographical) logic is based on. I’m afraid that it’s still based on cheating. If I hear that a certain place is in the east, of course I know where east is, but at the same time, I think to myself that I have to read the right side of the map. To the right of Europe. Two days later when Krisa and I were embracing each other in bed, we first had to come to an agreement about geographical positions. She did not know where Slovenia was and asked me if English was our only official language. I told her that we spoke Slovene, but there really wasn’t much point to that because she could only understand Slovenia as being a part of Europe – this was probably her way of cheating when learning about places outside of Oceania. Though, I wasn’t much better; I wasn’t 24 Suzana Tratnik

able to place Fiji on that map in my head. I kept getting lost, I wasn’t able to place it on the left nor the right. When I was back at home, I finally looked at a map of the world; I usually looked for Oceania on the right side. And so I began my search for Krisa’s island. I looked to the extreme right and found Fiji. Then I looked to the extreme left and found Fiji there too! Krisa had had more than enough of her island of Fiji. She wanted to go to America, to New York, San Francisco, anywhere. She knew very little about Europe, she said that this continent seemed too foreign. My explanations about Europe being called the Old World as opposed to America being called the New World were a waste of time. It seemed to her that she had once heard something about this, but my explanations were too abstract for her, perhaps even unreal. Krisa wanted to study in America. At home she worked for a non-governmental organization for sexual minorities, which in the eyes of the locals was not worthy of respect. My Fijian roommate had many problems with respect in general. Now that she had finally got a job and moved into an apartment with her three children, everyone found out that she is a negligent lesbian, even though she herself categorized herself as bisexual. Before that she had been without her kids for some months because she’d left home. She left home because her brother had beaten her unconscious. He beat her up because she had told him that a taxi driver had raped her. The taxi driver had raped her because her friend had gotten out of the taxi before her and Krisa had been left alone with the driver. They had taken a taxi because they’d been going home very late at night, or morning rather, at six when it was still dark and too dangerous to go on foot. They had been so late because Krisa had been working as a DJ in a club, her friend as a waitress. So, to the right and to the left of Europe – Fiji twice – at least to me. To Krisa there was no Slovenia and Fiji was probably only once. Surely, she doesn’t read maps on the »left and right sides» of Europe. Europe is the centre of the map to me, the point I don’t search left or right for, nor up or down. This centered view of Europe pushes other territories to the extreme edges of paper maps. What about a round globe on which all are the same? Reading a globe isn’t as pleasant to an eye that isn’t used to it. Its centre is somewhere else – there somewhere in hot lava, but no less geo/egocentric. One evening after a busy day at the conference, three of us got together in the room and were drinking wine. Krisa combed her long hair in front of the mirror, Esthera from Latvia and I had wrapped ourselves in cigarette smoke. »Then I remembered that it had begun even earlier,» Krisa suddenly said in the bathroom. Esthera and I looked at each other and waited for Krisa to go on. After the rape and her brother’s beatings, she left home and left her kids with her mother. She was not longer able to work as a DJ, she rented a room and began to earn money as a prostitute. »It’s far from the best profession in the world,» she said as she came out of the bathroom with combed shiny blue hair, »Yet I found it very informative.» She laughed sharply and the two of us joined her with careful smiles. We 25 Suzana Tratnik

had noticed that she often laughed at inappropriate times. She sat down with us, drank some wine and then continued. Most of the time, I probably still imagine the world in a primitive way, flat. My favourite cartographic projection. Whenever I fly from one town to another, I never think about how much of the earth’s curved surface is below us. Distances on a flat map seem somewhat friendlier to me, shorter, easier to conquer. While prostituting she realized that there had been others before the taxi driver. She had been raped by her older brother, the one who beat her up for getting raped. And before that by her uncle, who would never let her leave the table until she had eaten everything up. When her clients paid her for sex, she finally remembered why she had such unpleasant memories of that part of her childhood, she had spent at her uncle’s while her parents had been in China. Perhaps she had forgotten about it because she had known that she wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone. Rather, no one would have believed her. There are, of course, measurements for geographical coordinates. They are usually found in the lower right-hand corner of most maps. »But sometimes it’s possible,» the Latvian said pensively. Krisa and I looked at her in surprise. »Sometimes it’s possible,» she continued, »for an adult to love a child. I mean: like a sexual object.» »But that’s abuse,» Krisa and I said in unison. »It is always abuse, everywhere. A child isn’t responsible for himself, an adult is. A child doesn’t have all the information, an adult knows what he or she is doing.» »I know,» said the Latvian quietly. »But still. A child can also love an adult. You love and desire without information and responsibility. I’m only saying that it’s possible.» A shadow of disappointment and rage covered Krisa’s face as she drank up what was in her glass. »Perhaps it’s possible,» she said with a blunt look centered at the hotel wallpaper above Esthera’s head,» but that is deception. Manipulation.» »But love between two adults is never deceitful?» Esthera asked. I shrugged, »I think that’s too general a view.» »In any case, I don’t know anything about love between adults and children,» said Krisa as she laughed sharply. This time her laughter had cut the conversation. And all three of us silently tried to regain our balance on the slippery terrain on which we had found ourselves. Without numbers that express ratios, one to so much and so many thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, we’d find it hard to believe that we actually read anything on a map. Then Krisa thought that we could still go for some champagne, it was after all our last evening together. We quickly got dressed and left the window open. In the hotel lobby I looked at a local map. We were all at the same point: at 26 degrees south and 29 degrees east.

Translated by Elizabeta @argi and Kelly Lenox Allan 26 © Jo`e Suhadolnik 1974 Polona Glavan In the novel No~ v Evropi/Night in Europe (nominated for Kresnik Award) Polona Glavan focused on the story of young men and girls travelling by inter-rail through various European cities, cementing these stories into a kind of fragmentary whole. She received the Zlata ptica Award for the collection of short prose Gverilci/Guerillas. Her stories have been translated into Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak, German, English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Hungarian, and they have been included in the anthology O ~em govorimo: slovenska kratka proza 1990-2004/Of what we speak: Slovene short stories 1990-2004. Glavan translates from English into Slovene, she was also co-editor of an anthology of contemporary British prose.

