NEOPHILOLOCICA
JANEZ STANONIK
LETTERS OF MARCUS ANTONIUS KAPPUS FROM COLONIAL AMERICA
MARIJA PIRJEVEC
LA SITUAZIONE POLITICA E CULTURALE NELLA SLOVENIA NAPOLEONICA E CHARLES NODIER
BRUCE MCIVER
HEMINGWAY IN THE SOČA VALLEY
MIRKO JURAK
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SPENDER
IGOR MAVER
THE POSSIBILITIES OF VERSE TRANSLATION: THE RECEPTION OF AMERICAN POETRY IN SLOVENIA BETWEEN THE TWO WARS
METKA ZUPANČIČ
LA RECEPTION DU NOUVEAU ROMAN FRANCAIS EN SLOVENIE
HENRY A. CHRISTIAN
WILLIAM STYRON'S SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE: A FULCRUM AND FORCES
1988
RADO L. LENCEK
ON LITERATURES IN DIASPORAS AND THE LIFE SPAN OF THEIR MEDIA
STOJAN BRAČIC
zu DEN DETERMINANTEN DES KOMMUNIKATIONSEREIGNISSES IM TEXT
LJUBLJANA
ACTA NEOPHILOLOCICA
JANEZ STANONIK
LETTERS OF MARCUS ANTONIUS KAP-PUS FROM COLONIAL AMERICA ....
MARIJA PIRJEVEC
LA SITUAZIONE POLITICA E CULTU-RALE NELLA SLOVENIA NAPOLEONICA E CHARLES NODIER..........1]
BRUCE MCIVER
HEMINGWAY IN THE SOCA VALLEY
17
MIRKO JURAK
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SPENDER
IGOR MAVER
THE POSSIBILITIES OF VERSE TRANSLATION: THE RECEPTION OF AMERICAN POETRY IN SLOVENIA BETWEEN THE TWO WARS..............31
METKA ZUPANČIČ
LA RECEPTION DU NOUVEAU FRANCAIS EN SLOVENIE . . . .
ROMAN
39
HENRY A. CHRISTIAN
WILLIAM STYRON'S SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE: A FULCRUM AND FORCES .... 53
XXI
1988
RADO L.LENCEK
ON LITERATURES IN DIASPORAS AND THE LIFE SPAN OF THEIR MEDIA ... S3
STOJAN BRACIC
zu DEN DETERMINANTEN DES KOMMUNIKATIONSEREIGNISSES IM TEXT ... 69
LJUBLJANA
Uredniški odbor — Editorial Board:
Kajetan Gantar, Meta Grosman, Anton Janko, Mirko Jurak, Dušan Ludvik, Jerneja Petrič, Neva Šlibar
Odgovorni urednik — Acting Editor: Janez Stanoniik
YU ISSN 0567.784X
Revijo Acta Neophilologica izdaja Filozofska fakulteta univerze Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljani. Naročila sprejema Oddelek za germanske jezike in književnosti, Filozofska fakulteta, 61000 Ljubljana, Aškerčeva 12. Predloge za zamenjavo sprejema isti oddelek.
Tisk Učne delavnice, Ljubljana
The review Acta Neophilologica is published by the Faculty of Philosophy of Edvard Kardelj University in Ljubljana. Orders should be sent to the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Philosophy, 61000 Ljubljana, Aškerčeva 12, Yugoslavia. Suggestions for the exchange of the review are accepted by the same Department.
Printed by Učne delavnice, Ljubljana
UDK 929 Kappus M. A.:910.4(7/8)
LETTERS OF MARCUS ANTONIUS KAPPUS FROM COLONIAL AMERICA III
Janez Stanonik
The letter of Marcus Antonius Kappus (1657—1717) from Cucurpe in So-nora (Mexico), dated 20. January 1691, which is now published for the first time in the present study, is historically important, because it speaks in considerable detail of the revolt of the Tarahumara Indians in 1690. It is one of the few contemporary accoimts of this revolt and brings a number of facts unknown so far.'
I.
The Tarahumara Indians — they call themselves Raramuri — are one of the major aboriginal tribes in northwestern Mexico.^ They inhabit the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre, in southwestern part of the Chihuahua Province, and extend partly also towards the east into the Chihuahua plateau. They are therefore divided into the Tarahumaras Altos in the Sierra, and .the eastern Tarahumaras Bajos. Towards the northwest they border on the Pima Bajos and Opatas, towards the east on the Conchos and the nomadic Tobosos, to the south on the Tepehuanes, and to the west on a number of smaller tribes who inhabit the western siopes of the Sierra Madre (Varohio, Temoo, Tubar).
' The present study is a continuation to the two earlier contributions: Janez Stanonik: Letters of Marcus Antonius Kappus from Colonial America I, Acta Neo-philologica XIX (1986), 33—56 and part II, Acta Neophilologica XX (1987), 25—38. The first part tried to reconstruct the biography of Marcus Antonius Kappus; the second analyzed the journey of Kappus and his companions, 23 Jesuits, from Cadiz to America in summer 1687.
CORRIGENDA: In the second contribution several mistakes have unfortunately been made by the printer in the Latin letter from the Canary Islands, dated 10. July 1687 and in its English translation {Acta Neophilologica XX, 1987, pp. 25—38). In the Latin text, p. 36, line 11 from above: read »velox« instead of »Velox«; line 37 from above read: »eleuacionis gradum versemur, hoc nempe...« instead of: »eleua-cionis gradum, hoc nempe...«. In the English translation one line has been dropped out by the printer: after p. 38 line 7 from above which ends: »twice baked white...« the omitted line should be added: »bread in the evening, before we lie down, fresh water and bread. With sugar we ...«
^ An early accont of the Tarahumara country was written by Juan Ratkay which is still unpublished. An early Httle known published work on the Tarahumaras is by Josef Neumann: Historia seditionum, quas adversus Societatis Jesu missionarios, eorumque auxiliatores moverunt nationes Jndicae, ac potissimum Tarahumara in America Septemtrionali. This book was probably published in Prague in Bohemia in 1730. This rare work is available in a photostatic copy in the Bancroft Library of the University of California in Berkeley.
Geographically they inhabit the region between the source area of the Yaqui River in the north and the Rio Fuerte and its tributaries lin the south. Linguistically they belong to the Uto-Aztecan group of Indian languages and are more closely related to the Opatas and Cahita Indians.
Before the Tarahumaras came into contact with the Spaniards they supported themselves with agriculture, growing com, beans and squash, and with hunting. They lived scattered in small rancherias which were widely separated from each other. Frequently they migrated seasonally from their field areas on the high mountain plateaus into the more protected canyons in winter.
Decisive for the spreading of the Spanish colonization into the Tarahu-mara region was the discovery of silver mines which attracted many new Spanish settlers. The centre for the Spanish expansion into this area was the town of Durango which itself was started in 1563 as a silver mine. In 1567 silver was discovered in a place that was given the name of Santa Barbara, 500 miles north of Durango, in the southeastern part of the Tarahumara territory, in 1631 silver was found at Parral, in 1685 in Cusihuiriachic in the northwestern part of the Tarahumara territory, and in 1709 at Chihuahua, the present capital of the province. In this way the Spaniards penetrated step by step along the eastern, peripheral section of the Tarahumara region northwards. These silver mines needed slave labourers, and so those Tarahumaras who were not baptized were hunted down and forced to work in the mines. Also a certain number (4 %) of christianized Indians was forced to work as paid labourers in the mines: these regulations were frequently violated and misused by the mine owners. Around the mining towns the Spaniards created large haciendas and ranches where the Indian labour was also needed. This situation created tensions with the native population which frequently led to revolts.
The missions in the Tarahumara coimtry were led by the Jesuits, while east of them, among the Conchos, the missionary work was conducted by the Franciscans. The first missionary among the Tarahumaras, Juan Fonte, came to work here in 1607 and founded the mission San Pablo Ballesa, near the mining town of Santa Barbara. In 1616 he was killed by the revolting Tepehuanes who were joined in the rebellion also by the southern Tarahumaras. The Jesuits resumed their work in the area in the 1630's, after the dis-
There is considerable modem literature on the Tarahumara Indians. The most significant works are: Carlos BASAURI: Monografia de los Tarahumaras, Mexico, Tälleres Gräficos de Naciön, 1929. — WendeU C. BENNETT and Robert M. ZINGG: The Tarahumara, An Indian Tribe of Northern Mexico, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1935. — Peter Masten DUNNE: Early Jesuit Missions in Tarahumara, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1948. — Filiberto GOMEZ GONZALEZ: Rardmuri, un diario Tarahumara, Mexico, Tall. Tip. de Excelsior, 1948. — A. L. KROEBER: Uto-Aztecan Languages of Mexico, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1934. — Mexico, Departemento del Trebajo: La raza Tarahumara, Mexico, 1936. — Manuel OCAMPO: Historia de la misiön de la Tarahumara 1900—1950, Mexico, Editorial Buena Prensa, 1950. — Francisco M. PLANCARTE: El problema indigena Tarahumara, Institute nacional indigenista, Memorias, vol. V, Mexico 1954. — Carl SAUER: The Distribution of Aboriginal Tribes and Languages in Northwestern Mexico, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1934. — Edward H. SPICER: Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest 1533—1960, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1981. — Rudolf ZABEL: Das heimliche Volk, Erlebnisse eines Forschungsreisenden am Lagerfeuer und vor den Höhlen des Urvolks der Tarahumara-In-dianer, Berlin, Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1928.
covery of silver at Parral. They soon created a number of missions in the eastern Tarahumara Baja. The missionaries tried to reduce the Tarahumaras into their mission centres, but without much success. During the whole of the XVI I"' century a considerable part of the Tarahumara country remained free and the Tarahtimaras had the possibility to flee into this area when necessary. The years from 1648 to 1652 were characterized by several mutinies which were cruelly suppressed by Spanish soldiers. The Spaniards tried now unsuccessfully to found a military outpost in the centre of the revolting area, in the source region of the Yaqui River, at a place they called Villa de Aguilar, and a Jesuit mission nearby at Papigochic. Here the Jesuit missionary Padre Comelio Beudin Godinez was Miled in 1650, and his successor Padre Jacome Antonio Basilio in 1652. This stopped the Jesuit expansion into this area for twenty years.
In the mid-seventies new missions were founded at Carichic, Papigochic, Tutuaca, and in several other places in the source region of the Yaqui and Conchos rivers. At Carichic worked from 1681 to 1683 Juan Ratkay, bom in Ptuj in Slovenia, who died here under not quite clear circumstances. Peace reigned in this area from 1652 to 1690.
The new revolt broke out in 1690. This is the revolt described by Kappus in his letter which we reprint in our present study. In 1685 a new mine was discovered at Curihuiriachic which brought Spanish settlers into this northwestern moimtainous part of titie Tarahumara country. The revolt started at the mission Yepomera, where its missionary, the Spaniard Padre Diego Ortiz de la Foronda was killed on 11. April 1690. The revolt threatened to spread also among the Jova Indians, a tribe belonging to the Opatas, living in Sonora. The rebellion, however, was soon suppressed by Spanish soldiers who came from Parral.
The revolt of 1690 was the forerunner of the last and the largest revolt of the Tarahumara Indians which broke out in 1696. Its centre was again Yepomera. The rebellion spread over the largest part of the Tarahtmiara Alta. The Spanish soldiers tried to suppress it with great cruelty. The Indians fought desperately, frequently preferring death to subjugation, xmtil 1698 when the country was finally pacified. The Tarahumaras, however, still continued to find refuge in the rugged canyons of the headwaters of the Mayo and Fuente rivers. In the mid XVIII''' century it is believed that there were some 18.000 Tarahumaras. At present there are some 50.000 Tarahumaras. In the 1930's, under the president Cardenas del Rio, they obtained their first schools in the vernacuJar.
IL
Although Kappus did never live among the Tarahumaras, his report of the Tarahumara rebellion is a valuable historical soiirce. According to Kap-pus's own statement his knowledge of the events is largely based on what he was told about them by the Father Visitador. This was in 1690 and 1691 the famous missionary Juan Maria Salvatierra whose life was also endangered by the revolt.^
^ Gerard Decorme; 8. J.: La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos durante la epoca colonial, 1572—1767, Mexico City 1941, of. vol. II, p. 384. — About Salvatiera, of. the first part of our study. Acta Neophilologica XIX (1986), p. 47 ff.
Kappus's description of the general development of the revolt agrees basically with what is already known about it. Interesting is Kappus's statement how the fear of tlie revolt reached even Cucurpe and thus it spread over the whole northern Sonora.
Kappus in his letter speaks of the deaths of two missionaries killed by the rebellious Indians. Kappus confirms what is already known about the death of Padre Diego Juan Ortiz de la Foronda at Yepomera on 11. April 1690 which marked the outbreak of the rebellion. Diego Juan Ortiz de la Foronda was born in 1655 in Guadalupe in Spain. He joined the Jesuit order in the Province of Toledo, and left for America in 1675. For a time he taught at the College of San Luis Potosi. Since 1684 he worked among the Tarahumara Indians."
Kappus, however, gives a completely new version of the death of Padre Manuel Sanchez. In Kappus's letter we find the name of this missionary distorted, as P. Emanuell Sanenez. This is doubtlessly due to the fact that Kappus's present letter is preserved in a copy only, and the copyist was not able to decipher here Kappus's handwriting. Padre Manuel Sanchez was born in 1639 in Marchena, the Province of Sevilla. He joined the Jesuit order in 1659 in the Province of Andalusia. In 1675 he embarked at Cadiz for America. Since 1684 he worked as a missionary in the north, in 1687 he came to Tu-tuaca where he remained until his death. According to Kino, he was returning from the Real de San Nicolas, where he had preached, to his mission at Tu-tuaca, when he was attacked by the Indians in the area between Yecora and Tutuaca and killed together with his companion Captain Manuel Clavero.^ — According to Kappus, however, Manuel Sanchez was paying a visit to Maxi-millianus Amarell who worked as a missionary at Yecora (among the Lower Pimas). When Manuel Sanchez heard of the revolt he immediately decided to go to Tutuaca to save the chalice there and the church robes, but on the way he was attacked by the Indians and killed by stabbing. Kappus confirms this by stating that he himself had seen the jacket of the dead missionary pierced to pieces.
Interesting is also the information about Maximillianus Amarell, that he was a travelling companion of Kappus and Adam Gilg when they went from Mexico City to their working places in Sonora at the beginning of 1688, and that he worked at Yecora. About Maximillianus Amarell little is known, except that he was a missionary from the Bohemian Province.
III.
Kappus's letter, dated Cucurpe 20. January 1691, which we reprint here in German original and in English translation, is preserved in the same collection as the two letters that we have already published in the preceding numbers of Acta Neophilologica, tliat is in the Archives of Slovenia in Ljub-
* About Padre Diego Juan Ortiz de la Foronda, cf.: Kino's Biography of Francisco Javier Saeta, ed. by Charles W. Polzer, S. J. and Ernest J. Burrus, 8. J., Rome, St. Louis, Jesuit Historical Institute, 1971. — Francisco Zambrano, S. J.: Diccionario bio-bibliografico de la Compania de Jesus in Mexico, Mexico City 1961 ff, vol. X, p. 659.
' About Padre Manuel Sanchez, cf. Kino's Biography of Francisco Javier Saeta, op. cit., and Zambrano, op. cit. vol. XIII, p. 262.
ijana, in the collection Archives from Dol (Dolski arhiv). The text is preserved on a single piece of paper, dimensions 30.5 X 21 cm, written on both sides. There is no opening head of the letter: the letter begins immediately-addressing Kappus's brother to whom the letter was written. The manuscript preserved in the Ljubljana Archives is obviously a copy of the original: this is proved by the fact that the copyist was not able to read correctly the name of the missionary Manuel Sanchez. The writing of the manuscript shows that the copy was made already in the XVII*^ century. The manuscript is written in Gothic script with the exception of the names which are written with the Latin characters. The orthography and the dialect (the so-called southern Bavarian which is spoken in Austria) show the same characteristics that we have registered for the letter from Cucurpe, dated 30. April 1689 which we have published in our first study.«
THE TEXT
Herzlibster Herr Bruder: den 8: Aprili des verloffenen 1690 Jahrs hob ich das Glükh gehobt sein den 15: Marty geschribenes Brieffl sambt andern Europeischen schreiben zuempfangen. Es freyt mich von grundt meiner Seelen, dass sich der Herr Bruder sambt denen Vnsrigen sich woolauff befindet, Vnd alle meine Brieff denselben zuhanden khömben sein. Bedankhe mich ganz herziglich vmb das zue-geschikhte Verschlögl, wie woollan solches zu meinen Händen noch nicht Khomben ist. Ober Weillen es der P. Stephanus Fliscus, wie er mir geschriben schon nach Cadiz verschikht, Vileicht wierts nach hauss Taglicht Kumben. Dises Johr hat sich vndter den Tauromanensichen Indianern, die gegen Orient von vns gelegen sein, eine erschrekhliche revolution erwegt, dan die maisten dem hoben zusamben conspiriret, alle Patres die vndter Ihnen in vndterschidlichen Missionibus leben, vmbzubringen. Den 29 Mertzen hoben sie zu Jepomera dieses vollzuziehen angefangen, vnd in aller fruehe dass Hauss des fäter mit solchen feuer, vnd Rauch vmbgeben, dass er gezwungen war sich auss dem Hauss zubegeben. Vnd als er sich khaumb bei der Thür hat sehen lassen, da hoben ihn die bössewicht olsobolt mit pfeillen zugesezt, vnd erbärmlich zu Tott geschossen. Der Pater nente sich Didacus Ortiz De Foronda. Also boldt darauf verbrenten sie die Kürchen vnd das Hauss, vnd machten sich auf eben solches in der negsten Mission allwo sich 3 Patres beysamben fanden, zu vollziehen, ober es khame ihnen vor ein Threuer Indianer, welcher bey Zeiten die Patres vermandt damit sie flucht nämben. Vnd hoben die ormen in aller Eyll vndter die Threue Indianer reteriredt. Vndter dessen Khamben diese Traurige Zeitungen auf Jekhoro, welche Mission administrierte ein Teitscher Pater auss Böhmen, welcher auss Mexico main Raissgspan ware nambens Maximillianus Amarell, vnd hate zu gast oder vill mehr zu Trost einen andren Fater der nehsten Mission, welcher nach verstandener Sach sich also-boldt aufgemacht, den Khölich, vnd Kürchen omat auss seiner Mission zuheben, ober es überfalleten ihn die Barbaren vnter wegs, vnd als er wohr namb, das
der glorwürdige Tott vor banden ware Kniete er nider vnd mit zusamen geschlo-genen händen batte er den guedten gott vmb seine feint. Vnd als er also KJhmiendt bettete, da tanzte gegen ihm, vnd machte schimpf stossen vor seiner einer auss den Barbaren, vnd rendt ihn entlich durch mit einer Klingen von der rechten Seithen biss zu der linggen durch, vnd durch, einmoll vnd zwaymoll biss er Ihnn zu Tott gestossen. Dessen glükhseligen Faters wämäsel wie es zerstossen war, mir diser Tagen der P. Visitator gewissen. Der vmbgebrachte Pater war ein Spaniger nambens Emanuell Sanenez. Hetten auch auf ebne weiss 8: andere Paters dass vnschuldige bluet vergossen so sie nicht durch anordnung gottes von Etlichen Treyen Indianern bey zeiten weren vermandt worden, wie vnd wo sie ihr leben in die Sücherheit stellen solten. Alss dise schmerzhaffte Zeitimgen Täglich sich mehr vnd mehr hörren wisen, mahneten, vnd batten mich meine Indianer, ich solte mich nicht damon machen, vnd sie verlassen, welches ich zwor nicht gedacht. Dan sie wolten wenn es soll darzue khomben, stattlich vnd manhafft fiir
Op. cit-, Acta Neophilologica XIX (1986), cf. p.
den glauben streitten, vnd sagten, wass ist den wan wür auch entlich alle sterben Sölten. Wür werden fJr gott vnd für den glauben sterben vnd du sollest eheunder sterben alss wan wür schon alle solten vmbgebracht werden, es gefüelle mir über die massen ihre Treuherzigkheit, und zweifle nicht dass sie auss herzen geredt hoben. Jezt ist widerumb gott sey es gelobt, alles still, dan es haten sich etlich 100 Spaniger zusamben gesamblet, vnd hoben mit hülff der Threuen Indianern etlihe hundert der Barbaren vmbgebracht, vnd die übrage in die flucht geschlagen, den 19: May hat sich nicht wait von hier auch ein sehr schmerzliches Vnglükh zugetragen. Dan ein Spaniger hat vngefehr sein frau mit ein amder Späniger beysamben gefunden, vnd alsoboldt den man erschossen, vnd sein aignes weib mit der Fixen zu tott geschlagen. Ich will mich waiter nicht ausslassen mit der feder, damit ich nicht villeicht dise guete gelegenheit versäume, bitte einzig, vnd allein der H. Bruder wolle beständig meiner in seinem H. gebett ingedenkh verbleiben, ich vergesse auch nicht den Ersten vnd lezten tag eines jeden Monaths mein Möss auf die intention des H: Bruder aufzuopfern ohne dem dass ich Täglich des H: Bruders vnd aller der vnsrigen in der H. Möss opfer ingedenkh bin. Der H: Bruder wolle mich allen den vnsrigen absonderlich seiner Haussfrauen dero ich auch gar offt ingedenkh bin, der frau Francisca, vnd Maria Te-resia, dem P. Zacharias, dem H: Hanss Georgen, der frau schwester Fruepergerin, der frau Adlmänin so sie noch lebt, vnd allen Steinpüchlem, meinen H. Corl Joseph, vnd Joahimb ganz freintlich anbefelchen. Es freyt mich dass der Hansel
ist Jesuiter worden, vnd dass der Zöherl so wool studiert, aber es schmerzt mich das zeitliche ableiben vnserer frau Schwogerin Cord: ich bin taglich ihrer in meinem Memento ingedenkh, der allegüt: Gott gebe vns sein H. Segen vnd gnad, damit wür vns alle in dem andern, vnd beständigen leben beysamben fünden, vnd in ewigkheit beysamen vorbleiben. Amen. Cucuipe den 20 Januar 1691.
meines herzlichst H. Bruder bis in Tott
Treuge vnd alzeit ingedenkh
Marcus Ant: Kappus S: J:
Den vergangenen Mertzen hob ich dem H: Bruder vnd dem H: Hans Georgen wie auch der frau Mumb Francisca zugeschickht hoffe es wurden solche Brieff allen zukhomben sein
TRANSLATION
Dearly beloved Sir Brother: on the of April of the passed 1690 year I had the good fortune to receive, together with other European letters. His' letter, written on the IS'h of March. I rejoice with all my heart, that my Sir Brother and all our people are well and that all my letters have reached him. I thank most cordially for the small box sent to me althou^ it has not yet come into my hands. Yet since it was sent already to Cadiz by P. Stephanus Fliscus, as he wrote to me, it will perhaps come home any day. This year a horrible revolution arose among the Tarahumara Indians who live towards the East from us; for the majority of them have together conspired to murder all the Fathers who live among them in various missions. On the 29"' of March they began to carry out this at Jepomera and to surround quite early in the morning the house of the Father with such a fire and smoke tlaat he was foreed to go out of house. And as soon as he showed himself at the door, the villains at once attacked him with arrows and in a wretched manner they shot him dead. The Father's name was Didacus Ortiz de Foronda. Immediately afterwards they burned down also the church and the house and left to do the same thing at the next mission where 3 Fathers got together; yet a faithful Indian arrived before them who in time warned the Fathers so that they could take to flight. And these poor (Fathers) retreated in all haste to the faithful Indians. In the meantime the sad news reached Jekhoro, a mission administered by a German Father from Bohemia with the name of Maximillianus Amarell who was my travelling companion (on the road) from Mexico. He had as his guest, or rather for his solace, another Father from the next mission
' i.e. brother's. Kappus uses the personal pronoum for the third person singular as the form of address for the addressee.
who as soon as he learned of the events set out to take from his mission the chalice and the church robes. But the Barbarians attacked him on the road, and when he became aware that the glorious death was .near, he knelt down and with the folded hands he asked the good God for his enemies. And when he so prayed kneeing, one of the Barbarians danced towards him and made sham thrusts in front of him, and finally he ran the blade through him, from the right side through to the left side, through and through, once and twice, until he had stabbed him to death. These days the Father Visitator has shown me the vest of the blessed. Father, how it was pierced to pieces. The murdered Father was a Spaniard with the name of Emanuell Sanenez. They would have shed in the same way the innocent blood of 8 other Fathers had they not been exhorted in time through God's disposition by several faithful Indians how and where they should place their lives into safety. When each day these dolorous news were heard more and more, my Indians admonished and begged me I should not flee away and leave them which in reality I had not thought of. Because they wanted — if it would come so far — to fight with dignity and manly for the faith, and they said, what it is finally when we should all die. We shall die for God and for the faith and you would actually die only after we had already all been murdered. This faithfulness pleased me extremely and I do not doubt that they spoke from their hearts. Thank God, evei^^-thing is now calm again because several hundred Spaniards had gathered and with the help of the faithful Indians they killed several hundred Barbarians and the rest put to flight. On the 19'^' of May a very dolorous accident happened also not far from here. For a Spaniard had found by chance his wife together with another Spaniard, and he shot immediately the man and hit his own wife with his firearm to death. I will not further enlarge with my pen so that I do not miss this good opportunity. I only beg that Sir Brother would always remember me in his holjf prayer. I also do not forget on the first and the last days every month to celebrate my Mass for the intention of my Sir Brother in addition to my daily remembrance of my Sir Brother and of all ours in the celebration of the holy Mass. Sir Brother may most friendlily recommend me to all our people, especially to his housewife whom I also frequently remember, to Lady Francisca and Maria Teresia, to P. Zacharias, to Sir Hans Georg, to Lady sister Fruepergerin, to Lady Adlmänin if she is still alive, and to all the inhabitants of Kanma gorica, to my Sir Karl Joseph and Joachim. I am glad that Hansel has become a Jesuit and that Zöcher? studies so well, but the temjjorary demise of our Lady Sister-in-law Cord(elia) grieves me: I remember her daily in my Memento. May God in his infinite goodness give us his blessing and mercy that we find us all together in the other and everlasting life and remain together in eternity. Amen. Cucurpe, on the ZO'i* of January 1691.
To my dearest Brother faithful unto
death and always remembering him Marcus
Ant: Kappus S: J.
The last March I have sent (letters) to Sir Brother
and to Sir Hans Georg as well as to the Lady
Aunt Francisca. I hope that these letters have reached them all.
Zöcherl, a diminutive of the name Zacharias.
UDK 929 Nodier C.:949.712»1809/1813«
LA SITUAZIONE POLITICA E CULTURALE NELLA SLOVENIA NAPOLEONICA E CHARLES NODIER
Marija Pirjevec
Nel 1813 in qualitä di direttore del Telegraphe Official, il foglio ufficiale deiramministrazione delle Provincie Illiiiche, stampato a Lubiana, Charles Nodier comincio a pubblicare trna serie di articoli dedicati ai diversi aspetti dell'Illiria. In essi egli esprime un grande entusiasmo pear la scoperta della regione slovena concludendo le sue osservazioni, secondo la moda neoclassica del tempo, con immagini tratte dalla mitologia greca. Nodier scrive:
»De ce Polypheme et de cette belle Galatee dont les amours ont ete chantes par Theocrite, naquirent Illyrius et Gala. Les Gaulois descendent de ce demier, et les Illyriens de son frere, de sorte que ces deux peuples, si longtemps separes par les institutions comme par les distances, ne son plus reellement que d'anciens collateraux dont im protectetir genereux a ritrouve les papiers de famille, et qu'il fait jouir sous ses auspices de toutes les douceurs de la felicite domestique.«'
Questo iimo a Napoleone e alia dominazione francese dei territori che vanno dal Tirolo alle Bocche di Cattaro e che nel 1809 con I'accordo di Schönbrunn sono Stati riuniti in un'entita statale semiautonoma sotto il nome di Provincie Ullriche, nasconde naturalmente tma realta alquanto diversa. Napoleone aveva riunito territori di lingua, costumi e passato estremamente eterogenei in un organismo a se stante soprattutto per garantire una conti-nuita territoriale tra il dominio francese in Italia e quello in Dalmazia e a Ragusa. II governo che egli impianto in questa »marca di frontiera« come egli la chiamava, fu un govemo di carattere principalmente militare, estraneo al paese, i cui interessi vemiero assoggettati agli interessi della Francda. Un forte esercito stanziato nelle Provincie Illiriche, una macchina burocratica piuttosto complessa, per quanto senz'altro moderna rispetto a quella precedente asbur-gica, e la determinazione delle piu alte autoritä francesi a partire dallo stesso governatore generale di arricchirsi al piu. presto, vennero a gravare su una popolazione numericamente scarsa di appena un milione e mezzo di persone che nella sua grande maggioranza considero il dominio francese con piu o meno velata ostiliitä.^
I contadini assoggettati da una tassazione estremamente rigorosa e non affrancati dai loro obblighi nei confronti dei signori feudali, costretti a pesan-
' Charles Nodier, Statistique Illyrienne, Ljubljana 1933, a cura di F. Dobro-voljc, pag. 9.
