KOSOVEL: A GREAT POET BUT A POOR PROSODIST
Boris A. Novak Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Kosovel's early poetry - and it is debatable whether the literary historicist term "early poetry" is at all fitting for a poet who died at the age of twenty-two and left behind such a vast opus - offers excellent materials for an analysis of the loosening and deterioration of the traditional metrical structures into free verse. The young poet was visibly making an effort to keep versification in check, but it kept slipping out of his control; he was desperately trying to accommodate his inner sense of poetic rhythm to rigorous prosodic designs, but his verses stand awkwardly beside the traditional metrical line; and rhyme to him was still an indispensable mark of the sheer poetic quality of a poetic text, but only rarely did he rhyme in a way that was entirely satisfying to the ear. In the whole history of Slovenian poetry there is not a more drastic instance of a "crisis in verse", to use Mallarme's formulation. What is a gifted young poet to do if he is not in command of the material of his art, poetic language? He must create a new language, but how? By turning flaws into virtues, defects into strengths, and by forging a new vigour out of shortcomings.
When we speak of faults, we can only do so against the backdrop of a defined system of rules. Moreover: faults as such are the outcome of a rule put into effect. A very simple truth follows from this: if we make a mistake in a given system, the most effective way to neutralise it is to repeat it. A repeated mistake is no longer a mistake; it is already a system. At the start of his poetic adventure Kosovel intuitively adhered precisely to this artistic strategy: repeating mistakes. Fashioning an artistic truth out of a formal flaw!
A beginner cannot find fresh new rhymes, so he keeps repeating the same rhyming pairs, or even resorts to repeating the same words, a procedure that was strongly discouraged by traditional poetics, which saw in it simple mechanical repetition. In Kosovel's poem Vas za bori (Village Behind the Pines) such repetition paradoxically enhances the meaning of a poem.
Voklepu zelenih borovih rok	Clasped in green pine hands
bela, zaprašena vas,	a white, dusty village,
poldremajoča vas	a half-drowsing village,
kot ptica v varnem gnezdu rok.	like a bird in a safe nest of hands.
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 28/2005, Special Issue	133
Sredi dehtečih borov postanem:	Amid the fragrant pine trees I halt:
Ni to objem mojih rok?	Is this not the embrace of my own hands?
Velik objem, velik obok	a big embrace, a great arch
za tako majhno gručo otrok.	Afor such a small group of children.
Za zidom cerkvenim je pokopan	Someone is behind the church wal
nekdo. Na grobu šipek cvete.	On his grave a briar blossoms.
Iz bele vasi bele poti -	From the white village, white paths -
in vse te poti v moje srce	and all these paths lead to my heart.1
The words hands and village are repeated more than once in the verse endings as rhyming words; the repeated words thus enter different semantic contexts and develop a set of semantic connotations that broaden the thematic field of these worn-out words far beyond the traditional Weltschmerz and its related poetics. Later, I will analyse this procedure to establish that what in fact we are dealing with is a quite singular re-animation of the troubadour principle of what I have referred to as final/key words.
Only Srečko Kosovel can get away with a word like "bolest" ("grief^', "affliction", "sorrow") in his poetry. With any other poet this word is so "heavy" it is unpalatable. Only in Kosovel's usage is it semantically rich and diverse enough to be positively fresh. Poetic sound is always the product of meaning. Let us look at the introductory stanza in the poem Slutnja (A Premonition):
Polja.	Fields.
Podrtija ob cesti	A wrecked house by the road.
Tema.	Darkness.
Tišina bolesti.	The silence of grief.
Most of Kosovel's early poems, which Slovenian literary history has somewhat loosely labelled "impressionist lyrical poetry", formally fall within the framework of traditional versification; more precisely: they belong to the period of its disintegration and demise. These texts follow formal metrical structures based on the rules of the accentual-syllabic versification, but which have already been significantly relaxed and are leaning towards free verse.
These poems are marked by simplicity of poetic language: verse rhythm is derivative of the most common and popular metres borrowed from long tradition, euphony is characterised by hackneyed rhymes, and the poems employ the most common stanza structures. Quatrains top the list, and Kosovel seems particularly fond of joining three quatrains into a poem, this being the form he employs most frequently.