Marginal characters appear in the short stories of Polona Glavan (a woman trying to get over the death of a child; a boy whose mother physically mistreats him; a derelict father, a down-and-out visiting his hairdresser daughter, three unemployed fi shermen who fi nd their raison d’être in directing traffi c on an unpaved road...). It thus appears that anyone can be a marginal person, since everyone is sooner or later pushed to the limits of themselves, in the loneliness of what they dare not express about themselves. At these limits, only a guerrilla, and thus hopeless, military strategy remains; a human being is left fi ghting without means – since hopeless fi ghting is better than nothing. Despite the melancholy story pattern, here and there shines the gold thread of a basic empathy with »guerrillas«. This gold thread is not so much a thing of narrative means but more a matter of delicate organisation of the storyline. If Vinko as an invention is »only« the fi nal strategy in a war with loneliness, then the banality of dispelling loneliness is »only« a mask for the never expressed pain of loss of a child. The empathy in Guerrillas is something that Glavan puts into the non-expressed so decisively that it fi nally explodes. Guerrilla squared?

27 Polona Glavan

VINKO (excerpt) The days went by. A late autumn came. My man had a lot of work, he stayed in the office later and later. One rainy afternoon I sat on the balcony watching people go by. Backs, long lines of backs. I needed company. The only people I knew in the town were those my man had told me about. Colleagues from work. The man servicing photocopying machines. The manager. The receptionist. I decided not to like any of them. I made up a visitor, a quiet and discreet yet helpful sort. Somebody not disturbing me with my errands but always willing to talk. I pictured him part by part. A wise, experienced face. Greying temples. Simple but smart shirt, black shoes always in fashion. I placed him by the door, beside the umbrella stand. I didn’t think it wise to invite somebody I had just met to the kitchen. I called him Vinko. I had to give it some thought before coming up with it. I found it familiar and not too outstanding, a name I could quickly get used to. Personally I knew no Vinko so I didn’t have to fear I’d confuse him with anyone. I had to repeat the name twice; upon second attempt the visitor shrugged and opened his arms, which I took as confirmation. At first I had to remind myself I was not alone. When my man left for work I got up and walked to the bathroom in my knickers. Then I got aware of the situation and quickly covered myself with a towel hoping that Vinko hadn’t noticed a thing. There was nothing sexual in our relationship. I didn’t want to raise false hopes, to risk being taken for a nymphomaniac or adulteress. My man and I often made love, quietly and sometimes loudly, and then I thought the walls vibrated and the roof tiles dropped from the neighbours’ breathing. My man would spread his arms and throw his head back and I knew he’d forgotten about everything, his job and soaked soles of shoes and death which is not like rain. Vinko had nothing to do with such things. He simply existed, for the moments when the flat was swamped with silence, open and vulnerable like a snail shell. Gradually we got to do things together. Vinko was sitting in the lobby and murmuring to himself while I chopped onions. I set myself a challenge to use all stocks from the fridge in three days. So I made barbecued pickles, fried bean balls, beetroot sauce. Some dishes I threw away before they were even finished, but I was still pleased to see things disappear. Every now and then I’d ask for his opinion. Should I add some cumin, Vinko, I said, or, Do you think potatoes can stew in their own juice? When the lunch was finished I sat down in front of the telly. I thought I deserved it. Vinko made me enthusiastic about afternoon replays of basketball matches. He’d come from the lobby and sit down on the chair beside the sofa. He pointed out the details, the technique of individual players, the coaching methods. My man knew a lot about basketball and I was glad I could discuss it with him as an equal. One day when I served him lunch I had a slip of the tongue. Have we done it well, I said. My man gave me a funny look. Who’s we, he asked. I said, me and the cooker. I felt a hot flush. My man kept watching me. You’re not pregnant, are you, he asked, and I said, Oh, come on. Then we kept silent for a long time. Darkness was howling past the window and the flat felt empty, empty. I never thought of asking Vinko what to do in the town, where the best panoramic spot was and if there were any museums. It never occurred 28 Polona Glavan

to me, although Vinnie could tell me. He was a native. Soon he was like a part of the family. First I found him by the table, then in more unusual places. He’d sit on the top of the bookshelf swinging his legs, or he’d lie down in the bathtub. Once I saw him dangling from the chandelier in the living room. But I didn’t mind it much, Vinko was just human like me, and like me he wanted to see how it felt to have an unlimited quantity of time. He listened to me talking about my life in the other town. I was putting the laundry in the washing machine, explaining the distance between the trees planted under the balcony. There was something about it, a meaning, although I couldn’t quite define it. Vinko sat at the edge of the bathtub, nodding. He always knew what to do. One morning he had a tie round his neck, the one that my man had left behind in the morning. It was blue with white dots, it went with the suit my man wore to meetings. This surprised me. Vinko was loyal, he never took things that weren’t his own. Although he could move freely around the flat he understood he was still a guest. It was snowing outside, tiny white flakes were falling on the muddy ground and disappearing in it. It snowed to no real effect. It was almost half a year since my man and I had moved here. Nothing had changed. Nothing had come to be. Nothing had really disappeared. My time was the same, unlimited. I used it to make things I later destroyed. Wherever you looked, however you turned it, nothing was different. I looked at Vinko. He nodded. Then he took off his tie and handed it to me.

