Welcome to Slovenian poetry - May 2004

January 18, 2006 Both the language as well as the poetry are profoundly characterized by a unique cultural feature. “The Slovene language is one of those rare modern languages that retain the dual number, an archaic grammatical form. As a reader may well imagine, this dual form plays an important role, especially in Slovenian erotic poetry. The dual is the language of love, an island of intimacy in between the desert of solitude and the voice of the masses, represented by the plural,” as the poet Boris A. Novak, one of the leading precursors of Slovenian post-modernism brilliantly expressed it.

The dual number is not only a grammatical form but unique expression of understanding and presenting the world as well as the human condition. One should try to look at Slovenian poetry from this special perspective.

In the last twenty years of the 20th century, Slovenian poetry has taken various turns, and not all of them can be classified as yet. In the great tradition of poets like Srečko Kosovel, Edvard Kocbek, Kajetan Kovič, Dane Zajc, Ada Škerl and others, Slovenian poetry has incorporated the achievements of modernism, yet also taken on the challenges of post- and postpost-modernism. Especially the latter movement forms the historical framework for individual poets such as Uroš Zupan, Peter Semolič and Brane Mozetič. Zupan and Semolič, both younger poets, have already been published here. In this new edition of the Slovenian magazine, we present to you the poetry of {id="5038" title="Brane Mozetič"}. Again, to borrow the words of Boris A. Novak: “He is a poet who has succeeded in discovering a new expression of love in our contemporary poetry. The obsessional rhythm of his verse evokes the pulsation of erotic passion. The thematic novelty of his poetry rests in the fact that for the first time in Slovenian poetry, a poet has sung of homosexual love in such an open manner.”