Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the 
Turn of the Nineteenth Century: 
Male Censorship of Vida Jeraj’s 
Poetry
Alenka Jensterle Doležal
Department of South Slavic and Balkan Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Nám. Jana 
Palacha 2, Praha 1, 116 38, Prague, Czech Republic
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0777-5701
alenka.dolezalova@ff.cuni.cz
61
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 46.1 (2023)
This article analyses the gendered censorship of male writers towards the poetics 
and writing of Vida Jeraj (1875–1932), the most prominent Slovenian female 
lyrical poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a member 
of the new wave of Slovenian women writers associated with the Trieste-based 
publication Slovenka. This case study demonstrates the immense difficulty, if not 
impossibility, for a woman from a small, conservative patriarchal society on the 
outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to become a poet and introduce new 
poetics and new imagination. This was due not only to patriarchal society in 
general, but also to the gendered censorship of Jeraj’s male colleagues and friends. 
We aim to analyse the gendered discourse with its misogynistic characteristics 
evident in the correspondence between the poet and male authors during her early 
period of writing, which had a profound impact on her poetic strategies. Two 
male critics in particular had a great influence on her style and shaped her poetic 
career: her friend Josip Murn-Aleksandrov (1879–1901), the impressionist poet 
of the Slovenian “moderna” literary movement; and Anton Aškerc (1856–1912), 
the most important and celebrated Slovenian poet of the older generation and 
the editor of the Slovenian newspaper Ljubljanski zvon. This male censorship also 
meant that the young poet was forced to self-censor, as her writer’s identity was very 
fragile. This was one of the reasons why her voice eventually fell silent.
Keywords: feminist literary criticism / Slovenian poetry / Slovenian women writers / 
Jeraj, Vida / censorship / self-censorship
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62
The twenty-first century has seen censorship become a very real phe-
nomenon; however, in terms of theory, there is no clear consensus on 
what the term actually signifies.1 Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, 
Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler have offered useful theories on this 
subject. Helene Freshwater proposed an inclusive definition that takes 
into account the diverse experiences of censorship and its socio-histori-
cal specificity. This definition acknowledges that censorship is a process 
realized through the relationships between censorious agents, rather 
than a series of actions carried out by a single authority. Furthermore, 
to reflect the ethical complexity of speaking for the silenced, this defini-
tion of censorship is based on the inclusive logic of “both/and,” rather 
than the censorious modality of “either/or” (Freshwater 217). This the-
oretical concept can also be applied to the Slovenian context.
Gendered censorship in the Slovenian context
Intellectuals and writers from Slovenian culture, which was a part of 
the Habsburg monarchy, experienced very tough political censorship 
throughout the nineteenth century, from the era of Romanticism to 
the end of the century. During this period in particular, there were 
numerous political agents who promoted different types of ideologi-
cal systems in the small, provincial Slovenian land as part of the larger 
monarchical state. The writers had to contend with three main sourc-
es of power: the political ideology of the monarchy, the ideology of 
the Catholic Church, and later the ideology of the Slovenian nation. 
Marijan Dović and Luka Vidmar established that from 1790 to 1848 
the monarchical censorship in Slovenian culture was primarily charac-
terized by a centralized and comprehensive pre-publication censorship, 
which was further intensified by restrictiveness (a system of granting 
concessions), economic constraints (i.e., taxes and deposits), and se-
vere penalties (Dović and Vidmar 36, 37). They also highlighted the 
existence of retroactive censorship after 1848, which lasted until the 
beginning of the First World War (37–41).
Nevertheless, at the turn of the nineteenth century, gendered cen-
sorship was also present in Slovenian culture as an implicit form of 
1 The author acknowledges financial support from the Slovenian-Czech research 
project Transformations of Intimacy in the Literary Discourse of the Slovenian “Mod-
erna” (GAČR project 21-47320L and ARRS J6-3134). The work was also supported 
by the Cooperatio program, Research area Literature/Medievistics (Charles University, 
Czech Republic).
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
63
censorship; this was connected to the emergence of the second wave of 
women writers.2 Judith Butler has highlighted that implicit and pow-
erful forms of censorship suggest that the power of censorship is not 
exhausted by explicit state policy or regulation. She emphasized that 
such implicit forms of censorship may, in fact, be more effective than 
explicit forms in enforcing a limit on speakability (Butler 130).
The socio-political climate in Slovenian culture during this period 
reflected a divided, polarized society with considerable tension in gen-
der relations, and the suppression of women in the cultural sphere. 
Slovenian society and public spaces at that time were clearly divided; 
the main writers, critics, and editors of major literary and cultural pub-
lications were all male.
The entry of women into the public sphere in Slovenian culture 
occurred in tandem with the growth of the national movement and 
feminism, which was typical of the contemporaneous processes across 
Europe (Verginella & Selišnik 1–17). The public activities of young 
intellectuals took place within the framework of the multi-ethnic and 
multinational empire of Austria-Hungary, which was destabilized in 
the nineteenth century by numerous nationalist movements, seeking 
to consolidate their national identities.