I don’t know what was the first thing I heard. Somewhere above my head my man was talking in a hasty, raised voice about a tube. A radiator tube. It snapped, and the whole kitchen was covered in water squirting from the radiator. I had hit myself in the head. This was what probably saved me. Conditionally speaking; if my man hadn’t come home soon I’d have died of suffocation. Brain haemorrhage. Hypothermia. Or some other related phenomenon. Then I heard many more things. That we had acted too hasty in having moved, having made a change, having thought we’d left it all behind. Mourning takes its time, this much is generally known, and any improvement in the first few years is but temporary. Especially when the death of a child is involved. It’s no laughing matter, they repeated, it’s no laughing matter. As if one of us ever laughed. I stayed in the hospital for five days. My man used the time to clear out the flat, using new boxes instead of those I’d stored under the bed. He wouldn’t touch those. If he came across one of them by accident, he knocked on wood, once with each hand, I imagine. I never asked him if he ever had a feeling that he was not alone, if he thought there was somebody else in the flat. I never wanted him to think that I hadn’t taken good care of him when he was home.

Translated by Polona Glavan 29 30 Du{an Merc: Merc © Svit 1952 D u { a n M e r c Du{an Merc began publishing books somewhat late, and then published novels at an unbelievable tempo (Galilejev lestenec/Galileo’s Chandelier, Sarkofag/Sarcophagus, Slepi potnik/Blind Traveller, Pota`ba, Jakobova molitev/Jacob’s Prayer, Potopljeni zvon/Sunken Bell) and two collections of short prose (Golo mesto/Naked City, Pega v o~esu/Speck in the Eye). His novels have been nominated several times for the Kresnik Award. His fi rst novel has been published in German translation (Die Hexe und Apotheker), and his works have also been translated into English, German, Finnish, Italian languages. Du{an Merc creates philosophical studies of evil and love in his novels. Perhaps that is why he often shapes them into historical frescoes of turbulent moments in modern history. In contrast, his short stories mostly touch on contemporary life and the intimate relations between people. The author is interested in analysis of alienation as the pre-stage evil in which people are fi rst indifferent to each other and thus also become indifferent to themsleves. Analysis of the causes of alienation lead the writer each time to a sort of lacuna, a kind of void, without a name around which the story tissue is woven. The effect of this strategy of Du{an Merc is very clear: what is unnoticeable at the beginning of the story becomes palpable at the end. The literary fi gures do come in contact with the void in them; they touch it – although they cannot fi ll it or make it dissapear. In the story Tenisa~i/The Tennis Players, the hollowness becomes palpable when the wife, almost in the presence of the husband and a friendly married couple, lets herself be seduced by a sexually agressive tennis player. However, when awareness of the gap in human relations is almost suppressed and is about to become intangible, Merc gives it a new theme. The tennis player starts to seduce the wife from the other married couple, at which the husband, in excellent ironic mimesis, exposes the tennis player’s arrogance and emptiness. The tennis duel with hollowness this time ends in victory – but the tournament continues. 31 Du{an Merc

Tennis players (excerpt) The hockey player was drinking heavily and then he attacked the figs with special attention. One could see how he took them into his hands and kneaded them in his hands, how he then tore them in half so that they dripped and how he sucked the seeds and the flesh and how he was looking at all these. The home man was only waiting for what was going to happen. He still didn’t know how he would behave, he still didn’t know how to fight all this. Perhaps he should have said something immediately, you know what, there’s no point, we wanted to go out or whatever, so that the tennis players wouldn’t sit down at the table, where they knew so well how to manage it. But the wine had a soothing effect at the beginning and everyone was getting a bit more relaxed. The defeated tennis couple went over, again and again, each point, each stroke, move and wittiness. Especially delicious was supposedly the fact that they both, as if they had agreed upon it, tapped the first couple on the shoulder, when they shook hands and when they won, as if to say, it was OK. In reality they all did this to each other and they knew the feelings of triumph and defeat and they enjoyed their narration. But suddenly the home woman noticed that the hockey player was somehow seducing her friend, that he was turning his attention to her and that he wanted to seduce her. She didn’t know whether someone else saw it but her friend most definitely felt it. And then when she looked more closely, she saw that both husbands had noticed it. Perhaps the judoist didn’t see it but all this was irrelevant to him. He was constantly bending over to her, filling her glass, watching her as he was dividing the fig, as he was sucking and licking it and there’s almost no doubt that he tried to touch her under the table with his leg. This was very clear. Her husband was waiting for what was going to happen. He wasn’t particularly burdened by last night’s events, except that the situation was annoying him. It was obviously his turn. He was waiting for what his wife was going to do. He didn’t know her in such situations. If anyone had ever approached her at work, which was always possible, she didn’t say anything, they’d never spoken about it, he expected her to deal with the intruder herself, that this was somehow her duty. And now as well. It was annoying and too much for him. But he was waiting to see if this thing would begin to develop. And as if the home husband wanted some kind of revenge, a new phase in the happening, he asked how the friends at the camp were, whether the tennis players had arrived and whether no one would go and look for them this evening. The wife grew pale and wanted her husband to have sufficient strength to disband the company and that everyone, without the annoying visitors, should go quietly to bed. But she knew he didn’t have that strength, That he didn’t have that courage and that he was purposely trying her out and pushing her to last night’s situation. The guest couple’s husband understood the remark, as if his wife was going down to the port with the hockey player, so that he would know how it feels. 32 Du{an Merc