1 All the translations of Kosovel's poems in this paper were made with the aim of facilitating the reader's understanding of the content of Srečko's poems, but not the rhyme and metre. They have no pretentions to literary merit and should not be read as Kosovel's poems translated into English. In order for this paper to make sense to an English reader, I was obliged to keep to the original syntax as closely as possible, and did so as long as this was still within bounds of intelligibility. Rendering the formal properties of the poems in translation, assuming this could even be done, would inevitably change the content of the original poems to such an extent that many of the points made by the author of this text would be lost.
A careful assessment of the rhythms in these poems gives a highly diversified picture: a more or less equal predisposition to trochaic and iambic metres, and frequent use of a trisyllabic foot, which is less usual in Slovenian poetry (dactyls, amphibrachs, and even anapests, very rarely be found in Slovenian poetry, since few Slovenian words support the anapest stress pat-tern).The variability of the rhythm within a poem or even within a single line renders the traditional tool of metre in the case of Kosovel's poetry largely useless; it seems more appropriate to adopt the term metrical impulse, which allows for rhythmic variation, deviation from, and even violation of, the original metrical scheme. In many poems, the metre, or rather, the metrical impulse changes from one line to the next: the scansion of one line of verse reveals a regular rhythm, but already in the next line the rhythm changes, although it may still be metrically regular. Such texts are therefore isometric on the level of individual verse lines and polymetric on the level of the poem as a whole. The rhythm of a large number of Kosovel's poems constantly changes, even within one line, so that a metrical analysis is futile.
The underlying principle of traditional versification is the subordination of syntax to external, metrical criteria; or to put it simply, the sentence needs to yield to the limitations imposed by the metrical scheme (stress pattern, number of syllables, etc.). when after a long stretch of domination, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, metrical verse had run its course and was beginning to wear down to a cliche, poets were overcome by the need to break out of standard moulds that were stifling living inspiration. (I have deliberately used the traditional, rather sentimental word inspiration, because etymologically it stems from the Latin root spirare (= to breathe), suggesting the rhythm of lungs, blood, heart and body.) But the collapse of metrical rules, in fact, leads to the collapse of poetic language. In the organism of a line there emerges a structural vacuum, because the verse line is no longer organised by metrical laws and rules. In a sense, a regular metrical line constantly draws attention to its own poetic qualities, we could say, "sings out": I am not prose, I am verse. The signals of the poetic qualities in the traditional verse are regular (metrically organised) rhythm, the "jingle" of rhymes in verse endings, etc. How is a verse to prove that it is a verse, that it belongs to elevated poetry and not banal prose, if it has turned its back on its most powerful tool? The crisis of metre thus calls for a new organisational and ordering principle, a new manner of generating rhythm. The primary metre-forging function is now taken over by syntax. This development is demonstrated vividly by Kosovel's "impressionist" lyrics. In fact, it makes for the best case study within the entire history of Slovenian poetry, perhaps, to observe and understand the tectonic shift, the dramatic and far-reaching transition, from traditional metre into free verse.
The term free verse is dangerously misleading, suggesting as it does the illusion of complete artistic freedom, which is simply not possible in the domain of poetic language. A verse is invariably constituted through strong rhythm, be it metrically organised or organised in some other way, or it is not a verse.
Rather than repeating rhythmic and euphonious (sound) patterns characteristic of traditional verse, free verse is based on the repetition of syntactic units and words or phrases, very often functioning as rhetorical figures of anaphora (the repetition of the same words at the beginning of lines or sentences) and epiphora (the same procedure at the end of lines or sentences). This way of rhythmically organisatiing a line, syntactic parallelism, is in effect the same as the ancient - historically the earliest - principle of poetic language, which has come down to us, for instance, through the marvellous psalms of the Old Testament. In Kosovel's psalm-like sonnet Želja po smrti (Longing for Death), the anaphora Daj (literally = "give"or "let", but here best translated as "grant") is repeated as many as seven times in the introductory line with the phrase, Daj mi, Bog (Grant me, God):
Daj mi, Bog, da mogel bi umreti, tiho potopiti se v temo, še enkrat kot zvezda zažareti, onemeti, pasti v črno dno,
kjer nikogar ni in kjer ne sveti niti ena luč in ni težko čakati poslednjih razodetij, kar od vekomaj je sojeno bilo.