^ Louis Chardigny, Les marechaux de Napoleon, Editions »J'ai lu« (ITiistoire), Librairie Jules Tallandier, 1977.
tissime leve militari, furono particolarmente ostili alia presenza francese e manifestarono tale stato d'amimo con dalle rivolte che assunsero anche dimen-sioni piuttosto preoccupanti e con fughe massicce nei boschi per sottrarsi airobbligo del servizio militare. In Slovenia in questo periodo si ebbe un fe-nomeno alquanto diffuso, quello dei »rokovnjači«, di gente che si dava alia macchia, si costituiva in bände e viveva di assalti, rubenie ed imprese violente. La Chiesa fomentava la scontentezza delle vaste masse popoiari, preoccupata per il diffondersi delle idee laiche e libertarie che Tamminiistrazione francese, nonostante il fatto che l'Impero avesse smorzato la carica innovativa suscitata dalla Rivoluzione, portava con se. La borghesia, colpita nei suoi interessi eco-nomici dal blocco continentale imposto daU'Imperatore, era a sua volta assai scontenta del nuovo regime, e ad esso erano avversi anohe quei rappresentanti della classe aristocratica che non si erano trasferiti in Austria ma erano ri-masti nei loro possedimenti aviti.
Favorevoli al nuovo regime furono dtmque solo quei pochi intellettuali che videro nella situazione creatasi un'innaspettata possibilita di impostare la propria opera di rirmovamento culturale con rappoggio e la benevola assi-stenza delle autorita statali.^
Nei corso del tardo Settecento anche le terre Slovene vennero investite da quello spirito riformatore ed illuminista che aveva fatto scoprire, attra-verso I'opera di filologi, letterati e studiosi, la lingua del popolo come mezzo essenziale per la crescita spiiituale ed economica deH'inrtera societa. In questo senso a Lubiana fu particolarmente importante il circolo costituitosi intorno al barone Žiga Zois, I'uomo pdü ricco della Catrniola, che non fu solo uno studioso di mineralogia di fama europea, ma fu anche mentore e mecenate di giovani intellettuali decisi a riscattare la vita culturale slovena da quella oscurita in cuii giaceva fin dai tempi della controriforma e a creare una lette-ratura sganciata dalla Chiesa ed eminentemente laica.
Uomini vicini a Zois, come lo storico e commediografo Anton Linhart, il poeta e grammatico Valentin Vodnik e il grande filologo Jemej Kopitar, uno dei padri della slavistica, si impegnarono a cavallo del secolo in un'intensa attivita scientifica e letteraria che divenne la base sulla quale, nei corso dei decenni successivi, fu innalzato I'edificio della cultura slovena.
Lo scossone provocato nella tranquillita provinciale della Camiola e delle altre terre Slovene dalle guerre napoleoniche prima e dalla costituzione delle Provincie Illiriche poi, fu avvertito da questi intellettuali con spiiito favore-vole perche esso assecondo sotto molti aspetti la loro opera che si puo ben dire di risorgimento nazionale. E interessante notare che la stessa sdtuazione critica in cui venne a trovarsi la Monarchia asburgica a causa delle pressioni
' Fran Zwitter, Napoleonove Ilirske province, Ljubljana 1964, pp. 25—36. Vasilij Malik, Les Provinces Illyriennes dans I'histoire Slovene in: Les relations entre la France et les pays yougoslaves du dix-huitieme au vingtieme siecle, Ljubljana 1985, pp. 26—30.
Peter Vodopivec, Les Slovenes et la Revolution frangaise, ibidem, pp. 17—21. Monika Senkowska-Gluck, Illyrie sous la domination Napoleonienne, 1809—1813, Acta Poloniae Historica, Varšava 1980, pp. 99—121.
Monika Sankowska-Gluck, Razdy napoleonskie w Ilirii 1809—1813, Polska Aka-demia Nauk, Inštitut historü, Varšava 1980.
Edward Madany, L'episode napoleonien dans I'histoire des Balkans et la formation de la coscience nationale des Slaves meridionaux, in: L'epoque napoleonienne et les Slaves, Academia polonaise das sciences, Varšava 1982, pp. 81—88.
degli eserciti napoleonioi favori, giä prima dell'arrivo dei Francesi, le nazioni sottomesse, quelle dette comunemente ed erroneamente senza storia, nel loro difficile cammino verso I'emancipazione. Infatti allora per la prima volta le autoritä di Viemia sentirono I'urgenza di rivolgersii alle popolazioni slave nella loro lingua e a fare propaganda tra di esse con proolami, testi, traduzioni di canti patriottici nel loro idioma. Sd ricordino a questo proposito i canti di Collin Wehrmannslieder che vennero appunto tradotti dal tedesco in Slovene da Valentin Vodnik per incarico dalle autoritä e diffusi tra dl popolo.
Si ricordi ancora che nel 1810, quando ormai la maggior parte delle terre Slovene erano state cedute dagli Asburgo a Napoleone, Jernej Kopitar, sotto I'influenza delle idee nazionali di Friedrich Schlegel, pote pubbhcare a Vienna nella rivista Vaterländische Blatter degli articoli in cui poneva le basi dell'-austroslavismo, prospettando la trasformazione della Monarchia asburgica in una compagine di popoli tra i quali gli Slavi avrebbero avuto quel degno posto che ad essi spettava."
Nel tentativo di trovare delle simpatie presso le popolazioni illiriche, come vennero chiamati secondo i'uso colto ed antico gli Slavi Meridionali, anche i Frances! non disdegnavano di favorire quei fermenti nazionali che si erano giä manifestati negli ultimi decermi del Settecento, permettendo che le lingue locali trovassero un loro posto nei proclami ufficiali, nei giornali e cosa piiu importante ancora, nelle scuole.
Giä durante il dominio della Dahnazia, immediatamente precedente alia costituzione delle Provincie Illiriche, essi si mossero in questa direzione, pubblicando a Zara tra il 1806 e 1810 il foglio Kraglski Dalmatin (II Regio Dalmata) in lingua croata. Quando Lubiana divenne capitale delila neocosti-tuita Illiria, essi estesero tale politica di illuminato per quanto paternalistico appoggio alia cultura del popolo sottomesso, anche agli Sloveni, incaricando il Vodnik di preparare per ie scuole dei manuali nella lingua locale e pro-gettando la pubblicazione del Telegraphe Officiel anche in illirico oltre che in francese, tedesco ed italiano.^
Le loro idee sull'iillirico del resto erano piuttosto confuse in quanto, almeno per il periodo iniziale, non riuscirono ad individuare delle differenze tra la lingua parlata in Slovenia e quella parlata in Croazia, Dalmazia e la Frontiera Militare. Tuttavia essi accolsero I'osservazione di Valentin Vodnik, manifestata in un ampio memoriale del 1811, che si trattava di due parlate diverse e nelle loro pubblicazioni diedero alia lingua slovena pari dignitä di quella croata.^
Per quanto riguarda dunque la presenza francese in Slovenia e la sua influenza suilo sviluppo culturale della nazione, si puo ben dire che esse furono senz'altro positive. E non a caso il poeta piü importante di questo periodo, Valentin Vodnik — che abbiamo giä visto traduttore di canti patriottici e filoasburgici — pubblico nel 1811 un'entusiastica ode IKria rinata (Ilirija oživljena) in onore di Napoleone, che e un'eloquente testimonianza
* Eduard Winter, Romantismus, Restauration und Früh-Liberalismus im österreichischen Vormärz, Wien 1968, pp. 67—68.
' Milko Kos, Telegraphe Officiel in njegove izdaje. Glasnik Muzejskega društva za Slovenijo, Ljubljana 1926/21, pp. 10, 11.
' Ivan Prijatelj, Slovenščina pod Napoleonom, Veda, Gorica 1911, pp. 320—323.
France Dobrovoljc, Slovenska književnost v dobi Ilirije in odmev francoskih okupacij naših dežel v slovenskem leposlovju, in: Napoleonove Ilirske province, op. cit., pag. 87.
del fervore intellettiiale e delle speranze che i Francesi seppero suscitare neH'ammo di alcuni esponenti dell'mtellighenzia slovena contemporanea7
In questo contesto il fatto che Lubiana sia diventata la capitale di uno Stato, per quanto periferico, non e senza importanza. Da centro amministra-tivo della Carniola essa diveime, nel periodo che va dal 1809 al 1813, una oittä con una sua corte in cui circolavano i piü diversi personaggi ed erano in auge le idee e le mode di Parigi e dii Milane. Intorno al governatore generale (il primo fu Marmont, e a lui seguirono i generali Bertrand, Junot e I'ex ministre di polizia Fouche), si riimi una piccola colonia di intellettuali, ammini-stratori ed ufficiali frcincesi, ma anche funzionari italiani, croati, dalmati ed istriani, nobili tedeschi, vescovi ortodossi e cattoMci, capi di panduri alba-nesi, inviati di pascia vicinli, che orearono a Lubiana un'atmosfera cosrnopolita vagamente orientaleggiante.
Nel palazzo del governatore, ex sede del vescovo costretto a sloggiare, venivano organizzate delle feste sontuose che diedero al dominio del periodo francese un tono di brillante mondanitä. Va detto a merito dei padroni del
momento che essi, nonostante I'atteggiamento di superioritä assunto nei con-fronti degli »indigeni«, non si chiusero nel loro guscio, ma cercarono di in-trattenere rapporti con la societa locale riuscendo ad attirare nella loro cerchia i suoi uomini migliori. Basti considerare che i tre personaggi di mag-gior spicco della vita culturale slovena contemporanea, cioe Žiga Zois, Valentin Vodnik e Jernej Kopitar, furono individuati dai Francesi e riconosciuti par il loro valore. II maresoiallo Marmont fu ogni settimana ospite del barone Zois, il quale ebbe, a rioonoscimento dei suoi meriti scientifici e culturaJi, anche la Legione d'onore.
Del Vodnik, nominate direttore delle scuole Slovene, abbiamo giä parlato, ma anche Jernej Kopitar che viveva a Vienna ed era legato, in quanto biblio-tecario della Biblioteca imperiale, alia corte degli Asburgo, non pote sottrarsi ad una qualche collaborazione con i Francesi: egli fu infatti a fomire a Marcel de Serres, professore presso la Facolta di Scienze dell'Universitä di Parigi e piu tardi ispettore delle arti, scienze ed industria in Austria e nei paesi assoggettati al dominio francese, delle informazioni e del materiale per Tampio capitolo sugli Slavi e la loro lingua che egli insert nel suo fondamentale Viaggio in Austria o saggio statistico e geografico su questo Impero, pubbM-cato nel 1814 in quattro volumi a Parigi.'
Charles Nodier, gitinto a Lubiana nel 1813, quando ormai la Stella di Napoleone stava per tramontare, soggiomo nella capitale delle Provincie lUiriche per un periodo relativamente breve. Questa esperienza fu pero alquanto impor-tante per la sua attivita futura, perche egli tomato in Francia e trovato lavoro come direttore della Biblioteca dell'Arsenale, fu considerato per tutta la vita come un esperto delle cose illiriche. Egli stesso del resto coltivo tale convin-zione per quanto la sua conoscenza diretta deirilliria si limitasse alia citta di Lubiana e della Carniola e per quanto egli dovesse ricorrere per delle informazioni sulla vita, suUe abitudini e la cultura degli »Illirici« ai testi pubbli-
' Valentin Vodnik, Ilirija oživljena-, poesia pubblicata per la prima volta in Pismenost ali Gramatika za Perve šole, Ljubljana 1811 e ristampata insieme alia traduzione latina sul Telegraphe Officiel il 31 luglio 1811.
' Ivan Prijatelj, Slovenščina pod Napoleonom, op. cit., pag. 130.
cati nel tardo Settecento da Alberto Fortis, e all'mizio dell'Ottocento da Francesco Appendini e dal conte Sorgo, ambasciatore di Ragusa a Parigi.'
Come noto lo storico Rudolf Maixner nel suo saggio Charles Nodier e I'llliria, la maggior parte delle informazioni che Nodier spacciava per sue, erano per lo piü variazioni di temi tratti dagli autori succitati, soprattutto dal Fortis, per cui si puo ben dire che lo sciittore francese nelle sue opere, articoli e romanzi presento una sua Illiria alquanto fantastica per lo piu inventata e di maniera.'"
Tipico in questo senso e il romanzo Jean Sbogar, pubblicato nel 1818 e tradotto per ben due volte in sloveno, in cui viene narrata la storia roman-tica di un famoso aiducco, «ignore del castello di Duino. In questo racconto movimentato e pittoresco, uno dei pochi elementi concreti oltre alle descri-zioni paesaggistiche, e il nome del protagonista, che il Nodier uso, ricordando il caso di un prigioniero di cui ebbe notizia durante il suo soggiorno in Illiria.
Lo scritto che rispecchia in maniera piü fedele I'esperienza di Nodier nella capitale delle Provincie Hliriche e I'articolo che egli pubblico nel 1821 sul giornale La Quotidienne}^ In queU'aniio si era riunito a Lubiana il Con-gresso della Santa AUeanza a cui prese parte tra gli altri esponenti politici europei anche lo stesso zar di tutte le Russie, Alessandro I. Cio attirö Tatten-zione del pubblico europeo sulla aittä, sede del Congresso, e spiinse il Nodier a pubblicare il suo articolo in cui egli non si Hmito a parlare della citta, ma descrisse anche I'intero paese e il popolo di cui essa era la capitale.
Attraverso il velo del ricordo e della nostalgia egli da una immagine assai favorevole del popolo sloveno, la cui lingua egli sa distinguere dal croato. »La langue nationale«, scrive nell'articolo il Nodier, »est le slave vindique qui differe en peu de chose du croate et de Tistrien proprement dit; mais il n'y a personne qui n'y joigne la connaissance ou de I'allemand, ou de I'italien uo de grec modeme et souvent de toutes ces langues ä la fois. Le sejour prolonge qu'y ont fait les Frangais pendant Tusuipation de Bonaparte, y a rendu la langue francaise tres familiere; de sorte que le petite education de ce pays est generalment polyglotte et que le moindre bourgeois reunit, en lui seul des elements d'instruction que nous chercherions souvent inutilmente dans une academie... Quant aux qualtes morales de ce peuple, il est impossible d'en trouver de plus parfaites dans une societe humaine. Sobre, pieux, hospi-taliter, laborieux, modere dans tout ses penchants, le Camiolain ne passe pour un peu ruse aux yeux des peuples de I'lUyrie Orientale que par ce qu'il a sur eux quelques avantages de civilisation. II n'a pas conserve d'ailleurs dans ses annales populaires, le souvenir d'une revolution, d'xine orage politique, d'tm desordre meme passager; et, ce qui paraitra plus etonnant c'est que des persoimes qui ont reside plusieurs aimees ä Laybach, n'ont pas memoire d'y avoir entendu parier d'lm crime ...«
Nel proseguire I'autore ricorda tutta una serie di uomini di scienze e d'arte che egli aveva conosciuto a Lubiana e che evidentemente gld avevano fatto un'impressione assai favorevole se erano rimasti cosi vivi nella sua memoria. In questo elenco troviamo naturalmente il barone Zois, definito il
' Rudolf Maixner, Charles Nodier i Ilirija, Rad, Jug. ak., knj. 229, Zagreb 1924, pag. 14.
Rudolf Maixner, ibidem, pp. 20, 21. " Charles Nodier o Ljubljani, Življenje in svet, vol. VI, Ljubljana 1924, pp. 399, 400.
Charles Nodier, Statistique Illyrienne, op. cit., pp. 103—108.
primo minerologo d'Europa, il »profondo« Vodmk, Anton Jevnikar, innova-tore nel campo della medicina, il Kalister, professore della lingua francese al liceo, ed altxi esponenti della ciiltura slovena del tempo.'^
II fatto che il Nodier abbia frequentato tutti questi personaggi e che abbia cercato, come risulta da questo e da altri suoi scritti di conoscere il passato del paese — egli consulto tra I'altro anche la storia di Lubiana del seicentesco Schönleben — dimostra con quale apertura mentale e con quale simpatia egli si sia awicinato al nuovo ambiente nel quale si trovo ad operare nel 1813.
Charles Nodier conclude i'articolo dedicato a Lubiana con ima lode all'amministrazione francese, sostenendo che fu grazie alia sua saggezza che i germi di cultura poterono svilupparsi tra il popolo sloveno. E si tratta alia fine di un giudizio che e possibile accettare. Per quanto, come abbiamo detto all''inizio, I'amministrazione francese fosse vista da molti con viva ostilitä, non si puö non riconoscere che essa portö nello spazio politico e culturale sloveno tutta una serie di Idee nuove e una rinata volontä ad operare nel campo della cultura nazionale che non passarono senza lasciar traccia.
" Rudolf Maixner, Charles Nodier i Ilirija, op. cit., pp. 29, 30.
UDK 820(73) Hemingway E. 7 A farewell to the arms .06
HEMINGWAY IN THE SOCA VALLEY Bruce Mclver
Hemingway is a veiy popular writer in Slovenia. One of my students in Ljubljana pointed out a very well known passage in A Farewell to Arms about two refugee girls Frederic Henry and his driver, Aymo, pick up in Gorizia (Gorica) during the retreat from Caporetto (Kobarid). What interested many of my students about the episode was that the two girls seem to speak a dialect that neither Aymo, who is Italian, nor Frederic, who is fluent in Italian,' -understands. My students believed that these girls are speaking Slovenian. The only Italian they seem to understand are the words in Italian for sexual intercourse,' which makes them very upset, and virgin and sister, which calm them down. It is very likely that two Sloveniian girls would know a little Italian, particularly if they came from Gorizia, which at the time of the first world war was predominantly Slovene.^
I thought the question interesting enough to warrant a little research. I discovered, surprisingly, that Hemingway did not take part in the retreat from Caporetto.^ At the time of the retreat (October 23—27, 1917), he was a cub reporter on the Kansas City Star. He did not arrive on the Itahan front as a Red Cross ambulance driver until June of 1918, long after the Caporetto debacle. He was, moreover, stationed west of Gorizia at Schio and Fossalta di Piave, where he indeed was wounded, like his counteipart Frederic Hen£ry in the novel. Lastly, Hemingway never even visited the scene of the retreat, not Caporetto, not Plave, not the Bainsizza plateau, not the Isonzo River (the Soča), not even Gorizia. How then, I thought, could these girls in the hovel be modeled on ones Hemingway might have met during the campaign? Much less, how could he know tliey might be Slovene girls (even if he had met them) since he never came within 100 kilometers of Gorizia either during the war or after it when he visited the Fossalta di Piave to show his wife Hadley where he was woimded?"
' Max Perkins, Hemingway's editor at Scribners, for proprietary reasons, left a blank space in the text where the word would appear. A Farewell to Arms, New York (1929), p. 196.
' In 1915, 62 % of the population of the Gorizia-Gradisca region (or 155,000 people) was Slovene. Stephen Clissold, ed., A Short History of Yugoslavia, Cambridge (1966), p. 154.
' Ironically, Hemingway may have taken his description of Caporetto from a tourist guidebook — »I remember it as a little white town with a campanile in a valley. It was a clean little town and there was a fine fountain in the square« {A Farewell to Arms, p. 164). The current edition of Baedeker's Yugoslavia (1985) wrongly implies that Hemingway took part in the fighting there.
* Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway, A Life Story, New York (1969), p. 94.
2 Acta
In the novel Hemingway mentions many eastern europeans — Magyars, Bosnians, Montenegrians, and Croatians — but he does not mention any Slovenians. The supreme commander of the forces on the Soča was an Orthodox Serb long in the service of the Habsburgs.' It was according to Hemingway the fierce fighting Croatians who attacked the Second Army on the Bainsizza in the morning of October 24"'. The Croatians were fighting on the Austrian side. Were there Slovenians among these Croatians, and, I wondered, if not, were Slovenians fighting on the Austrian side? These questions seemed relevant to the episode of the two Slovene girls, for what would Slovenian refugees be doing retreating from the advancing Austrian armies if Slovenians were fighting on their side? Perhaps they preferred to be on the Italian side. Even though the Habsburgs held sway in the region before the war, the Italians were assigned the region in the Treaty of London (April 26, 1915). Perhaps the Slovenes had more economic affinities with the Italians than with their Austrian neighbors to the north? In fact I discovered that they very likely preferred not to fight in either army, being caught up in a desire for autonomy and self determination.^ So in a veiy real way it did make sense that Slovenian refugees would be swept up in the retreat from Caporetto out of the Soča Valley and onto the plains of Italy. Where else could they go?
Still I had not answered the question of the probability of the refugee girls being Slovene. I thought another approach w^ould be better. How could these girls be Italian? In the novel they cannot make themselves understood either to an Italian or to an American fluent in Italian. It seemed reasonable to assume, I thought, that no Italian dialects are so far apart that the only common words are virgin and sister. In ail likelihood, however, foreign girls, that is, Slovene Catholic girls, would knov>/ these words in Italian if they knew any at all. Common sense, then, dictates the probability that the girls are not Italian but Slovene.
Of course, the final question is somewhat absurd. If they are Slovene girls, did Hemingway know it? Frederic Henry says, »The girl who looked at me said something in a dialect I could not understand a word of.« Henry, who is fluent, cannot understand her at ail. Aymo, who is a native speaker, simply says, »I can't understand them.« Aymo doesn't say that the girls are speaking in dialect. Hemingway, unlike Frederic Henry, was not fluent in Italian. Anyone he might have met who did not speak any recognizable Italian might well have to him been speaking in a dialect or in a foreign language.
Another point, then, occurred to me. Hemingway's description of the Bainsizza and Gorizia is extremely accurate for one who was not present at the retreat from Caporetto. He is in fact so accurate that many war scholars are surprised to hear that he was not present at the time of the retreat or afterwards. He did, however, do a great deal of research both when he returned home after the war and when he began to write the novel a decade later. He was fascinated by military history, battle accounts, and topographic maps.^ His accoimts, for example, of the rainy weather during the retreat and of the behavior of the Second Army are uncannily accurate (Reynolds, 112ff). His descriptions of Piave and Gorizia are based (in fact upon his careful
' Clissold, p. 161.
' But see John A. Amež, Slovenia in European Affairs, New York (1958), p. 64—65.
' Michael S. Reynolds has made this point abundantly clear in his Hemingway's First War: The Making of A Farewell to Arms, Princeton (1976).
reading of contour maps (Reynolds, p. 140). Thus, it is not surprising that his representation of the retreat is convincing from the standpoint of military history and topographic description. Why, then, could it not be accurate in terms of linguistic aiid ethnic descriptions?
It is quite possible that, in one of the accounts of the retreat from Capo-retto that Hemingway read, he found a description of Slovenian refugees among whom we miglit well believe were the two girls separated from both friends and family. It is, however, a peculiar characteristic of his fiction that he blends events as they actually occurred with events as they might have occurred, that is, with events as he imagined them. In this respect, the two girls, vulnerable, a mixture of fear and trust, function accurately in the imaginative context of the novel. They are refugees, thousands of whom got caught up in the welter of the retreat, along with war weaiy soldiers, deserters, and looters. It is in reflecting on these girls, on their innocence and vulnerability, that Frederic Henry begins to dream lyrically of his lover, Catherine, imagining her in his arms again.^
These girls are beautiful, young, and innocent. They are the victims of a war not of their making. They do not deserve to lose that innocence, as many Slovene girls did in the wake of the war; they deserve to be at peace and in control of their own Mves. I began to see why these girls were important to my students, and indeed to many Slovenians, for they represented the age old role of victim that Slovenia and the Slovene people had played for their entire history from the eleventh century onward, forever vulnerable to another country's mercy or cruelty.
Why, then, were these two Slovene girls — for I shall so call them — so importsmt to my students? I now think that the episode of the novel in which they appear pays an -unwitting tribute to the bare facts of the reality of war. The girls fear the worst, but Frederic treats them well, feeding them and giving them a ride in his truck for a little while, and later sends them off with a little money to search for friends and family among the refugees. Hemingway may not have known what Slovenes suffered in the debacle of Caporetto, but he did know the rape, pillage, and carnage that unjust victims of war suffered, and it is perhaps for this reason, and for Hemingway's sympathetic understanding of the conditions of war, that Slovenians embrace the two young girls in A Farewell to Arms as their own.
University of California at Santa Barbara
2*
A Farewell to Arms, p. 197.
19
UDK 820(73).03.091-1(497.12)»1919/1940«
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SPENDER Mirko Jurak Introduction
The interview took place on Wednesday, June 24, 1964 at the offices of the London Magazine. The conversation was recorded and the original tape is in the Libraiy of the Department of English, Edvard Kardelj University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. The interview is printed without essential changes, only some redundances and sentence fragments have been omitted, and I tried to preserve the atmosphere of the conversation as much as possible. The text in brackets [] has been added for this article in order to clear some points or to provide the additional bibliographical information.
Some passages taken from this conversation were used in my Ph. D. thesis (1967) on politico-poetic plays written by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender and Louiis MacNeice published in part in Glavna problemska območja v angleški poetično-politični drami v letih 1930—1940 (Main Spheres of Problems in English Politico-Poetic Drama in 1930—1940. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, 1968, pp. 40), and in a revised form of my dissertation also published in Slovene and with a summary in English titled Dileme parabolične umetnosti (Dilemmas of the Parabolic Art. Ljubljana:" Partizanska knjiga, 1975, pp. 213). I have drawn on this material in some articles published in English in various reviews. These are: »English Political Verse Drama of the Thirties: Revision and Alteration.« Acta Neophilologica, I (1968), pp. 67—78; »The Group Theatre: Its Development and Significance for the Modern English Theatre.« Acta Neophilologica, II (1969), pp. 3—43; »Dramaturgic Concepts of the English Group Theatre: The Totality of Artistic Involvement.« Modern Drama (Toronto), XVI (1973), 1, pp. 81—86; »Commitment and Character Portrayal in the British Politico-Poetic Drama of the 1930s.« Educational Theatre Journal (New York), XXVI, 3 (Oct. 1974), pp. 342—351; »Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender: Development and Alterations of Thedr Plays Written for the Group Theatre.« Acta Neophilologica, VII (1974), pp. 59—65.
THE INTERVIEW
QUESTION: Mr Spender, would you, please, tell me something about your activities at the Group Theatre, the policy of the theatre, and your responsibility as the Literary Director, as you were called in 1936.
* I wish to thank most warmly our Fulbright Visiting Professor Robin Bates for having read the typescript of this interview and commented upon it.
ANSWER: Well, I've rather forgotten about the Group Theatre, but as far as I remember, the idea of the Group Theatre was that we should form a company of actors and actresses who stuck together, rather like the Moscow — what we imagined to be — the Moscow Arts Theatre. And this is lacking in England. In England plays are done, or were done before the War, by companies which were simply brought together in order to perform that play. There was no idea at the beginning that the Group Theatre should be particularly on the Left, or political, but as it was the 1930s and as the best plays that were being written were of that kind, we tended to do a good many political plays.
QUESTION: What do you think of the production of your play {Trial of a Judge] now and what did you think about it at that time? I unfortunately haven't seen any of these plays produced, but I've read them and about them. For instance, in the criticism of your play, it is very often said that the choruses were the worst part done in that production IdirectedJ by Mr Doone. Would you agree with that?
ANSWER: Well, I think that my play was impossible to do anyway. It's really a kind of lyrical poem, or dramatic poem, rather than a play, and I would hate to see it put on again. On the other hand I think that the whole idea of my play is a very good idea indeed. It's curious you are asking me about this because during the last month or two I keep on asking myself whether I shouldn't rewrite this
play, because I think it's a very interesting idea which is completely spoilt. The
Trial of a Judge. Even the name is very good. Even the title is very good.
QUESTION: Now that you've mentioned that you would rewrite it, I've got another question. It took you quite a long time to write it, I think about three years, and I'd like to know whether you have changed the play during the writing or what were the reasons for writing it so slowly?