The judoist didn’t notice anything, the guest couple’s wife thought that she would go if they all went together. She felt the pressure of the hockey player, at first she found it funny and amusing - whatever he was thinking - she felt the thigh of his leg getting closer and closer to hers and she wasn’t either comfortable or uncomfortable. Somehow, summery, nothing’s going to happen, there’s no sense. Even though she had been watching him the evening before and she thought that he really had a beautiful body. And suddenly her husband took his clothes off. He said I’m hot today, I’m really hot. One could see his body, figure, he was taller than the hockey player, but by far not so well shaped and cared for. One could tell from his hands that he had never worked, that they were just a simple man’s hands, a bit fattish, inexpressive actually. And he was sitting there, caressing his hands and imitating the hockey player from last night. Everyone laughed. The home woman felt relieved. Something was bound to happen. The hockey player got confused, he didn’t know what to think. He was watching the long, fattish and inexpressive hands of this man and he couldn’t figure out how a woman could love a person like that. And his wifecertainly didn’t. If she did, she wouldn’t let someone seduce her like that, if not, she would find an excuse to move to another seat, but now she was just letting him touch her with his leg. He felt that this man was trying to make fun of him. And he knew that in a way he was. In a special rapture, when he didn’t know where all this could lead, in a special malice and affect when everyone was laughing at the gesture of this sleazy and pallid man without muscles who had imitated him, he suddenly demanded that his wife take off her clothes as well, as if to say she was hot too, that he could feel it, and that she should also caress her breasts. Why not, let her take her clothes off and then everyone else and they could also get naked. That would be the real thing. During his speech he found a vague apology, as he went along, for his demand for stripping, or as if he wanted to make fun of them all as if to say: what did their bodies look like, let them be seen, or that this was something usual at the seaside and let the real, concealed qualities of each individual be seen. She laughed, she laughed uproariously, no one could explain such strange laughter. As if it was a really good idea or as if he was stupid, a fool? When she came to, she said no, that she wasn’t hot but that there was no other reason. And she laughed again. This time he knew, not just felt, that she was making fun of him. Her look and the way she withdrew herself as if he was filthy, as if she was disgusted with him, as if he was a poor thing, hurt him. He started persuading her and pulling up her shirt, but she resisted, then he reached for her breasts and almost tore her shirt. But she laughed at him even more. You’re not going to laugh at me. And he reached for her again. At that moment her husband splashed a glass full of red wine on his face. The hockey player grabbed his wife and wanted to strip her by all means. That’s when her husband hit him really hard. But, of course, it was too weak to be effective. The hockey player carried on and with one move tore the shirt off his wife so that she was naked in an instant.

33 Her husband hit him again. This time the hockey player turned to him and hit his face so hard that blood started to run from the man’s nose immediately and he was completely dizzy and helpless. The wife wanted to protect him against new blows and she should have if the judoist hadn’t interfered, he was by far the strongest, and he controlled the small hockey player in an instant. The home wife started to scream, get out of my house, everybody out, what are you doing. The hockey player instantly calmed down when he saw what had happened. He calmly put down the glass and the bottle, wiped his face, quickly looked at his shirt, so that it seemed as if the greatest injustice had been done to it, because there was red Istrian wine spilt all over it, and said to the judoist, come, let’s go to Ljubljana.

Translated by Vida Cuder Turk 34 © Peter Uhan 1939 Du{an Jovanovi~ Du{an Jovanovi~, one of the best contemporary Slovene dramatists and an eminent director, has received many awards for his work. He won the Obie Award for the play The Karamazovs, while his play Liberation of Skopje received a special Obie mention. He has received the Pre{eren Fund Prize and the prestigeous Pre{eren Award of the Republic of Slovenia for his directing and dramatic opus. With The Exhibitionist and several other plays he won four Slavko Grum Awards. In 1995, his play Liberation of Skopje was performed in The Moving Theatre London with Vanessa Redgrave. His best known plays (Osvoboditev Skopja/ Liberation of Skopje; Karamazovi/The Karamazovs; Zid, jezero/The Wall, the Lake, Antigona/Antigone, Ekshibicionist/ The Exhibitionist) have been translated into various European languages and have been included in many anthologies of European Drama. The central problem of The Exhibitionist is communication with the other and Jovanovi~ sets out from the psychoanalytic premise of suppressed desire. Fred Miller, a stockbroker, is unable to have normal communication with women. He resists the mechanism of a suppressed desire with excess: he becomes an exhibitionist. The same mecchanism also masters the other fi gures in the play. There is, however, a basic difference between them and Fred. The system of suppression is so deeply rooted in the others that their desire gets expressed in various socially acceptable forms. Dorothy, for example, was an exhibitionist at the age of three. As an adult person, she does not know any more what her desire is and so she constantly adopts the desire of others. The tragic aspect of her personality expresses itself in her emphasized compassion for others. At the psychoanalytic core of the play, Jovanovi~ displays a humourous, ironic fl ourish and has obvious sympathy with the love by which Dorothy and Fred try to rescue themselves in their hopeless situation. Only, of course, until the masterly third act, in which Jovanovi~’s play takes the form of a play within a play. Here, the human bond between the lovers is severed by the scissors of the pseudo-saviours (Eva, Daniel) who humiliate their wards into puppets through whom they fi ght their own battles.

35 Du{an Jovanovi}

The Exhibitionist (Excerpt) Act 1, Scene 19

CHARACTERS: Dorothy Jackson, social worer; Fred Miller, stockbroker; Eva Stempowsky, psychiatrist; Jimmy Pollack, prison guard.

Park. Fred and Dorothy. Dorothy: I asked my psychiatrist if I should give you permission to fall in love with me. Pause. She said that wouldn’t be sensible. Fred: ... But you told me I don’t need your permission to fall in love with you. Dorothy: Yes, I did say that. Fred: You didn’t mention she has the last word ... Dorothy: Yes, well it’s not the last word, it’s advice, which carries weight. Fred: That very sensible advice has come a bit too late ... Dorothy: Better late than never ... Fred: Is she categorically against it? Dorothy: Yes. Fred: Why? Dorothy: She said you obey your psychiatrist too much. Fred: And you yours! Dorothy: I respect her because she’s an intelligent woman ... Fred: And I respect him because he guesses exactly what it is I want. I wouldn’t listen to him if he gave me the wrong advice ... Dorothy: And Eva said something else. She thinks it wouldn’t be honest of me if I went with someone who would fall in love with me, without my feeling the same towards him as he feels towards me. Fred: Would you like to say that again, please? Only - slowly. Dorothy speaking slowly: She says it wouldn’t be honest of me if I went with someone who would fall in love with me, without my feeling the same towards him as he feels towards me. Fred: O.K., then everything’s in perfect order. Tell Eva I’m not in love with you. Dorothy: You’re not? Fred: No. Dorothy: Then why did you ask for permission to be allowed to fall in love with me? Fred: And why did you invite me in for coffee? Dorothy: And why did you invite me to the opera? Fred: And why did you kiss me without permission? Dorothy: I already told you why! Fred: Did you really? Dorothy: Have you perhaps forgotten? Fred: I’m joking, I haven’t forgotten. Dorothy: That’s why you’ve forgotten how my lips taste. Fred: But it’s the living truth. Pause. You’ve forgotten you’ve got a harsh psychiatrist. I’m not even talking about your boyfriend. She’s a cold fish, what about him, is he at least emotionally potent? Dorothy: It depends what you understand by that. Fred: Does he have strong feelings? Dorothy: I’d say he was more physically potent than emotionally potent ...