Along the author’s journey, there were numerous challenges for the 
young female poet to advance her career and have her works published 
in Slovenian newspapers. As Slovenia was part of the conservative mon-
archy, women’s roles were greatly restricted. Within the framework of 
the patriarchal power and the existing discourse, women did not have 
many opportunities to voice their opinions. According to Greene and 
Kahn, “the oppression of women was both a material reality, originat-
ing in material conditions, and a psychological phenomenon, a func-
tion of the way women and men perceive one another and themselves” 
(Greene and Kahn 3).
As with all European fin-de-siècle writers, Slovenian writers sought 
to explore new literary styles. They introduced impressionism, symbol-
ism, and decadence into literature. According to Felski, since they were 
2 In the nineteenth century, only some female writers appeared in Slovenian cul-
ture, but they were isolated and had no predecessors. They were also connected to the 
national appraisal: in their writing, they supported national ideas. The first Slovenian 
female poet was Fanny Haussman (1818–1853), who published her first poem in Octo-
ber 1848, “Vojakov izhod” (“Soldier’s entrance”). In the second half of the nineteenth 
century, two distinguished poets, also prose writers, tried to pursue careers: Pavlina Pajk 
(1854–1901) and Luiza Pesjak (1828–1898). The poetic expressions of L. Pesjak were 
often interwoven with patriotic feelings, but nevertheless in her poetry we also find inti-
mate themes and modern descriptions of nature, landscapes, and changing time periods.
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64
“caught between the still-powerful evolutionary and historical models 
of the nineteenth century and the emergent crisis of language and sub-
jectivity which would shape the experimental art of the twentieth, the 
turn of the century provides a rich textual field for tracking the ambi-
guities of the modern” (Felski 30).
During this period, a big generation clash occurred in Slovenian 
literary culture, which paved the way for writers to embrace modernity 
in the culture. It was a time of great transformation; fin-de-siècle writers 
approached writing with a newfound nervousness. In their works, they 
delved into subjectivity by employing new psychological and philo-
sophical approaches to the question of existence.3 Imaginative writing 
was predominant in literature, as evidenced by the symbolist and deca-
dent works, which depicted discordant emotions, as well as themes of 
anguish and anxiety.4
The young generation of Slovenian writers, the circle of “moderna,” 
tended to encounter difficulties in terms of the reception of their initial 
literary works within the inflexible cultural milieu of the past, wherein 
realistic standards had been the norm and the readership of the narrow 
Slovenian society had become accustomed to them.5
The emancipation of women in the Slovenian territory led to 
increased equality in rights and opportunities. At the turn of the twen-
tieth century, Slovenian female writers tried to transition their careers 
from the private to the public sphere. This was reflected in the estab-
lishment of the first women’s journal, Slovenka (Slovenian Woman), 
in 1897 in Trieste, and the emergence of a group of young women 
writers, of which Vida Jeraj was a member.6 The journal was founded 
before the organized Slovenian feminist movement in 1901. Among 
them, Jeraj was considered to be the most talented female poet. 7
3 Franc Zadravec declared in the texts of Slovenian “moderna” the turn to subjec-
tivism (Zadravec 15).
4 Literary historians also deliberately named this period “New Romanticism.”
5 The first texts of the Slovenian “moderna” originally received negative public 
reception. In their critical reflections, the critics of the major newspapers repeatedly 
used moralistic criteria, ideological norms, and prejudices. They also reviewed literary 
texts with the criterion of mimesis (see Jensterle Doležal, Avtor 151–167).
6 Among the poets were: Zorana Trojanšek-Franica Tominškova (1867–1935), 
Vida Jeraj (1875–1932), Kristina Šuler (1866–1959), Ljudmila Poljanec (1874–1948), 
Marica Strnad (1872–1953), and Ljudmila Prunk (1878–1947).
7 Jeraj, in the view of Slovenian literary historians, was recognised as the most 
original and talented (Jensterle Doležal, Ključi 74–77). Joža Mahnič wrote that Jeraj’s 
original and free lyrics is, among the female poets of that time, the most prominent 
(Mahnič 207).
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
65
At the end of the nineteenth century, the topic of intimacy was 
prevalent in Slovenian literature. The beginning of Slovenian modern-
ism (the so-called “moderna”) was marked by the emergence of erotic 
poetry, with the dialogue of love between the sexes being the primary 
focus of male poets, and female poets following suit. This “moderna” 
generation began in 1899 when two anthologies, O. Župančič’s Čaša 
opojnosti (The Goblet of Inebriation) and Ivan Cankar’s Erotika (Erotics), 
were published.8
On 5 January 1901, the prominent Slovenian impressionist poet, 
Josip Murn-Aleksandrov, wrote to his female colleague and friend, 
Vida Jeraj: “Being a writer is not so easy, especially for a woman. In 
ourselves, a certain distrust a priori exists for those inherited by nature.” 