Daj, da stopim stran izmed ljudi, daj, da stopim in da se ne vrnem, daj mi milost: temo, ki teši,
da v bolečini s Tabo se strnem, daj, da odidem od teh ljudi, daj, da odidem in da se ne vrnem.
Grant me, God, that I should die, quietly sink into the dark, once again like a star blaze forth, grow silent, fall to the black rock bottom,
where there is no one and nothing shines not a single light and where it is not difficult to wait for the final revelations, because for ever it has been destined thus.
Grant me that I should step aside from people, grant me make this step, and never return, grant me mercy: darkness which consoles,
so that in pain with You I merge, grant me that I leave these people, grant me that I leave, and never return.
An analysis of this poem reveals that a trochaic metrical pulse is undermined three times with iambically intoned lines. It also demonstrates a procedure that is commonly observed in Kosovel: the loosening or even violation of the metrical scheme established at the beginning of the poem. A rhythm that pulsates and inspired cannot but steer the poet away from metrical dictates and limitations.
Particularly interesting is Kosovel's use of rhyme: in all honesty, his rhyming dictionary is extremely poor, with a prevalence of the so-called verbal rhymes. (Of all the parts of speech in the Slovenian language, verbs are the easiest to rhyme because of their corresponding inflections, and easily-formed rhymes tend to be semantically - and thereby also musically - poor.) It is as if Kosovel were endlessly repeating rhymes he had learnt from the poetic canon of 19th-century Slovenian poetry. For any other, less talented poet of Kosovel's time, drawing on such a familiar and worn-out domestic stock of rhyme endings would be a sign of grossly sentimental and conservative poetics. Not so with Kosovel: in his verses, these rhymes, a hundred times used and abused, suddenly ring out in a different, fresh, and artistically authentic way. A silent, but a deep and far-reaching break was effected within traditional versification: even those inherited rhythms and rhymes were now endowed with new sound and meaning through the different use of poetic language (for in poetry, sound and meaning are always closely bound together).
One of the strategies Kosovel employed in order to overcome semantic and euphonic bareness is - paradoxically - precisely the strategy of repetition, of which we have already spoken above. A repeated mistake is no longer a mistake. A semantically and musically weak rhymed word that is repeated is no longer weak, since the changed semantic context recharges the word with a new meaning. The repetition of rhymed words, which may have initially been an expression of the poet's shortcomings and awkwardness, an inability to find a word that would rhyme, became a conscious and productive moduss operandi. Kosovel's use of this procedure was so thoroughgoing that his poetry no longer presents us with a rhyme in the traditional sense (that is, the repetition of all the sounds following the last accented vowel in a word), but with a procedure which Italian literary theory refers to as parole rime, end-words, where entire words are rhymed, where repeated words stand in for rhymes. I myself have termed this za-ključne beside ffinal/key wordsj: the final words in a line are rhythmically, musically and semantically key words. The Provencal troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries were fond of this method, and used it in many different ways: they either repeated end-words in each stanza in the same position (at the end of the first, second, third etc. verse line) or, following a complicated key, they repeated words in varied order. The most prominent example of the latter is a sestina, a poetic form that was invented by Arnaut Daniel and which repeats the end-words in the order of 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3. After six sestinas, six stanzas of six lines, the final tercet tornada usually goes back to the original order of the end-words, two in each line. With the exception of the sestina, which has survived thanks to Dante and Petrarch, this troubadour technique sadly disappeared from the repertoire of European poetry; how unexpected and lovely to see it reanimated by an awkward young poet from the Slovenian Karst. The following poem can serve to demonstrate Kosovel's use of end-words:
Ne, jaz nočem še umreta, saj imam očeta, mater, saj imam še brate, sestre, ljubico, prijatelje; ne, jaz nočem še umreti.
Ne, jaz nočem še umreti, saj še sije zlato sonce, saj mladost me drzna spremlja, saj so cilji še pred mano; ne, jaz nočem še umreti.
kadar pa ne bo nikogar, staršev ne, ne bratov, sester ljubice, prijateljem -in jesensko tiho soncebo čez Kras, čez Kras sijalo, kot bi za mano žalovalo -res, ne bom se bal umreta, kaj mi samemu živeti?