36 Du{an Jovanovi}

Besides - what do you care if you’re not in love with me? Fred: It’s my stock exchange reflex. I’m always interested in the state of the market, whose shares are doing badly. Dorothy: I didn’t tell you he was doing badly with me. Fred: You said that sometimes you have him, sometimes you don’t! That means you don’t have a fixed rate. On that basis I inferred that you’re using him from time to time until you get something better. Dorothy: So now you’re going to be impertinent as well? Fred: What would you be if you were in my shoes? You treat me like an old rag! First you tell me I can fall in love if I like, then your psychiatrist says that wouldn’t be sensible, and you hint that it wouldn’t be honest if we came together, as if to say I’m in love with you, but you’re not with me! In other words, no more dates, no more conversations! I just start to get a little bit used to you, then - ‘It’s been a pleasure, Mr Miller, so long!’ So you don’t like me? That’s clear enough, isn’t it? Well, it would be strange if it were otherwise. I’m a cretin! How can a cretin feel the same as you? Do I feel the same as you? I don’t know! You said yourself: there’s not much you can say with those little words ‘yes’ and ‘no’. You said: I don’t even know how to say much with a whole sentence. Those were your words! I don’t know how to say what I want. ‘At first I think I know what I want, but then - the more I think about it, the less I know’. Believe it or not, it’s the same for a cretin! A cretin knows even less what he wants! And then you also said: ‘I think a person has more need of what they haven’t got than what they have’. I feel like that too. Maybe even more than you! But - if you don’t want me to, then I won’t feel like that! Why should we feel the same? Perhaps we feel similar things, we just both call our feelings different things? To ourselves, not aloud! Pause. You can try for a hundred years and you won’t find out what was spinning around in my head. I wanted to suggest something to you, but I’m not going to now! As you said: ‘I’m giving myself up to you, I’m trying to persuade you to give yourself up to me ... I surrender myself lovingly so that perhaps I might be loved myself in a love without bounds ...’, I wanted to suggest something to you, and then Eva came in and said they’d stabbed José. Pause. Dorothy: Go on, suggest it now! Fred: I won’t, not out of spite, but there’s no point! Pause. Dorothy: What did you suggest to me in your mind? Fred: Haven’t you guessed? Dorothy: I don’t know if I’ve guessed right. Fred: You have to find that out yourself. Dorothy: How? Fred: Look - what I suggested to you in my mind I’m still suggesting to you all the time. And you know - what! Nothing has changed from then till now, everything’s the same: I can’t express it, you can’t do it. Kisses her exactly as she did him and quickly exits.

Translated by Lesley Wade Soule 37 38 1928 – 2004 Lojze Kova~i~ Lojze Kova~i~ is among the best Slovene novelists of the second half of the 20th century. His work ranges from neo- realism (Ljubljanske razglednice/Ljubljana Postcards, Pri{leki/ Incomers, Otro{ke re~i/Children’s Things), from which he starts in his early works, and to which he returns in his mature and late novels, and modernist narrative techniques (Sporo~ila v spanju/Report in Sleep, Resni~nost/Truth, Pet fragmentov/Five Fragments, Kristalni ~as/Crystal Time). Kova~i~ received a number of prestigious awards for his work: @upan~i~ Award, two Kresnik Awards, Pre{eren Fund Prize and the Pre{eren Award of the Republic Slovenia for Life Work. His novels and prose have been translated into several European languages.

One cannot run from oneself: thus Lojze Kova~i~ explained the use of the fi rst person singular in his prose. However, in the same breath with this apparently simple thought he spoke of the core around which he created monumental work, which does not just belong within the canon of Slovene modernism, but is comparable with Proust and Joyce. Kova~i~’s various novels, in fact, read as different facets of his life and can also be read as a never fi nished tale of self-constitution, which, of course, never produces identity with the subject itself – the dialogue between the known and the unknown is crucial. In Kova~i~’s late works there is a redefi nition of the contact between autobiography and literature. The modernist narrative techniques are loosened by the essayist style, and the merciless introspection is transposed from the fl ow of language to the story level. The author thus sets the fi rst person singular in the literary image of an inquisitive child who, in the process of investigating the world, falls, is raised, falls again – and with tough resilience continues to infi nity. In this inversion, Kova~i~’s late prose becomes warm and humorous, the densely overgrown forest of consciousness is full of light and air. Thus, Children’s Things thematicise the fi nal point of Kova~i~’s fi rst person literary journey towards himself. 39 Lojze Kova~i~