(Murn 174)9 This paper aims to analyze the gendered censorship that 
was visible in the correspondence between Vida Jeraj (1875–1932), 
the main Slovenian female poet of intimacy at the turn of the twenti-
eth century, and her male colleagues, who were also writers. This had 
a great impact on the poetic strategies of the young and promising 
poet. Gendered censorship in this case was a problem of discourse and 
language.10 The study of Jeraj’s ego documents demonstrates how gen-
dered prejudices formed the poetic career of this talented young writer 
with promising impressionist poetics, who was recognized by Slovenian 
public organs, such as newspapers and revues, at the beginning of the 
century (see also Jensterle Doležal, Ključi 35–107).
This case study of Vida Jeraj will show that for Slovenian women 
it was almost impossible to break through and to persuade the literary 
audience of that time that their work was worthy and valuable. Jeraj was 
nomadic and cosmopolitan, with a bilingual identity: Slovenian and 
German, like all the other members of Slovenian “moderna.”11 As part 
of the “moderna” group, she wrote in Slovenian. As she was establishing 
8 The most prominent male authors of the Slovenian “moderna” were: Ivan Cankar 
(1876–1918), Oton Župančič (1876–1946), Dragotin Kette (1879–1899), and Josip 
Murn Aleksandrov (1879–1901).
9 “Pisatelj biti ni tako lahko, zlasti pa še za ženske ne, do katerih nam je že a priori 
od narave vcepljeno neko nezaupanje.” All translations from Slovenian into English 
are by the author.
10 This correspondence is, for researchers, the most visible form of communication 
between them. There were also other forms: things they said and did also expressed 
performative acts and showed patriarchal power, and unwritten norms of behavior in 
the society. The other expressions of male power in communication also merged the 
intimate and public spheres of writers.
11 She was partly educated in Vienna (1887–1891), where she lived with her uncle. 
From 1901 to 1910 she lived in Vienna with her family.
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66
her poetics, she had to justify her place in the Slovenian literary system. 
This was a shared difficulty amongst the modern generation of writers 
at the turn of the century, but for the first real Slovenian generation of 
female writers, it was almost impossible.12 Furthermore, the topics of 
intimacy that were featured in the lyrical confessions of female poets 
were also subject to censorship.
She wrote and published her poems in the shadow of great his-
torical and political changes in Central Europe: the collapse of the 
Habsburg monarchy, the First World War, and the emergence of the 
new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians (later the Kingdom of 
Yugoslavia), of which Slovenia was a part after the end of the war.
Ambitious and unconventional poet … Willing to respect the 
authorities?
Vida Jeraj broke through into the public arena at the end of the 1890s. 
She published primarily in Slovenka, yet she was also able to publish 
some of her poems in the major literary journal, Ljubljanski zvon. We 
are particularly interested in the initial period of her career, when she 
resided in Zasip, near Bled (1897–1901), striving to establish her ca-
reer in the Slovenian public arena as an independent teacher and un-
conventional writer. When we analyze her correspondence with her 
contemporaries, we find a surprising fact. It was difficult for Vida Jeraj, 
as a female poet, to make her mark in the Slovenian literary milieu, 
not only due to the numerous gendered prejudices in society and its 
misogynistic critics, but also due to the “soft” gendered censorship of 
her close male colleagues and friends.
In her formative writing period, two writers had a profound 
influence on her style and the trajectory of her poetic career: her 
friend Josip Murn-Aleksandrov (1879–1901) and the renowned poet 
Anton Aškerc (1856–1912), a leading figure in Slovenian poetry of 
the time, a mentor to all young Slovenian poets, and the editor of 
Ljubljanski zvon.
12 Jeraj was a friend and fellow writer of the “moderna” circle, connected to 
the leading figures (Josip Murn-Aleksandrov and Ivan Cankar), living in Slovenia 
(Zasip, Bled) and Vienna. At the beginning of her career as a teacher in a small vil-
lage near worldly, famous Bled, she was a self-supported, independent intellectual, 
which would have a major impact on her patriarchal position later: being only the 
wife of a celebrated musician (Karel Jeraj) and a mother of four children in Viennese 
bourgeois society.
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
67
From the time when Jeraj was almost unknown to the public, there 
exist five letters from May to September 1897 that Anton Aškerc,13 
an epic poet, wrote to the young, talented female poet. Aškerc had an 
impressive facility for storytelling and preferred realistic poetics and 
traditional forms of expression, often incorporating social motifs into 
his poetry, and favoring epic themes. His realistic poetics merged with 
post-romanticism. His most renowned anthology, Balade in Romance 
(Ballads and Romances) from 1890, featured themes drawn from his-
tory, folklore, and contemporary life, and his poetry conveyed patrio-
tism, religious criticism, and a critical view of society. Furthermore, 
his poetry demonstrated both great imagination and knowledge of 
other cultures.
Throughout their correspondence, Jeraj was a novice, publishing 
her first love poem in Slovenka on 16 January 1897 (Jeraj, “Slutnje” 1). 