ANSWER: Well, I tend to write everything slowly, but I think the real reason why it was difficult to write it quickly was because it was in verse and I write verse very slowly, because I write a kind of free verse and this is only arrived at in my case by constant rewriting and constant research and discovery of what I myself ami trying to do. I always feel that whatever I write in this kind of verse cannot be changed. I mean that I feel that I arrive at something which was my original idea, as a matter of fact, and I am always in search of my original idea but it takes me a long time often to get there. If I rewrote it now I think I might write a lot of it in prose; that's one of the things I have to decide.
QUESTION: Though I think that verse was generally praised at the time when the play came out. Do you think it is bad verse compared with the rest of your work?
ANSWER: No, I think some of it is quite good, but the important thing is the play, and the idea, and I feel that perhaps what is lacking in this play is realism and strong characters. And when I was young I didn't know enough about people, but funnily enough the kind of characters that I've drawn in that play, in verse, could be made much more realistic. And therefore I would like to do it in this way.
QUESTION: The Black soldiers were often considered as very convincing. Would you improve, maybe, the characters generally because you couldn't improve the Chorus very much, or otherwise the play would not remain poetic any longer.
ANSWER: As far as I remember the play, I think that one of the best scenes was with the Chorus, with confrontation of the Red Chorus and the Black Chorus, as verse. I think this is one of the most successful things. I don't know whether this would have to go, I think I would try to keep this. Of course, I think I understand a great deal more about the ideas in that play than I did at the time that I wrote it.
QUESTION: I think that the Reds and their ideas are very often rather abstract in the play. Very often I think they use the same words, they are fighting for humanity, and so on, for ideas, so maybe the play would not be clear for an average audience. So I think at the same time the positive ideas of the Reds (well, I take them as positive, anyway) at that time were not strong enough to persuade the audience, if the play had this intention.
ANSWER: Yes, I think this is quite possible, because to me at that time the Blacks represented the present and the Reds represented the future, and of course it's much more difficult to write about the fixture, except in an abstract way, than it is about the present. I myself was very much involved in the debate about Marxist ideology, which was a very important part of the 1930s. Nowadays it is always thought that we were all communists, we were all to the Left, we all had sort of Left wing ideas. But people forget how in the 1930s, on the Left, there was a very bitter debate going on, which to some extent still continues. I mean, for instance, the debate between Camus and Sartre, is a kind of 1930s debate, and carried on in a very theoretical kind of way. So I think I might find it difficult to make this less theoretical; it's a good point.
QUESTION: In the World Within World [S. Spender's autobiography; London: Hamish Hamilton, i95i] you say about the thirties: »I was ,political' not just because I was involved, but in feeling I must choose to defend a good cause against a bad one.« [World Within World, p. 250.] You felt you had to choose to defend a good cause against the bad one. Did you expect the play to have a positive influence on the audience or on the readers, on the proletariat?
ANSWER-. No, I didn't at all, and I'd never really thought seriously in that kind of way. I mean, I've often been criticized for not writing for the workers, but I've never really thought for one moment about writing for the workers. It's verj' difficult for me to write what I mean to say anyway, and I never really think for one moment whom I am writing for. I just am trying to get something clear.
QUESTION: In the New Country led. by Michael Roberts'], in 1933, in the article »Poetry and Revolution«, you said: »The art which is being and which can be created today is not in any sense proletarian art. It is not easy to think of any writer today who is an artist and whose work appeals to a proletarian audience.« Ip. 65] Did you change this opinion by 1939?
ANSWER: No; well I still think this is difficult, because I don't think the proletariat is interested in seeing plays about themselves. I don't know whether they enjoy them in Yugoslavia, but they don't enjoy them in this country. The proletariat always wants to see plays about kings and queens and rich people and middle-class life. All the proletarian plays which we have had — by John Osborne and people of this kind — are admired by middle-class audiences, not by proletariat audiences at all, and I think that proletarian plays, anyhow, can only rarely be written, by people who have led the life of proletariat, either because they are workers or because, like ^George Orwell, they have joined, they've lived a great deal with the workers, which I've never done. I am just a hopeless case, I am a hopelessly middle-class person, that is all it comes to.
QUESTION: You wouldn't say then that a middle-class person can write about, well, about the workers and about their problems?
ANSWER: Well, I think the heroes of the middle-class, of the workers, the heroes of the revolution, really are people like Shelley and Byron, people who are aristocratic, or rather middle-class. Well, then there is Maxim Gorky, or Dickens even, who have lived very intensely, and with very great tmderstanding and very great interest in a sort of mass society, and these, of course, are people I very much admire and envy, and I think that they appeal to the worker because they appeal to all classes, because they are extremely human people, very full-blooded, very instinctive, with a very wide understanding of life, and are great writers. I don't feel that I am in this class at all, I am a sort of rather subjective kind of writer, a lyrical poet. Lyrical poets are not really a working class, I think.
QUESTION: To return back to your play. I have a few more questions. You didn't try to use many expressionist devices, except for a dream, which was quite a normal one. For instance, it was Kenneth Allott who regretted in the New Verse, in an article about your play [»Play for Puritans, New Verse, No 30, Summer 1938, pp. 20—2i], that Hummeldo^ had a dream, which you put in the middle of the play. I'd like to know why didn't you use more expressionist devices, more popular songs and so on? Was it just to make the play more easily politically understandable, or was that not a question at all?
ANSWER: Well, possibly because I didn't think about it objectively enough. I always tend to think that I can discover entirely for myself how to do something and I never really ask myself how other people have done it. It would probably be a very good idea if I did, although I don't think at the moment — I am not sure whether I regret very much — not having expressionist devices, because I don't think that expressionist plays seem very interesting at the moment.
QUESTION:... Something else puzzles me a great deal and that's the female figure, which is presented very black in your play, the Judge's Wife, who is like a monster (and there are women in other plays, well in Auden's The Ascent of F6, and so on). Would you say that it was just the influence of Freud? was it Strind-berg? or what else might have been?
ANSWER: Well, this is certainly one of the things I would change. I would try to make the Judge a person with a wife. Because, after all, there are arguments which could be used against the Judge, which can be used without making the woman into a monster. This is one of the big mistakes in the play. I would like to have a new character whom I often thought about but was not able to write about, who could be the Judge's son, and I would like to give some idea of the kind of decadence of life in Germany at the time, and perhaps I would try to make the Judge's son be a kind of beatnik, and a kind of person who lived in bars, in
sort of brothels. One of the great mistakes about the play is that this is a situation in which there could be a great deal of life. But, as you say, instead of dealing with it, instead of trying to make it a situation in which there is a great deal of life, I've treated it as a kind of abstract state or situation rather than argument about ideas. What rather fascinates me about the play and makes me think I might go back to it is that it is a very good idea. I think. It is something that really might have happened. And in fact it is the sort of thing that did happen. It's a play about the liberal conscience, essentially, and one could treat it much more realistically.
QUESTION: Do you remember any dramatists that you might have been influenced by at that time or earlier? I didn't find much about this in your autobiography.
ANSWER: No, I can't really. I suppose I might have been influenced a little bit by German expressionist drama, Ernst Toller and that sort of thing...
QUESTION: Did you read ...?
ANSWER: I had read Ernst Toller, yes, Georg Kaiser, yes. I had seen them even when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. They did plays by Georg Kaiser. I don't know whether I'd read Danton's Death — perhaps I had — by Büchner. I translated Büchner at one time, but this is certainly the kind of play that I thought was possible to write, I thinJf.
QUESTION: There is one symbolism which is not clear to me. That's when the Fiancee mentions towards the end of the play that Petra and her brother were not seven-pointed indrawn stars [Trial of a Judge, p. 1011. The Jewish star has six points. Do you remember maybe this little detail?
ANSWER: Well, I am sure it had nothing to do with the Jewish star. I think it probably meant they were not introverts, they were not drawn in upon themselves, as far as I remember. Because I don't think I even knew about the Jewish star at that time.
QUESTION: Could you tell me something about the meetings with Mr Auden and Isherwood, and Rupert Doone. In your book [World Within Worlds you mention them, that you've met quite a few times, and I believe they [the meetings^ were more or less informal. I've read in some articles — I think it was in Mr Doone's article — that there were some meetings which were public. Did you attend any of them and do you know if the minutes of the meetings were kept?
ANSWER: I don't remember that any minutes were kept. They were private meetings which were to discuss how little money we [The Group Theatre] had, and how to get the money and what plans for productions there were, to suggest
ideas, things like that, just committee meetings, and then occasionally they were meetings which were pubhc in which the plays that had been produced were discussed. I know my play was discussed and it was very much attacked by all the communists, because it was supposed to be mystical and so on and people got angry and said it was not a really revolutionary play, that kind of thing.
QUESTION: Some of the reviewers, for example, the Scrutiny, were rather hostile towards all of the plays produced by The Group Theatre. Do you think it was just different views that you had about art and politics, or was it because in some of the reviews you and Mr Auden wrote, you criticized them as well, P. R. Leavis, for instance. Would you say it was just a difference of opinion or maybe just a reaction because you didn't like them?
ANSWER: Well, no. I don't think I ever criticized Leavis until very much later.
QUESTION: Maybe somebody else did.
ANSWER: Perhaps, yes. I think that the point about Scrutiny is that very valuable criticism of past works and of a few contemporary works was written, but on the whole. Scrutiny worked out a position for itself which made it impossible to accept anything that was badly written, really. Because the whole position of Scrutiny was that everything that was written had to be rooted in tradition and the way in which it was rooted in tradition had to be discernible to someone who was on the staff of Scrutiny and this is a formula that was almost impossible for any writer to fulfil unless he happened to be a writer who belonged to the staff of Scrutiny. Therefore Scrutiny got itself into a position in which, although it could go on publishing very valuable criticism of past works and sometimes quite valuable criticism of work with which the editors had some particular kind of sympathy, everything outside this was completely banned. There was no possibility really of them being able to like anything, I think.
QUESTION: You have just now criticized the way Scrutiny treated other writers. Don't you think that at least during the years you and Mr Auden and Mr Isherwood and MacNeice worked more closely together, published in the same reviews, that it was a kind of an affront towards the other writers and other poets? That you were — even if you were not recognized — a group at that time. You were quite friendly, let's say not just friendly, but you were quite critical towards the others. And you had some common features.
ANSWER: Yes, this is possible, although I can't really remember whom we attacked. Occasionally we attacked people for ideological reasons like we attacked Roy Campbell and we always felt extremely uneasy, I think, with the people who were further to the Left than we were, and we were always being attacked by them, for example, John Comford, Christopher Caudwell. We were under constant attack from the communists, in fact, which is probably the kind of attack that we took most seriously because we felt that we did have, I mean, we felt there was some justice in saying we did have petty bourgeois attitudes. I think that communism is a kind of conscience really, and if you are in a situation in which you feel that you ought to be on the side of the workers, that you. ought to be on the side of the poor, and you yourself are a rather successful middle-class person, but sympathizing with the commumists, you are very open to criticism by them, I think. This would certainly be the criticism that I felt most deeply myself and which, of course, sometimes I got angry about and I tried to answer.
QUESTION: In an article in New Writing l»The Poetic Dramas of W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood«, Autumn 1938, pp. 102—iOS] about the poetic dramas of Auden and Isherwood you mentioned that they portrayed public figures in The Ascent of F6. Could you remember whom they had in mind? And in the same article you expressed the hope for a new poetic drama but then none of you wrote any poetic dramas after 1939.
ANSWER: Well, I probably thought that Ransom, the hero of The Ascent of F6, was a bit modelled on T. E. Lawrence. You know, the airman and the climb and so on. I can't remember any other public figures. Well, the poetic drama was something that I was very interested in, but at the same time the whole movement
which was The Group Theatre and so on, was really much too weak a movement and too marginal and it didn't really have enough force of any kind behind it, it didn't have an audience, didn't really have money, it just had a sort of vague desire that poets should write plays. This is a desire that always exists. If you interviewed twenty poets in England today they'd all say they want to write plays. They somehow think it's a good thing to do and that they should try and do it. But I don't think we really felt strongly enough about it. The English theatre really had a stimulus after the War when a new kind of playwright came forward who had much more feeling for ordinary life than any of us had.
QUESTION: Maybe I am not so pessimistic about this drama because I think these Ipoetic plays} were the best plays of the decade. It was a revolutionary change to take politics and serious subjects into drama. At that time... [other theatres were either doing} renewals or comedies and nothing serious. The Unity Theatre was another theatre which was oriented towards the Left. Were there many differences between Unity and The Group Theatre?
ANSWER: I should say there was a strong class difference. The Unity Theatre really was an attempt to start a working class theatre, it was ideologically communist, whereas the Group Theatre was sort of middle-class with the literati. But the real trouble about this theatre [The Group Theatre] was, that the theatre is a thing that requires an enormous amount of attention, an enormous amount of ambition. And the conditions in the theatre are such that anyone who wants to write [for the theatre], who tliinks of himself as writing poetry or writing novels, tends only to have half an eye on the theatre. I mean he thinks »well maybe I might write a successful play and then everything would be much easier for me.« But he is not really prepared to sacrifice, to write under conditions which he can lay down with the really awful kind of gamble which is writing for the theatre. For example, this is a figure you see that is impressive: of all the plays that appear in London, the average time between their being written and sent to an agent or to a theatrical company and their actual appearing, is four years. There's a gap of four years. Plays... they are often unsuccessful. There are very few revivals of a play. Well now, if you are a poet or a novelist and you have a reputation, you turn in your manuscript, you get your advance, your book appears within a matter of weeks or months and so naturally this seems much more safe than the sort of gamble of writing for the theatre. Because that's another thing about playwrights, that playwrights in a way hardly seem to be writers, they don't seem to be able to write anything except plays and in a way they hardly seem to belong to contemporary literature.
QUESTION: Would you say that this disillusionment was the cause for you and the other writers, poets, for not writing new poetic dramas?
ANSWER: Well. Yes. For instance, if I think today of rewriting the Trial of a Judge I realize that I can't think of anyone who would be at all interested in staging it; and in fact I would only be doing it to please myself, I'd only be doing it because I consider that it's a good idea, that it's a problem which I didn't solve at that time. Therefore because one wants to solve problems and because I think it's one in a way, it [the play] could be one of my best works, therefore I want to do it. But the idea that I could interest anyone... I mean, I would be afraid even to go to a manager and say I want to rewrite Trial of a Judge. They'd just be polite and that's the last I'd hear about it. You have to be right in the theatre, you see, for people, for managers and companies to be interested at all.
QUESTION: Do you think that the poetic drama of the thirties, the political-poetic drama — if I may call it so — had some influence on the later decades?
ANSWER: Well, that's very difficult to say. I mean, I don't know the answer. I should've thought that, for instance, on Oh, What a Lovely War, there was a certain influence of the 1930s. Because there's a reaction today against the 1930s and yet often people seem to be doing the same kind of thing, either just imitating it or sometimes doing it much better; sometimes you feel that they are doing what we were trying to do, but that they are much better equipped to do it. So I don't really know.
QUESTION: Mr T. S. Eliot spoke about your play at the International Theatre Congress in Stratford-upon-Avon in October 1938 l»The Future of Poetic Drama,« Drama, 17/1, Oct. 1938, pp. 3—5]. He said he was afraid that you had too many interests. Do you think that this was true?
ANSWER: He said this about me, did he?
QUESTION: He said this about you, yes. He mentions you especially as a promising writer of poetic drama. But he was afraid that you had too many interests. And he continues that he would like poets to write poetic plays because that was the only solution to the decay of the stage, of the theatre in that time.
ANSWER-. He thought that I had too many interests? Well, he is quite right, of course. I am sure, he was quite right about that.
QUESTION: And even there in the play? Yes?
ANSWER: That I don't know about so much, no.
QUESTION: What is your attitude towards the role of propaganda in the theatre? or let's say, what was it in the thirties?
ANSWER: I think in a way it is an unreal question, because I think that the moment anything is called propaganda, it's bad. I think there are certain things which are implicit propaganda in that they make you feel that you ought to act, that life ought to be different, and things like that. But I think that anything that you start to call propaganda, which you think is propaganda, is bad, probably.
QUESTION: In your article »A Modern Writer in Search of a Moral Subject« published in The London Mercury in December 1934 [31/182, pp. 128—735] you say that one of the things that a subject should be related to is politics. Do you think that that was a solution at the time and do you still think that a modern moral subject should be like that?
ANSWER: No, I don't at all, no. I mean I thought, you see, that in the 1930s there was a great political cause, which was anti-fascism, and I therefore thought that everything should be related to this and we should try to identify ourselves with this. But, it seems to me today, in the first place, there are not really very simple causes like this, and in the second place,... well, yes there are some [simple causes], for instance, the cause of race. This racialism and desegregation in the United States, they certainly are very great causes in the world. I don't sort of feel there's a kind of general duty that we all, that we have to participate in them.
QUESTION: Mr Spender, in your article on the importance of W. H. Auden in London Mercury in April 1933 [»The Importance of W. H. Auden,« 39/234, pp. 613— 6J92, you said, »The task of modern poetry is not so much to create new values
as to interpret permanent human values in forms which have a significant bearing on our environment and the circumstances of our life«. Don't you think that after some revolutionary changes and especially in your period, in the thirties, when you tried to pull down all the established political, moral, religious [norms'], that you should try and create some new moral, aesthetic values as well?
ANSWER: I don't think there is such thing as a new value, because I think it's a value because one associates it with the past, it's a value because it has been a value. Even Communism, for instance, is not really new. After all, it's preached in the New Testament and it appeals to a kind of humanism, and humanism has existed for a long time, if you consider it simply as a value and not as a political programme, and a means that appeals to a sense of human justice. If you consider it as a moral force, it's entirely human, or traditional; something has existed always. One way of putting it would be to say that Communism is a Christian heresy, maybe.
QUESTION: I think that one should take sides, if an important question has to be decided. Do you think one should do that?
ANSWER: Well, I wouldn't quite say, if you say one should, I suppose it means everyone should. (Yes.) No, I don't think that everyone should, because I don't think there's any point in everyone being concerned with things which they don't have any experience of, or any feeling about. But if you ask, should I, I think this is so, I think that one, I and you, and most of my friends, I think that on the whole one should, yes. I think one should be on the side of human freedom and so on, but I would have to give the whole list of things which one should [do, I] think, and they are often very legalistic things. There shouldn't be secret trials and so on, people shouldn't be sent to prison for long periods without being tried, and I think that often these things are very tied up with the law and structure of society and one should certainly take sides about that. I think that one should be on the side, for example, in America today, of the Bill of Rights and desegregation, and so on, one should be against what's going on in South Africa.
QUESTION: Here I have another quotation of yours. It's a sentence which was printed in The Left Review in February 1935 [»Writers and Manifestoes«, I, 5, Feb. 1935, pp. 145—147\ in which you say: »The contest {between the two worlds) is so important that the neutrality is impossible.« If I take the Judge of your play, for example, if he had taken action, I think that maybe he could have prevented some of the deaths which had occurred.
ANSWER: I am sorry I don't know quite what you're asking me?
QUESTION: ... For instance, the Judge who did not take a side, he was at the same time guilty of the other people's deaths.
ANSWER: Yes, possibly. Again, I haven't read the play for a long time. I always rather think of him as taking sides, slowly, but perhaps he didn't. When I rewrite the play, this is something that I'll certainly think about. Yes, I think he should take sides. I don't think as a matter of fact in that situation he probably would have been able to prevent deaths. I think the real question is whether you should do what you think is right quite regardless of the consequences, and I think that on the vhole you should.
QUESTION: Mr Ashley Dukes said in one of his articles [»The English Scene. A Word About the left.« Theatre Arts Monthly, 20/4, April 1936, pp. 265—269'] that the political writers and the poets, the dramatists of the 1930s, were most angry if somebody accused them that their dramas were just a kind of safety-valve. Would you comment upon this statement?
ANSWER: Well, it wouldn't make me angry if someone said that, because I think it might be true and of course it depends a bit whose safety valve. You might say that everything that a writer says is a safety valve in so far as he is not acting, he is writing. So I don't think it's a very good argument, really. You have strong feelings about what ought to happen in the world and you express these feelings, but in expressing these feelings you aren't actually acting, you aren't doing anything. It can always be said that you aren't doing anything, you aren't sitting down on the pavement in front of the American Embassy to stop atomic tests, and so therefore it can be said that by staying at home and writing a poem about it you are just sort of blowing off a safety valve. But it isn't an argument that has very much value, because it cuts every way. You could say that anyone who doesn't succeed in an action is just acting as a safety valve, because we all know very well that the sitting down on the pavement in front of the American Embassy or the Soviet Embassy doesn't stop atomic tests so that people can always say that any kind of attitude which doesn't seem to produce results is just subjective interest and just persistent blowing off steam on the part of the person. But I think it is a very unimportant argument, really.
QUESTION: Would you say then that the poetic plays in the 1930s had some influence on the people because probably a poet, a writer, desires to influence the reader.
ANSWER: I think that on the whole the leftism of the 1930s, the antifascism, had a very great influence. Yes. For instance, to an extent that it often made one quite ashamed. A whole generation of people who had been brought up in the 1930s afterwards became the pilots who won the Battle of Britain. We weren't being pilots, we were sort of going on writing about other things and we weren't taking part in any kind of action. I knew some of those people and I know quite well that they were very influenced by the antifascism of the 1930s. People like Auden and to some extent myself had persuaded many members of a generation that the great mission in their life was to destroy fascism. So I think to this extent it did have real influence.
QUESTION: Was this done by their reading your plays or by watching them?
ANSWER: Not my play, I don't think. How things are done is you write a few books and something is abstracted from your books which is really the idea of you, the idea that there were these young people who wrote poems, and who wrote... were writing all the time, who were demonstrating all the time. They became symbols through the fact that they wrote their poetry or their plays or whatever it was, they themselves became symbols for something, just like Pasternak became a symbol in the Soviet Union. I mean, they are two separate things. In the first place he did write, he wrote Zhivago, he wrote his poems and these give him enormous credit. But it wasn't really because anyone who read Zhivago and who read the poems... I don't think they probably got very much political message. But there was an idea that there was a man who went together with it and who — yes, the man himself — who is devoted to his work and who goes on writing his work in spite of censorship, and so on. The two things become identical, I think. I don't really think that if plays or poems were written by computers, which is possible, just conceivable, if they were written by machines [even if] they were very beautiful, whether they would have the same effect. I think that somehow it is important that one associates the work with the person who's made the work.
QUESTION:... Can you, maybe, remember what kind of audience came to see The Group Theatre plays?
ANSWER: Yes, a lot of schoolteachers and kind of Left-wing people and other writers and very few workers. The plays of Auden and Isherwood especially were written with the idea that anyone who came in, by chance, would be interested, but on the whole, I think, they were exclusive. And they weren't even very popular. I think that Auden and Isherwood's plays ran for quite a time, perhaps a month or two months at the outside. My play ran for ten days, I remember, and it [the theatre] wasn't full all the time; it was in a very small theatre, so it couldn't have had a very wide public.
QUESTION: Do you think this had something to do with the play? or just that the public wanted musicals, light plays, »At the White Horse Inn,« I remember, or Cochrane (I do not know how to pronounce this name), his revues were done a lot) ...
ANSWER: Yes.
QUESTION: ...Do you think that the audience just didn't like the poetic plays, or this kind of drama, and preferred something light at the time, in the 1930s?
ANSWER: I think that part of the merit of a play is that it must attract the audience. It's quite different from every other kind of work, because a poem, for example, it doesn't matter at all whether it attracts an audience. It may be much
better thaii other things that are being written. The test of it really is whether it goes on being read over a hundred years, not whether 25,000 people read it in a month. But the important thing about a play is that it must attract 25,000 people, or whatever, in six months in order to keep going at all, and this is an element which you simply can't ignore. So therefore, if these plays bored people it was partly the fault of the playwrights and not entirely the fault of those people. I always have quite a respect for things which draw large audiences. They may do it through being bad but they may also do it through being good, and I think that a good play that doesn't attract an audience is an awful waste of effort. If a play is worth doing, it is worth making it so that it does attract the audience.
QUESTION: Mr Spender, thank you very much.
UDK 820(73).03.091-1(497.12)»1919/1940«
THE POSSIBILITIES OF VERSE TRANSLATION: THE RECEPTION OF AMERICAN POETRY IN SLOVENIA BETWEEN THE TWO WARS
Igor Maver
Contemporary American poetry was more or less terra incognita in Slovenia throughout the first half of the 20''^ century. The thesis question, then, is why are there so few translations of American poetry into Slovene in the discussed period between the two world wars? Although this subject has not been treated in detail, the best critical reference is to be found in the study »American Poetry in Slovene Translations«^ by Mirko Jurak, Janez Stanonik's research of American-Slovene relations,^ and Velemir Gjurin's work on Griša Koritnik, one of the foremost verse translators of the period, and his translation of E. A. Poe's poem »The Raven«
The absence of verse translations from American literatm-e is, however, not to be explained by the lack of verse translations generally, because those from other European literatures abounded. The reasons for such a situation are several. On the one hand American literature (including poetry per se) was in the eyes of contemporary Slovene poets and translators derivative of the European one, which was according to them the sole »high culture« and thus the only one worth translating. The second reason was voiced by one of the then Slovene literary critics, who saw American »materialism« and the way of life as totally anti-lyrical. Slovene poets also felt that European, or for that matter American literary movements, like Futurism, Surrealism and Expressionism, allowed them to address in their works importemt issues, such as the existing economic, political and social conditions altogether, as well as the search for lost ethical values. Yet another reason for the scarcity of verse translations is that the general cultural orientation and the knowledge of foreign languages in Slovenia was in the discussed period directed primarily towards the German and French speaking countries. Conversely, the Slovene intelligentsia and culturally aware public were well acquainted with the literary activity in tliese countries, while there was a great deal of ignorance as far as American literature/poetry is concerned.
' Mirko Jurak, »American Poetry in Slovene Translations«, Seminar on Contemporary American Poetry. Ohrid, 1977, pp. 12—Kl.
^ Janez Stanonik, »Ameriško-slovenski odnosi« (»American-Slovene relations«). Enciklopedija Slovenije. Ljubljana: MK, 1987.
' An exhaustive study about Griša Koritnik was prepared by Velemir Gjurin, »Gregor Koritnik in njegov prevod Krokarja«. (»G. Koritnik and his translation of The Raven«). Iz zgodovine prevajanja na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: zbornik DSKP, 1982, p. 279.
Initially we shall examine the translation of an essay on American literature by V. F. Calverton, which appeared in 1932 in one of the leading Slovene periodicals of the period between the wars: Ljubljanski zvon {The Ljubljana Bell).'^ It is significant to note that in the very same year that Calverton's essay appeared in transilation, Louis Adamič (1898—1951), a renowned American Slovene fiction writer, visited his native Slovenia for the first time since his childhood on a Guggenheim Fellowship, which caused a revived interest in American literature. Consequently an American editiion of Ljubljanski zvon to be published in Cleveland was being prepared, but because of financial difficulties the scheme fell through. However, several translations from American poetiy appeared that year in the magazine, and it seems only reasonable to bdlieve that Adamič must have visited the editor(s) and suggested the possible topics for the translations into Slovene. Moreover, on close inspection of the personal letters of Louis Adamič we discovered that Calverton was in fact his good friend, which proves our point. V. F. Calverton was merely a nom de plume that George Gaetz used in his articles. In 1931 Adamič spent some time in the Yaddo colony of artists in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., where he worked on his novel Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America. On October he answered Calverton's letter of October in which Calverton offered Adamič to use his flat in New York upon his return there and his editorial work that Adamič was to start with The Literary Rotary. Adamič thanked him warmly for the generous offer and it seems very likely that he did use the flat in the forthcoming winter.^ Adamič mentioned Calverton also in his letter to Upton Sinclair,^ namely his article on Sinclair's fiction,^ published in the literary magazine The Modern Quarterly, the editor of which Calverton was.
In the article which was translated into Slovene, Calverton emphasizes the influence of the British and European literary tradition on American literature and the »Americanness« of Walt Whitman's poetiy, saying that »the sphere in which our colonial complex grew is dead«.® While he admits that a ntmiber of contemporary American poets, for example Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Hart Crane, Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers, are fairly original, his overall view is that American poetry is still trying to establish its solid basis and rid itself of its »coloniail complex«. Hence, the essay was informative enough, but did not hasten the interest of the then Slovene poets and translators for contemporary American poetiy. It also proves that this poetry was considered as derivative of the Europ^n one and therefore inferior to the latter.
" V. F. Calverton, »Emancipacija ameriškega slovstva« (»The Emancipation of American Writing«). Translated by Griša Koritnik. Ljubljanski zvon, LII (1932), 293—299.
