Slovenian Sociology of Literature and Slovenian National Poet: France Prešeren between the Partisans, Dissidents and Theorists ❦ jernej Habjan ▶ [email protected] SLAVICA TERGESTINA 17 (2016) ▶ The Yugoslav Partisan Art In the 1960s, Boris Ziherl provided В 1960-е гг. Борис Зихерл дал словен- Slovenian sociology with its theoretical ской социологии её теоретическое и and institutional foundations—his- институциональное основание: исто- torical materialism and an academic рический материализм и универси- department. After Ziherl, however, the тетскую кафедру. Но после Зихерла two foundations have only grown apart, эти основания настолько разошлись, so much so that two recent studies had что две недавние реактуализа- to assume an anti-institutional per- ции исторического материализма spective to reaffirm (Ziherl’s) historical Зихерла не могли не быть анти-ин- materialism. Both these texts—Miklavž ституциональными. Оба эти текста Komelj’s book on Slovenian Partisan art — книга Миклавжа Комеля об искус- and Rastko Močnik’s book on Prešeren стве словенских партизан и книга studies—intervene in Slovenian sociol- Растка Мочника о прешерноведении ogy of literature, which Ziherl helped — интервенируют в словенскую found as well. I will hence address the социологию литературы, пионером key field shared by Slovenian sociology которой также является Зихерл. Эта and literary criticism: Prešeren studies. статья посвящена прешерноведению Ziherl’s view of Slovenian national poet как точке пересечения словенской France Prešeren was formed during социологии и литературоведения. and post WWii. His interwar Prešeren Подход Зихерла к словенскому is an adversary of German Romanti- национальному поэту Прешерну cism, and his post-war Prešeren is an формировался во время и после Вто- ally of Hegel’s anti-Romanticism. I will рой мировой войны. Во время войны read the former with Komelj’s Ziherl, Зихерл считал Прешерна противни- and the latter, with Močnik’s. ком немецкого романтизма, а после войны сторонником антиромантиз- ма Гегеля. В статье первый Прешерен читается на фоне Комеля — второй на фоне Мочника. sLOVENIAN soCioLoGY, СЛОВЕНСКАЯ СОЦИОЛОГИЯ, preŠeren STUDIES, Boris ziherL, ПРЕШЕРНОВЕДЕНИЕ, БОРИС ЗИХЕРЛ, RASTKo MočniK, MiKLAVŽ KoMeLJ, РАСТКО МОЧНИК, МИКЛАВЖ duŠAN pirJEVEC КОМЕЛЬ, ДУШАН ПИРЬЕВЕЦ 127 JERNEJ HABJAN ▶ Slovenian Sociology of Literature and Slovenian National Poet 1 Two decades ago, marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Slovenian This paradoxical role of historical material- Sociological Association, Marko Kerševan (444–6) noted that Slovenian ism as both foundation and lacuna of the De- sociology, though being practised in important ways already in the early partment of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts, twentieth century by such researchers as Andrej Gosar, Aleš Ušeničnik University of Ljubljana is addressed in Ras- and Janez Evangelist Krek, received its theoretical and institutional tko Močnik’s recent study on historical foundations only after World War II, when Boris Ziherl provided it with materialism and so- ciology of culture in with its theoretical and institutional foundations: historical material- Slovenia (Močnik, ‘Od historičnega materi- ism and an academic department. alizma’ 139). The study appeared in the vol- Today, in the fifty-second year of the Association’s existence, it ume dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of seems that after Ziherl the two foundations—historical materialism the Department, which was also the occasion and the academic department—have only been growing apart. This for which I wrote the Slovenian-language growing apart, however, has been not only temporal but, first and version of this article, 1 which was published foremost, structural. It has often taken the shape of institutional ig- in a special section of essays on Slovenian norance of Ziherl’s legacy. It is then no coincidence that this legacy was sociology of culture that I co-edited, with recently revitalised in view of historical materialism by a pair of texts Rastko Močnik, as is- sue 1 of volume 7 (2013) that assume an anti-institutional perspective, namely Miklavž Komelj’s of Arts & Humanitas. book Kako misliti partizansko umetnost? (How to Think the Partisan Art?) and Rastko Močnik’s book Julija Primic v slovenski književni vedi (Julija Primic in Slovenian Literary Studies). Both these texts intervene mostly in sociology of literature, a discipline whose Slovenian version was importantly developed by Ziherl as well. Let us therefore take a look at the most important intersection of sociology and literary studies in Slovenia, namely Prešeren studies. ZiHerl’s interWar Prešeren Ziherl’s approach to France Prešeren, the Slovenian national poet cel- ebrated for his Romantic poetry and nation-building, is formed during and in the years after World War II. In what follows, Ziherl’s writings 128 SLAVICA TERGESTINA 17 (2016) ▶ The Yugoslav Partisan Art on Prešeren will be read against the background of the two above- 2 In Pushkin’s case, mentioned reactualisations