It is a brief, intimate love poem. An autobiographical confession is 
composed in a straightforward traditional style and a love dialogue is 
depicted between the first person of the lyrical subject and the love 
object (you). The subject expresses intense emotions, is haunted by 
dreams and longs for a great future realization.
Tisoč sladkih slutenj / Dušo mi objame, / Če oko se tvoje / Z ókom mojim 
vjame // V blaženosti svoji / Zrem zaupno na-te, / O življenja sreči / Sanjam 
dneve zlate. (Vida Jeraj “Slutnje” 2)
A thousand sweet premonitions / candles my soul / when your eyes / meet 
mine // Blessed and happy / I look at you / and I dream about the never-
ending happiness in life / and about the golden days. (Transl. by the author)
Even in subsequent intimate poems, the autobiographical lyrical sub-
ject with modern sensibility uses lyrical confessions to express mod-
ern feelings. Subjectivity was articulated in brief, evocative poems with 
symbolic implications. The confession of the lyrical subject generally 
stops in time to look for a sense of purpose.
It was already evident in his letter that Aškerc read her first poetry in 
Slovenka. Jeraj’s lyrical poetry at this time was a great mosaic of modern 
13 Aškerc was a Catholic priest who at that time lived in a small town near Velenje 
(1894–1898). He was the main Slovenian poet at the end of the nineteenth century, 
the most respected in literary circles. From 1895, in Ljubljanski zvon, he was respon-
sible for young talents: the main editor Viktor Bežek entrusted him with editing the 
literary portion of the newspaper. He remained an editor of Ljubljanski zvon until 
1902. After 1899, he was a co-editor of Ljubljanski zvon with Anton Mikuš, and from 
1900 until 1902, the main editor.
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68
emotions; it was in some ways rather ethereal and subjective. Aškerc did 
not approve of this; instead he suggested she change her writing style 
and focus on “prose or short stories” that were more grounded in real-
ity. He asked her directly: “Are you not interested in social issues?” His 
primary recommendation was to “stick to the solid ground of reality” 
(Aškerc 48).14
She held his advice in high esteem and sent three poems in an epic 
style to Aškerc in his capacity as an editor of the newspaper Ljubljanski 
zvon: “V stolici” (“In the capital”), “Stava” (“A bet”), and “Rojenice” 
(“Witches”).15 In the third letter, he advised her to submit the two 
last romances with social commentary to Slovenka rather than to “his” 
Ljubljanski zvon.
Aškerc was the principal Slovenian professional “poeticus arbiter.” 
Therefore, in his second letter (8 June 1897) he proposed to her some 
novel poetic solutions. He emphasized the significance of poetic imag-
ery and metaphors in poetry: “To say as much as possible with images—
this is one of those secret solutions that make up a poetic style.” (Aškerc 
49)16 He also advised her to use a more varied and relaxed verse by 
alternating between masculine and feminine rhymes. He additionally 
advised her not to incorporate fantastical elements into her poetry and 
to shift towards realism.
He expressed his fear that he may have been too authoritative in his 
initial letter to the young poet, thus recommending that she should 
compose with the principles of her own subjectivity; that is, she should 
discover her own style and language with sincerity of emotions.
He also sought to demonstrate an appreciation and empathy for 
gender issues; he wrote about the lamentable position of women in 
Slovenian society, which, in his view, could be ameliorated through 
education and civil rights. At the same time, he also expressed patriar-
chal opinions and prejudices about that problem: “Considering myself, 
if you will allow me one remark, I was until now very skeptical about 
the poetical texts and poems of the female writers.” (Aškerc 50)17
He felt superior to the other sex from the standpoint of male author-
ity; eventually, he proclaimed that he favored beautiful women over a 
beautiful poem. Consequently, in the third letter (13 October 1897), 
14 “Držite se trdnih tal resničnega življenja!”
15 She didn’t include them in the anthology in 1908.
16 “Povedati, koliko se največ dá v podobah – to spada med tiste tajne momente, 
ki činijo poetični slog.”
17 “Kar se meni tiče – dovolite mi še to opazko – bil sem dozdaj sila skeptičen glede 
poetičnih spisov in pesmij izpod ženskih peres.”
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
69
he praised the image of the attractive woman (Jeraj had sent him a 
photograph, which frequently occurred in communications during this 
period), and his conclusion was that she was so beautiful that she did 
not need to write poetry.18
In the last two letters, he encouraged her to write. At the end of 
1897, however, they stopped writing to each other. One potential 
explanation for this could be Jeraj’s declared lyrical poetics; she had 
established herself as a lyrical poet, and her writing tended towards sub-
jectivity, intimate expressions, and emotional confessions, which was 
far removed from Aškerc’s poetic discourse and poetics.19 His “censor-
ship” could also be interpreted as a productive force: Jeraj eventually 
discovered that epic poetry was not her style. Nevertheless, it was only 
for a brief period that the great poet tried to persuade her to change 
her lyrical poetics. Aškerc’s advice hindered Jeraj’s creativity, yet later it 
also helped her articulate issues related to intimacy.