= Izbrana pisma Louisa Adamiča {Selected Letters of L. Adamič), ed. by Henry A. Christian, transi, by Jerneja Petrič. Ljubljana: CZ, 1981, p. 162. ' Ibid., p. 49.
' V. F. Calverton, »Upton Sinclair: A Satirist«, The Modern Quarterly, 1923, pp. 45—48.
' V. F. Calverton, »The Emancipation of American Writing«, transi, by G. Koritnik. Ljubljanski zvon, LII (1932), 294.
Within the extant critical surveys or rather literary appraisals of American lyrical poetry we would single out an essay written by Vinko Košak,' in which he wonders from the outset why the Slovenes still have not got a comprehensive, scholarly study in this particular field. Košak (1903—1942) wrote poems, fiction, essays and literary criticism for all the major Slovene magazines and was shot as a hostage during World War Two.^" In his opinion the fact that Slovene intelligentsia did not speak English at the time largely accounts for their ignorance in the field of American literature in abstracto, which was also the case with most European coimtries, except for the British, of course. Moreover, it is coupled by the erroneous belief that American art is merely a bad imitation of the European one. Still, Košak points to Harriet Monroe's magazine Poetry which, to his mind, represents a new, typically American spirit in art and lyricism in general.
The essay by Ferdo Delak is in some ways an extremely provocative one." Delak (1905—1968) had multiple interests in his life: he was a director, an actor, an editor and even a film director, as well as an avant-garde dramatist and essayist.'^ He somewhat surprisingly maintains that the notion »American lyrical poetiy« is really nonsensical, for the Slovenes are »used to being showered mainly with the dubious blessings of American technical, materialistic society«.'^ Furthermore they should only expect to get from America bare facts, hectic tempo, tension, and no emotional deepness. This harsh and by far exaggerated writing brings no credit to its author; nonetheless it shows to what degree some of the contemporary literary critics were emotionally dependent on the »greatness« of European art and poetry, which prevented them from seeing the true merits of American literature. Accordingly, Delak considers American poetry and »the American way of life« as totally anti-lyrical.
' Vinko Košak, »Ameriška lirika« (»American Lyrical Poetry«). Jugoslovan, I (1930), 65, p. 10.
Vinko Košak (1903—1942) graduated in Slavic languages in Ljubljana in 1928 and then served as a high school teacher in various Slovene towns. The Italian Faschists put him into prison because of his imderground activity during the war and shot him as a hostage in 1942. Before the war he was on the editorial boards of the magazines Mladina (Youth), Svobodna mladina {Free Youth), and also Novi čas {New Era), published by the American Slovenes in Cleveland, which very likely represented his contact with American literature. He wrote poems, fiction, articles, essays (cf. A. Gspan, »Vinku Košaku v spomin« (»In Memory of V. Košak«), Jis, IV (1958/59). Košak is also represented in the anthology of the letters written by those sentenced to death (.Letters di condannati a morte, Torino, 1954).
" Ferdo Delak, »Ameriška mlada lirika« (»American Young Lyrical Poetry«). Slovenec, 56/1928, pp. 280—287. Cf. also the article Anton Debeljak adapted from A. Kreymborg, »A. Kreymborg about Modem American Lyrical Poetry«, LZ, 1931, pp. 703—704.
Ferdo Delak (1905—1968) studied Slavic languages and drama. In 1925 he formed a »leftist« drama group »Novi oder« (»The New Stage«), together with Avgust Černigoj. He was a director and an actor in the group which vorked in Gorica (the then Italian Gorizia). It was banned by the authorities and he fled to start publishing »the magazine of modern Slovene art« Tank in 1927. When it was banned, too, he went to Berlin and delivered a lecture on Slovene revolutionary art; he edited a special issue of the magazine Der Sturm (1929) entitled »Die junge slowenische Kunst«. In 1930 he led the »Prolettheater« in Vienna and published Rote Revue. In 1933 he returned to Ljubljana, where he was a reporter; a director in Trieste and Zagreb, and finally the stage manager of MGL (The Civic Theatre of Ljubljana, 1957—1961).
Cf. note 11, p. 282.
3 Acta	33
As far as the cultural impact of Iinagism in Slovenia is concerned, one is led to believe that the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859—1941), whose theory of an art that rather »suggests than causes« in its turn exerted a strong influence on Imagist poets, served as a kind of intermediary, a secondary source from which the Slovenes indirectly learned about this new movement and its libido dominandi, Ezra Pound, who was rendered into Slovene only after the Second World War. Particularly one of the best known Slovene poets Oton Župančič (1878—1949) played an important role in it, since he assisted the lectures delivered by Bergson in Paris at College de France during his Paris years 1905/6.
It looks as though Imagism had not been noticed in Slovenia until the mid-thirtiies, although it could have been because of its nature better accepted than the abstract Futurism.^" Imagism represented a new, typically American poetics, which Slovene poets failed to pick up, although they could/should have found it sympathetic. The reason for this may well be in their »cultural snobbishness« that highly appreciated primarily European literary movements. Thus Imagism remained somehow closed within the Anglo-American cultural circle, and, as the lack of translations amply proves, with which the Slovenes had developed very few direct cultural ties. Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell were in the period between the two wars mentioned a couple of times, together wiith Harriet Monroe, who published the first poems of the Imagists.'^ These articles were obviously not based on a thorough knowledge of the Imagists, but just repeated the second-hand info^rmation about the contemporaiy development of American poetry. It is significant that at the time they were published Imagism was no longer active in the United States.
II.
The choice of poets and themes for the translation into Slovene in the discussed period largely depended on what could be called »a direct abihty of communication« to the Slovene reading public, such as politicai or ideological reasons, economic migration, aspirations for democracy or simply owing to European »cultural snobbishness«. Thus the Slovene verse translations of Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg and some black American poets will now be briefly examined, although also a few poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were published.'^
Those Slovene poets who had at least some knowledge of American, literature most admired the poetry of Walt Whitman. He was at the time considered the epitome of a new, democratic America that had emerged since
" Majda Stanovnik, Angloameriške literarne smeri v 20. stoletju (Anglo-American Literary Trends in the 20'" century). LL 8, Ljubljana: DZS, 1980, pp. 5—29.
Ibid., p. 14.
" The bulk of translations from H.W.Longfellow appeared in Slovene at the turn of the century or by the beginning of the Great War. Andrej Smrekar (1868— 1913), an American Slovene and the vicar of Collingwood in Ohio, produced masterly translations and some of them published in the Slovene immigrant press in the United States. Unfortunately many of his unpublished verse translations (including also Byron, Bryant, etc.) were lost after his death. In the discussed period a few Longfellow's poems were published: »Excelsior. Sužnjeve sanje. Izvor žita, Pesem«, transi, by Griša Koritnik. Uodra ptica, 8/1936—37, 9, pp. 289—90.
the Civil War: Vladimir Martelanc wrote on him ia 1922" and Karlo Kocjan-čič translated an essay on Whitman originally written by Giovanm Papini in 1925.^^ There was no systematic approach to Whitman's poetiy and the reasons for occasionail translations were usually external ones, such as for example the lOO"' anniversary of Whitman's birth" ia 1938.
The first individual to have translated. Whitman was the well-known social realist poet Tone Seliškar.^" Karlo Kocjančič in 1926 translated some poems from Whitman's collection Children of Adam and published them together with an essay about the poet's life and times It is only in 1932, eighty years after its original publication, that the Slovenes get a more comprehensive selection of poems from the central collection Leaves of Grass, which points to a relatively long time lag, considering its importance.^^
Janez Žagar succeeded in creating a smooth free verse in his Slovene translations, or to be more precise, a special kind of rhythmical prose in which it is indeed hard to find any kind of recurring metrical pattern. However, the metrical scheme of the verses from Leaves of Grass at times seems very regular. In tlie translated poem »Mother and Child«, for example, his verses are additionally enriched by original phonetic colouring. In the phonetic determinants we may observe the repetition of the consoimant groups containing aspirated plosives p, t, k, which convey the impression of a deliberate consonnance. This by no means isolated fact ri^tly leads us to believe that the phonetic, vocal harmonization as a structural and in consequence also as a translational principle usually tends to occur in the instance of free verse, where no regular metrical scheme has to be observed. This seems to be one of the most significant features in the translation of free verse from English into Slovene, and possibly into other languages as well.
In 1939 the poet Anton Podbevšek prepared a short selection of translations from Whitman's lyrical poetry.^ His verses reflect the determination to search for visually constructed lines and stanzas, similarly to his own original, typographic poetry in which verse and prose sections reappear alternately. The role and significance of Walt Whitman as a literary instigator and inspirator is today widely recognized and considerable also among the Slavic nations For the one who investigates the literaiy fortxme of Whitman in Europe, Whitman's reception in these countries is more to the point, especially in France, Germany, and to a lesser extent, in Italy. This has to do with cultural influences and with general political relations, since in the 19^ cen-
" Vladimir Martelaxic, »Walt Whitman«. Učiteljski list, III (1922), 76—77, 85.
" Giovanni Papini, »Walt Whitman«, transi, by Karlo Kocjančič, LZ, XLV (1925), pp. 551—555, 625—629, 686—691, 750—754.
" »Iz lirike Walta Whitmana: Nekoč sem šel skozi obljudeno mesto. Pesniki bodočnosti. Ko sem bral knjigo. Ne zaprite svojih vrat. Neka ženska me pričakuje. Jaz sem tisti, ki z ljubeznijo muči. Ko berem o priborjeni slavi junakov. Nekemu dečku iz zapada«. Transi, by Anton Podbevšek, Modra ptica, 10/1938—39, II, pp. 359—361.
Walt Whitman, »Disonančna pesem«. Translated by Tone Seliškar. Ameriški družinski koledar, 12/1926, p. 94.
" Walt Whitman, »Iz Spevov ob slovesu«, ženski svet, 5/1926—27, 12, p. 365. Translated by Karlo Kocjančič.
^ W. Whitman, »Iz Travnih bilk« (»From Leaves of Grass«), Transi, by Janez Žagar (= Lojze Šegula). Modra ptica, 4/1932—33, 7, pp. 213—215. " Cf. note 19.
"" An authority on the reception of Whitman's poetry abroad is G.W.Allen, ed., Walt Whitman Abroad, Syracuse UP, 1955.
3*
35
tury Europe, French and German were far more widely used than English is today. Another feature to bear in mind is that a great number of Slavic peoples lived under the Habsburg and later Austro-Hungarian monarchy, thus within the orbit of the German language, while French was the language of the aristocracy and the diplomatic world. Therefore, Whitman's reception in Germany and France has influenced also his fortune among the Slavic nations.
This can best be illustrated by the famous, patriotic Slovene poem »Duma«, written by Oton Župančič, and its heavy indebtedness to Whitman's poem »Salut au Monde« .25 One could say there was a »Whitmanesque« period in his poetic creativity after his return from Paris in 1906. The star of Whitman was then in France decisively ascendant, especially owing to the Unanimists (Romains, Claudel, etc.). For, Jules Laforgue as early as 1886 published, under the title »Translations of the Astonishing American Poet Walt Whitman«, several of his poems from Leaves of Grass, which considerably contributed to the fame of Whitman in France.
One of the most productive poetic translators in the period between the two wars, Griša Koritnik, highly successfully rendered into Slovene Poe's poem »The Raven« also because he had studded Poe's relative essay to this poem The Philosophy of Composition. This translation was primarily intended to pay tribute to 120"^ anniversaiy of Poe's birth. Apart from »The Raven« Koritnik brought Poe's ballad »Annabel Lee« in his anthology of English and American poetrywhich is artistically good enough, with the reserve that it appears at times semantically poorer than the original.
Carl Sandburg was primarily not voicing the ideas of the American proletariat of the 1920s and 1930s; however, the American Slovene Ivan Molek chose for translation particularly those poems that according to him stressed the hardships of American workers during the Great Depression which could also relate to Slovene workers.^^
American black poetry had a very strong resounding in Slovenia. The poet Mile Klopčič in 1932 prepared a small anthology of the authors such as were Hughes, Cullen, McKay and a few others.^' Cvetko Kristan, like Klopčič, translated these poets from the German translations of their poems by Anna Nussbaum, published in the book Afrika Singt {Africa Sings)P The poetry of Langston Hughes appears veiy frequently in Slovene translation, which is probably due to the themes Hughes treats in his poems, to his progressive social and political outlook, as well as to his racial backgroimd. In the poetry of American black authors one gets the impression that the poet does not
" Cf. Igor Maver, The Echoes of English and American Poetry in Slovenia until 1945. Typescript. Faculty of Arts and Science, Ljubljana, 1987, study submitted as an M.A. thesis.
^^ E.A.Poe, »Krokar« (»The Raven«), transi, by Griša Koritaik. Ljubljanski zvon, XLIX (1929), 85—88.
" Griša Koritnik, Listič iz angleške lirike (A Leaf from English Lyrical Poetry). E.A.Poe, »Annabel Lee«, p. 38. Ljubljana, 1929.
Carl Sandburg, »Iz zbirke Sandburgovih pesmi« (»From the collection of Sandburg's Poems«), translated by Ivan Molek. Pod lipo, 4/1928, 11, p. 161; 12, pp. 177—178.
® Mile Klopčič, »Iz lirike črncev« (»From Black Lyric«), translated are L. Hughes, C. Cullen, C. McKay, S.A.Brown. Ljubljanski zvon, LH, (1932), 7—8, pp. 434—436.
Langston Hughes, »čmčev spev« (»Black Man's Song«), translated by Cvetko Kristan. Pod lipo, 3/1926, 10, p. 155.
draw the inspiration merely from his own personal experience; rather, his poetic sensibility reflects the bitter experience of a nation and may well represent also an advantage, particularly as far as culture is concerned, the fact the Slovenes are not unfamiliar with.
III.
As for the original poetic creativity of the Slovene poets in the period between the two wars, it seems that what they should have done is to abandon the »majority/minority« dichotomy, namely Europe vs. America/Slovenia) in culture and by extension in literature appraisal. This view of the comparative literature science is not decisive for the literary and theoretical verification of a »minority« culture, in this instance Slovene. You will observe that the traditional dichotomy of the literature belonging to a »small« and »big« nation, respectively, could possibly be overcome by using the more objective notion of a »majority/minority« culture, which is based solely on quantitative figures of the people that represent each particular culture/literature. Thus the biased appraisals of a literature, belonging to economically powerful or just bigger society and that of the opposite kind, are in the Foucaultian sense avoided. For only good literature is of any consequence, stemming from either of them. It is as simple as that.
In this sense European and American literatures are not adequate standards against which to measure the Slovene literary works of the discussed period, since the real merit Mes in their intrinsic, autochthonous aesthetic value. However, it is noteworthy that the behaviour of Slovene poets was also counter-productive. They tried to imitate the »majority/big« literatures, American and European, and to judge their own work against American literature or European models, that is to condemn or praise it accordingly.
UDK 840.03.091-31(497.12)»1950/197«
LA RECEPTION DU NOUVEAU ROMAN FRANQAIS EN SLOVENIE
Metka Zupančič
Nous nous proposons, dans le present article, de reflechir sur la reception d'un prenomene de la litterature contemporaine, ä savoir du Nouveau Roman frangais, dans le monde romanesque Slovene. Ce qui nous a mteressee plus particulderernent dans nos recherches, c'etait de voir comment cette diffusion pouvait etre accueillie eit meme assimilee dans un contexte qui est d'ailleurs peu coimu des Frangais. Le passage d'informations semble d'ailleurs n'avoir ete assure que dans une direction, evidemment de la France vers la Slovenie. Comme il arrive souvent, la reception des informations' etaiit fortement con-ditionnee par tous les obstacles qui peuvent intervenir dans les echanges entre deux cultures: les barrages de la langue, les differences d'esprit, les pos-sibilites de reception reduites par I'ideologie (culturelle) dominante, ou encore, les informations parvenant au recepteur par le biais des lintermediaires, et en dernier lieu, les retards possibles et la subjeotivite des porteurs d'informations.
Dans notre analyse de la litterature Slovene ä partir des annees cinquante, nous nous sommes propose de ne mettre en relief que les textes qui semblent offrir le plus grand nombre de donnees grace auxquelles on peut legitimement les rapprocher soit du Nouveau Roman soit d'un type de roman »moderne« qui, comme son homologue frangaiis, se presente comme un refus tres net des valeurs traditionneUes heritees du roman du 19eme siede, tels I'intrigue, les personnages, leur psychologie, la Chronologie des evenements etc.
II serait peut-etre opportun de signaler des maintenant un phenomene assez interessant et typique pour la litterature contemporaine Slovene. Nos recherches montrent qu'il existe xm bon nombre de textes dans lesquels il serait vain de chercher ime intrigue, ime suite logique (voire chrono-logique OU diegetique) d'evenements ou bien la presence de personnages. Et pourtant, ces romans ne correspondent pas au Nouveau Roman, ils ne sont en rien un echo, un emule ou encore une variante des procedes neoromanesques fran-gais. Comme nous le verrons par la suite, ils sont tout simplement quelque chose d'autre. Ceci semble pouvoir s'expliquer par le fait que les informations provenant de France furent incompletes et qu'elles ne proposerent pas ime vision globale des dimensions de ce nouveau type d'ecriture. En outre, lorsqu'il existe une filiation apparente, celle-ci indique plutot im meme etat d'esprit s'inscrivant dans un contexte plus large et au cas ou les phases »preparatoires« dans les processus de maturation auraient suivi un cheminement semblable, un passage presque obligatoire dans tm type semblable d'expression.
Partant de certains postulats du Nouveau Roman frangals, notre reflexion insdstera plutot sur leur transformation dans I'espace et dans le temps, puis-
qu'il s'agira de demontret, d'abord dans le contexte plus general de la littera-ture Slovene apres 1950 et ensuite dans la presentation de quelques textes, des mecanismes assez curieux d'echanges et de reception.
Dans cette optique, un texte retiendra tout particuliierement notre attention, le roman Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler (Triptih Agate Schwarz-kobler), ecrit par Rudi Šeligo et publie pour la premiere fois en 1969 (avec I'indication de 1968). Reimprime en 1982 dans une colleotion d'etudes et suivi de deux analyses critiques, ce texte reaffirme la presence d'une pensee et d'une esthetique qui, en Silovenie, se veulent tributaires des grandes orientations du Nouveau Roman frangais. Mais 11 faut eviidemment definir ce qui, dans le Nouveau Roman, semble attirer les romanoiers slovenes, Rudi Šeligo en par-ticulier, et ce qui interesse la critique Slovene lorsqu'elle cherche des reminiscences ou des influences du Nouveau Roman dans les textes slovenes con-temporains. Avant d'essayer de repondre ä ces questions qui sont au centre de notre reflexiion, nous aimerions indiquer quelques jalons d'une certaine »penetration« du Nouveau Roman en Slovenie, et de fagon plus generale pour certains textes en Yougoslavie.
Les premieres indications concemant le Nouveau Roman apparaissent assez tot dans les revues slovenes, vers 1960. La presence d'une pensee tribu-taire du Nouveau Roman ne peut toutefois etre observee qu'a partir de 1965, ä la suite d'une traduction en Slovene de certains textes qui ä I'heure actuelle encore, sont consideres comme I'expression de la theonie du Nouveau Roman frangais. En revanche, la necessite d'une orientation vers un autre type de litterature fut sentie des 1952 par les professeurs de litteraiture comparee de rUniversite de Ljubljana, Anton Ocvirk et Dušan Pirjevec.' En 1954, les courants contemporains de la litterature frangaise sont traites par Jean-Marie Leclerc lors d'une conference ä Maribor.^ En 1955, une polemiique litteraire s'engage qui aboutit ä un refus definitif du realisme — refus formule par Dušan Pirjevec. Dans les annees cinquante, il existe done en Slovenie un mouvement de pensee assez proche de ce qui se passe en France. Une difference fondamenitale s'impose neanmoins: en France, ce sont plutot les ecri-vains qui s'attaquent k la notion de realisme, tandis qu'en Slovenie, ce sont les theoriciens qui semblent ressentir un besoin profond d'affirmer leurs convictions »anti-realistes«. Cette anticipation de la theorie sur la pratique litteraire est un phenomene assez typique du contexte culturel Slovene.
Le premier nouveau romancier frangais ä etre introduit en Slovenie fut Michel Butor avec la traduction de son essai Roman et poesie accompagne d'un extrait de La Modification.^ Vint ensuite la presentation de Nathalie Sarraute faite par Hamid Mokdad,"* avec le terme de »Nouveau Roman« indique dans le titre de I'article. Quant aux articles dus aux critiques ou joumalistes slovenes, ils sont anterieurs ä ces traductions. En 1953, le rapport entre Zola
' Anton Ocvirk parlant de la Lumiere d'aout de Faulkner et Dušan Pirjevec attaquant les restes du realisme du 19eme siecle.
^ Publie sous forme raccourcie dans le quotidien Večer (24. 2. 1954, p. 45) sous le titre »Les courants contemporains de la litterature frangaise« (Sodobni tokovi v francoski književnosti).
' Michel Butor, Roman in poezija (Roman et poesie; traduit par Radojka Vran-čič). Naša sodobnost 1962, No. 12, pp. 1130—1137.
Hamid Mokdad, Nathalie Sarraute. Položaj in pot novega romana v Franciji (Nathalie Sarraute. La position et la voie du Nouveau Roman en France), Naši razgledi (13. 1. 1962, p. 11).
et les jeunes ecrivains frangais est analyse par Vasja Predan.^ La question du soi-disant »nouveau realiisme« est aborde en 1961 par Draga Ahačič;® le roman contemporain frangais est presente ä partir des positions de Michel Butor en 1963 par Božidar BorkoJ Entre 1966 et 1973, cinq articles traitent encore du Nouveau Roman: mis ä part le dernier® qui relate la conference de Nathalie Sarraute ä Ljubljana, tous les autres sont lies ä Robbe-Grillet. Entre 1965 et 1970, la prose contemporaine frangaiise n'apparait que dans la traduction de trois extraits de textes de Marguerite Duras, de Le Clezio et de Robbe-Grillet.
Toutes ces constatations ne contredisent qu'en apparence notre hypothese enoncee plus haut, ä savoir que le terminus a quo pour la reception du Nouveau Roman frangais en Slovenie etait ä chercher autour de I'annee 1965, vu qu'avant cette date, les informations touchant au Nouveau Roman passerent pratiquement inapergues. Ce fait apparemment curieux semble pouvoir etre explique par la periodisation de la vie culturelle Slovene pro-posee par le philosophe Slovene Tine Hribar.^ II distingue plusieurs phases dont la premiere, de 1945 ä 1955, serait socio-realiste, la deuxieme, de 1955 ä 1965, existentialiste avec les influences de la pensee du jeune Marx, la troi-sieme, de 1965 ä 1975, serait marquee par I'influence de Heidegger et celle apres 1975 par I'influence de Lacan. Cette periodisation un peu schematique nous permet neanmoins de conclure qu'il a ete probablement bien difficile sinon impossible de faire valoir les idees de la premiere phase du Nouveau Roman ä I'epoque de la predominance de Texistentialisme. Seule une ouver-ture ä la pensee phenomenologique dans la conception plutot heideggerienne permettait done la penetration d'une certaine theorie du Nouveau Roman, celle developpee par Robbe-Grillet dans les annees cinquante, puisque toute la premiere phase du Nouveau Roman semble etre orientee vers la phenome-nologie.'" Cette ouverture de la pensee Slovene suit, dans xm certain sens, ce qui eut lieu en France une dizaine d'annees plus tot, avec I'avenement du Nouveau Roman en tant que contrepartie ou refus des positions existentialistes.
Ce fut precisement en 1965 que la revue Problemi publia les »textes des conferences donnees ä la Tribune Libre Universitaire de Bruxelles« par Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet et Lucien Goldmann. Dans la traduction Slovene," les textes furent reunis sous le titre »Nouveau Roman et veridicite« (nous soulignons). Comme on peut le supposer, un phenomene interessant se produit ici: la notion de realite dans le texte original est remplacee dans la traduction par celle de la veridicite. II s'agit la d'une ambiguite assez typique
^ Vasja Predan, Zola in mladi francoski romanopisci (Zola et les jeunes romanciers frangais), Beseda, No. 2, pp. 121—122.
' Draga Ahačič, Resničnost in resnica (Veridicite/Realite et la verite). Naša sodobnost 1961, No. 3, pp. 267—270.
' Božidar Borko, Sodobni francoski roman. Iz izvajanj književnika Michela Butora (Le roman contemporain frangais. Propos de Michel Butor), Delo V/1963 (4. 10.), p. 5.
' Bogdan Pogačnik, Nathalie Sarraute pri nas (N. S. chez nous). Delo, 10. 5. 1973, No. 125, p. 8.
' Tine Hribar, Dve leti po pobudi (Deiuc ans apres l'initiative). Nova revija I, No. 2, pp. 133—135.
Metka Zupančič, Metamorfoze novega romana (Metamorphoses du Nouveau Roman), Nova revija 1984, III, No. 22—23, p. 1497.
" Novi roman in resničnost. Teksti predavanj, ki so jih imeli avtorji na Tribune Libre Universitaire v Bruslju. Problemi 29, avgust 1965: Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet. Problemi 30, september 1965: Lucien Goldmann.
dans le oontexte litteraire Slovene. Les conceptions traditionnalistes s'y trou-vent en effet en confrontation avec des notions dites contemporaines. Une certaine impossibilite ä se soostraire completement ä des conceptionis plutot depassees coexiste avec une ouverture d'esprit pour des phenomenes nouveaux, meme s'ils sont suivis avec un certain retard. Et c'est la qu'il faut chercher ä notre avis les raisons du retentissement des conferences traduites et citees plus haut. Elles instaurerent pour aimsi dire une certaine conception du Nouveau Roman qui persiste encore de nos jours en Slovenie. Cette conception est fondee principalement sur la »definition par opposition« — opposition de Robbe-Grillet ä ranthropocentrisme et ä ranthropomorpliisme. Elle vehi-cule avec le refus de la litterature mimetique, le refus du realisme, refus qui se traduit en Slovenie par le terme du »reisme« (reizem). L'oriigine de ce terme propose pour la litterature Slovene contemporaine par un de ses theoriciens, Taras Kermauner, doit remonter ä Lucien Goldmann. Dans sa conference bruxelloise, celui-ci prend en consideration la notion philosophique, marxiste de la reification telle qu'elle apparait dans le Nouveau Roman frangais. Depuis 1966, Kermauner (et d'autres apres lui) se sert de ce terme pour designer tout procede qui dans la prose, et aussi dans la poesie Slovene, se caracterise par une description »objectale«, par le descriptionnisme avec les objets mis au premier plan, ce qui serait plutot ime reduction, une attenuation des impor-tants changements apportes dans I'ecriture par le Nouveau Roman frangais.
La traduction en 1967 de I'essai Nature, humanisme, tragedie de RobbeGrillet, toujours dans la revue Problemi, irenforce encore la conviction du cote Slovene que la theorie du Nouveau Roman est ä chercher dans les ecrits de cet ecrivain. Dans son essai, ce sont surtout des affinites avec la phenomeno-logie, dont la »reduction phenomenologique«, qui semblent avoir ete parti-culierement interessantes pour le milieu intellectuel Slovene.
Ces deux series de traductions, celles de 1965 et celle de 1967, ont donne la base pour la speculation Slovene dans le domaine du Nouveau Roman, surtout pour les etudes comparatives entre le Nouveau Roman frangais et les ecrivains slovenes contemporains, Rudi Šeligo en particulier (qui est con-sidere comme le nouveau romancier Slovene par excellence). Cette insistance, vers la fin des annees soixante, sur Robbe-Grillet en tant que theoiicien du Nouveau Roman frangais, eut pour consequence la meconnaissance d'aspects bien differents du nouveau type d'ecriture, synthetises en grande partie dans la theorie de Jean Ricardou qui ä I'heure actuelle reste encore tres peu connue en Slovenie.
Si Ton doit parier d'influence possible du Nouveau Roman en Slovenie, c'est bden par la traduction de textes theoriques devangant la traduction des romans qu'elle a eu lieu. Les extraits mentionnes plus haut semblent d'aüleurs avoir produit peu d'effet.