No, I do not want yet to die, for I have a father, mother, I still have brothers, sisters, a sweetheart, friends; no, I do not want yet to die.
No, I do not want yet to die, for the golden sun still shines, for bold youth is still with me, for there are goals still ahead; no, I do not want yet to die.
But when there is no one left, neither parents, nor brothers, sisters, my sweetheart, friends -and the quiet autumn sun shines across the Karst, the Karst, as though it was in mourning for me -then no, I will not be afraid to die, for why would I live alone?
The final/key words in this poem are: to die, sisters, friends, and sun, but other words within the lines are also repeated, as is the final line of the first two stanzas, which gives the effect of a refrain. The stanza composition of this poem is somewhat unusual: two five-line stanzas are followed
by an eight-line stanza, as though the poet had set out to write according to a plan of five-line symmetrical stanzas, but suddenly, in a flight of inspiration, prolonged the third, concluding stanza. with the exception of the last four lines, which have successive verbal rhymes (a facile and rather bombastic procedure, but in this particular instance very effective), the text is unrhymed; the absence of rhymes Kosovel compensates for with compact, metrically organised verse (trochaic octosyllabic verse, with the exception of two seven-syllable lines with the same trochaic metre). If a series of un-rhymed verse lines are suddenly followed by a rhyme, the unexpectedness of this acoustic transition makes it all the more powerful; the same effect is achieved by the absence of a rhyme after a series of rhymed lines; Kosovel must have intuitively felt the poetic and emotional charge of such shifts in rhyme and metre.
Rhyme, of course, is by no means merely a euphonic device; it is also a rhythmic and semantic phenomenon. The interdependence of rhythm and rhyme (note the etymological kinship between the two words) is a marked feature of many Kosovel's texts which move away from traditional versification. In other words, in those poems where the rhythm is metrically irreproachable, Kosovel allows himself to drop rhyme, and in those texts where the poet has abandoned metrical regularity, a stronger use of rhyme makes up for the instability of rhythm. This is yet another proof of the law mentioned earlier, that a structural vacuum left behind after the collapse of the traditional system of versification needs to be filled with other structural means: if rhyme is barely audible, rhythm speaks forth; if rhythm dose not flow smoothly, lines are reinforced by rhyme. On the basis of the many examples Kosovel's poetry provides, one can derive another, more general, maxim: the period of deterioration of the traditional system of versification metre and rhyme are inversely proportional to each other. The poem Spomnim se (I Remember) is a good example of when a reinforced metrical design (a trochaic octosyllabic line) fills the structural vacuum which is left when rhymes and symmetrical stanzaic composition are abandoned. The organisation of the poetic text is made more compact also through anaphora (in/and; tiho, da ni /quietly, so) and syntactic parallels.
Spomnim se, ko sem se vrnil	I remember when I returned
in molčal sem kakor cesta,	and was mute like the road
ki vse vidi, a ne sodi.	that sees all, but judges not.
Tam pod tistim temnim zidom	There beneath that dark wall
sem poslavljal se od tebe	I was taking leave of you
in sem te težko poljubljal	and heavy were my kisses
na oči otožnovdane	on your sad devoted eyes
in na tvoje temne lase	and on your dark hair
in tajil besede rahle,	and I kept tender words secret
da bi Krasu bil podoben.	to resemble the Karst more.
In ko sem domov se vračal,	And on my way home,
sem na cesti se razjokal,	I burst out crying on the road,
tiho, da ni čulo polje,	quietly, so the field could not hear,
tiho, da ni čula gmajna,	quietly, so the woods could not hear,
da drevo ni zaihtelo	so the tree did not weep
sredi gmajne, tiho, samo.	amid the woods, quietly, alone.
As an example of the reversed technique, let me cite the following poem Mati čaka (Mother Is waiting ), in which rhymes compensate for the absence of regular metre:
Tujec, vidiš to luč, ki v oknu gori? Moja mati me čaka in mene ni, vse je tiho v noči, polje temno, zdaj bi stopal tja, pokleknil pred njo.