Jeraj was not the only female poet whom Aškerc tried to shape in 
terms of poetic style.20 Seven years later, he revealed his misogynistic 
views about female poets in a letter to another Slovenian female poet, 
Ljudmila Poljanec.21
Women can’t write poetry? The power of written words and 
prejudices …
Vida Jeraj met Josip Murn-Aleksandrov (1879–1901), who was five 
years her junior and at that point still unknown to the greater Slovenian 
public, though his colleagues recognized him as a promising figure of 
his generation.22 From February 1900 until his death in May 1901, 
Murn wrote Jeraj nineteen letters (unfortunately, Jeraj’s replies to him 
18 “Ta podoba kaže, da Vam ne bilo treba baš pisati poezije. (This photograph 
shows that you don’t really need to write poetry.)” (Aškerc 52)
19 That silence could have concrete reasons: Aškerc in 1898 had great problems 
with the Catholic institutions.
20 The younger generation later turned his back on him—that happened after his 
arbitrary editorial work on the poems by Dragotin Kette (1876–1899), published after 
his death in 1900.
21 See Aškerc’s letter to Ljudmila Poljanec, 5 October 1904: “Proti ženski poeziji 
imam, kakor sem Vam menda že povedal, hude predsodke. (I have terrible prejudices 
about female poetry, I think I have told you that already.)” (Aškerc 215)
22 At that time, Murn lived in Ljubljana—it was already after his stay in Vienna. 
He occasionally visited Bled and Vipava because he wanted to cure himself from 
tuberculosis.
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70
have been lost). They also met in Bled, Ljubljana, and Kamnik (where 
another female poet, Zorana23—Jeraj’s cousin—resided). During this 
period, she was one of his best friends. In his letters, he detailed his life 
and work, his travels, and he also wrote about their mutual acquain-
tances, cultural events, and books; however, surprisingly, he did not 
discuss poetry much. As such, we can presume that he was quite indif-
ferent to her poetry, despite knowing that she was striving to become 
a poet.24
In his letter from 17 December 1900, Murn was critical of Jeraj’s 
poetry, claiming that her poems were not personal or emotional enough. 
He implored her to “go inside of herself,” to discover what she wanted 
to write and then attempt it. Thinking about her poetry, he expressed 
his prejudiced views about “unreliable” women: “You women have a 
big heart; it’s just erratic, and it’s so fickle and so blurry that a man can’t 
know what’s inside.” (Murn 171)25 For the first time, he also advised 
her to write only for children.26 He confessed that he would be disap-
pointed with her writing if he would not read her poems for children, 
which he considered the most beautiful thing that “could be created 
from a woman’s hurt” (Murn 171).27 He continued by expressing his 
idealistic concepts of an artist’s integrity, writing about the “clearness” 
of the poet’s mind and his abilities and skills. According to Murn, the 
artist must be in a “clearly defined mood” and his art must be highly 
ethical. Through his words, Vida Jeraj could infer that it was not pos-
sible for a female writer to reach the high standards he suggested for the 
artist’s personality.
We can presume that he did not believe in her poetry, even though 
she had been one of his closest friends. Women, in his view, were 
incapable of writing poetry. He gave her the only real advice about 
poetics in his letter dated 9 January 1901. He again advised her to 
write poetry specifically for children. He suggested changes for the 
children’s tale in verse “Orjaki na Ajdni. Gorenjska pravljica” (“The 
Monsters from Ajdna: The Tale from Gorenjska”)—which she later 
included as the last poem in her anthology. He believed that the last 
23 Her real name was Franja Trojanšek Tominšek (1867–1935).
24 Perhaps she was also afraid or not confident enough to show him some of her 
poems.
25 “Ve ženske imate sicer veliko srce, samo nestalno in tako motno je, da človek ne 
more vedeti, kaj je v njem.”
26 On 6. 12. 1900, Murn wrote to the poet Oton Župančič about the high quality 
of Jeraj’s poems for children (Murn 145).
27 “Tudi bi izgubil o tebi že zdavnaj vse veselje, da nisem bral tvojih otročjih pesmi, 
ki se mi zdijo nekaj najlepšega, kar sploh zamore ustvariti žensko srce!!”
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
71
verses were overly constructed in a Germanic style (Murn 175).28 He 
encouraged her to add three new verses at the end of the poem, so 
that it would sound more poetic and musical. She respected his poetic 
authority, so she changed those parts of the poem before publishing it 
in her anthology in 1908.
However, Murn did not make any reference to either her impres-
sionist poems for adults or her subtle love poetry.29 On the other side, 
we have letters containing detailed “instructions” about poetry and 
poetic solutions that Josip Murn-Aleksandrov wrote to an unknown 
poet, Janko Polak.
Murn’s sudden death in the spring of 1901 was a great shock 
to Jeraj, a kind of “epistemological wound.” On this occasion, she 
wrote a cycle of poems “Mrtvemu pesniku Aleksandrovu” (“To the 
Dead Poet Aleksandrov”) in which she mourns the death of one of 
the most eminent poets of the generation. She then published the 
cycle in the renowned Ljubljanski zvon.30 The year 1901 also saw 
Jeraj experience a personal crisis, and she gave up her independent 
life, opting to marry and relocate from a small village to the bustling 
metropolis of Vienna.