Les principes enonces dans les textes theoriques prirent ainsi la place qui dans d'autres circonstances appartiendrait ä la pratique du Nouveau Roman, si on accepte que la reception s'effectue d'abord et essentiellement par les traductions. Mais la pratique neoromanesque ne put en effet trouver des editeurs que tres tard, ä savoir La Modification de Michel Butor traduite en 1971 et Le Voyeur d'Alain Robbe-Grillet en 1974. II est curiexix de constater comment I'acceptation generale d'une soi-disant »definition« du Nouveau Roman, ä savoir le refus de I'anthropocentrisme et de ranthropomoiphisme, put ä ce moment-la encore conditionner rorientation critique des etudes accompagnant la publication Slovene de ces deux romans. Leurs auteurs,
Janko Kos pour Butor et Dušan Pirjevec pour Robbe-Grillet, insisterent tous les deux sur le fait que le Nouveau Roman devait etre compris comme le refus de I'existentialisme d'un cote et de la tradition realiste de l'autre, avec le rejet de l'intrigue, de la psychologie des personnages etc. Dans son etude sur Le Voyeur, Pirjevec souligne en outre la dimension phenomenologique de I'ecriture ä I'ecole de Robbe-Grillet, mais ne semble par cooitre pas etre sensible, dans son approche du Voyeur et du Nouveau Roman en general, aux autres changements produits dans ce type d'ecniture. Dans sa reflexion, de meme que dans celle de Janko Kois sur Butor, le domaine de I'analyse structu-rale n'est touche que de tr^ loin, alors que I'optique phenomenologique y est dominante.
Tout en se limitant ä la phase pour ainsi dire robbe-grilletienne du Nouveau Roman, les textes de ces deux theoriciens sont toujours consideres comme des etudes de base pour relucidation de la question. Ce fadt nous aidera ä mieux concevoir I'attitude des autres critiques oeuvrant plus spe-cialement dans le domaine de la litterature Slovene contemporaine. L'accepta-tion de ce type de mediation critique suppose d'ailleurs une meconnaissance des textes originaux. En outre, ces critiques consideraient le Nouveau Roman frangais comme une des formes d'tm processus general dans la litterature contemporaine, voire post-modemiste. Toujours est-il que les traductions dans d'autres langues yougoslaves, notamment en serbo-croate qui recouvre un reseau linguistique beaucoup plus important, et offre ainsi plus de possi-bilites pour le choix des textes etrangers, auraient en principe pu assurer une information plus approfondie du Nouveau Roman. Le Voyeur traduit en croate presqu'aussitot apres sa sortie en France, La Modification traduite des 1958, La Route des Flandres parue en 1962 ne semblent pourtant pas avoir eu de retentissement particulier en Slovenie. Ce ne fut que la traduction croate de L'Inquisitoire de Robert Finget en 1966 qui put interesser I'ecriivain Slovene Rudi Šeligo; dans ce cas encore, la date nous semble etre significative.
Ce ne sera done qu'a partir de 1965 que Ton cherchera, dans les lettres slovenes, des retentissements ou peut-etre meme des variantes de certains procedes neoromanesques regroupes en Slovenie sous le terme de »rfeme«. Cette notion, comme nouis I'avons dejä signale, concerne aussi la poesie, mais nos investigations se limiteront ä la prose. La, il nous parait utile de distinguer deux types de textes. Les premiers se reclament ouvertement de la poetique du Nouveau Roman frangais telle qu'elle est connue en Slovenie. Les seconds mettent eux aussi en oeuvre certains procedes que Ton peut appeler neoromanesques, mais tres souvent ä I'insu de leurs auteurs. Dans ce cas, il serait
plus opportun de parier de certain esprit commun, d'immanences, de jaillis-sements d'une meme orientation recouvrant un domaine litteraire plus general et plus vaste. Cest dans ce type de romans slovenes que la facture raste cependant en general assez traditionnelle. A titre d'exemple, citons le roman Orfeum (1972) d'Andrej Hieng ou toute une serie fictionnelle est generee par les images d'un rideau de theatre, ce qui pourrait suggerer un rapprochement avec la technique d'xm Claude Simon ou d'un Robert Pinget. Mais en dehors de ce fait, le roman d'Andrej Hieng ne cherche pas ä depasser les omieres traditionnelles, si ce n'est par xm changement constant de I'optique dans le recit, a savoir du narrataire dans les differentes parties du texte. Toujours ä l'interieur de ce second type de textes, citons la generation des jeimes ecri-vains slovenes dont Jančar, Gradišnik, Švabič, Kalčič et Filipčič qui ont reussi ä bien s'affirmer par l'emploi des procedes formels assez proches du Nouveau
Roman, mais qui de fagon plus generale relevent plutot de I'infiuence d'ecri-vains amenicains oontemporains tels que Vonnegut et Kerouac dont les romans ont ete traduits en Slovene par les membres de ce groupe.
Un dernier exemple assez curieux qui offre lui aussi des possibilites de rapprochement avec le Nouveau Roman frangais est donne par un texte que son auteur, poete Slovene Gregor Strniša, proposa au public sous forme de jeu iradiophonique. Brat Henrik (Frere Henri), ecrit dans une prose rythmee et produit dans la saison \91S/16, est passe presque inapergu. La critique Slovene s'y attarda d'autant moins que ce genre reste quelque peu neglige en Slovenie. Ce jeu radiophonique tres riche dans son expression frappe par la mise en oeuvre de procedes qui ne sont pas eloigne de ceux d'un RobbeGrillet de la meme epoque, sans qu'il y ait pourtant moyen d'etablir une filiation directe. La structuration bien radicale du texte procede suivant la ligne de la spirale; I'interdependance des procedes fictionnels et narratifs y est de regle. Dans son imagenie et dans son symbolisme (le texte nous propose une possibiJite d'echappement au temps et ä Tespace par un jeu de mises en abyme et de redoublement des personnages, avec ce »frere« Henri signifi-catif par son appellation meme et guide vers des dimensions »autres«), ce jeu radiophonique ouvre des champs d'investigation qui depassent largement le refus de I'anthropocentrisme et de Tanthropomorphisme et menent meme au-dela de Tanalyse structurale.
Voyons maintenant les textes qui selon nous peuvent etre legitimement definis comme le Nouveau Roman Slovene. D'apres la critique Slovene, ce type d'ecriture, appMquant les postulats exprimes dans les textes frangais traduits en 1965 et en 1967, ne serait appam que vers I'annee 1968. Cette optique neglige forcement les autres dimensions critiques developpees alors en France. Ce sont ces perspectives que nous entendons integrer dans notre etude. C'est pourquoi nous sommes amenee ä distinguer entre deux sortes d'expression romanesque. D'lm cote, une lecture plutot semiotique mettrait en valeur et actualiserait de nombreiox traits interessants dans les romans de Rudi Šeligo. Par contre, certains de ses contemporains qui, vers 1968, se reclamaient eux aussi de la poetique du Nouveau Roman framgais, ne peuvent plus du tout, ä rhein-e actuelle, etre lus comme des emuiles slovenes du Nouveau Roman. Parmi eux, Braco Rotar demandait en 1968 precisement qu'il n'existat plus de barrieres entre les plans fictionnel et narratif; en outre, il insistait sur i'importance des donnees structurales dans une oeuvre litteraire. Son recueil de nouvelles Moloh^ se caracterise par la destructiooa de I'intrigue au sens traditionnel du terme, par I'aneantissement du plzm psychologique et par les objets decrits pour eux-memes, »objectalement«, comme nous le suggere la critique Slovene. Et poiirtant, ce type d'ecriture differe fondamentalement du Nouveau Roman frangais. Nous trouvons surtout un certain desequilibre, ime certaine dualite, voire une ambiguite entre un residu tres fort des elements traditionnels dans son recueil de nouvelles et ses declarations qui pourraient signaler ime recherche assez poussee dans le sens du Nouveau Roman. Un certain retour ä la mythologie grecque est ä noter chez lui des 1968, alors que ce phenomene semble prevaloir dans le roman post-modeme plus recent.
Cette double orientation, mise en evidence ä partir d'une lecture a posteriori, semble pourtant bien etre une caracteristique de la production litteraire contemporaine Slovene. EUe est signalee aussi par le theoricden Jože
OÜ nous voyons une allusion cachee ä Molloy.
Pogačnik dans son Histoire de la litterature sloveneP Jože Pogačnik laisse entedre que les annees soixante-dix se distinguent par la presence de plusieurs ecrivains qui, au lieu de s'approprier des structures narratives modernes, se servent des formes anciennes tout en possedant un materiel adapte ä ce nouveau type d'expression. Dans certains cas, I'experience traditionnelle de la matiere se voit depassee par un appareil formel moderne. D'apres Pogačnik, l'impossiblite de sortir de cette qualite est ä attribuer ä un manque de »concentration oreatrice« susceptible d'engendrer un grand texte en prose. II avance encore que les possibilites ouvertes dans le »processus d'une restructu-ration« de la litterature ne sont pas developpees pour la simple raison qu'il n'existe pas de personnalites assez fortes »capables de les dominer creative-ment«.'"* Le tome 8 de son Histoire de la litterature Slovene, Existentialisme et structuralisme, est en fait une classification de la litterature Slovene d'apres la deuxieme guerre mondiale et son titre nous semble signiificatif. Pogačnik, bien isole dans sa tentative de definir I'epoque posterieure ä 1965 comme appartenant au structuralisme, alors qu'il s'agirait plutot d'lme ouverture vers la pensee heideggeriemie ou plus largement phenomenologique, signale toutefois la presence de recherches structurales, meme si ces recherches n'occupent ä I'epoque qu'une place secondaire dans I'esprit Slovene.
Parmi les ecrivains que presente Jože Pogačnik dans son Histoire de la litterature Slovene, le seul ä etre caracterise par le terme de »structuralisme« est Rudi Šeligo. Cette indication de structuralisme, bien que le sens n'en sodt pas precise, ouvre des possibilites pour xme lecture autre que »reiste« ou phenomenologique ä laquelle semble se limiter la vision de Pogačnik.
Cest dans ce contexte que s'inscrivent plusieurs textes theoriques de Šeligo publies vers 1970. A notre avis, ces ecrits se rapprochent d'une fa^on extraordinaire du Nouveau Roman sans que pourtant les dimensions theoriques en soient alors connues en Slovenie. Dans le Schema lineaire du procede, (Im)pressions,^^ Šeligo definit I'ecriture comme »generee« par la peinture, tout ä fait dans le sens des generateurs ricardoliens sans qu'il ait pu exister de fait un lien entre les deux auteurs. Ensuite, Šeligo insiste sur I'importaiice, la toute-puissance de I'acte, du procede d'ecriture, seule capable d'ordonner le recit: »Sans papier et sans instrument d'ecriture je ne puis penetrer dans la matiere de I'image au point de pouvoir en devoiler les significations«'^ — et un peu plus loin: »La description de I'image dntroductive est im element constitutif essentiel du texte et du message et nuUement quelque style ou mode«." Ces quelques idees indiquent assez clairement la nouveaute par rapport aux conceptions slovžnes citžes plus haut. Cela explique aussi pourquol ces textes n'ont ete que tres rarement cites par la suite et surtout redmts aux notions connues et acceptees concemant le Nouveau Roman, dues, comme il a dejä ete signale, en grande partie aux traductions des textes »theoriques« de Robbe-Grillet, de Nathalie Sarraute et de Lucien Goldmarm.
" Jože Pogačnik, Zgodovina slovenskega slovstva, Maribor, 1972. Tome 8: Eksistencializem in strukturalizem (Existentialisme et .structuralisme), pp. 100—101. " Ibid., p. 104, nous traduisons en frangais. Publie en Slovene dans la revue Problemi 1972, No. 118—120, et repris en 1973 dans Le Livre Slovene, publication destinee ä la promotion des lettres slovenes: XI, nov. 1973, No. 2, p. 54. " Ibid., p. 55. " Ibid.
En quoi Šeligo a-t-il reussi ä depasser la vision premiere du Nouveau Roman? Puisque dans son cas, il semble etre impossible d'etablir des influences veritables, le credo esthetique exprime dans l'article cite doit etre mis en rapport avec sa logique propre qu'il puise dans son ecriture. De son propre aveu il confie: »Le ,comment' mentiomie plus haut est d'une importance de-cisiva, car il amene revolution finale et definitive du ,quoi'. C'est pourquoi la formulation du blocage du bouilloamement ne signifie pas pour moi ,1a forme' opposee au ,contenu'. Pour moi les deux questions sont toutes deux ,quoi' et toutes deux .comment' et en effet nous ne pouvons pas les separer.«'^ La fait qu'un peu plus loin dans le texte, lil dit lui-meme: »J'ai suivi d'un peu plus pres les ecrits ,theoriques' de Nathalie Sarraute et de Robbe- Grillet et leurs intervieus«!' prouve bien qu'il ignorait lui-meme ä quel point il avait depasse les idees idees neoromanesques des annees cinquante. Limite par sa mauvaise connaisane des Langues etrangeres, il a ete sürement dependant des traductions, dont delle en serbo-croate de l'Inquisitoire qu'il signale lui-meme. Le manque d'informatioais provenant directement du domaine du Nouveau Roman lui fait en outre chercher des correspondances plutot avec des »pi-ecurseurs« tels Faulkner et Bounine, dont les textes etaient disponsibles en traduction Slovene. On rencontre la encore la trace de cette double' orientation, de I'am-bigui'te de la pensee contemporaine Slovene dont nous avons parle plus haut et ä laquelle Šeligo ne sut se soustraire, ce qui est encore souligne par son article Pour une prose hermetiques ouverte^ Šeligo y indique d'abord qu'il ne voit pas, »en ce qui conceme la langue, de grandes differences en tre la pross et la poesie, en tout cas aucune separation comme nous les trouvons chez Sartre ou Duffresnes, bien qu'en poesie ce soit plutot le cote semantique qui est au premier plan et en prose le cote syntaxique.«^* Par la suite, il insiste sur la notion da la production textuelle, en affirmant meme que »la langue dans le sens etroit du terme et la structure esthetique — que nous pouvons nommer ecriture litteraire — sont soumises ä une constante subversion et innovation.«^ La coincidence d'idees entre ce qu'affirme Šeligo et le Nouveau Noveau Roman dans sa presentation ricardoMenne.^' n'est pas pergue pax I'ecrivain Slovene, et c'est la encore une source de dualite dont nous parlions plus haut.
Passons maintenant ä I'examen de la pratique litteraire de Šehgo et au rapprochement possible avec le Nouveau Nouveau Roman. Y a-t-il moyen d'etablir un rapport productif entre la theorie et la pratique litteraire, comme c'etait le cas en France? Nous nous refererons au roman Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler (1968) qui est considere comme le texte le plus typique de la production »neoromanesque« en Slovenie.^'' Dans les autres romans de Šeligo, il s'agit plutot d'un developpement qui va des influences faulkneriennes (avec Bruit et Fureur) ä un type d'expression proche d'un Claude Simon des annees
Ibid.
" Ibid., p. 57; il s'agit evidemment de la traduction signalee plus haut dans Problemi 1965, et ensuite de la traduction dans Problemi maj 1967, p. 689, de I'essai Nature, humanisme, tragedie (Narava, humanizem, tragedija) d'Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Paru d'abord en frangais dans Le Livre Slovene 1976, No. 3/4, p. 49, et en 1983 seulement dans le livre de France Pibemik, Čas romana (L'Ere du romanj p- 234, dans le cadre de I'interview avec Rudi Šeligo.
Le livre Slovene 1976, No. 3/4, p. 50; ce qui surprend ici, c'est I'attitude de Šeligo qui met sur un meme plan Sartre et Duffresnes. ^^ Ibid.
^ Puisque Ricardou definit lui-meme cette deuxieme phase du mouvement par le terme de »subversion« (Le Nouveau Roman, Seuil, 1973, p. 139).
Cinquante, sans que dans ce cas, il existe un lien direct entre les deux auteurs. La encore, Šeligo persiste dans une certaine diversite d'dnspiration qui carac-terisait dejä Braco Rotar et qui se definit bien par le terme de dualite. En ce qua concerne plus specialement le Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler- il s'incrit dans ce meme etat d'esprit. Notre lecture de ce roman de ŠeMgo sera guidee par ime certaine conception de la notion de »triptyque« et de sa manifestation en litterature telle qu'elle est proposee par Claude Simon dans son roman Triptyque (1973).'^ Notre comprehension du texte de Šeligo semble en effet pouvoir etre enrichie par cet exemple tout ä fait excellent de la realisation du lien entre la litterature et la peinture tel que preconise d'aiUe-urs par Šeligo lui-meme. Nous allons observer d'une part les dimensions de la triplicite dans le Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler et d'autre part le depasse-ment de la linearite du recit par I'intermediaire d'une organisation du texte relevant elle-meme en partie de la peinture. Nous essayerons de voir si I'image du triptji-que proposee par le titre du roman est eile aussi generatrice de cette inter-action du »comment« et du »quoi« dont parle Šeligo dans ses textes theoriques.
Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler est un livre assez mince, il n'a que 69 pages dans sa premiere edition et 80 dans la reedition accompagnee des reproductions des tableaux du peintre Slovene Janez Bemik, ce qui n'est pas un fait negligeable. Le livre est divise en trois chapitres de longueur plus ou moins egale. Cest dans cette repartition que la critique Slovene a vu le principe fondamental de triplicite, puisque les trois parties representent chacune une unite du point de vue de la disposition du materiel fictionnel. Les evenements de la matinee se trouvent dans la premiere partie, ceux de I'apres-midi dans la deuxieme, alors que la troisieme partie est reservee aux evenements de la nuit.
Pour Šeligo, de meme que pour Simon, la peinture represente ime sorte de directive structurale, ou qu'il indique lui-meme dans son texte theorique Le schema lineaire du procede: »Au debut il y a toujours un tableau, une image, une impression visuelle. Elle agit ä la maniere d'une representation imposee, se repetant sans arret, apparaissant sans desir ou volonte consci-ente.«^^
Et un peu plus loin: »Lorsque je cite mon image, je ne donne que le cadre de base dans lequel se forme la premiere impulsion du futur texte. Je ne veux pas dire par la que le texte definitif soit la »description juste« de I'image premiere. Au contraire, le texte est quelque chose de different, continue ä etre quelque chose de different si bien qu'a la fin I'image primordiale n'y est plus.«^' Generation du texte ä partir des images done, et transformation de ces impulsions dans le procede de I'ecriture: »La veritable elucidation de ce que les images portent en elles se fait dans I'acte de I'ecriture si bien que
^ Matjaž Kmecl, La prose narrative Slovene, Le livre Slovene 1972, No. 2, p. 62. Question que nous avons traitee dans notre article Skozi labirint do strukture: pristop k romanom Clauda Simona (Au bout du labyrinthe, la structure: une approche des romans de Claude Simon), Primerjalna književnost (Litterature com-paree), 1979, No. 2, pp. 27—35; en outre, nous avons analyse le rapport entre Simon et Šeligo dans I'article Triptih kot strukturno vodilo pri Šeligu in Simonu (Triptyque comme principe structural chez S. et chez S.), Primerjalna književnost 6, 1983, No. 1, pp. 34—43. op. cit. Ibid.
c'est I'ecriture, la composition du texte, qui devoile son contenu.«^® Nous en concluons qu'il existe chez Šeligo, comme d'ailleurs chez Simon, im desir profond d'echapper ä la litterature mimetique par le biais de la peinture. Non seulement la peinture propose des images generatrices du texte, mais eile introduit dans la litterature, par son caractere foncierement different, des dimensions autres qui menent vers la depassement de la linearite et du temps chronologique dans le texte. C'est de cette fagon que se justifie la metaphore du triptyque inscrite dans le titre du roman. Ce type d'emprunt ä la peinture devrait signaler an meme temps que la litterature veut developper une organisation OÜ tout irait par trois. Les elements fictionnels et narratifs y cir-culeraient done d'un »panneau« du triptyque ä I'autre. II y aurait ainsi un mouvement circulaire horizontal et dans une certaine conception verticale du livre. Ton porrait tout aussi bien trouver des relations triples. Bref, une vision litteraire de la notion du triptyque developpee ä tous les niveaux du texte. Si la triangulation constante du reoit, dans Tinteraotion de la fiiction et de la narration, est un procede fidelement respecte dans Triptyque da Simon, en revanche le texte de Šeligo ne semble pas regrouper dans un denominateur commun toutes les manifestations de la triplicite et de la triangulation. La repartition du texte et du materiau fictionnel en trois parties n'est pas tout ä fait consequente: la partie centrale comporte en fait deux unites thematiques et il s'y trouve ä la fin une coupure qui semble indiquer xme organisation binaire, ce qui corroborerait notre idee ä propos d'une certaine dualite de l'auteur. Sur le plan fictionnel, la premiere partie nous decrit ime jeim.e fille habillee de blanc ä son poste de travail, dans un bureau; eile n'est pas designee par un nom. Dans le premier versant de la deuxieme partie, eile se rend au cinema avec un denomme Jurij pour voir L'Annee derniere ä Marienbad (nous y reviendrons encore); eile s'enfuit pour echapper ä son violent desir. Dans le deuxieme versant de cette meme partie, elle accepte de s'asseoir dans la voiture d'un inconnu qui I'emmene au bord d'une riviere ou il la viole. Dans la troisieme partie, la jeune fille passe la nuit dans un immeuble en construction. Pour resumer: dans leur ensemble, les deux premieres parties nous proposent une triplicite sur le plan de I'erotisme: au bureau, la jeune fille est importunee par son chef dont elle se debarrasse par un coup de talon dans le tibia; au cinema, le jexme honmie qui Taccompagne est tellement pressant qu'elle est obligee de s'enfuir, et dans la rue, elle se retourne pour voir si elle n'est pas poursuivie. Sur le troisieme panneau de ce triptyque, la jeune fille n'est par contre plus du tout combattive ou agressive: elle suit docilement son futur agresseur. L'erotisme dont le point culminant se trouve dans le viol est indique des la premiere phrase du roman par une petite mise en abyme, une cle coincee dans la serrure. Dans la sequence du viol, le romancier respecte encore le principe de triplicite, puisque les faux-amants sont observes par un pecheur. Dans la disposition des personnages, la fidelite ä une certaine triplicite peut etre observee dans des situations differentes: il y a trois hom-mes qui entrent en liaison erotique avec la jeime fille; le matin au bureau, trois employees prennent leur cafe ensemble. Au debut de la deuxieme partie, la jeune fille quitte une amie, Barbara, pour rejoindre Jurij; cette triplicite a une autre signification sur laquelle nous reviendrons encore. Au cinema, le film d'Alain Resnais et d'Alain Robbe-Grillet propose la rencontre de deux
» Ibid., p. 55.
personnages auxquels se joint im troisieme: cette triplicite annoncerait done Celle qui se reproduit dans le viiol. Ces retours ä la triplicite dans I'organisa-tion de la fiction sont appuyes par des elements secondaires groupes par trois mais qui ne semblent pas pour autant etre de vraies mises en abyme concer-nant les precedes narratifs (dans la premiere partie: trois tasses de cafe, trois sandwichs, trois tampons dans le tiroir du bureau; dans la deuxieme: trois guichets de caisse au cinema, trois murs du hall, trois rangees de fauteuils dans la salle du cinema; dans la troisieme: trois tuyaux, plusieurs mentions du triangle). Meme si les elements allant par trois ne sont pas pleinement utilises dans ce qui pourrait devenir tm jeu subtil, ils participent cependant au symbolisme du livre (et nous ne tiendrons compte que du symbolisme des nombres et des formes). En effet, ces elements sont tres souvent mis en relation avec le chiffre de quatre, le carre ou le rectangle, ainsi qu'avec le cercle, dont la symbolique pourrait etre definie comme la mise en relation du mouve-ment et de la fixite, de la vie — de I'erotisme — et de la mort, des retours cycMques s'elevant au-dessus de ce que Ton pourrait appeler ime rectangu-larite. Cependant, le livre semble privilegier la triplicite qui, sur le plan d'une lecture verticale du recit, decouvre des dimensions bien interessantes. Ce n'est probablement pas sans raison que dans la detixieme partie, Šeligo fait inter-venir un hypotexte frangais: c'est ainsi qu'il semble s'acquitter de ses dettes envers le Nouveau Roman et envers Robbe-Grillet en particulier. Cette partie est la seule ä mettre en jeu plusieurs recits, ce qui forme im vrai triptyque, peut-etre le plus important dans le livre. L'un des panneaux de ce nouveau triptyque est constitue par la sequence de L'Annee derniere ä Marienbad; le second releve plutot du niveau diegetique du texte, de la ligne mediane du recit. Le troisieme panneau est lie ä la tradition litteraire Slovene, au roman La Chronique de Visoko^ ecrit par Ivan Tavčar en 1919 et avec pour person-nage-cle Agata Schv^arzkobler (les prenoms de Barbara et de Jurij dont se sert Šeligo dans son livre sont d'ailleurs aussi empruntes ä ce roman). Chez Šeligo, ce nom n'est reproduit, mis ä part le titre, que dans xm epithete — le corps »agatise« (agatasto telo) de la jeune fille.
Le roman de Tavčar qui sert ainsi d'hypotexte ä Šeligo fut congu lui aussi comme un triptyque, mais ne put etre realise que dans sa premiere partie qui decrit la noyade exemplaire d'une presumee sorciere (Agata Schwarz-kobler) vers la fin du 17eme siecle, ä I'epoque de la Contre-Reforme. Par rapport ä cette base, I'hypertexte^® que propose Šeligo est developpe surtout dans la troisieme partie du livre qui represente un monde ä part, I'ouverture vers d'autres dimensions. La jeune fille se retrouve seule dans tm immeuble en construction; eile avale tme pillule hexagonale, ce qui reproduit de fait la forme de six triangles. A la suite, eile pousse une sorte de »cri muet« accom-pagne de la saUve vert jaime. Attaque d'epilepsie? Un autre Symptome d'ime maladie quelconque? Toujours est-il que l'ecrivain, dans ses declarations re-centes, semble attribuer ä ces manifestations une valeur magique qui lie la jeune fille de son livre ä la magie de 1'Agata Schwarzkobler du roman de Tavčar, plus precisement ä la sorcellerie (ce qui demanderait une lecture du texte dans une optique toute autre que structurale). Dans ce sens, l'hypotexte de la
^ Ivan Tavčar, Visoška kronika; le texte a paru en frangais chez POF en 1975. Nous empruntons la terminologie de Genette dans ses Palimpsestes, Seuil,
1982.
4 Acta
deuxieme partie etend son influence sur la troisdeme partie du livre egalement, avec la reference renforcee par Timage de la tour qui renvoie au passe. Comme le dit le roinajacier, les tours protegeaient leurs habitants des intrusions ve-nant de I'exterieur, ce qui est une raise en abyme pour les evenements con-cernant la jeuine fille, plus exactement pour le viol (les tours protectrices des ■wierges representent une image chere ä la mythologie Slovene). Ceci aide ä la formation d'un autre trip ty que qui cette fois se si tue dans le temps: le passe y est indique par la tour, le present par le developpement diegetique du recit et le futur par le ciel etoile qui est en meme temps la dimension cosmique, voire intemporelle ä laquelle aspire la jeune fille. Dans le texte, cette tendance ä s'elever au-dessus de la linearite nous est proposee par I'image de la jeune fille »en croix«: elle est placee en verticale par rapport ä une certžiine ligne »ouest-est« et »estouest« sur laquelle I'ecrivain revient avec beaucoup d'insi-stance. Ce n'est done pas curieux que ce triptyque se transforme en une croix (qui est d'aiUeurs annoncee dams le texte par quelques mises en abyme). Nous voyons la une possibilite pour la solution du probleme apparemment central, celui de la verticalite par rapport ä I'horizontalite, ä savoir la linearite. L'axe vertical qui dans le livre devrait en principe se situer dans la deuxieme partie est comme deplace par I'accent mis sur la voiture et le viol, alors qu'il serait represente de fagon ideale par le jeu des hypotextes et de I'hypertexte. La jeune fille qui dans la troisieme partie essaye de se placer verticalement sur la ligne ouest-est/est-ouest semble indiquer une tentative de remedier ä ce desequilibre de la deuxieme partie, tout en representant une mise en abyme pour les efforts de I'ecrivain qui voudrait harmoniser la verticalite avec la linearite, voire developpement diegetique du roman. Dans un article recent,'^ Šeligo irevient aux problemes ouverts par son ecriture depuis le Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler. Malgre ses reflexions sur la necessite Tintroduction d'un temps cyclique ä la place de la diachronie, la linearite luii paralt un probleme insurmontable dans la prose, ce qui le decide ä proposer en guise de solution le passage ä ce qu'il appelle »le theatre magique«. D'apres lui, le temps de I'ecriture ne peut etre que le present dans sa domination absolue: »Constituer le monde sans ses significations preetablies signifiait pour moi en premier lieu ramener le texte du passe au present, rendre en une fois tout ce qui etait opiniätrement, irreductiblement present.«^^ H avoue neanmoins ne pas avoir su vraiment repondre ä ces exigences, ce qui ä notre avis parti-cipe de l'ambiguite signalee ä propos de son roman. De plus, nous pouvonis observer un certain decalage entre les vues theoriques de Šeligo et les solutions qu'il propose dans sa prose. Ceci indique encore une certaine Suprematie de la pensee theorique dans le contexte Slovene et rejoint par lä notre hjTJOthese de depart. II faut neanmoins souligner que l'interpretation proposee du Triptyque d'Agata Schwarzkobler est fortement et deliberement conditionnee par notre compr^ension du developpement du Nouveau Roman, et plus specialement, de ce que nous propose Claude Simon. Neanmoins, le but principal de notre recherche a ete de demontrer conmient une reflexion se declarant tributaire des positions du Nouveau Roman frangais dans les annees cinquante parvint ä depasser cette premiere phase que nous definis-
" Rudi Šeligo, Za magijsko gledališče (Pour un theatre magique), Nova revija 1982/83, No. 7/8, p. 746. ^^ Ibid., nous traduisons.
sons en tant que phenomenologique pour developper des caracteristiques structurales (et structuralistes) dans la theorie ainsi que dans la pratique, ce qui I'a rendue plus proche du Nouveau Roman dont eUe devait probable-ment ignorer I'ampleur at les points d'attache. Dans ce cadre, le texte de Claude Simon n'etait pris que comme point de depart et comma reference pour la mise en relief du fonctionnement du roman Slovene.