of Ziherl: his interwar Prešeren will be this negation is demonstrated also by read via Komelj’s book, while his post-war Prešeren will be viewed Močnik (Spisi 105–7), according to whom the through Močnik’s. metaphor-free pronoun poem Ja vas ljubil . The specificity of Ziherl’s interwar Prešeren can best be demon- (I Loved You Once . .) is readable only from strated in relation to the two kinds of contemporaneous readings of God’s point of view. Prešeren that resemble Ziherl’s the most and which are documented and interpreted in Komelj’s book as well. Both approaches to Prešeren register and then undo Prešeren’s metaphoricity. In the first kind of interwar readings of Prešeren, this metaphoricity is undone in the sense that it is understood as realised in the ongoing People’s Liberation Struggle; and in the second kind of readings, Prešeren’s metaphoric language is simply read non-metaphorically. What Komelj does is to show that the truth of both interwar approaches to Prešeren lies in their respective negation. When the first approach, as it was practised, say, by Matej Bor, sees in Prešeren a Partisan avant la lettre, a Romantic poet who foresaw the liberation of the Slovenian national soul, it si- multaneously romanticises the Partisans and thus effectively negates itself (Komelj 305). And the second approach to Prešeren is represented, say, by the following demand made by Josip Vidmar: ‘Anything incom- prehensible to the masses must go. Think of Pushkin! There is no metaphoricity there. Or think of Prešeren!’—a demand, that is, that is negated by Vidmar’s own public defence of the ‘“freedom of art” in the face of political decrees’ (Komelj 218 n. 47).2 So, when Bor reduces Prešeren’s metaphoric language to a prophecy of the People’s Libera- tion Struggle, he in fact reduces the Struggle itself to Romanticism; and when Vidmar refuses to even acknowledge the metaphorical dimension in Prešeren, he only reiterates per negationem the abstract character of his aestheticist defence of art against politics. 129 JERNEJ HABJAN ▶ Slovenian Sociology of Literature and Slovenian National Poet 3 If we read these two kinds of interpretations of Prešeren together, In the same year of 1957, working in a simi- as two kinds of undoing of his metaphoric language, we can begin to see lar strand of humanist Marxism, Theodor W. the originality of Ziherl’s Prešeren. According to Ziherl, an anti-fascist Adorno returned to Hegel himself from poem can reach the level of Prešeren’s poetry even though—rather the perspective of this kind of turn: than insofar—it is metaphor-free: of concentration-camp sonnets he A historical occasion says that a ‘[m]eticulous critic and aesthete’ might notice ‘poor vocabu- like the 125th an- niversary of Hegel’s lary and overrepetition, whereas we sense in these verses the spirit death could have elicited what we call an of Prešeren’, which ‘nevertheless was able to dictate to the author a ‘appreciation.’ But that concept has become beautiful sonnet’ (quoted in Komelj 138 n. 10). As for Prešeren and the untenable, if indeed it ever had any value. It People’s Liberation Struggle, Ziherl sees in Prešeren not a prophet of makes the impudent claim that because one the People’s Liberation Struggle but a poet engaged in the struggle has the dubious good fortune to live later, against Novalis’s ‘reactionary Romanticism’ (quoted in Komelj 289 and because one has a professional interest n. 5), a struggle that Prešeren is said to have fought in his own time in the person one is to talk about, one can and in his own, poetic field. sovereignly assign the dead person his place, In other words, Bor’s Prešeren is a proto-Partisan (which implies thereby in some sense elevating oneself above that the Partisans are merely Romantics in action), and Vidmar’s a him. This arrogance echoes in the loathsome proto-socialist realist poet (which implies that socialist realism is question of what in Kant, and now Hegel as only a Romanticism without metaphors). Ziherl’s Prešeren, on the well, has any meaning for the present . The other hand, is a ‘revolutionary Romantic’ (quoted in Komelj 289 n. 5) converse question is not even raised: what the who joins Shelley and Byron in their struggle against the reactionary present means in the face of Hegel; whether nature of Romantic poetry. And precisely insofar as Prešeren was a perhaps the reason one imagines one has revolutionary in his own time and in his own field, the turn of Parti- attained since Hegel’s absolute reason has not san poets to his poetry was ‘healthy’, according to Ziherl (quoted in in fact long since re- gressed behind the lat- Komelj 467). Moreover, even when he comes closest to the so-called ter and accommodated to what merely exists, theory of reflection, Ziherl remains at the level of poetry: in 1944, he when Hegelian reason tried to set the burden demands tendentiousness of poets, but only because he dialectically of existence in motion through the reason that inscribes in reality itself a tendency worthy of progressive poetry: obtains even in what exists.