The Basket II. Some time ago, before my son renovated the room, I used to sleep on the east side under the window, and in the dawn, when morning had hardly broken, I interlaced my fingers on top of the blanket, pretending that I was making little spheres out of the early morning light. It reminded me of a game that I used to play when I was a baby lying in my bassinette in the brown room on Elizabethplatz in Basel. I played with my fingers that stuck out from the blue wool and continued with them down toward the other end of the bassinette where all my toys lay. These little endings of mine were dangerous because they seemed to move on their own and would often thrust into the thing I was looking at, and that hurt. Of all things, what was certainly most mine, was what lay wide and heavy above me. I could touch everything on it, like someone who in the middle of the night touches each object that sits on the nightstand next to the bed. There was some sort of ridge or shelf under the thing I liked to touch, and then a hole, wet, hot, hollow, with a lively ribbon that I dared to pull toward me, and I squealed. In the beginning, many figures moved above me; it was as if I were something altogether new and important. When I was alone, I looked over the edge of my cocoon and saw something at the other end of the room that was moving in an even more lively fashion than my toys, only whatever it was could not toss the toys out of the bassinette. The light came through the curtains that wafted and fell on the air. I saw through the mesh the high back of several figures that paid no heed to me. Now and again, one of these white figures would appear in my vision. If it was small with a hairy head, I did not get too excited because that one was always there, where it was, far away. A little shriek came out of it and then it disappeared again. It was my sister, Margrit. The second figure also had a lot of hair, so I often mixed it up with the first one, though this one was taller and wider. Barely audible whispers emerged from this second figure, though sometimes it also leaned in over me, popped its mouth open like a scented flour, and wiped away my wetness. It was my older sister, Klara. Only the next figure with the reddish face and the shiny yellow hair was the right one. I recognized her from the very beginning, rosy face, two bluish eyes, moist lips, blond hair. Each movement, each necklace around her goitrous neck was more mine than hers. If she had worn a hat and a veil that covered her face, if she were draped all in black instead of white, I would quickly perceive her resemblance to the one and would liberate her from her changed garb. She could even be hateful to me, she could even strike me, and I didn’t resent her, though it did hurt. It was terrible when she didn’t look at me and pretended she didn’t know me, and concerned herself with some other unknown thing. Although she was in the room, moving about the room and holding the thing, she ignored me. Instead of coming near my bassinette – or when she did not stopping there – she went where I could not see her. She was the master, not only over me, but over everybody. There was, however, one more white figure. She came into the room but her behaviour suggested she didn’t belong with the others. She was stiff, darker, and strange. She stood in the background as if she couldn’t come forward. Although she was pleasant and would sometimes lean over me and I would also stretch my hands out to her, she didn’t touch me. She 40 Lojze Kova~i~

only stroked my blanket, remaining far above my bassinette. Only when I was lifted did I realize that the room had a bottom and that the figures did not float like curtains on the air, but that they moved about on their lower limbs, and that only the high chairs that I had spied through the weave of my bassinette could not go anywhere on their own, but rather were moved and then put back. They were even stupider than me. I was carried to the window and the curtain moved aside so I could see the ground below, a brown and grey basin of sorts upon which moved tiny, different coloured figures. Near the window a roundish thing stuck out. It was a wooden clock with a silver face. I was least amazed by the tramway, the box that jingled and moved along some sort of straight lines, connected to wires above but with no legs below. This was the artificial world. I was most impressed by the doves on the windows with their little round eyes, stepping on their tiny red fingertips. They sometimes rose up and hovered above me, other times they held the sill with their talons, flapping and screeching in fear that they would fall. Now and again, I would spit out my pacifier so it would disappear in the air and after that, I would be swatted a bit, and I understood I had done this countless times. I spotted Margrit, the tiny figure with a lot of hair, coming out of the house. Once she had had to pick up the pacifier from the track right in front of the tramway, which had already started to move. She called out to me where I was sitting in somebody’s lap and scolded with her hands: “Bubi! Bubi!” That was me, but I could only see the reflection on my blanket, which was even less solid than a windowpane. Then they gave me a round brilliance in my bassinette. I saw a face that was wider than the brilliance, and eyes that looked back at me. “That’s you, Bubi! That’s you!” It was sucking on a pacifier just like me. I was not alone. There was another one like me. When they took the brilliance away, I howled. They gave it back to me and I looked at it again. I had company. The brilliance moved here and there, and a finger touched me from outside while another touched the one in the brilliance: “Ears. Eyes. Forehead. Mouth. That’s you.” I let the brilliance drop from my hand. I was no longer interested in someone who kept doing the same thing time and again, something I would never do.