Mati, poglej: nič nočem več od sveta, reci besedo, besedo, besedo od srca, da bo v njej mirna luč in topel svit zame, ki tavam okrog ubit, ubit.
Joj! Ugasnila je luč. Zakaj, ne vem. Šel bi pogledat, tujec, a zdaj ne smem. Daj mi, da morem umreti tukaj, sedaj,
Stranger, can you see this light in the window burning? My mother is waiting and I am not there, everything is quiet in the night, the field dark, I would go there now, kneel down before her.
Mother, look: there is nothing more I want from the world, say a word, a word, a word from the heart, so it will hold calm light and warm gleam for me, who am wandering around beaten, beaten.
Oh! The light has gone out. why, I do not know. I would want to go and see, stranger, but cannot right now. Grant me that I should die here, now,
glej, meni je ugasnil edini, poslednji sijaj. You see, the one, final glow has died.
The metrical impulse of this poem is trochaic, but one that undergoes numerous variations; the rhythm changes, as do the number of syllables, which vary between 10 and 15. In order to counterbalance these rhythmic fluctuations, Kosovel resorts both to consecutive rhyme, which is the simplest of rhyme schemes and the "loudest", and to a symmetrical, regular stanza organisation. My notion of the inverse relationship between metre and rhyme in a period of deterioration of the traditional system of versification can be extended to include stanza organisation. In metrically looser poems, Kosovel and other poets of this transitional period insist on symmetrical, regular stanzas, whereas whenever a poem adheres to strict metrical composition, it allows for a more relaxed stanza composition and symmetrical stanzas give way to stanzas of different lengths, organised mainly according to the "thematic", that is to say syntactic and semantic, aspect.
From the generic and formal point of view, many of Kosovel's early poems are modernised ballads. It is interesting to note that Kosovel uses the title Balada (Ballad) for one of his short, simple and most celebrated poems:
V jesenski tihi čas prileti brinjevka na Kras.
Na polju že nikogar več ni, le ona
preko gmajne leti.
In samo lovec ji sledil
Into the autumn quiet time a fieldfare flies to the Karst
In the field there's no one left, only the bird flying
over the woods. And only a hunter following it^
Strel v tišino; droben curek kr^i; brinjevka obleži, obleži.
A shot through the quiet; a tiny trickle of blood; the fieldfare falls dead, falls dead.
Kosovel's combination of narrative and lyrical elements and the poem's tragic conclusion are probably why he chose the title, A Ballad. On the other hand, there are many poems to be found in Kosovel's work where, beside the dimensions of genre and theme, the poet also takes into account, consciously or unconsciously, the formal properties of the traditional Slovenian ballad. The best example of a ballad "proper^' is the well-known poem Bori (Pines), which is based on the trochaic octosyllabic verse metre, universally one of the most common metres of the ballad. One other element of Kosovel's poem that falls within the characteristic features of the ballad is the use of dialogue. Instead of rhymes, the poem resorts to the principle of final/key words (groza/terror, bori/pines, bratje/brothers, mati/mother, oče/father); the rhetorical figures of gemination, the immediate repetition of a word (here, the word bori/pines); and the anaphora (bori/pines, ali/or, ko da/as though), all of which contribute toward a tighter structure.
Bori, bori v tihi grozi,	Pines, pines in silent horror
bori, bori v nemi grozi,	pines, pines in mute horror,
bori, bori, bori, bori!	pines, pines, pines, pines !
Bori, bori, temni bori	Pines, pines, dark pines
kakor stražniki pod goro	like guards at the foot of a mountain
preko kamenite gmajne	across the stony woods
težko, trudno šepetajo.	whisper heavily, exhausted.
kadar bolna duša skloni	When a sick soul arches
v jasni noči se čez gore,	on a clear night across the mountains,
čujem pritajene zvoke	I hear stifled sounds
in ne morem več zaspati.	and can sleep no more.
»Trudno sanjajoči bori,	"Exhausted, dreaming pines,
ali umirajo mi bratje,	are my brothers dying,
ali umira moja mati,	is my mother dying,
ali kliče me moj oče?«	is my father calling me?"