UDK 820(73) Styron W. 7 Set this house on fire .06
WILLIAM STYRON'S SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE: A FULCRUM AND FORCES
Henry A. Christian
When discussing American fiction since World War II, it is usual to note works .which illustraite disillusion, rebellion, anti-heroes, isolation, the decline of community, the grotesque and abnormal, the failure of fiction in the face of fact, the subversion of history, existentialism, black humor, vivified violence and sex, the validity of myth and God, the uselessness of myth and God and man, apocalyptic moments, and the superiority of style over meaning (Bradbury, Hassan, Karl, Klein). The list is not exhaustive. Criticism has followed, and sometimes even created, a similar progress, although currently it has reached a stage in which it seems to invent itself and be an independent art. William Styron published his third major work. Set This House on Fire, in 1960; and attention to the novel was immediate and wide ranging. The variety and volume of responses sprang from both an expanding set of critical approaches that were themselves in search of a main direction and a performance by Styron that implied a direction but equally invited expanding approaches. Criticism and the novel were both in search of the new novel. Styron's work is therefore here described in terms of a fulcrum and forces to indicate that an investigation of even the selected elements here considered will verify that the novel encompasses much that was past, current, and still coming in the style and meaning of fiction.
In the matter of plot. Set This House on Fire is rather strai^t-forward. In the early 1950s, a young American lawyer named Peter Leverett, upon quitting his position in a U.S. »government relief agency« (20) in Rome, accepts an invitation to the town of Sambuco to visit an acquaintance. Mason Flagg. Spoiled, wealthy, overtly sexual, suspected of incest with his mother, and trailing an ex-wife and a string of mistreses. Flagg is essentially friendless. He is in Sambuco »for 'a long spell of writing'« (21) and during his residence has gained nearly complete mental and physical dominance over another American named Cass Önsolving. An aspiring painter whose hopes outstrip in abilities, Kinsolving with his wife and children has been living lin Europe in an attempt to gain inspiration lacking in America. He has gravitated to Sambuco as part of a downward slide of his hopes and Ms ability to control his drinking. Kinsolving's one remaining joy centers on his restrained love for the Italian peasant girl Francesca Ricci from the town of Tramonti and a desire to preserve the life of Francesca's disease ridden father. On his first night in Sambuco, amid these people and a füm making entourage which has arrived, Peter Leverett finds himself enveloped in chaos. In httle more than
twentyfour hours Flagg rapes Francesca, Francesca is agaiin raped and then murdered by a local idiot, Kinsolving believes Flagg has killed the girl and therefore he murders Flagg, and finally Kinsolving's local policeman friend Luigi allows him to go free by manipulating the official explanation that Flagg assaulted and killed Francesca and then committed suicide.
To deliver this plot and the possible meaning of such action, Styron employs Peter Leverett as first person narrator. Leverett retells the events in a manner which details how his vague and uneasy feelings about Sambuco led him to seek out Cass Kinsolving in order to understand just what had happened. Together, punctuated by long flashbacks from each, the two men discuss and clarify for each other what the story is that Leverett finally begins to tell as tine book opens. From very near the beginning, Leverett thus states the events in Sambuco were »a murder and rape which ended, too, dn death, along with a series of other incidents not so violent yet grim and distressing« (4). Furthermore, midway through the book, Leverett and the reader know from Kinsolving's own lips that he has murdered Flagg; yet why and how he has done so and who did kill Francesca are not revealed until the tale is nearly ended. In his interesting chapter »Narrative Structure in Styron's Novels,« John Kenny Crane charts four, ever deepening levels of flashbacks and links Styron's technique to Bergsonian concepts of time and memoiiy (128—64). These many flashbacks, even parts thereof, are also recongized as prime examples of the poetic power of Styron's prose to delineate scene and action but as well are blamed for the failure of the novel as a whole to hold reader interest, fulfill characterization, or effect a satisfactory denoument. Even many with praise for the novel suggest the detail and number of the flashbacks make the book far too long. Few readers or critics fail to note the similarity of Leverett's narrative role to that of Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby; or Styron's Faulknerian overtones; or, via tlie author's interest in French literature, links to Proust, Flaubert, and others (Crane 103). Considering Styron dn the context of 1950s fiction, David L. Stevenson classifies Set This House on Fire a blunted novel: »for all the ... brilliantly sketched detail.... the book is ... curiously organized as a series of teasing and tentative minor revelations, a series of slow steps around, rather than toward, the central revelation of the action____the basic defect... is that its materials are eveiywhere 'unnovelized'« (268—69). Such judgements of course reflect a 1960s desire for the past habits of the novel and were supported by Styron's Fitzgerald-Faulkner links and the fact that the author's origin allowed him candidacy in a proposed new generation of »Southern« writers whose technique — the Gothic and the grotesque — was nevertheless barely beginning to be understood. Indeed, as Stevenson also points out, new authors after World War II had not at first faced criticism »truly conscious of a peculiarly -unstable world of event and disintegrating value with which the contemporary writer must cope« (272).
Those critics inclined to meet new authors found in Styron's novel more than enough to juggle. In a 1960 issue of the journal Critique containing several articles devoted to Styron, Richard Foster calls Styron's work »an orgy of commercialism« designed to mesh perfectly with the plots, stars, and »self-excitation« of contemporary Hollywood films (59). »There is nothing good about [the novel]. Nothing true,« Foster states. »But it has immense interest ... as a symptom and a symbol----In this age of the pre-fabbed or
artificially inflated literary reputation we must... throw... Mr. Styron back
into the hopper« (67—70). Typical of critics more favorably inclined to the novel was Charles Fenton, whose article »William Styron and the Age of the Slob« places Styron's work in the forefront of accurate portraits of the American 1950s. Another positive view more devoted to stylistic matters came from Marc L. Ratner, who singles out Styron's »combination of satire and the tale of horror« which thus makes the novel »a Gothic tale in which the grotesque is used for moral and satiric effect« (70—71). Furthermore, Melvin J. Friedman, discussing Styron's numerous references to literature, music, and myth, joins the detective story aspect of Leverett's narrative and the numerous references to Oedipus in the novel to form links with the French nouveau roman and works by Robbe-Grillet, Claud Simon, and others. He especially concentrates on parallels between Styron's novel and the »Oedipus-detective metaphor« of Michel Butor's earlier Passing Time [L'Emploi du temps'] and Butor's preface to the French translation of Set This House on Fire ILa Proie des flammes] (18—36). There, Butor describes the novel as »an allegory of the American condition« (Ratner 88—89), a concept echoed in several tones by other critics. Indeed, »the American condition« as Styron depicts dt, and the sometimes vicious attacks on the United States his characters pronounce but do not always hold to, brought both direct and oblique suggestions that Styron's work was anti-American (Crane 112—14). Confusing the issue is Styron's naming of characters. Does he mean readers to breeze by or in a Jamesian manner ponder the man Kin-solving (Crane 141), whose first name may have derived from Sinclair Lewis' marital study Cass Timber-lane. What then of Mason Flagg? Is his name derived from the verb, or does it deliver him as the ugly American? And what of Peter Leverett, and other characters?
Whether for, against, or confused by the novel, commentators usually center their discussion on the core character Cass Kinsolving. Neither well educated nor especially talented, declared uncured by his Navy psychiatrist and in 1945 turned back to society with a copy of Sophocles in hand, it is Kinsolving who creates the conflicts, performs the acts, and forces whatever resolution there is in Peter Leverett's story. Employing a comment from the character himself — »a man just like me, maybe, who had dreamed wild Manichean dreams« (275), John Kenny Crane finds Kinsolving representative of the dualism in man that creates »beauty on the one hand« and »the filthiest evil on the other« (101). Several critics also note Kierkegaardian thought behind Styron's rendering, and indeed the author has loaded down Kinsolving with a large burden of possible reference points. David Galloway states that
Kinsolving's continual if hazy quoting from Oedipus at Colonus indicates Styron made his character a modern Oedipus who in Camus' terms is thus »an example of absurd man« (104). Galloway points out »the most significant reason for the failure of modern authors to create tragedy in its classical fullness is simply that tragedy demands ... a belief in a moral order superior to the individual« (99). Styron had drawn his title from a sermon by John Donne (»To the Earle of Carlile...«) which speaks of the horror of being separated from God; and Kinsolving's fevers and visions of the duality of good and evil — what he says »started on the day I was born« but »ended with Mason« Flagg (249) — certainly indicate the kind of moral order and torture of soul Donne subscribed to. Moreover, at one point Kinsolving tells Leverett that when Flagg raped Francesca he felt Flagg had also raped him: »At that very moment when through Francesca I had conceived of life as
having some vestage of meaning, he tore that meaning limb from limb« (444). So Kinsolving breaks Flagg's hold by killing him and in doing so begins a new life. Here, in both verbal and physical configuration Styron has made a most modern, ironic, and nearly shocking parallel to an additional Donne metaphor, in Holy Sonnets XIV, where the poet implores God:
Yet dearly' I love you, 'and would be loved faine. But am bethroth'd unto your enemie: Divorce mee, 'untie, or breake that 'knot lagaine. Take me to you, imprison mee, for I Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
But that Donne's God — »a moral order superior to the individual« — is not what Kinsolving achieved is made very clear by Styron. »I wish,« Kinsolving teUs Leverett concerning Flagg's death, »I could tell you I had foimd some relief, some rock, and that here on this rock anything might prevail — that here madness might become reason, and grief joy, and no yes. And even death itself death no longer, but a resurrection« (500). Rather, Kinsolving declares that between being and nothingness, he has chosen being »in the hope of being what I could for a time« (501).
Whether, and in what sense, Kinsolving is redeemed becomes then a major question for critics. Some aver that »being« commits Kinsolving to the horror of the modern world and his responsibility in it, and they believe that after Sambuco his quiet residence in South Carolina where Leverett finds him is an escape from such obligation. Others, tending to the traditional »fortunate fall« concept of Hawthorne and MelviiUe, believe Kinsolving's acts have made him appreciate life and therefore try to live it (Crane 106—09). On both sides of the debaite weighs the Italian policeman Luigi who is credited for both letting Kinsolving go free and enlightening him. Ready to be punished,
Kinsolving must be told »'In jail you would wallow in your guilt____For
the love of God... Consider joy ... Consider the good in yourself! Consider hope!'« (497—99). Thus Kinsolving goes unpunished by law "but is only free to live his life with knowledge of his crime. Certainly Luigi lies for his friend, and were Kinsolving to confess he would compound his crime by destroying Luigi. But what most critics pass by is that Luigi exhorts Kinsolving to something he already knows. He has discovered, in the Conradian sense, how to live immediately upon killing Flagg and well before Luigi acts in the event. Shortly after murdering Flagg, Kinsolving drimkenly returns to Ms apartment and encounters Leverett. His salutation is the chronological beginning of the detective motif which is the vehicle of Leverett's narrative: »You caught me red-handed____Thought I could sneak in here and tend to my own business, unbeknownst to man or monster. Only I forgot all about you. I guess I'll have to put you out of the way like they do in the flicks. You know too much, buddy« (237—38). But genuinely glad to see Leverett amidst his fatigue and confusion, Kinsolving also confesses a wish to die: »'Longer'n I can remember/ he said in a whisper, 'I been hxmgering for my own end----Now
there's a justification----Tell me that ten million times I got to die, to find
beyond the grave only darkness, and then be born again to live out ten million
wretched lives, then die again and so on____But tell me that once in ten
million deaths I'll find no darkness past the grave, but him, standing there in the midst of eternity, grinning... ready for the fury of these hands, then
I'll... be done with living in half a minute. Oh, I should not have let him off so easy! Oh! ... I should not have let him off so easy!'« (240). Kinsolving has already xmderstood that Flagg should have lived to suffer the crime Kinsolving thinks he committed just as Kinsolving now knows he must do for the crime he has himself committed. Significantly, this episode ends Part One of the novel; and the second part opens with lines from Roethke: »I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow./I learn by going where I have to go« (243). Therefore, most critics see meaning in the novel going as Kinsolving goes.
There is a configuration for Set This House on Fire which is somewhat contratry to many established critical positions but at the same time includes a number of them within its boundaries. This alignment supposes that Peter Leverett's story is his because he is the protagonist, in the sense that he is as ordinarily human as most who occupy the earth. True, within historical American fictional constructions, Leverett has more viewed than suffered, he is more Fitzgerald's Carraway than Hemingway's Lt. Henry; but like each and all on whom those narrators were modeled, Leverett no less has need to speak to us. Much has been made of Leverett's self portrait at what could be called his »post-Kinsolving« period when he begins his narrative. He is »white, Protestant, Ango-Saxon, Virginia breed, just past thirty, in good health, tolerable enough looking... orderly habits, more than commonly inquisitive, and strongly sexed« (4—5). To these specifics he adds his suspicion he shall »remain at that decent, mediocre level« of his ancestors, a view he calls realistic rather than cynical or self-abasing. He believes his destiny is not »as satisfying as the role of composer« he once thought of playing; but there is consolation in the fact that »in America no one listens to composers« and his profession »the law, in a way that is at once subtle and majestic and fascinating, still works its own music upon the minds of men. Or at least I hope to think so,« he adds (5). He hopes so because he is carrying his message at his level to us who are on the same level but perhaps less informed. Lous D. Rubin has posited that the construction of the novel causes Leverett to become Kinsolving, thus creating the major structural defect of making readers do »what :in terms of plot logic we should not do: we give [Kinsolving] Peter Leverett's experience« (178—79). Yet Kinsolving has said Mason Flagg was not the start but the finish of his torment. What Peter knows and tells about Flagg does delineate the man before Kinsolving and he clash in Sam-buco, but only after the clash. Leverett and Kinsolving do together try to discover »What made [Flagg] such a swine?« (391), but Kinsolving knew Flagg was »scum« before Leverett arrived and his inquiries concern the man he has already killed. Therefore, it is not so much that Leverett and KinsoMoig exchange places or become one person as it is a matter of degree or depth of action and envolvement for each man. For all Leverett's fascination with Flagg, between his adolescent awe when they were in school and their final meeting in Italy, Leverett has seen Flagg for only a week in New York. During that week he responds to Flagg's lies about wartime adventures in Yugoslavia by shouting »You think I'm a moron? You think I wouldn't eventually somehow leam what's true?« (171). And in Sambuco when Flagg's pursuit of Fran-cesca brings him to scream at Leverett, the narrator replies »Go to hell! ... Do you think I'm some lousy contadino — some peasant you can push around?« (123—24, 175—76). Certainly Leverett has had the same stirrings as Kinsolving. Both are lured and vulnerable to Flagg. Both resist. That duality thas so bedeviled the artist Kinsolving, those visions and dreams, that seclusion from
the sight of God which Donne warned of — Leverett too has had these. What drove Kinsolving forward to murder Flagg drives Leverett to seek to know what Kinsolving has already done. It ds a lesser but parallel drive; and by learning the story he tells us, Leverett does and learns what Kinsolving has, but in a more reasonable context. Just as Kinsolving cannot revivify the Oedipus myth, Leverett can no more be expected to revivify Kinsolving's act than as a Christian he should be expected to reenact Calvary. Contrary to Marc L. Ratner's belief that Peter Leverett's »moral and intellectual outlook is that of his illustrous namesake Peter Rabbit,« that »nostalgia and bourgeois Romanticism inhibit his development toward awareness,' (74—75), it is clear the newly informed Leverett is acting only as the modern everyman can after such knowledge. Kinsolving may be bound within »the moral significance of the struggle of the artist to free himself from the claims of the affluent, antihuman society« (Ratner 74) which Flagg represents, but Leverett has landed below his once imagined role of composer. Surely, as for most of us, a murder is in neither his past nor his future (that generality may not apply should one become a critic). Especially not in one's future is the Sambuco murder, where Kinsolving has killed Flagg in revenge for a murder he does not know was committed by Saverio, an idiot whom society has not properly restrained. It has been argued that Leverett »must be rescued... lest he unwittingly participate in the creation of historical evil« because he is the kind more dynamic men bent on evil »can feed upon unless something occurs which can make him ask the questions about life most men fail to ask« (Crane 110). Kinsolving's overt but futile act as Galloway's »absurd man as tragic hero«, the illegality of Luigi's freeing Kinsolving, and Kinsolving's final knowledgeable peace at home again in America are the occurances and questions Leverett and we too have not risen to meet. But they make Leverett once he has finished with Kinsolving become our composer and suggest to us the truth of his statement that the law as he has seen it »works it own music«. Kinsolving had asked him »,Do you want to get the facts now? Or the tn-ith?'« »,The truth,' [Leverett had] managed to say, somehow, straightening up« (249).
In support of Leverett as protagonist and to indicate further Styron's several depths of association and meaning, it is possible to trace a seldom noted theme of Set This House on Fire as it forces itself into and fuses with the larger scope of the work. It is a theme no American fiction after 1945 ever completely ignores. Leverett explains he »had not been in the war (the one before Korea)« (19—20). With that post-war attitude prevalent, through no fault of their own, among Americans whose land combat did not soil, the non-participant Leverett foimd his post-war relief agency job in Rome less than vital. On his journey to Sambuco, his car accidentaly hits the motor scooter of Luciano di Lieto (Light of Joy), an accident-prone youth whose past injuries include the missing right eye which caused him not to see Peter's car. This encounter with di Lieto »brings [Leverett] directly into the circle, the moral forces of responsibility« (Ratner 76). For the next several years Peter has sent money to the hospital where di Lieto lay in a coma; but some time before his narrative begins, Leverett learns di Lieto has regained consciousness, become engaged, and yet again seriously injured himself. Among the crowd that gathered when Leverett hit di Lieto is di Lieto's mother, who hysterically accuses Leverett of being one of the »Swedes« who came during the war »Bombing and sacking our home ... Raping! Stealing!«
(35). Leverett histerically shouts in return, »I didn't bomb your house!« (35). The scene is full of comedy and stereotypical characterizations of Italians, but it is as well a serious event. As Leverett later tries to tell Kinsolving's wife, then Flagg's mistress, then Flagg, he could not avoid hitting di Lieto. But he has done so. And as he tells di Lieto's mother, he didn't bomb her house during the war. Yet in a way he has. When Leverett finally finds a sympathetic listener in Sambuco, the conversation is again in terms of World War IL The movie director Alonzo Cripps, a man aloof from and quite unlike the rest of the film group, empathizes with Leverett because »during the war... [he] was in a jeep that hit a child... didn't Mil the boy but broke him all up« (109). Similarly, Mason Flagg has brought to his Sambuco residence a mass of American goods — including the medicines Kinsolving needs to attempt to cure Francesca's father — and from food to machinery the items have been bought wholesale at the post-war Army PX in Salerno. Leverett is impressed by the display but sufficiently combines his former government responsibilities and his growing sense of involvement to ask »show did you get PX privileges?« (178). Furthermore, when Kinsolving takes Leverett amid the poverty of Francesca's village, he tells Leverett »Seems like you boys could have spread some of that aid or assistance or whatever you call it down here« (206). Styron makes clear that the war has not caused the conditions; indeed, he spends some effort to indicate that the condition of peasants is perpetual and that should some rise they would probably cast no humanitarian glance at those remaining behind. In that sense, Leverett can subscribe to Flagg's view that the United States would quickly go broke supporting every needy foreigner (409—10). Nevertheless, in Leverett's mind the acts and subsequent obligations of World War II are fused with Kinsolving's pursuits. The war was unavoidable, as was Leverett's accident with di Lieto; both took place. Leverett therefore becomes aware that in a way he has bombed di Lieto's home, especially when war is understood in the basic terms of Flagg's murder. Alonzo Gripps' empathy for Leverett's distress is based on having experienced the war, on having the kind of ironic knowledge yoked to innocence by fiat that caused members of America's Eighth Air Force in Britain to place at the entrace of their base a sign reading »Through These Portals Pass the Highest Paid Murders in the World«. For God, for country, for ideology, indeed even for freedom, historically one has killed one's fellow human. In the long run what matters is not the validity of the idea for which either side died at Bastone or Anzio or Drvar; it is rather the deaths themselves, which Styron reduces to symbolic primitiveness in Kinsolving's murder of Flagg: »But he rose, with a Stone in his hand, and [Flagg] rose with a knobby olub ... and [Kinsolving] drove the stone again and again, and still once more into the skull... Children! he thought, standing over the twitching body. Children! by Christ! All of us!« (464—65). Thus, a part of what haunts Leverett about Sambuco is the deeper, xmitiated innocence and real guilt of the just war of 1939—45. Leverett's nightmares and visions are dn part the legacy of the war — of all wars — and his search through Kinsolving's mind and experience bring to him, and he to us, that truth. He therefore opens his narration with a guidebook description of Sambuco but, since he is speaking after the events there, concludes our introduction to the town in a diction he would not have used before Sambuco: »But the affairs of war have left the place intact, almost unnoticed, so that its homes and churches and courtyards, corroded as they are by poverty, seem... proudly, even unfairly, preserved, like someone fit
and sturdy among a group of maimed, wasted veterans. Possibly dt was just this remoieness, this unacquaintance with war and with the miserable acts of violence which are its natural aftermath, that made the events of that summer seem to everyone so awesome and shocking« (4). By the close of the novel, readers know both Sambuco and Leverett have become post-war veterans.
There remain many other facets of Styron's novel which appear, fuse, and reappear only to suggest but equally confuse traditional literary responses. In the gamut of hetero and homo and immitative sexual episodes alone. Styron more than overloads our minds. If, for example, he swings far afield for the the Donne-ravish-ICinsolving- rape analogy, he moves in an equally opposite direction to detail Kinsolving's sexual initiation. Early in World War II when a youngster, believing his first conquest is going to be an equally young street evangelist. Kinsolving suddenly realizes the object of his desire is more than experienced and willing. Her name is Vernelle Satterfield. Again escaping most critics is the fact that in 1941 there occurred an event which allowed American males who were at the time about Kinsolving's age — including Styron — to fill hours of fantasy. The film star Errol Flynn was accused of statutory rape by a young girl who had willingly boarded his yacht. Her name, bruited in media across the nation, was Peggie Satterlee (Higham 157—214). If such is symptomatic of Styron's technique, how then to weigh Leverett against Kinsolving? In describing the moments just after his car struck di Lieto, Leverett says: »What foUowed immediately afterward seemed to be only a grotesque fantasia of events lacking sequence or order, in which I am able to pick out mostly random impressions, as of scenes from a movie film dimly remembered« (30). Later, when the news of Flagg's death has spread in Sambuco, Leverett recalls: »I lingered long enough outside to watch the movie folk go. There escape was hasty and frantic: no military unit forced into sudden retreat could have made such a determined exit from the scene... Not one of them had any kinship whatever with tragedy... for in less than a minute they were all past sight, leaving the street... as quiet and serene as it had been... a thousand years before« (231—32). Just as Leverett's pre-Sambuco experience with the war might have been primarily via the movies, is it possible his Sambuco existence is likewise a magnified and technicolored moment, in which both the Oedipal Kinsolving and the excessive Flagg are merely hyperbolic images worthy of their symbolic names? Perhaps, then, in a valueless and random world the old verities of action and suffering are no more permanent than the deceptive images of the cinema screen. That is certainly very much the state of Leverett's mind concerning Sambuco as he seeks out Kinsolving in order to be told not facts but truth. Yet Leverett does seek him out. Flagg and Francesca are really dead, and Kinsolving is truly a murderer gone free despite the entrapping implication for Americans that after all it is only the Italian criminal justice system that has been subverted. Furthermore, in a post-Sambuco letter to Leverett, Kinsolving does remark: »Have not incidentally had a drop of beer, even, going on to 2 years. It make Sophocles much easier to read« (9). And lastly, when Leverett stops talking, in an epilogue to the book readers are left to see, as did Leverett, that letter from a Naples hospital which reminds them that by sending money for the haphazard di Lieto's care, Leverett has at least for a time fulfilled Jesus' pledge »as ye have done it unto one of the least... ye have done it unto me« (Matt. 25:40).
In the final balance then we must see Styron's performance is made of much that is both real and imaginary, both factual and literary. Though hardly what forward looking critism approved in the 1960s — it was by then unfashionable to let the old eagle spread his wings — Styron seems to have perpetuated T. S. Eliot's weste land and reiterated with full contemporary scope the poet's famous line »These fragments I have shored against my ruins« (L. 431). Therefore, just as I dare take Peter Leverett at symbolic value and see him as the lever between his narrative and us who are below and outside fiction, I also offer Set This House on Five as a fulcrum for the vying literary forces since 1945.
WORKS CITED
(Note: several of these references are works which provide extensive comment and bibliographies concerning criticism of Set This House on Fire and also consider Styron's biography and other extant works, thus condensing the material of many journal articles into a few volumes which may be more accessible outside the continental United States.)
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modem American Novel. New York: Oxford, 1983.
Crane, John Kermy. The Root of All Evil: The Thematic Unity of William Styron's Fiction. Columbia, South Carolina: Univ. South Carolina Press, 1984.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land.
Fenton, Charles A. »William Styron and the Age of the Slob.« South Atlantic Quarterly, 59 (Autumn 1960), 469—76.
Foster, Richard. »An Orgy of Commerce: William Styron's Set This House on Fire.« Critique, 3 (Summer 1960), 59—70.
Friedman, Melvin J. William Styron. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Univ. Popular Press, 1974.
Galloway, David. The Absurd Hero in American Fiction: Updike, Styron, Bellow, Salinger. Austin, Texas: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981 (2°" rev. ed.).
Hassan, Ihab. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961.
Higham, Charles. Errol Flynn: The Untold Story. New York: Doubleday, 1980.
Karl, Frederick R. American Fictions: 1940/1980. New York: Harper, 1983.
Klein, Marcus, ed. The American Novel Since World War 11. New York: Faw-cett, 1969.
Ratner, Marc L. William Styron, New York: Twayne, 1972.
Rubin, Lewis D. »An Artist in Bonds.« Sewanee Review, 64 (Winter 1961), 174—19.
Stevenson, David L. »William Styron and the Fiction of the Fifties,« in Joseph J. Waldmeir, ed. Recent American Ficton: Some Critical Views. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963.
Styron, William. Set This House on Fire. New York: Randon House, 1960.
UDK 886.3(73):323.1(73: = 863)
ON LITERATURES IN DIASPORAS AND THE LIFE SPAN OF THEIR MEDIA*
Rado L. Lencek
Almost one year after the first choice of my topic, I would today feel more comfortable with a concentration of its focus on something like this: »On Poetic Language in a Literature of a Linguistic Diaspora at the Break of Its Continüity with Its Native Language.«
1.0 By narrowing down the focus, our discussion seems to be reduced to a string of known and self-evident facts, and to an argimient with a rather simple, contradictory proposition. The self-evident part rests with the process of assimilation in societies, the contradictory part of the argument with the fact that the break of the umbilical cord between a homeland and a diaspora not necessarily means an end of the existence of a poetic language in a diaspora. In the moment the native resources of a language die out, the poetic talent in an ethnic diaspora creates already in the medium of the new adopted language. This fact, most obvious, confirmed by observation — in our opinion — deserves a sooiolinguistic interpretation.