Translated by Erica Johnson Debeljak

41 Ten Authors from Slovenia in Translations

Books, Literary Magazines and Internet Literary Reviews By the Selected Authors

^u~nik, Primo` (2002): Zapach herbaty, translated into Polish by Adam Wiedemann, Agnieszka Be¸dkowska Kopczyk and Katarina [alamun Biedrzycka, Krakow: Zielona sowa. The book is available also on the internet page Blesok/ Shine, Babylonia, see http://www.blesok.com.mk. ^u~nik, Primo` (2004): poems translated into English by Ana Jelnikar and Joshua Beckman, in: A Fine Line: New Poetry From Eastern and Central Europe, Jean Boase – Beier, Alexandra Büchler and Fiona Sampson, Todmorden: Art Publications, pp. 166–175. ^u~nik, Primo` (2005): poems in The Prague Literary Review, translated into English by Ana Jelnikar and W. Martin. ^u~nik, Primo` (2004): poems in El Occidental, 28th nov. 2004, translated into Spanish by Pablo Fajdiga. Glavan, Polona (2001): »Eigentlich«, translated into German by Erwin Köstler, in anthology Die Zeit der Kurzen Geschichte, Klagenfurt – Celovec: Drava. Glavan, Polona (2003): »L’insolita identità di Nina B.«, translated into Italian by Mojca Bogataj and Matteo LaPorta, in Racconti senza dogana, Lucio Lami (ed.), Roma: Gremese (Gli Spilli), pp. 337–353. Glavan, Polona (2003): »Vlastn«, transl. by Tereza Benhartova, in anthology Promlky ~asu, Vetrne Mlyny. Glavan, Polona (2004): short stories »Hansel and Gretel«, »Actually«, »Natte«, translated into English by Sonja Kravanja, in Orient Express, Volume 5, Spring 2004 (Unlocking the Acquarium: Contemporary Writing from Slovenia). Glavan, Polona (2004): »Nina B. különös identitàsa«, translated into Hungarian by Gabor Csordas, in anthology Vammentes elbeszelesek, Gremese. Glavan, Polona (2005): »Hansel and Gretel«, in The Prague Review 7/2005. Jakob, Jure (2004): poems in Tre}i trg no. 3, Sept.–Oct. 2004, translated into Serbian by Ana Ristovi}. See http://www.trecitrg.org.yu/casopis/Brojevi/03/ 0102imp.htm#imp. Jovanovi}, Du{an (1988): »Wyzwolenie Skopia«, translated into Polish by Dorota Jovanka Cirili}, in: Antologia wspolczesnego dramatu jugoslowianskiego, Lodz: Wydawnictwo Lodzkie. Jovanovi}, Du{an (1989): Die Befreiung von Skopje, translated into German by Klaus Detlef Olof, Klagenfurt – Celovec. Jovanovi}, Du{an (1990): »Wand, See«, translated into German by Klaus Detlef Olof, in: Drei Dramen, Klagenfurt/Celovec – Salzburg: Wieser (Edition Vilenica im Wieser Verlag). Jovanovi}, Du{an (1990): »The Wall, the Lake«, translated into English by Richard Williams, in: Scena, pp. 154–163. Jovanovi}, Du{an (1993): Antigone, translated into French by Mireille Robin (a manuscript, see http://www.troisiemebureau.com/3d/regards_croises/calendrier/ data/biblio.pdf). Jovanovi}, Du{an (2001): The Exhibitionist, translated into English by Lesley Wade for the needs of Kranj Theatre and other European Theatres. Jovanovi}, Du{an (2001): L’Exhibitionniste, translated into French by Primo` Vitez and Marie Michaud (see http://www.troisiemebureau.com/3d/regards_ croises/calendrier/data/biblio.pdf). Jovanovi}, Du{an (2003): La libération de Skopje, translated into French by Mireille Robin and the Author, Paris: L’éspace d’un instant. Kova~i~, Lojze (1982): Rzeczywistos´}, translated into Polish by Joana Pomorska, Warsaw: Literatura na wiecie. Kova~i~, Lojze (1984): A valóság, translated into Hungarian by Orsolya Gállos, 42 Ten Authors from Slovenia in Translations

Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó. Kova~i~, Lojze (2004-2005): Die Zugereisten: eine Chronik, 2 voll., translated into German by Klaus Detlef Olof, Klagenfurt – Celovec: Drava. Kramberger, Taja (1997): Marzipan, translated into English by Dean Devos, and others, introduction by James Powderly, Chattanooga: Poetry Miscellany Chapbook. Kramberger, Taja (2002): Protitok/Gegenströmung, translated into German by Maja Haderlap, Ottensheim an der Donau: Edition Thanhäuser. Kramberger, Taja (2003): “Mobilisations”, translated into French by David Jauzion-Graverolles, in Sezim 3, la mémoire 2003, Saint-Claude: Édition de La fraternelle, pp. 41-53. Kramberger, Taja (2004): Mobilizacije/Mobilisations/Mobilizations/ Mobilitazioni, French translations by David Jauzion-Graverolles, Braco Rotar and Anne Talvaz, English translations by Ana Jelnikar, Italian translations by Michele Obit. Ljubljana: Tropos, dru{tvo za zgodovinsko, socialno in druge antropologije ter kulturne dejavnosti & KUD Zrakogled. Kramberger, Taja (2004): poems in » Unlocking the Aquarium: contemporary writing from Slovenia «, Orient Express, vol. 5, ed. by Fiona Sampson, Ana Jelnikar and Iztok Osojnik. Kramberger, Taja (2004): poems in anthology A Fine Line : New Poetry from East and Central Europe, with a preface by Václav Havel, London: Arc Publications, pp 176–191. Merc, Du{an (2002): Die Hexe und Apotheker, translated into German by Martina Horak, München: Slavica Verlag Dr. Anton Kova~. Merc, Du{an: Ulkomaalainen eli kuinka olla fiksu suomalainen, translated into Finnish by Kari Klemela, see http://www.kolumbus.fi/kari.klemela/Merc.html. Osojnik, Iztok (1995): Shepherd of Silence, translated into English by Sonja Kravanja, introduction by Regina Wilkins, Alta Vista : Poetry Miscellany (Poetry Miscellany Chapbooks). Osojnik, Iztok (2001): And Things Happen for the First Time. Selected Poems, translated into English by Sonja Kravanja, introduction by Richard Jackson. Mississauga (Canada): Modry Peter Publishers, 2001. Osojnik, Iztok (2001): »Gospodin Danas«, 20 poems translated into Croatian by Ana Jelnikar, San Jose: Jacaranda Press. Osojnik, Iztok (2005): V tobe o`iju, transl. by Ale{ Kozár, Zlín: Drewo a srd. Semoli~, Peter (1993): »Byzantinische Blumen«, Log, Zeitschrift für internationale Literatur, vol. 16, 1993/62, pp. 1–12. Semoli~, Peter (2003): Wiersze wybrane, translated into Polish by Adam Wiedmann et alii, introduction by Adam Wiedemann, Port Legnica: Biuro Literackie. Semoli~, Peter, see Barcelona Review: http://www.barcelonareview.com/39/ c_fest.htm Tratnik, Suzana (1997): »Unter den Hainbuchen«, in: Madeleine Marti in Marianne Ulmi (eds.), Sappho küsst Europa. Querverlag, Berlin. Tratnik, Suzana (1999): »Under the Ironwood Trees«, in: Naomi Holoch in Joan Nestle (ed.), The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction, Vintage, New York. Tratnik, Suzana (2002): Unterm Strich, transl. by Andrej Leben, Milena Verlag, Wien. Tratnik, Suzana (2004): »Unterm Strich«, in: Volltext, Zeitung für Literatur (Austria), February–March 2004. Tratnik, Suzana (2005): Mein Name ist Damian, translated into German by Andrej Leben, Milena Verlag, Wien. Tratnik, Suzana (2005): Jmenuju se Damián, translated into Czech by Ana [amonilová, Prague: One Woman Press. 43 Ten Authors from Slovenia in Translations