Brez odgovora vršijo	Without answer, they swish
kakor v ubitih, trudnih sanjah,	as in beaten, spent dreams,
ko da umira moja mati,	as though my mother were dying,
ko da kliče me moj oče,	as though my father were calling me,
ko da so mi bolni bratje.	as though my brothers were sick.
Pines, one of Kosovel's best poems, bears suggestive evidence that the young poet had overcome his initial prosodic awkwardness with the aid of the principle of repetition, and evolved it in the direction of a deeply personal and unusually mature poetic expression.
The crown of Kosovel's mastery of traditional versification is his sonnets - fifty poems brought together in part II of Pesmi (Poems) of Srečko Kosovel's first volume of Zbrana dela (collected Works), edited by Anton Ocvirk (DZS, 1946). Some readers will not recognise these texts as sonnets, for the quatrains are followed by the third, six-line stanza (the tercets are combined into a sextain). But even this stanzaic composition has a place within the rich and diverse storehouse of the subgenres of the sonnet form, and is not Kosovel's invention. In these poems Kosovel is striving for the historically earliest metre of the sonnet verse line - the iambic hendecasyl-lable. And he achieves the so-called simplex, as Antonio da Tempo in the 14th century has referred to the demanding organisation of rhymes ABBA ABBA CDC DCD (the envelope pattern of rhymes in the quatrains, and
interlocking pattern of rhymes in the tercets - rime incatenate), which is the sonnet form most frequently used by the great Slovenian Romantic poet France Prešeren, and constitutes the basic rhyming model in the history of the Slovenian sonnet form. An example of such rhyming is Kosovel's sonnet Truden, ubit (Tired, Spent):
Truden, ubit grem iz dne-va v večer na mojih ustnih ni več molitve, v moji duši prekrute žalitve in brez miru sem, miru ni nikjer.
Kakor da sem že izgrešil smer, v dalji ne vidim več odrešitve, ah, v moji duši ni več molitve in miru več ne najdem nikjer.
Dvigni se, duša pobita, steptana, dvigni, zagori, zapoj do Boga, da boš kot harfa prijetno ubrana kot med večernim žarenjem srca, da spet bom zaslutil kraljestva neznana tam preko morij, tam onkraj sveta!
Tired, spent I go from day to evening, on my lips there is no more prayer, in my soul, insults too cruel
and I am without peace, there's no peace anywhere.
As though I have already lost the way, in the distance I no longer see salvation, ah, in my soul there is no more prayer and peace is nowhere to be found.
Rise, beaten soul, down-trodden, rise, flame up, sing forth all the way to God, so you will be like a harp sweetly fine-tuned as when the heart in the evening glows, so that once again I will intuit realms unknown, there beyond the oceans, there beyond the world!
It needs also to be said that Kosovel did not combine this rigorous rhyme scheme with iambic hendecasyllables, historically the foremost and also subsequently the most frequent sonnet metre, but instead based the metrical impulse of his sonnet on dactyls, with some digressions and some oscillation in the number of syllables per line.
Besides this variant, Kosovel also liked to employ cross rhymes in the quatrains (ABAB), and repeated rhymes (rime replicate: cDE cDE) or inverse rhymes (rime invertite: cDE EDc) in the tercets. It is also interesting to note that Kosovel drew on a rhyme scheme characteristic of the French and English sonnet, which is highly unusual for Slovenian poetry. Here is an example which adopts the French rhyme scheme (ABBA ABBA - or ABAB ABAB - CCD EED) - Iz cikla: Peto nadstropje (From the Cycle: Fifth Floor).
Vpetem nadstropju so dobri ljudje, v petem nadstropju in v vlažnih kleteh, tam se nikoli ne utrne smeh, oči tiho, mrliško brne.
Vpetem nadstropju so dobri ljudje, v petem nadstropju in v vlažnih kleteh, tam se nikoli ne utrne smeh, oči tiho, mrliško brne.
In otroci, ki se rode, kot da imajo žveplo v očeh, brezglasno leže, zvijajoč se po tleh, v cunje gnijoče ihte, ihte^
Toda peto nadstropje in klet kadar pregnije, se zruši svet in stisne smeh veselih ljudi. Tropa vojakov s puškami gre, a še ti se nad mrliči zgroze -kako da bi mogli streljati?