And lit stands to reason that in assimilative processes everywhere the strength of a minority ethnic community, its social make-up, and its cohe-siveness may be important factors. In smaller ethnic communities, such as those of Slovene Americans, as far as it can be judged on the basis of their three-four generational span,' ethnic enclaves preserve their language in family life of their first generation, rarely of the second generation; slightly longer in church life, in religious tradition, but certainly not on the street. In formal and informal situations the communication is in English. When children leave home, they very often leave their ethnic communities for good. The higher is their education they bring to America, the longer they cling to their Slovenian language; the higher is their education they acquire in EngUsh, the easier and quicker is their Americanization.
In sociological terms every such minority community in Amenica, dominated by a preoccupation with folklore, ethnic customs, dances, ethnic art
Presented at the Symposium on Contemporary Literatures and Cultures of the United States of America and Conada, Bled, Slovenia (Yugoslavia) 9—14 May 1988.
' The notion of generations is crucial in the process of ethnic assimilations. An American immigrant of the first generation is a person bom in the old country; the second generation immigrant — a person bom in the U.S.A. from parents of first generation; the third generation immigrant — a person bom in the U.S.A. from parents of second generation.
and ethnic food, tends to preserve a kind of »residual ethnicity«.- Even in the Slovene American communities which may be rightly proud of the fact that they descend from a high language-centered society and culture as the Slovene culture and society is in Slovenia today, this stream of ethnical culture gets steadily shallower and less able to act as a creative agent in the cultural life of the community as a whole.The fossilized ethnic life holds no attraction to the educated young ethnics who can give expression to their talents only through the medium of the dominant American culture.
Thus, by implication, a Slovene American creative literature with a Slovene poetic language can exist and exists only in its first generation of men of letters, e.g., Etbin Kristan (1867—1953), Ivan Zorman (1889—1975), Anna Pra-ček-Krasna (1900—1988), Karl Mauser (1918—1977), Ivan Dolenc, Irma Ožbalt, Tom Ložar in Canada, .writers and poets — born, educated and, as a rule, first published in Slovenia. A second generation of poets and writers of Slovene descent, e.g., Frank Mlakar (1913—1967), Rose Mary Prosen — bom, educated and first published in America, invariably creates in English.^ Louis Adamic (1899—1951) ds an exeption: born and partially schooled in Slovenia, he withered away from Slovene language; he first published in America in English and became known as an English writer. There are no first generation Slovene Americans, born, educated, fi]gst published in Slovenia, who would create in English in America, and no mfen of letters of Slovene descent, bom, educated in America who would write and publish in Slovene in America.
It is to these facts that we wish to extend our sociolinguistic model for investigation of standard languages.'*
2.0 On the whole, literary standards, or simpler literaiy languages, perform two sorts of actions in society. First, the so-called inherent functions, i.e. operations for which a human language exists as a tool of communication; and secondly, the so- called social functions, i.e. operations which are ascribed to human language because of its existence as a tool of communication in a society
Living language is functional, i.e. serving its »efficiency« if it is able of regeneration, or simply of change; on intellectual level — capable to meet the needs of its users as an instrument of referential meaning; on the level of poetic expression — adequate to meet the needs of a well-developed matrix of emotional and poetic expressiveness.
In indigenous (natural, primary) speech communities where a standard language really serves as a means of communication, linguistic devices are always available via intellectualization modification of the means available to
^ For the concept of »residual ethnicity«, see J. A. Fishman and V. C. Nahimy, »Organizational and leadership interest in language maintenance,« Language Loyalty in the United States, ed. J. A. Fishman (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), 151.
' For Frank Mlakar, note in particular his novel: He, The Father (1950), and his drama: Francie (1966); for Rose Mary Prosen: Poems by Rose Mary Prosen (1971), and O The Ravages (1977).
^ Cf., Rado L. Lencek, »On Dilemmas and Compromises in the Evolution of Modem Slovene,« Slavic Linguistics and Language Teaching, ed. Th. F. Magner (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1976), 112—152. — Idem., O jeziku in zavesti narodnega porekla. New York: Slovene Ethnic Heritage Studies Center, 1978.
' Cf., The Word and Verbal Art. Selected Essays by Jan Mukafovsky. Translated and edited by John Burbank and Peter Steiner. Foreword by Rene Wellek. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977.
language for new functions — either through activization of grammatical categories and forms no more in active use in a language,«' or through adaptation of patterns and models of genetically related languages/ or through creation or simply adaptive borrow;ing to extend the lexicon as far as its speakers need for everyday communication.^ In the language of immigration, i.e. in secondary speech communities, in its non-educated strata, such needs can be stimulated only by contact with the dominant speech community and activated by vulgar, non-adapted borrowings (e.g. kara ,car', kare [plural], bojs ,boy' bojsi [plural], and most crude loan traslations from English (e.g. maš rada tukej? ,do you like it here?').'	k
Similarly, the poets and writers of a primary speech community in order to express themselves more adequately, draw continuosly from the living resources of its rural dialects and dialectal usages. This kind of adequacy, nourished only within a primary speech community, is less likely to effect the purely rational needs of expression, but rather falls within the more inmost personal life of its users — to impart a more vivid and intimate flavor to a poetic language. This stimulus to enrichment of the poetic and standard language, is in the long run entirely absent in a secondary speech community. And these seem to be the ultimate limits of the search for the appropriate expression on intellectual and poetic level, above all of a poet's search for a verbal »realization« of a poetic image. It is no accident that such creative search can not be done by a second generation poet in emigration.
3.0 The social function of literary standards express relationships bet-tween language and society in which a language is used. These functions are entirely symbolic though they do represent societal forces, we call them functions, with which language influences speech communities and societal reactions, we call them attitudes with which speech communities respond these forces and functions.
Four auch functions are distinguished, and three attitudes. A separatist and a unifying function — the unifying function arises as a consequence of the fact that usually a standard unites several dialectal areas into a single speech community; the separatist function, as a result of the fact that normally a standard sets off a community as separate from other speech communities — are correlated with an attitude of loyalty. A prestige function —
' The intellectualization of Modem Slovene on the grammatical and word-formational level does not significantly differ from the same processes in other Slavic languages. The language possessed formal resources for the categories of abstract thought, but the noneducated speaker did not make much use of them.
Thus, the category of verbal aspect, inherent as it is in the grammatical structure of the Slavic languages, in spoken Slovene became dangerously weakened in com-petion with the category of »Aktionsart«; but at a certain moment of its history, it was activated in the literary language. The use of passive constructions is being developed much further than it existed in the vernacular. The forms of some participles, certain types of adjectives, verbal substantives were either renovated or resurrected under the influence of Church Slavonic. Cf., Rado L. Lencek, The Structure and History of the Slovene Language (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1982), 289—290.
' Ibid., pp. 291—292.
' Ibid., pp. 292—293.
' Cf., Joseph Paternost, »Slovenian language on Minnesota's Iron Range: Some sociolingustic aspects of language maintennance and language shift«. The Dilemma of the Melting Pot: The Case of the South Slavic Languages, ed. R. L. Lencek and Th. F. Magner (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 125.
5 Acta	65
reflecting the consciousness of pride derived from possession of a standard literary language — is correlated with an attitude of language pride. A frame-of-reference function — functioning of the standard language as a system serving to orient the speaker in matters of correctness and of perception and evalution of poetic speech — is correlated with an attitude of awareness of a norm. When systematized into a sociolinguistic mini-system, these functions and attitudes serve us not only as a guide to understand the language planning practiced for today and tomorrow; they may also be used as parameters to measure the development of language in general and their literary standards of yesterday and tomorrow, we submit — as well as models to illustrate the terminal conditions of the existence of languages and their final evaporation in a society.
A TABLE accompanying this paper is intended to illustrate these positions for three stages in the evolution of the Slovene language in the old country, and very tentatively two stages in the evolution of the Slovene language in the emigration. The stages in the evolution of Slovene at home are posited at the levels of its natural dialects, its ethnic vernacular, and of today's contemporary standard language (CSS = Contemporary Standard Slovene). The stages in the changes of language in Slovene American communities are suggested to exist at the levels of the Slovene language use in its first generation (column »Emigration 1«) and at the level of a second or/and a third or fourth generation (column »Emigration 2«). In column »Emigr. 1«, we separate the language usage of non-educated (including those with no more than elementary education) and educated speakers; in the »Pre-CSS« language situation, the »Dialect« and the ethnic »Koine« usages represent non-educated usage, the Contemporary Standard Slovene (CSS), by definition — an educated language.
TABLE
Sociolinguistic
categories
function/attitude
In the old country
Pre-CSS
Dialect Koine
CSS
Emigr. 1_
Non-Ed. Ed.
In emigration
_ Eimgr. 2 SLE. ENG.
Separatist/Loyalty	-1-	±*	+	0	-1-	0	-I-
Unifying/Loyalty	-1-	-1-	-1-	+*		0	
Prestige/Pride	+*	_*	-1-	_*	+	0	-t-
Frame of Reference/ Awareness of Norm	0*	(0*)	-1-	—	-h	0	+
A »plus» in our Table indicates that the level of the language has or had a major role in a particular sociolinguistic function, and is or has been significantly the object of the associated attitude; a »minus« indicates that neither seem the case. A »zero« in our Table indicates that a particular sociolinguistic function and its attitude seem to be not applicable for a particular level of the language, i. e. not yet developed in the »Pre-CSS« evolution, or not practical any more in the »In Emigration« column. An asterisk (*) suggests that the indicated sociolinguistic function/attitude differs in degree or/and quality from the same sociolinguistic fimction/attitude characterizing modem standard language. A »parentheses« ( ) indicates less specific evidence.
In more concrete terms, in reference to our »In Emigration« colums, we could summarize sociolinguistic situation as follows: The first generation of emigrants speaks its native language as brought from the old country:
the non-educated — one of its dialectal varieties, the educated — a colloquial form of the Contemporary Standard or literary Slovene, at least one of its varieties. After some time, both levels of this language — under the impact of English, the dominant language and the language of prestige — heavUy and increasingly aboxmd in borrowings. The subsequent waves of non-educated immigrants join their relatives and neighborhoods in America where Slovene dialects prevail; thus dialects tend to strengthen and perpetuate in emigration. Individual educated arrivals, some with good knowledge of English however, tend not to stay with ethnic commxmities.
At first generation level the knowledge of English among the non educated is mostly passive, receptive — and the unifying and separatist func tions of Slovene lose their relevance, whereas the attitude of linguistic loyalty still persists. There is, of course, no room for the frame-of-reference funo tion and for the awareness of norm in this situation. On the other hand, the educated emigrant would tend to keep sociolinguistic categories, functions and attitudes toward his native standard language, long after his immigration — more or less intact.
It has been from among such immigrants, educated, well versed to write Slovene, very often already published in the old coxmtiy, that the tradition of a Slovene poetic language has been, in different periods of time, but again and again transplanted to emigration commtmities in America. Limited to the first generation individual poets and writers exclusively, very often contingent upon their personal ties and links with the old cotmtiy literature production and with literary movements at home, it never became an autonomous, self subsistent tradition on its own. It remained alive during the life time of individual poets and writers in emigration, but died and vanished with their death.
Columbia University
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ZU DEN DETERMINANTEN DES KOMMUNIKATIONSEREIGNISSES
IM TEXT
Stojan Bračič
O. Allgemeines
Jedes Kommunikationsereignis (bei SCHMIDT in FKS 1981, 20 Konrniu-nikationsvorgang) ist ein komplexer Prozess, der aus mehreren Phasen besteht und von verschiedenen Determinanten mitbestimmt wird.' So ist z. B. innerhalb des Kommunikationsereignisses zwischen den »Kommunikationsakten« (MICHEL in SBE 1977, 65) Produktion und Rezeption von Äusserungen zu unterscheiden. Das Resultat des Texterzeugungsprozesses^ ist der Text im weiteren Sinne. Normalerweise interessiert bei einer linguistiohen Untersuchimg in erster Linie eben der Text als konkreter, resultativer Widerspiegelungskomplex der Gesamtheit am Kommunikationsprozess wirkender Determinanten. Da der Text an sich ein Endprodukt kommunikativer Tätigkeit ist, ist es geboten, aus ihm auf teils simultan, teils sukzessiiv verlaufende Entstehensphasen Rückschlüsse zu ziehen, um den Text unter dem Blickwinkel des Rezipienteoi, wohl aber auch dem des Produzenten besser erfassen zu können. Solche analytische Sicht ebnet also nicht nur den Weg zum besseren Textverstehen, sondern sie befähigt ebenso zum kompetenteren Text-gestalten.3 Wollen wir zum Beispiel einen Text auf die kommunikative Funktion der in ihm enthaltenen umgangssprachlichen Ausdrucksmittel prüfen, so ist dies nur möglich, legitim und sinnvoll, wenn der kommunikative Rahmen erhellt wird, in dem verschiedene Parameter der kommunikativen Tätigkeit bei der Entstehung des Textes in gegenseitiger Abhängigkeit wirksam waren.''
' Vgl. FKS (1981, 18, 20) sowie SBE (1977, 170). Von Rudolf GROSSE (1982, 44) werden verschiedene Klassifizierungskriterien der Kommunikationsereignisse angeführt: formell-informell, gesprochen-geschrieben, monologisch-dialogisch, emphatisch eingebettet-theoretisch informierend, phatisch-affektiv.
' Vgl. in HEUSINGER 1984 (42, 44) die synonymen Bezeichnimgen Textgestaltung. Textproduction, bzw. die geringen Differenzierungen unter ihnen. »Zwischen Textgestaltung und Textproduktion unterscheiden wir nur insofern, als mit ,Text-gestaltung' der Aspekt der Bewusstheit im Prozess der Textkonstituierung (Ent Scheidung über die Anordnung und Akzentuierung der Inhaltskomponenten, Formulierungsentscheidung und -realisierung) stärker betont wird.
' Beide Fähigkeiten sollten gleichberechtigt gefördert werden. Keine darf — besonders unter dem didaktischen Aspekt — vernachlässigt werden.
^ Wir finden in diesem Zusammenhang die Warnung von MICHEL (in SBE 1977, 71) völlig berechtigt: »Die stilistische Qualität der Äusserung ist zwar ein entscheidender Wirkungsfaktor, jedoch sowohl von theoretisch-prinzipiellen Überlegungen her als auch im konkret-praktischen Gestaltungsprozess immer nur ein aus dem Kommunikationsplan ,abgeleiteter' Faktor. Eine vorrangige Orientierung
Im Unterschied zu den Parametern des sog. äusseren kommunikativen Rahmens (allgemeine Charakteristiken der Textquelle, z. B. einer Zeitung) wollen wir die hier zu behandelnden Faktoren und Bedingungen, da sie sich unmittelbar an konkrete kommunikative Handlungen binden, den inneren kom-mimikativen Rahmen nennen.
Die Determinanten des Kommunikatiosprozesses sind verschiedentlich klassifizierbar. Franz SIMMLER führt vier grundlegende notwendige externe Faktoren jeglicher Kommunikation an: Sprecher/Schreiber, Hörer/Leser, Ort und Zeit.5 MICHEL (1982, 8 f.) postuliert die Unterscheidung der Begriffe Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (»Wer kommimiziert mit wem?«), Kommimi-kationsbereich (»In welcher Tätigkeitssphäre kommimizieren die Personen?«) und Kommimikationsform (»Welches Kanal- und Mediensystem wird für die Kommunikation verwendet?«). Er räumt allerdings ein, dass diese Aspekte zur umfassenden Bewertung sprachlich-kommunikativer Leistungen nicht ausreichen (a.a.O., S. 9). HEUSINGER (1981, 547) unterscheidet zwischen a) Komponenten, die die Sprachhandlung konstituieren (d. h. Handlungskomponenten: Kommvmikationsaufgabe, Komrrninikationsabsicht, Redegegenstand, Thema, Kommunikationsplan, Kommimikationsverfahren, Komposition),
b)	objektiven Kommunikationsbedingungen (materielle und ideologische gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse, umfassender und engerer Kommunikationsbereich, Kanalbedingungen, Kodierungsbedingungen, Partnerbeziehungen) und
c)	subjektiven Kommunika.tionsfaktoren (Hörer/Leser, Sprecher/Schreiber und die ihnen eigenen inneren Bedingungen).
Wir knüpfen hier an mid sehen — auch in Anlehnimg an »Funktionalkommunikative Sprachbeschreibung« (1981, 18, 20, 203) tmd »Sprache -Bildung und Erziehung« (1977, 170) — fünf wesentliche Determinantenkomplexe jeder kommunikativen Handlung:
1.	den kausalen Determinantenkomplex
2.	den intentionalen Determinantenkomplex
3.	den thematisch-gegenständlichen Determinantenkomplex
4.	den situativen Determinantenkomplex
5.	den operativ-strategischen Determinantenkomplex.
Wir wollen im folgenden die einzelnen Komplexe etwas näher darstellen, Beziehungen imter ihnen andeuten, vor allem unter dem Aspekt der Oppositionen subjektiv-objektiv, übergeordnet-untergeordnet (Hierarchie). Bei jeder kommunikativen Handlung sind alle 5 Komplexe mit im Spiel, wenn auch nicht immer explizit (s. unten zum kausalen imd intentionalen Komplex). Sie sind aufeinander abgestimmt in gewissen logischen, relativ konstanten Verhältnissen, die jedoch Abweichimgen zulassen. Diese gilt es tmter Beachtung komplizierter Zusammenhänge erst genau herauszuarbeiten, denn »die Wirkungszusammenhänge /sind/ allerdings noch längst nicht genügend bekannt« SCHMIDT in FKS, 1981, 21).
Der kausale Aspekt oder der kausale Komplex der Kommunikationsdeterminanten beantwortet die Fragen »Wanmi, aus welchem Grund, aus welchem Anlass wird kommimiziert?«. Es geht dabei also um eine grundlegende Kategorie jeder kommimikativen Handlung, ohne die es zur Kommunikation gar
des Sprechers auf stilistische ,Effekte' führt zu abschwächenden oder direkt negative Wirkungen. Aus diesem Grunde sind auch reine StUübungen, die nicht an bestimmte kommunikative Aufgaben gebunden sind, verfehlt.«
= Anlässlich eines Vortrags in Ljubljana am 9.9.1984. (Unveröffentlicht.)
nicht käme. Hierbei spielen eine wichtige Rolle die Begriffe menschliche Bedürfnisse, Anforderungen, Kommunikationsaufgabe, Motivation. Menschliche Bedürfnisse, die vom aussen und von innen her wirksam sind (s. unten) imd die sog. Anforderungsstruktur bilden (MICHEL in SBE 1977, 67), liegen der kommunikativen Aufgabe zugrunde. Die kommunikative Aufgabe ist die ranghöchste Grösse (Kategorie) im Determinantengefüge des Kommunikationsprozesses. Durch diese wird der Sender motiviert, kommunikative Handlungen durchzuführen, die zum gewünschten Ziel, das der Kommunikationsabsicht des Senders entsprechen sollte, führen. So geht der kaxisale Aspekt der kommtmikativen Handlung zwangsläufig in seine dialektische Opposition über, in den sog. intetionalen Determinantenkomplex, der die Frage »Wozu, in welcher Absicht wird kormnuniziert?« aufwirft und beantworten soll.
Kommunikationsaufgaben und -ziele müssen nicht immer explizit vorhanden sein. An dieser Stelle soll deshalb der Versuch unternommen werden, die Anschauung, dass jede menschliche Tätigkeit, also auch die sprachliche Tätigkeit, zielgerichtet sei (vgl. SCHMIDT, 1982, 15), zu relativieren. U. E. gibt es wenigstens zwei Bereiche der menschlichen Tätigkeit, die nicht dominant (primär) zielorientiert sind, und zwar den Bereich der künstlerischen Produktion und den der Kommunikation in der privaten (intimen) Kommunikationssphäre (Freundschaft, Liebe). Hier entspringt das Kommunikationsbedürfnis mehr einem inneren Drang zur »Entlastung oder Stabilisierung des psychischen Haushaltes des Sprechers selbst« (HÄRTUNG u. Kollektiv 1974, 320) und kann erst sekundär zielgerichtet sein, so dass dabei die Betonung einer intentionalen Orientierung eher negative Assoziationen auslösen könnte (bezahlte Kunst, unehrliche Partnerbeziehimgen mit Hintergedanken).^
Unter dem Blickwinkel der Subjektivität-Objektivität der Determinanten der Kommunikation kann man dem kausalen Komplex den Charakter der Objektivität zuschreiben, denn man muss ihn als primär gegeben (egal ob von innen oder von aussen her) betrachten und als Anregung zur kommunikativen Handlung dem intentionalen Aspekt übergeordnet. Intentionen dürften weniger objektiv sein, weil die (auch) von dem Sender abhängige Motivationsstruktur nicht unbedingt der Anforderungsstruktur entsprechen muss.' Wohl bindet sich aber an die kommunikative Absicht aufs engste der Begriff der kommunikativen Funktion von kommunikativen Handlungen und somit der Begriff des Textsinns (BIEBERLE 1987, S. 202 und passim).
Der thematisch-gegenständliche Aspekt. In diesem Zusammenhang sind aktuell die Fragen »Über was wird kommuniziert?. Was ist Gegenstand, Thema einer konkreten sprachlichen Kommunikation?« Eine wichtige Rolle spielen dabei die Begriffe stoffliche Basis, Gegenstand, Thema. Die stoffliche Basis (vgl. u.a. MICHEL in SBE 1977, 69) ist das zur Verfügung stehende stoffliche Potential der umgebenden objektiven Realität, aus dem gewisse Elemente ausgewählt werden und damit der Kommimikationsgegenstand festgelegt wird. Der Kommunikationsgegenstand unterscheidet sich von dem zugrunde liegenden Ausschnitt oder Element der objektiven Realität dadurch, dass er bereits subjektiv angeeigete Wirklichkeit ist« (SCHMIDT in FKS 1981, 19).
" Nebenbei erhebt sich die Frage, ob die hochorganisierten, jedoch höchstwahrscheinlich ausschliesslich instiktiv verlaufenden Haadlungen von Bienen imd Ameisen als zielgerichtet bezeichnet werden können.
' Vgl. MICHEL in SBE (1977, 68): »Eine optimale sprachliche Leistung setzt die Entsprechung von Motivationsstruktur und Anforderungsstruktur voraus.«
Vom Gegenstand ist das Thema abzuheben. Aufgrund verschiedener Interpretationen und Definitionen dieses Begriffs® Hesse sich allgemein sagen, dass das Thema ein besonderer Blickwinkel, ein besonderer Aspekt ist, unter dem ein Gegenstand in einem Text betrachtet (belichtet) wird. Verschiedene Kommunikationsgegenstände liegen also — onomasiologisch gesehen — verschiedenen Realisierungsmögilichkeiten einer Kommunikationsaufgabe zur gründe, denn das Kommunikationsthema wird durch die Kommunikationsaufgabe gegeben, es kann aber auch fehlen, wenn zu einem Text keine kommunikative Aufgabe explizit vorhanden ist (siehe oben). So gibt es Korrelationen und Überschneidtmgen unter den Begriffen Kommunikationsaufgabe — Kommunikationsabsicht — Kommunikationsfunktion — Kommunikationsthema. Ein Kommunikationsthema kann also in einem Text mit der Kommunikationsaufgabe übereinstimmen und darüber hinaus auch mit dessen Titel (siehe MICHEL in SBE 1997, 68). Das trifft aber nicht immer zu. Zu einem Kommunikationsthema (z. B. »Alle Kinder müssen glücklich aufwachsen«) können also mehrere Kommunikationsgegenstände (Ernährung, Frieden, Bildung, Erziehung) gerechnet werden. Jeder von ihnen kann aber seinerseits zum selbständigen Thema weiterer xmtergeordneter Kommunikationsgegenstände werden (Zum Thema »Kindererziehung« passen etwa Kommunikationsgegenstände Erziehung durch Eltern, Kinderkrippe, Schule; Schwierigkeiten bei der Erziehung u. d. m.). Bei fixiertem Thema (meistens auch Aufgabe) in einem Text kann der Textproduzent unter mehreren Gegenstandsvarianten wählen. Es kann aber auch sein, dass der Kommxmikationsgegenstand im voraus festgelegt ist. Man könnte also behaupten, dass der thematisch-gegenständliche Aspekt — je nach der Kommunikationssituation (siehe unten) — teils subjektiv, teils objektiv geprägt ist. Neben der Möglichkeit, die dem Textproduzenten bereits durch die Stoffauswahl bei der subjektiven Textgestaltung zur Verfügung steht, ist von grosser Bedeutung die Stoffaufbereitung. In dieser Phase des Textgestaltungsprozesses (vgl. Anm. 2) verfügt der Textproduzent über spezifischen und daher enger gefasste Verfahren. (Darüber mehr im 5. Determinantenkomplex.) Ausserdem ist zu vermerken, dass der KommuüQikationsgegenstand bei allen strategischen Entscheidungen für den Kommunikationsplan relevant ist, und zwar gleichberechtigt mit den Bedingungen des Kommunikationsprozesses. (Der Gegenstand eines Familiengesprächs bei Tische kann wesentlich den Charakter der Kommunikation unter völlig identischen Kommunikationsbedingungen mitprägen. Unterschiedlich wird kommuniziert über einen Todesfall, über Krankheiten, über Probleme in der Schule, über heiterere Dinge, etwa die Planung eines Sonntagsausflugs u. a. m.).
Der situative Aspekt kommunikativer Determinanten befasst sich mit der Frage »Unter welchen Bedingungen verläuft ein Kommunikationsereignis?«. Hier spielen eine Menge Faktoren eine wichtige Rolle, die alle zusammen die Situation ergeben, in der ein Kommunikationsprozess vor sich geht. Zu den die Kommtmikatiionssituation bildenden Parametern (Konstituenten) sind zu zählen: Ort und Zeit, Medium (Kommunikationsform). Kanal, Partner-
' »Als Thema bezeichnen wir den Grund- und Leitgedanken der zu gestaltende Rede« (so MICHEL in SBE 1977, 68). AGRICOLA definiert das Thema als »begrifflichen Kern im Sinne der konzentrierten Abstraktion des gesamten Textinhalts« (1976, 5 ff.). Ähnlich MOSKALSKAJA (1984, 19). Sie unterscheidet zwischen einem durchgehenden Thema (Element der Thema-Rhema-Gliederung) und einem Mikrothema als dem Sinnkern des entsprechenden Textabschnitts (a.a.O., S. 42).
beziehungen (Sender — Adressat), Kommunifcationsbereich (Tätigkeitsbereich, Tätigkeitssphäre — GROSSE (1982, 45) spricht von Lebensbereichen bzw. Kommunikationssphären —, gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse, Ko'dierungsbedin-gimgen). Diese Parameter stellen die Bedingungen dar, unter denen die Kommunikation läuft. Dass diese Bedingungen nicht unbedingt objektiv (d. h. von aussen her festgelegt) sein müssen, was eine verbreitete Meinung zu sein schein,' werden wir weiter unten nachzuweisen versuchen.
Es gibt verschiedene Vorschläge zur Systematisienmg dieser zahlreichen Determinanten. Bei HÄRTUNG (1977, 22) und SCHMIDT (in FKS 1981, 21) zerfällt der Oberbegriff kommunikative Situation in Tätigkeitssituation, soziale Situation, Umgebungssituation. Für SITTA (1973, 65) gebe es bis jetzt noch keine Situationstypologie, SCHANK/SCHÖNTHAL (1983, 29) sehen hingegen die Möglichkeit, die Kommunikationssituationen in 16 Punkten zu beschreiben.'® Wichtiger als eine Systematisierung erscheint uns hierbei allerdings, daß die Relevanz jedes einzelnen Parameters, das zur »Situationsbe-zopnheit« (ENGEL/MRAZOVIC 1986, 1323) der kommunikativen Handlung beiträgt, eingesehen wird, insbesondere noch unter dem Blickwinkel des Verhältnisses Konstante — Variable, weil dies u. E. wesentlich den Verlauf des Kommunikationsprozesses und seine Schlußphase (= den Text) mit beeinflussen kann. Von Bedeutung ist bei diesen Determinanten außerdem der Umstand, daß verschiedene Kommunikationsebenen im Text eine weitere Verhältnisdifferenzierung der Situationsparameter herbeiführen, die bei der Analyse der Kodierungsbedingimgen nicht übersehen werden darf.
Unter einzelnen Situationsdeterminanten gibt es normalerweise Korrelationen. Die folgende Tabelle soll auf einige Beziehungen zwischen Medium, Kanal, Kodierungsbedingungen, Übertragungsweise und Sprache hinweisen, beachtet wird dabei auch die literarische Kategorie Genre. (Siehe nächste Seite.)