Reception of Jeraj’s anthology (1908)
Jeraj published just one anthology of poems Pesmi (Poems, 1908)31 at 
the main Slovenian publishing house, Schwenter.32 It was not well re-
ceived in literary society, and the critics applied misogynistic criteria 
when evaluating her poetical world (Jensterle Doležal, Ključi 70–74). 
They denied the merit of her poetry, her ambition for the poetical 
language, her concentration on searching for right words in verse and 
her disciplined effort for formal arrangement. They wrote more about 
her as a woman than about her poetry. They were ironic, cynical, and 
28 It reveals the socio-historical context: Slovenian writers during this period were 
bilingual, as German culture and language was still influential (Jensterle Doležal, 
Avtor 69).
29 Perhaps she also didn’t persuade him with her poetry, because she published 
many lyrical poems after his death.
30 That was the decision of Anton Aškerc.
31 That was her success in the broader sense. Next to Ljudmila Poljanec, she was 
the only female poet from Slovenka who at the beginning of twentieth century suc-
ceeded in publishing a book (Poljanec in 1906, Jeraj in 1908).
32 Her second book, Izbrane pesmi (Selected Poems), was published after her death 
in 1935 (the editor was Marja Boršnik).
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72
paternalistic in their attitude towards her personality. They ironically 
referred to the young writer as “a beautiful female gardener” and “a 
cute fairy on the Slovenian Parness.” They wrote almost nothing about 
her poetry, but more about women in general as second-class citizens, 
who were in their opinion on the same level as children. The words of 
the critic Pam Morris, who analyzed Robert Lowell’s comments on 
Sylvia Plath’s poetry fifty years later can be applied here: “Comments 
continually blur Plath’s person with her poetry, this (con)fused identity 
is persistently described in gender stereotypes.” (Morris 45) In their 
view, a woman could not be a true writer because she was not an adult 
personality. For example, critics of Jeraj’s poetry wrote that “she was 
just skimming the surface, not going deep.” Her poetry was for them 
“a dwarf who possesses women in the years when they are neither a 
woman nor a child anymore” (Jensterle Doležal, Ključi 72).33
The reception was a great source of disappointment for her. She 
bitterly expressed her frustration to her Viennese friend Steffi Löffler,34 
stating: “My husband sent me one review of my poems [Zvon] … Not 
a single useful sentence! Just phrases and nonsense! But that doesn’t 
bother me!” (Jeraj, Vida. “Letter to Steffi Löffler, 2 September 1908”)35
That was one of the reasons why she stopped writing poetry for 
adults and started writing only for children. Her answer to the misogy-
nist critics of her first book was silence. Following the negative recep-
tion of her only anthology in 1908, she broadly followed Murn’s advice 
and began to write children’s poetry. The “soft,” implicit censorship 
of Murn-Aleksandrov had a great impact on her writing.36 From 1909 
onward, she wrote very few works for adults, and her poetry became 
less personal, with a greater focus on social and war themes.
In 1922, she published her last poem in Ljubljanski zvon (“Sappho”), 
which could be understood as a symbolical gesture with a “message” for 
Slovenian society. The poem represented a great contrast to her first love 
33 According to Rita Felski in the late nineteenth century, “to demonstrate wom-
en’s lower position on the evolutionary chain […] they [the women] are being invari-
ably compared to […] children or savages” (Felski 40).
34 Steffi Löffler was at that time the fiancée of Ivan Cankar and Jeraj’s friend and 
therefore part of the same Viennese circle of Slovenians as Vida Jeraj.
35 “Mein Mann samte mir eine Kritik über meine Gedichte (“Zvon“) … Nur 
eine einziger, vermischter Satze! Nichts als Phrasen und Gewischt! Aber das macht 
mir nichts!” She wrote about the critique of their view by the respected philologist 
Josip Tominšek (1872–1954) in the prominent Ljubljanski zvon (Jensterle Doležal, 
Ključi 71).
36 She published her second book, Iz Ljubljane čez poljane (From Ljubljana through 
the Fields), in 1921.
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
73
poem in Slovenka: “Slutnje” (“Premonitions”), published in 1897, and 
demonstrated a shift in her themes. One of her first public poems was 
a celebration of the joy and love wishes—the apotheosis of intimacy—
whereas her last published poem, more than twenty-five years later, was 
a lament of life’s defeats. It expressed the tragic position of the female 
poet in Slovenian society, who experienced a great disparity between 
herself as a poet and an inhumane, indifferent, misogynist society.
She also used a completely different form for that confession (the 
poem “Sappho” is written in free verse, and Jeraj in some way dis-
regarded the traditional forms of strophes and verses she had used 
before). In this poem, she also incorporated the myth of the first poet-
ess, Sappho, to express her tragical fate without any personal or profes-
sional success:
Šla je v množice ljudi, v bakhantski pijanosti je segla v strune zlate lire in vezala 
je v girlande besed krasoto ženske duše.