On the fifth floor there are good people on the fifth floor and in damp cellars, where laughter never erupts, the eyes silently, deathlike, whirr.
On the fifth floor there are good people on the fifth floor and in damp cellars, where laughter never erupts, the eyes silently, deathlike, whirr.
And children who are born as though with sulphur in their eyes, lie soundlessly in convulsions on the floor, burying their eyes in rotting rags, weeping, weeping
But the fifth floor and the cellar
when rotted through, the world collapses
and crushes the laughter of cheerful people.
A troop of soldiers with rifles is coming,
but even they shudder at the sight of the corpses -
how could they possibly shoot?
Kosovel 's poetics
In Kosovel's sonnets there are five which adopt the rhyme scheme characteristic of the so-called English sonnet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). The following rather bitter poem, Gospodom pesnikom (To Gentlemen Poets), is a good example:
kot v pekl^u zakajeni vinski kleti od jutra zbrani pa do polnoči pisatelji, slikarji in poeti dušijo svežost rože in moči.
Obrazi njih mrtvaški so in bledi, njih srca jih peko kot ogenj vic, popivajo ob bedi in besedi in javkanje, to njih^^ je poklic.
Gostilna je nj-iho-va zavetnica. Pa naj velja še, kar je že nekdaj? Jaz pojdem tja, ker beda in kr^^ica temnita zlati kraljevski sijaj, ponižanje, trpljenje, glad in beda, tam naj spoznanja željni duh spregleda.
In a wine cellar smoky as hell,
from morning till midnight
writers, painters and poets are gathered,
smothering the freshness of flowers and strength.
Their faces are deathlike and pale, their hearts smart like the fire of purgatory, they drink over misery and talk, and whingeing - that is their calling.
The tavern is their patroness.
Does what has always been, still to hold true?
I am going there, for misery and injustice
are dimming the golden regal glow,
humiliation, suffering, hunger and misery,
that's where any spirit thirsty for knowledge should
have its eyes opened.
Given their stanza organisation (4 - 4 - 6), it would appear that Kosovel's sonnets do not match the structure of the English sonnet (4 - 4 - 4 - 2) , but with questions of poetic form, the sound aspect (in this case, the rhyme scheme) takes precendence over the graphic division or the visual make-up of the poem.
In contrast to Prešeren's exclusive use of feminine endings and rhymes in his sonnets, and all the poems written in iambic hendecasyllables, Kosovel often employs masculine endings and rhymes (or draws upon the so-called extended masculine rhyme, where the dactyl ending and rhyme replace the masculine rhyme), which has in fact been the general tendency of the Slovenian sonnet form since Prešeren. The use of masculine rhymes is one dimension in which Kosovel and other poets deviate from Prešeren's model of the sonnet, which, however, has continued to have a firm hold on many Slovenian sonneteers. It is significant that in the more socially critical and political poems (eg. in the sonnets Revoluci/a/Revolution, Predkosilni sonnet/Pre-lunch Sonnet, as well as in the poem above, Iz cikla: Peto nad-stropje/From the Cycle: Fifth Floor), Kosovel uses almost exclusively masculine endings and rhymes, the tone of which is markedly sharper than that of the feminine endings and rhymes.
For Kosovel, writing sonnets was the apex of his metrical achievement; some sonnets are worthy of inclusion in an anthology of Slovenian sonnets. This would certainly apply to So^et smrti (Sonnet of Death):
In vse je nič. Te žametne oči ki strmi v sivino,
njih temni sloj prodira med tišino kot zvok, ki se v šumenju izgubi.
Te tihe, črne, žametne oči mi s svojim temnim bleskom in milino poljubljajo to sivo bolečino, ki mojo dušo vsak dan bolj duši.
And all is nothing. These velvet eyesso kakor žalost, are like sadness which stares into greyness, their dark layer penetrates silence like a sound that is drowned by a rustle.
These quiet, black, velvet eyes, with their dark shimmer and soft grace, kiss away this grey pain
that suffocates my soul more with each passing day.
Te tihe, črne, žametne oči	These quiet, black, velvet eyes,
so kakor črno, žametno nebo,	are like the black, velvet sky,
nad ostro rano Krasa razprostrto,	spread above the sharp wound of the Karst,
so kakor luč, ki dušo pomiri;	are like the light which appeases the soul;
ko ugasne nad pokrajino razdrto,	when the lights go out above the shattered landscape,
se v mehko temo duša potopi.	the soul sinks into soft dark.