Anthologies

1990 – Drei Dramen, Klagenfurt/Celovec: Wieser. Authors: Du{an Jovanovi} (Klaus Detlef Olof), Rudi [eligo (Anna; translated by Erich Prun~). 1996 – Anleitungen zum Schreien. Eine Anthologie slowenischer Prosa, Wien: Edition Atelier. 1998 – Nuova poesia slovena, ed. by Michele Obit, essay by Miran Ko{uta, translated into Italian by Michele Obit, Trieste: ZTTEST (Collana ALCHIMIE; 1). 1999 – The Fire under the Moon: Contemporary Slovenian Poetry, Chatanooga: Black Dirt Press & PM Books. 2001 – »Slovenska poezija od [alamuna do Semoli~a«, translated into Croatian by Radoslav Dabo, 5. januar 2001. 2002 – Poesia, Rivista letteraria di Milano, vol. 15, issue 162, information about young Slovene poetry. 2004 – »Unlocking the Aquarium : contemporary writing from Slovenia «, Orient Express, vol. 5, Spring 2004, ed. by Fiona Sampson, Ana Jelnikar, Iztok Osojnik. See content on : http://www.eurozine.com/partner/orientexpress/ current-issue.html 2005 – »Inventing Slovenia: 11 contemporary Slovenian authors«, in: The Prague Review 7/2005, (Drago Jan~ar, Jani Virk, Primo` ^u~nik, Nina Kokelj, Marjan Strojan, Iztok Osojnik, Ale{ [teger, Andrej Blatnik, Dane Zajc, Uro{ Zupan, Polona Glavan), edited with an introduction by Andrew Zawacki & Brian Henry. Some other contemporary Slovenian authors in translation on www: Jelenkor (Hungary) 2004. év 47. évfolyam 10. szám; See: http://jelenkor. net/main.php?disp=szam&ev=2004&evfolyam=47&szam=10 Jelenkor, 2002. év 45. évfolyam 2. szám; See: http://jelenkor.net/main. php?disp=szam&ev=2002&evfolyam=45&szam=2 http://slovenia.poetryinternational.org/- an excellent presentation of Slovene poetry. Spanyolnátha webfolyóirat, anthology of young Slovenian poetry by Lukács Zsolt; in Hungarian; see www.spanyolnatha.hu. Literary review Transcript 19/2005, see http://www.transcript-review.org/. - a guide to SLovenian contemporary literature.

Translations of Slovenian literature in Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian language, bibliography prepared by Mr. Kari Klemela, cfr. http://www.kolumbus.fi/kari.klemela/Skirj_bibl_sl.htm#Finsko

For more information, see: http://www.culturalprofiles.org.uk/slovenia/Directories/Slovenia_ Cultural_Profile/-6847.html http://www.drustvo-dsp.si/publikacije/Litterae_Slovenicae/litterae_ slovenicae.html

44 Literary Awards in Slovenia

The Vilenica Award has been awarded since 1986 for life work, within the framework of the Vilenica international literary festival, which takes place in Lipica annually at the beginning of September in Lipica (Slovenia). Award winners to date have included Fulvio Tomizza, Peter Handke, Peter Esterházy, Zbignew Herbert, Milan Kundera, Adam Zagajewski... It was awarded this year to Ilma Rakusa and Karl-Markus Gauss.

The Crystal of Vilenica has been awarded since 1987. Award winners to date have included Ewa Lipska, Dubravka Ugre{i}, Endre Kukorelly, Gergor Strni{a, Ale{ Debeljak and Peter Semoli~. It was awarded this year to the Lithuanian poet Vladas Braziunas.

The Jenko Award for the best poetry collection of the past two years has been awarded annually since 1986 by the Slovenian Writers’ Society, in Pre{eren Theatre Kranj. The award is named after the lyrical poet Simon Jenko (19th century), and as an award from poets is highly valued.

The Stritar Award has been awarded annually since 1988 by the Slovenian Writers’ Society as a means of recognising promising young critics.

Pre{eren Award of the Republic of Slovenia and Pre{eren Fund Prize have been awarded since 1947, by a commission of distinguished scientists and artists for achievements in the field of art. The Pre{eren Award, also known as »large«, is an award for life work. With a Pre{eren Fund Prize (»small« award), an individual artistic achievement is awarded. Both awards are the most prestigious in the Slovene cultural space. The Romantic poet France Pre{eren (first half of the 19th century) is the »father« of Slovene poetry.

Kresnik has been awarded since 1991 by the newspaper Delo, for the best novel of the past year. The jury consists of representatives of literary reviews and newspapers and university professors of comparative literature. Lojze Kova~i~ received the first Kresnik for the novel Crystal Time, and is the only author other than Drago Jan~ar to have received it twice.

Veronika Award has been awarded annually since 1997 by the Urban Municipality of Celje, for the best poetry collection. Iztok Osojnik received the first Veronika Award.

Ro`anc Award The Marjan Ro`anc Award for the best collection of essays has been awarded since 1993.

Slavko Grum Award awarded by Pre{eren Theatre Kranj, on the basis of a competition for the best Slovene drama text.

Award for First Work the Professional Association of Publishers and Booksellers of Slovenia awards it each year for the best first literary work published in the past year.

Zlata ptica Award is recognition of those involved in a creative process for exceptional achievements in various fields of cultural activity. It has been awarded since 1975.

45 10 Authors from Slovenia

Published for the Slovenian presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 2005. Published by: Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia with the financial support of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. Poems, prose and drama translated by Ana Jelnikar, William Martin, Teja Pribac Brooks, Elizabeta @argi, Polona Glavan, Vida Cuder Turk, Lesley Wade Soule. Foreword, commentaries and bibliography by Alenka Jovanovski Translation of foreword and second reading by Martin Cregeen Edited by Alenka Jovanovski Layout: Maja Licul, mimikrija Printed by: Delo tiskarna, d.d.

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