Postala je živ akord njegovega imena.
Za krohot in za aplavz je razprodajala svoje srce.
Pesmi so bile izgovorjene. Ona sama se je žrtvovala neusmiljenim bogovom 
sredi praznega svetišča. (Jeraj, “Sappho” 220–221).
She went into crowds of people. In bacchanalian drunkenness, she reached 
for the strings of the golden lyre and embroidered them with the beauty of a 
woman’s soul in a garland of words.
She became a living manifestation of his name.
She was selling her heart for applause and cheers.
The poems were spoken. She sacrificed herself to merciless gods in the midst 
of an empty sanctuary. (Transl. by the author)
The poem conveys the problem of expressing intimacy in her early po-
etry—the problem of her lyrical poems, which were met with disap-
proval from society due to its gendered view.
By the end of the twentieth century, Jeraj was completely forgot-
ten in Slovenian literary society. After all of the negative experiences 
on her path to becoming a writer and a poet within the gendered 
world of the Slovenian literature, Jeraj bitterly and sardonically con-
cluded in an epigram in 1926 that a Slovenian woman at that time 
had no chance of entering the literary world (Jeraj, Izbrano delo 142–
145).37 In 1932, she ultimately took her own life.
37 She wrote this epigram after the occasion in 1926 when the Slovenian Pen Club 
was founded: “Tu so vrata v Pen-klub, stoj! Ženska, n a š a vrhu tega!?! Moški tu smo 
med seboj in še to le radi tega, da slavimo svoj obstoj! Ženska, tu je Pen-klub: stoj! 
PKn, letnik 46, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2023
74
In 1929, in England, Virginia Woolf wrote about an imaginary sis-
ter of Shakespeare—a highly talented poet who, due to the restrictions 
of her time, was never given the opportunity to pursue her craft and 
was thus forgotten by history, but her afterlife will come when gen-
dered relations are no longer necessary for human existence: “We go 
alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to 
the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the 
dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she 
has so often laid down.” (Woolf 95)
Conclusion: Silenced voices
Implicit gendered censorship was a destructive form of male dominance 
in relation to Jeraj’s writerly identity and authorship. Also, in that case 
the formation of the subject “has everything to do with the regulation 
of speech” (Butler 133)—and also, we might add, of poetic speech. 
As Judith Butler has noted, censorship as the “performative with the 
agents of power also means psychical injury, which affects the bodily 
‘doxa’, that lived and corporeally registered set of beliefs that consti-
tute social reality” (159). Censorship is, in her words, crucial for the 
subject and his position in the society. According to Butler, this social 
performance is “a crucial part not only for the formation of the subject, 
but also of the ongoing political contestation and reformulation of the 
subject” (160). Gendered censorship, in the case of Vida Jeraj, caused a 
reorganization of her subjectivity and a decline in her writing, leading 
to her eventual silence.
In their correspondence, Jeraj’s colleagues and male friends provided 
her with advice on poetics, as well as what was deemed appropriate for 
a female poet to write. Behind all their gendered prejudices, Aškerc and 
Murn-Aleksandrov believed that a woman could not become a poet. 
They also tried to persuade Jeraj that she could not write poetry due 
to her gender. Male censorship of the young female poet signified the 
beginning of self-censorship, as her authorship was fragile at the outset 
of her career.
It was a significant challenge for a female writer from a small, nar-
row-minded, patriarchal, and deeply Catholic nation on the periphery 
(Here is the entrance to the Pen—club, stop! A woman, even more: our woman!?! 
Here just we men can stay and we are here to celebrate our existence! O woman, here 
is the Pen Club—stop!)”
Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
75
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Central Europe at that time to 
become a poet and to break through with new poetics. There are many 
similar stories of female writers in Central Europe at that time, most 
of which—as in the case of Jeraj—ended tragically.38 For a woman to 
become a poet in small Slavic culture of that “monarchical” time was 
a great sacrifice and a struggle akin to Don Quixote’s battle against 
the windmills. Examining her life, we can appreciate Jeraj’s courage, 
her determination and creative power, her quest for words, and her 
experimentation with language: writing poetry in an environment that 
was not conducive to her efforts. The obstacle was not only the poor 
reception of her work; in the process of writing, she was subordinated 
by male authorities and ultimately silenced.39 The female poet found 
herself neglected by her close colleagues, who did not encourage her 
work enough because of her gender.
Vida Jeraj was a highly promising poet and a cosmopolitan—a 
nomadic person who traversed between different cultures. Unfor-
tunately, her status as a woman worked against her and she was nearly 
excluded from literary history and Slovenian literature, of which she 
had so desperately wanted to be a part. Nevertheless, her legacy is not 
forgotten: after one hundred years, her poetry is finally becoming part 
of the Slovenian canon.
WORKS CITED
Aškerc, Anton. Zbrano delo. Deveta knjiga. Pisma II. Ur. Dušan Moravec. Ljubljana: 
Državna Založba Slovenije, 1999.
Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative. London; New York, NY: 
Routledge, 1997.
Dović, Marijan, and Luka Vidmar. “Habsburg Censorship and Literature in the 
Slovenian Lands.” Slavica Tergestina. European Slavic Studies Journal 26.1 (2021): 
20–52.
38 If we look at Slavic literatures in the period of the “moderna,” the exclusion of 
women from the poetry was common for a long time also in other “Habsburgian” 
nations. Here it is possible to mention the Czech decadent and impressionist writer of 
prose and poetry, Luisa Ziková (1874–1896), who after her tragic death from tuber-
culosis was not well received nor mentioned in the history of Czech literature like her 
male colleagues were (see Topor). In the history of the Croatian “moderna” from 1978, 
not a single female poet is mentioned (Šicel 268–305).
39 According to Judith Butler: “Silence is the performative effect of a certain kind 
of speech, where that speech is an address that has as its object the deauthorization of 
the speech of the one to whom the speech act is addressed. […] Power is exerted by a 
subject on a subject; its exertion culminates in a deprivation of speech.” (Butler 137)
PKn, letnik 46, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2023
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Felski, Rita. The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Greene, Gayle, and Coppelia Khan, eds. Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. 
London; New York, NY: Methuen young books, 1985.
Helen Freshwater. “Toward a Redefinition of Censorship.” Censorship & Cultural 
Regulation in the Modern Age. Ed. Beate Müller. Critical Studies 22 (2004): 
217–237.
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moderne. Maribor; Bialsko-Biala; Budapest; Kensas; Praha: Mednarodna založba 
Oddelka za slovanske jezike in književnosti, Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v 
Mariboru, 2014.
Jensterle Doležal, Alenka. “Med impresijo in dekadentnimi občutki—poezija Vide 
Jeraj.” Author Alenka Jensterle Doležal. Ključi od labirinta. O slovenski poeziji. 
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2017. 35–107.
Jeraj, Vida. “Slutnje.” Slovenka 1 (1897): 2.
Jeraj, Vida. Pesmi. Ljubljana: Schwentner, 1908.
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library in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Literary inheritance of Vida Jeraj. Ms 1213.
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Belo-modre knjižnice, 1935.
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Matica, 1964.
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Pirjevec. Ljubljana: Državna Založba Slovenije, 1954.
Šicel, Miroslav. Povijest hrvatske književnosti. Književnost moderne. Zagreb: Liber 
Mladost, 1979.
Topor, Michal. “Cestou Luisy Zikové.” Slovo a smysl 2.3 (2005): 177–196.
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študije spolov v Sloveniji.” Javnost 25 (2018): 1–17.
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Alenka Jensterle Doležal:     Becoming a (Slovenian) Poet at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
77
Postati (slovenska) pesnica na koncu 19. stoletja: 
moška cenzura poezije Vide Jeraj
Ključne besede: feministična literarna veda / slovenska poezija / slovenske pisateljice / 
Jeraj, Vida / cenzura / avtocenzura
Razprava se osredotoča na vpliv »moške« cenzure na poetiko in pisanje Vide 
Jeraj (1875–1932), glavne lirične pesnice med slovenskimi pesnicami, poveza-
nimi s tržaško revijo Slovenka (1897–1902). Primer Vide Jeraj razkriva, kako 
težko je bilo postati pesnica v omejeni, strogo razdeljeni patriarhalni slovenski 
kulturi kot delu konservativnega monarhičnega prostora tega obdobja. Niso 
je omejevala samo jasno dana patriarhalna pravila družbe, ki so korigirala njen 
prodor v javni prostor. Ravno tako je kasneje ni zaustavila samo mizogina 
negativna recepcija njene prve in edine zbirke pesmi leta 1908, nanjo je pri-
tiskala tudi »moška« cenzura kolegov in prijateljev pesnikov. Zanimalo nas 
bo njeno prvo obdobje ustvarjanja, ko je še iskala svojo poetiko in se uspešno 
uveljavljala v slovenskem javnem prostoru. Omejili se bomo na analizo kore-
spondence z njenim dobrim prijateljem Josipom Murnom-Aleksandrovom 
(1879–1901), tedaj mladim obetajočim impresionističnim pesnikom, ter z 
Antonom Aškercem (1856–1912), urednikom Ljubljanskega zvona in v tem 
obdobju glavnim arbitrom za pesniška vprašanja pri generaciji moderne. Pri-
krita cenzura moških kolegov je za mlado avtorico pomenila tudi avtocenzuro, 
saj sta se njena pesniška identiteta in samozavest šele oblikovali. Diskurz moči 
pesniških kolegov, ki je poudarjal politiko spola, je bil usoden za nadaljnjo 
pesniško kariero nadarjene pesnice. Tovrstna spolska cenzura, skupaj s kasnej-
šimi pritiski, je povzročila umik pesniškega glasu v tišino.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.163.6.09Jeraj V.:305-055.2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v46.i1.04