One of the most poignant poems is the sonnet Ena je groza (One Is Terror).
Ena je groza, ta groza je: biti -	One is terror, that terror is: being -
sredi kaosa, sredi noči,	amidst chaos, in the middle of the night,
iskati izhoda in slutiti,	seeking a way out and sensing
da rešitve ni in ni.	salvation will not come, will not come.
Včasih se med ranjene skale	At times the golden dawning
tiho razlije zlati svit	of daybreak quietly spills
jutranje zarje - šel bi dalje,	between wounded rocks - you would go on,
pa že čutiš, da si ubit.	but you already feel your are beaten.
Kakor da se zarja rani,	As though the dawn hurts itself
kadar razgrne svoj pajčolan,	when it spreads its veil,
kadar razlije goreče slapovje	when it spills its burning cascades,
in ti zakliče pod goro: Vstani,	and calls to you below the mountain: stand up,
glej, že gori razbito gorovje! -	behold, the shattered mountains are already ablaze! -
Ti čutiš ga in ne veruješ vanj. -	You feel him, but don't believe in him. -
After this early period of sonnet writing, Kosovel's poetic adventure took a different direction, towards avant-garde linguistic experimentation. The rhythm-forging function of syntax and the principle of repeating words mark the poet's withdrawal from traditional versification and his entry into free verse.
To conclude: the body of Kosovel's poetry written in regular metre offers many examples which show that artistically strong poetry does not necessarily rest on skilful versification. Srečko Kosovel is a poor prosodist and yet a great poet. Fortunately, in poetry versification is not all. Moreover, versification undergoes significant changes through time, and Kosovel's example demonstrates that shortcomings within one aesthetic system can become advantages in the next.
Translated by Ana Jelnikar
■ ABSTRACT
UDK 821.163.6.09-1 Kosovel S.
Key words: Slovene poetry / Kosovel, Srečko / versification / metrics / rhyme
Formally, the majority of Kosovel's early poems, which Slovenian literary history has unsatisfactorily labelled "impressionist lyrical poetry", fall within the framework of traditional versification; more precisely, they belong to the period of its disintegration and demise. Awkward in prosody, young Kosovel somewhat weakened traditional accentual-syllabic versification, thus bringing it closer to free verse.
In these poems, Kosovel's poetic language is very simple: verse rhythm is derivative of the most common and popular meters taken from a long tradition, the verse endings are marked by hackneyed, unoriginal rhymes, and the poems are usually divided into the most prevalent stanza structure (mainly quatrains).
Particularly interesting is Kosovel's use of rhyme: his rhyming dictionary is, in fact, extremely poor, with a prevalence of so-called verbal rhymes. (Of all the parts of speech in the Slovenian language, verbs are the easiest to rhyme because of their corresponding inflections, and easily-formed rhymes tend to be semantically - and thereby musically - poor.) It is as though Kosovel were endlessly repeating the rhymes he had learnt from the poetic canon of 19'h-century Slovenian poetry. For any other, less talented, poet of Kosovel's time, drawing on such a familiar and worn-out domestic stock of rhyme endings would be a clear sign of a grossly sentimental and conservative poetics. Not so with Kosovel: in his verse, these rhymes, a hundred times used and abused, suddenly ring out in a different, fresh, and artistically authentic way. Kosovel surpassed the weakness of his versification by repeating his mistakes: a repeated mistake is no longer a mistake; it is already a system. A silent, but a deep and far-reaching break was effected within the traditional versification: even these inherited rhythms and rhymes were endowed with new sounds and meaning through a different usage of poetic language (for in poetry, sound and meaning are always closely bound together).
In short, this segment of Kosovel's poetry offers plenty of textbook examples which show that great poetry does not necessarily rest on skilful versification. Srečko Kosovel is a poor prosodist, but a great poet. Fortunately, in poetry, versification is not everything. Moreover, versification undergoes significant changes through time, and Kosovel's example demonstrates that the shortcomings within one aesthetic system can become advantages in the next.