Daß solche Korrelationen sich auch über den Rahmen der fünf hier behandelten Parameter ausweiten können, ist selbstverständlich, und unsere Tabelle ließe sich also paradigmatisch entsprechend erweitem. Aus der Tabelle ist auch ersichtlich, daß in Wirklichkeit verschiedene Kombinationen einzelner Parameter möglich sind.
Im weiteren sei hier nur noch das Problem der Hierarchie bzw. der Subjektivität — Objektivität angeschnitten. Als objektiv können diese Bedin-gimgen nicht von vornherein bezeichnet werden. Manchmal können siie mit der Kommtmikationsaufgabe im voraus festgelegt werden. Dann ist die Situation als Konstante anzunehmen, der z. T. der Kommunikaülonsgegenstand, vor allem aber die Verfahrensstrategie (Kodierungsstrategie: siehe 5. Determinantenkomplex) angepaßt werden. Es kann aber sehr wohl auch passieren, daß bei gegebenen Kommunikationsaufgabe, -thema imd -gegenständ der Textner Situationsparameter zum Zweck einer effektiveren Kommunikation wäh
' Das leiten wir davon ab, dass die meisten oben erwähnten Quellen von objektiven Bedingungen der Kommunikation sprechen (Hervorhebung S. B.).
1. Teilnehmerzahl, 2. Verhältnis der Teilnehmer zueinander, 3. Kommunikationsmedium, 4. Kommunikationsart, 5. Zeitpunkt und -dauer eines Kommunikationsaktes, 6. Inszeniertheit von Kommunikationssituationen, 7. Spontaneität, 8. Intention der Kommunikationspartner, 9. Thematik, 10. Themenbehandlung (assoziativ, deskriptiv, argumentativ), 11. Relation Thema zu äusserer Situation und Sprechzeitwelt, 12. Relation Thema — Sprecher, 13. Themafixierung, 14. Öffentlichkeitsgrad, 15. Situationsvertrautheit, 16. Situationsdistanz.
Produzent in einer gewissen Toleranzbreite unter mehreren Varianten einzelner Situationsparameter zum Zweck einer effektiveren Kommunikation wählen kann. (Z. B. kann er zwischen gesprochener und geschriebener Sprache wählen, sehr groß ist die Variantenpalette beim Kanal — z. B. Beileidsbezeugung mittels Brief, Telegramm, Besuch-Bote (persönlicher Kontakt — das Telefon gilt als unangemessen); auch die Zeit- und Ortswahl kann bei der Kommunikation manchmal von entscheidender pragmatischer Relevanz sein; sogar der Partner muß nicht immer im voraus prädestiiniert sein, dessen Wahl kann möglich und relevant sein — man wendet sich z. B. mit einer Bitte an jene Person, von der man sich größtes Verständnis erhofft u. d. m.).
Kodierungsbedingungen	ad hoc	ausgefeilt
Sprache	Situationsentlastung: Redunanz, Auslassungen	mehr normgerecht, standardspraclilich
Übertragung	gesprochen (sekundär möglich auch Konservierung durch Tonband oder Protokollierung)	konserviert (sekundär möglich auch mündliche Realisierung)
Medium/Kanal	direkter Kontakt Megaphon Lautsprecher Telefon Rundfunk Femsehen Satellit	Papier (-h Schreibgerät)
Genre (Inhalt)	(spontanes) Alltagsgespräch, Verhandlung, Kommentar usw.	Vorlesung, Vortrag, politische Rede, Kommentar, Belletristik, Dokumente, Teletext, Brief usw.
Es ist evident, daß sich der Subjektivitätscharakter einzelner Determinantenkomplexe, ausgehend von dem kausalen Komplex mit zunehmender Intensität über den intentionalen Komplex, den thematisch-gegenständlichen und situativen Komplex bis hin zum strategisch-operativen Aspekt erstreckt. Die Hierarchie- sowie die Subjektdvitäts-Objektivitätsrelationen scheinen also sehr nuancenreich und kompliziert zu sein. Es liegen aber i. w. S. — das sei erneut betont — auch schon in dem thematisch-gegenständlichen und dem situativen Determinantenkomplex strategisch-operative Möglichkeiten vor. Aufgrund dieser und aller bisher genannten Kommunikationsdeterminanten entscheidet sich der Textproduzent für konkrete Schritte der Textgestalttmg.
Im Bereich des strategisch-operativen Determinantenkomplexes wird die Frage aufgeworfen »Wie, auf welche Art und Weise wird kommuniziert?« Hier geht es im engeren Sinne um WaHentscheidungen, die vom Textproduzenten getroffen werden, um innerhalb konkreter komunikativer Gegebenheiten (Aufgabe, Ziel, Thema-Gegenstand, Sitxiation) die optimalsten, geeignetsten Opera-
tionen iind Mittel zur Durchführung eines Kommunikationsprozesses einzusetzen. Das ist sehr eng mit den Normvorstellungen des Produzenten und den Normerwartimgen (»Erwartungshaltixng« bei SCHMIDT in FKS 1981, 20) des Rezipienten verbimden. »Er (der Mensch, S. B) muß nicht nur wissen, was er mit einer bestimmten sprachlich-fcommunikativen Handlung erreichen will und warum er das will, er mujß auch wissen, wie (Hervorhebimg S. B.) diese Handlung auszuführen ist, wie sie beschaffen sein muß, damit er sein Ziel mit ihr erreichen kann« (HÄRTUNG 1977, 14)." In dem zur Verfügung stehenden »Entscheidungsspielraum« (MICHEL in SEE 1977, 71) greift der Textproduzent nach jenen Mitteln, die im Schnittpimkt der oben erwähnten äußeren Gegebenheiten und seiner eigenen Fähigkeiten, Ansichten, Erfahrungen (»innere Bedingungen« der Kommunikation, a. a. O., S. 67), d. h. seiner eigenen Kompetenz, liegen. Daß sich dabei Schwerpunkte individuell verlagern können, ist selbstverständlich. So stößt man aber auch auf den Stilbegriff, der gerade hier eine Rolle spielt und für den Text definiert wird »als eine /./ Ausdrucksqualität im Spannimgsfeld von individueller Neigung und kommunikativer Bedingtheit« (HEUSINGER, 1986, 320).
Die im Bereich des strategisch-operativen Determinantenkomplexes zu klärenden Begriffe sind: Kommunikationsplan, Textaufbau (Architektonik und Komposition), Kommunikationsverfahren, Textsorte, funktional-kommunikative Merkmale, Gestaltungsimittel'^). »Ein Kommunikationsplan ist... eine Konzeption zur optimalen Realisierung einer Kommunikationsabsicht, die dem Thema gemäß und unter Berücksichtigung der objektiven und subjektiven Faktoren und Bedingungen des Kommunikationsvorgangs die Stoffauswahl sowie den Einsatz verschiedener geistig-sprachlicher Operationen... bei der Stoffverarbeitung umfaßt, damit die Grundlage für die Wahl der Gestaltungsmittel bildet und die inhaltliche und formale Struktur (Komposition und Architektonik) des Textes festlegt« (SCHMIDT in FKS 1981, 21). Von dem Kommunikationsplan, einer Art »Aktionsplan« (a.a.O.), ist also abhängig, wie ein kommunikativer Akt durchgeführt wird. Auch wenn alle Kommunikationsvorgänge nicht unbedingt nach wohldurchdachten Handlungskonzeptionen sich abzuwickeln scheinen, so verlaufen sie dennoch nach gewissen gefestigten, auf Erfahrungen, Reflexen, Vorwissen, Vorkenntnissen beruhenden Mustern, die oben angeschnittenen Gesetzmäßigkeiten im weitesten Sinne beachten. (Vgl. HARNISCH/SCHMIDT in SBE 1977, 168). Je bewußter die Planung eines Kommunikationsaktes ist, um so effektvoller vermutet man die Kommunikation, vorausgesetzt daß der Textproduzent über ausreichende Sprach- und Kommiinikatioixskompeteiiz verfügt. Daraus leitet sich, die Notwendigkeit einer gezielten Schulung der diesbezüglichen Eompeteaiz bei allen Kategorien der Kommunikationsbeteiligten ab. (Vgl. Arnn. 3.)
Der äußere, formale Aufbau des Textes (Architektonik) ist in der Regel der inneren, inhaltlichen Struktur (Komposition) untergeordnet. Sowohl die Architektonik als auch die Komposition haben pragmatische Relevanz und
"Wir meinen, dass zur Norm nicht nur das Wie gehört, sondern unbedingt auch das Was unter welchen Bedingimgen. Das stimmt weitestgehend mit dem Ansatz überein, dass der gegenständlich-thematische und der situative Determinantenkomplex mit zur Kommunikationsstrategie gezählt werden müssen.
»Zu den Gestaltungsmitteln gehören die sprachlichen Mittel, aus denen der Text gebildet wird, und das veranschaulichende Material (Schemata, Übersichten, Tabellen u. ä.) sowie paralinguale Mittel, wie z. B. Mimik und Gestik des Sprechers in der mündlichen Kommunikation« (SCHMIDT in FKS 1981, 22).
u. a. Einfluß darauf, wie eine im Text fixierte Kommunikationsabsicht beim Rezipienten ankommen wird. Die Kommimikationsverfahren — elementare Einheiten der sprachlich-kommunikativen Tätigkeit — sind geistig-sprachliche Operationen zur Realisierung von Kommunikationsplänen. (Vgl. HARNISCH in FKS 1981, 28). Neuerdings wird komplexen Kommimikationsverfahren auch der Handlungscharakter zugeschrieben. (Vgl. HARNISCH 1983, 41 ff.) Das dominierende Kommunikationsverfahren bestimmt — in Übereinstimmung mit Kommunikationsabsicht und Kommunikationsplan — auch die Textart. Funktional-kommunikative Merkmale sind (präkommunikative) invariante Wesensmerkmale der Kommuiükationsverfahren, mit ihnen lassen sich die Kommunikationsverfahren in ihrer kommunikativen Bezogenheit analytisch-strukturell beschreiben. Das ermöglicht einerseits einen dynamischen, strategisch ausgerichteten Einsatz von Kommunikationsverfahren, der sich verschiedene Kombinationen zunutze macht. Andererseits diktieren die funktional-kommunikativen Merkmale mit ihrem klaren definitorischen Charakter unmittelbar die Wahl von Gestaltungsmitteln. Die funktional-kommunikativen Merkmale sind somit edn Bindeglied zwischen dem kommunikativen Überbau einer Kom-munikationshandlxmg und dem konkreten sprachlichen Baumaterial, aus dem der Text als lineare Komposition von sprachlichen Zeichen sich konstituiert.
LITERATUR
AGRICOLA, Erhard (1976): Der Text und sein Thema. In: Sprachpflege 25, 3. 5—7.
BIEBERLE, Bruno (1987): Zum Erschliessen des Sinns von Texten. In: Deutschunterricht, 40/4, S. 198—203.
ENGEL, Ulrich-MRAZOVIČ, Pavica (Hg.) (1986): Kontrastive Grammatik DeutschSerbokroatisch. Institut za strane jezike i književnost. Novi Sad.
FUNKTIONAL-KOMMUNIKATIVE SPRACHBESCHREIBUNG (1981), theoretischmethodische Grundlegung. (Von einem Artorenkollektiv unter Leitung von Wilhelm Schmidt.) VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig. /FKS 1981/
GROSSE, Rudolf (1982): Bezeichnungen für Kommunikationsereignisse unter so-ziolinguistischem Aspekt. In: Lingustische Arbeitsberichte 36, Sektion Theoretische und angewandte Sprachwissenschaft, Karl Marx-Universität Leipzig, S. 42-^8.
HARNISCH, Hanna (1983): Zum Wesen von Kommunikationsverfahren (KV). In: Potsdamer Forschungen, Reihe A, H. 57, S. 41—54.
HÄRTUNG, Wolfdietrich u. Kollektiv (1974): Sprachliche Kommunikation und Gesellschaft. Berlin.
HÄRTUNG, Wolfdietrich (1977): Zum Inhalt des Normbegriffs in der Linguistik. In: Normen in der sprachlichen Kommunikation, Reihe Sprache und Gesellschaft, Bd. 11, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, S. 9—69.
HEUSINGER, Siegfried (1981): Zum ontogenetischen Aspekt einer funktional-kommunikativen Beschreibung von Schülertexten. In: WZ der PH »Erich Weinert« Magdeburg, 18. Jg., H. 6., S. 546—560
HEUSINGER, Siegfried (1984): Kommunikations- und sprachtheoretische Positionen zum ontogenetischen Aspekt der Textgestaltung. Dissertation B an der PH »Erich Weinert« Magdeburg, maschinenschriftlich.
HEUSINGER, Siegfried (1986): Kommunikative Adäquatheit oder kommunikative Angemessenheit? In: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 1. Jg., H. 3, S. 318—321.
MICHEL, Georg (1982): Weltanschauliche Aspekte bei der Charakteristik von Normen in der sprachlichen Kommunikation. In: WZ der Pädagogischen Hochschule »Karl Liebknecht « Potsdam, Jg. 26, H. 1, S. 5—12.
MOSKALSKAJA, Olga Iwanowna (,19&A): Textgrammatik. Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Hans Zikmund. VEB Bibliographischer Institut Leipzig.
SCHANK, Ger-SCHOENTHAL, Gisela (1976): Gesprochene Sprache. Eine Einführung in Forschungsansätze und Analysemethoden. Germanistische Arbeitschefte 18, Niemeyer, Tübingen.
SCHMIDT, Wilhelm (1982): Zum Funktionsbegriff in der neueren Linguistik, insbesondere in der funktional-kommunikativen Sprachbeschreibung In: ZPSK, H. 1, Bd. 35, S. 9—18.
SITTA, Horst (1973): Kritische Überlegungen zur Textsortenlehre. In: SITTA-BRIN-KER, Studien zur Texttheorie und zur deutschen Grammatik. Festgabe für Hans Glinz zum 60. Geburtstag. Schwann, Düsseldorf, S. 63—72.
SPRACHE — BILDUNG UND ERZIEHUNG (1977): von einem Autorenkollektiv unter Leitung von Wilhelm Schmidt, VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig. /SBE 1977/
UDK 929 Kappus M. A.:910.4(7/8)
Janez Stanonik
PISMA MARKA ANTONIJA KAPPUSA IZ KOLONIALNE AMERIKE III.
V tretjem nadaljevanju objavljene korespondence Marka Antonija Kappusa je natisnjeno pismo Kappusa iz Cucurpeja v Sonori datirano 20. januar 1691. V njem govori Kappus o uporu Tarahumara Indijancev, živečih na vzhodnem pobočju Sierra Madre v jugozahodnem predelu province Chihuahua v Mehiki. Uvodoma razprava prinaša prikaz širjenja španske kolonialne oblasti na področju Tarahumara Indijancev in njihovem odporu proti španski ekspanziji. Upor, ki ga Kappus omenja, je bil v letu 1690. Kappusovo pismo prinaša nekaj doslej neznanih podrobnosti o tem uporu, predvsem podatke o umoru dveh jezuitskih misijonarjev Spancev Diega Juana Ortiza de la Foronda ter Manuela Sancheza.
UDK 929 Nodier C.:949.712»1809/1813« Marija Pirjevec
POLITIČNI IN KULTURNI POLOŽAJ V NAPOLEONOVI SLOVENIJI IN CHARLES NODIER
Obdobje Ilirskih provinc je zapustilo pomembno sled v slovenskem zgodovinskem spominu, saj so francoske oblasti v tej dobi, ki je trajala od 1809 do 1814, začele uvajati slovenski jezik v upravo in šolstvo ter so na ta način podprle napote tistih intelektualcev, ki so se borili za pravico uporabe lokalnega jezika v javnem življenju. Charles Nodier, urednik časopisa Telegraphe Officiel je za časa svojega bivanja v Ljubljani in v svoji kasnejši literarni in žumalistični dejamosti kazal veliko zanimanje za slovensko okolje in njegove prebivalce. Postal je eden izmed prvih posrednikov med slovensko in francosko kulturo.
UDK 820(73) Hemingway E. 7 A farewell to the arms .06
Bruce Mciver HEMINGWAY V DOLINI SOČE
Študija ugotavlja, da sta bili dekleti, ki ju Hemingway popiše v romanu Zbogom orožje, ki med seboj govorita v neznanem jeziku, po vsej verjetnosti Slovenki. Hemingway ev prikaz italijanskega poraza pri Kobaridu in umika italijanske armade temelji na sekimdamih virih in ne na lastnih izkušnjah, saj je prišel Hemingway v Italijo in bil zaposlen kot voznik rešilnega avtomobila Rdečega križa šele junija leta 1918.
UDK 820.09:929 Spender S. (047.53)
Mirko Jurak INTERVJU S STEPHENOM SPENDERJEM
V	intervjuju s pesnikom in dramatikom Stephenom Spenderjem, ki je bil v Londonu dne 24. junija 1964, so obravnavane predvsem naslednje teme: delovanje Group Theatra (1932—1939) in Spenderjeva vloga pri vodstvu tega gledališča; verzifikacija, predstavitev značajev, tehnika zgradbe drame, ideološka in bivanjska problematika v Spenderjevi drami Trial of a Judge {Sodnikov preizkus, 1938); razredna pogojenost Spenderjeve drame in njegov odnos do tako imenovane »proletarske umetnosti«; odnos sodelavcev revije Scrutiny do pesnikov Audenovega kroga; gledališka situacija v Angliji v tridesetih letih. Unity Theatre; pomen in mesto poetično-poli-tične drame za angleško dramatiko in gledališče.
UDK 820(73).03.091-I(497.12)»1919/1940« Igor Maver MOŽNOSTI PESNIŠKEGA PREVODA:
SPREJEM AMERIŠKE POEZIJE NA SLOVENSKEM MED OBEMA VOJNAMA
Sodobna ameriška poezija je bila na Slovenskem bolj slabo poznana v obdobju med obema vojnama. Vzroke za to skuša opredeliti pričujoča študija, saj na primer pesniški prevodi iz nekaterih drugih evropskih književnosti v obravnavanem obdobju le niso bili tako redki. Po eni strani so slovenski pesniški prevajalci v ameriški poeziji-književnosti videli nasledek ali celo posnemanje evropskih književnosti, ki so bile po njihovem mnenju edini pravi umetniški dosežki, vredni prevoda v slovenščino. Tako naj bi predvsem tokovi kot so bili futurizem, nadrealizem in ekspresionizem omogočali pesniku izraziti težavne ekonomske, politične in sploh družbene okoliščine tedanjega časa. Nenazadnje je bila ameriška književnost terra incognita tudi zavoljo dejstva, ker je bilo znanje tujih jezikov na Slovenskem v glavnem omejeno na nemščino ter francoščino.
UDK 840.03.091-31(497.12)»1950/197« Metka Zupančič
RECEPCIJA NOVEGA FRANCOSKEGA ROMANA V SLOVENIJI
V	Sloveniji je po 1. 1945 izšlo precej literarnih del z izrazitimi modernimi tendencami, ki pa niso nastale pod vplivom Novega francoskega romana (Le Nouveau roman), pač pa izražajo sorodnega duha, pogojenega z istodobnostjo. Pri sprejemu francoskega Novega romana so imela večji vpliv teoretična dela francoskih avtorjev kot pa njihovi romani. Majhen je bil v Sloveniji vpliv prevodov teh romanov v srbohrvaščino. Že 1952 sta Anton Ocvirk in Dušan Pirjevec opozorila na nove tendence v francoski književnosti, ki so se usmerjale proč od realizma. L. 1954 je na isto opozoril Jean Marie Ledere na konferenci v Mariboru. V poznih petdesetih in v začetku šestdesetih let so vprašanja prehoda od naturalizma k novejšim oblikam proze obravnavali Vasja Predan, Drago Ahačič, Božidar Borko in Bogdan Pogačnik. Prvi prevod v sferi Novega romana je bil prevod eseja Michela Butorja Roman in poezija 1. 1962 in študije Hamida Makdada o Nathalie Sarraute istega leta. Vpliv Novega romana se izraziteje čuti v Sloveniji po 1. 1965, vzporedno z vplivom heideg-gerianstva. L. 1965 so v prevodih izšli referati Nathalie Sarraute, Allaina RobbeGrilleta ter Luciena Goldmanna s konference v Bruslju in L 1967 še en esej RobbeGrilleta. S tem so bili dani pogoji za razumevanje Novega romana v Sloveniji. Poudarek je na Robbe-Grilletu. L. 1971 je bilo prevedeno delo La Modification Michela Butorja ter 1974 Le Voyeur Robbe-Grilleta. V ocenah teh prevodov (Dušan Pirjevec, Janko Kos), so poudarjene neke značilnosti Novega romana. Vplive Novega romana lahko vsaj delno zasledimo v romanu Andreja Hienga Orfej (1972), v radijski igri Gregorja Strniše Brat Henrik (1975/76) ter v zbirki novel Bra-a Ro-tarja Moloh. Najpomembnejša pa so v tej zvezi dela Rudija Šeliga, njegovi teoretični spisi iz 1. 1972 in zlasti roman Triptih Agate Schwarzkobler (1968).
UDK 820(73) Styron W. 7 Set this house on fire .06 Henry A. Christian
ROMAN WILLIAMA STYRONA SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE: VZVOD IN SILE
Povojna ameriška literarna dela kažejo izredno heterogenost tako v pogledu na družbo kot na razvoj knjževnosti. Isto tudi literarna kritika. Ko je izšel roman Williama Styrona Zažgi hišo (Set This House on Fire), je bil odmev kritike na njega zelo živ. Roman predstavlja prehodno obliko iz starega v novo v ameriški književnosti. Po svoji strukturi spominja na Fitzgeraldov roman Veliki Gatsby, na dela Flauberta in Frousta ter na sodobni francoski Novi roman. Razprava obravnava lika obeh osrednjih karakterjev v romanu, Cassa Kinsolvinga, ki je kriv umora, pa mu je kazen spregledana, ter pripovedovalca Petra Leveretta, njuno medsebojno prepletanje ter moralne dileme. Te moralne dileme odsevajo moralne dileme kot posledice druge svetovne vojne.
UDK 886.3(73) :323.1 (73:=863)
Rado L. Lenček
O LITERATURAH V DIASPORI IN O ŽIVLJENJSKI DOBI NJIHOVIH MEDIJEV
Študija proučuje vprašanje ohranitve pesniškega jezika med izseljenci. Med manjšimi izseljenskimi etničnimi skupinami, na primer pri Slovencih v Ameriki, se rodni jezik redko ohrani še v drugi generaciji. Izseljenci, ki so prinesli s seboj od doma višjo izobrazbo, ohranijo rodni jezik dalje. Mesto jezika se med manj izobraženimi uveljavlja folklorna etničnost. Slovenska izseljenska literatura se razvija le med izseljenci prve generacije, v drugi generaciji naši izseljenci pišejo vedno le angleški. Louis Adamič, ki je že v prvi generaciji pisal v angleščini, je bil izjema. Jezik je živ organizem, če se prilagaja potrebam komunikacije po svojih notranjih zakonitostih; jezik priseljencev pa se v razvoju naslanja na jezik večine. Socialna funkcija jezika je razmerje med jezikom in družbo, ki ga uporablja, vpliv jezika na družbo in odziv družbe na ta vpliv. Funkcije jezika v družbi so združevalne, ločevalne, prestižne in normativne. Te funkcije lahko služijo kot parameter za merilo razvitosti jezika. Razvoj slovenskega jezika v treh stopnjah v domovini in v dveh med izseljenci je prikazan na razpredelnici.
UDK 007:801.73
Stojan Bračič
K DETERMINANTAM KOMUNIKATIVNEGA DOGODKA V BESEDILU
Prispevek prinaša zametke analize tistih komunikativnih determinant, ki opredeljujejo sporazumevanje med komunikativnimi partnerji. Pri tem želi vnesti
v številne faktorje in pogoje komunikativnega procesa, ki so med seboj v resnici
najtesneje prepleteni in soodvisni, določeno sistematizacijo. Tako razlikuje 5 deter-minantnih kompleksov: kavzalni ali vzročni sklop, intencionalni, tematsko-pred-metni, situativni ter operacionalno-strateški sklop faktorjev in pogojev komunikativnega dogodka. Kavzalni vidik opredeljuje vzročno pogojenost vsakega komunikativnega dogodka, katera dialektično prehaja v namernost, namenskost, tako da se motivacija praviloma realizira v cilju oz. reziiltatu komunikacije. Tematsko-predmetni vidik skuša razmejiti pojme, kot so predmet komunikacije, snovna pod-stat, tema, komunikativna naloga, komimikativna funkcija, naslov besedila. Situativni vidik obravnava množico različnih komunikativnih pogojev, ki tvorijo okvirno situacijo vsakega komunikativnega dogodka, operacionalno-strateški vidik pa nakazuje bogastvo možnosti za konkretno jezikovno oblikovanje sporočila, upoštevaje zgoraj omenjene okolnosti. Sestavek poskuša nakazati tudi možnost hierar-hizacije omenjenih faktorjev — tudi v smislu konstantnosti in variabilnosti — ter različne stopnje subjektivnostne oz. objektivnostne naravnanosti posameznih determinant.
6 Acta
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CONTENTS OF VOLUMES I—XX
VOLUME I (1968):
JANEZ STANONIK: Longfellow and Smolnikar
RONALD GOTTESMANN: Louis Adamic and Upton Sinclair: The Record of a Friendship
MIRKO JURAK: English Poetical Verse Drama of the Thirties: Revision and Alteration
BREDA CIGOJ-LEBEN: Apergu critique sur la critique litteraire frangaise au XIX= siecle
VOLUME II (1969):
MIRKO JURAK: The Group Theatre: Its Development and Significance for the Modem English Theatre
META GROSMAN: Scrutiny's Reviews of I.A.Richard's Works
KAJETAN GANTAR: Colomoni Segen als ein später Nachklang der solomonischen exorzistischen Tradition
BREDA POŽAR: Anastasius Grüns unveröffentlichte Ubersetzungen slowenischer Volkslieder
VOLUME III (1970):
JANEZ STANONIK: Ruskin's Theory of Literature as Communication DARKO DOLINAR: Die Erzähltechnik in drei Werken Uwe Johnsons STANISLAV ZIMIC: El Persiles como critica da la novela bizantina DUŠAN LUDVIK: Die Eggenbergischen Hofkomödiaten
VOLUME IV (1971):
DUŠAN LUDVIK: Die Chronologie und Topographie der Innsbrucker Komödianten (1632—1676)
MILOŠ DJORDJEVIČ: Grillparzers Begegnungen mit den Südslawen JANEZ STANONIK: The Sermon to the Sharks in Moby-Dick TOMAŽ LOŽAR: E. E. Cummings: The Poem as Improvisation
VOLUME V (1972):
MARJETA VASIC: Les Vues esthetiques d'Albert Camus BERNARD JERMAN: The Death of Tennyson
DRAGO GRAH: Bänkelsängerische Elemente in Döblins »Berlin Alexanderplatz« DUŠAN LUDVIK: Edlinge, Edlingen, Edlinger
VOLUME VI (1973):
JANEZ STANONIK: Althochdeutsche Glossen aus Ljubljanaer Handschriften DUŠAN LUDVIK: Mhd. Schifband
6*
83
BREDA POŽAR: Frederick Baraga and his Book on the Manners of American Indians
ALOJZ JAVORNIK: John Boynton Priestley in Slovenia VOLUME VII (1974):
FREDERICK M. RENER: Zur Übersetzungskunst im XVII. Jahrhundert
WOLFGANG HELD: Die Wünsche des Esels: Wahrheit und Moral in G. C. Pfeffels Fabeln
DUŠAN LUDVIK: Zur Mhd. Laut- und Wortgeschichte der Steiermark
STANISLAV ZIMIC: El tema del Rey Rodrigo en un poema esloveno
MIRKO JURAK: Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender: Development and Alternations of Their Plays Written for the Group Theatre
VOLUME VIII (1975):
STANISLAV ZIMIC: El libro de Caballerias de Cervantes
DUŠAN LUDVIK: Zur Chronologie und Topographie der »alten« tmd »späten« englischen Komödianten in Deutschland
BERNARD J. JERMAN: The Victorian Way of Death
MARIJA ŽAGAR: L'ßvolution des personnages retouches pendant 56 ans par Paul Claudel dans La Jeune fille Violaine et L'Annonce faite ä Marie
VOLUME IX (1976):
ERIC P. HAMP: On the Celtic Names of Ig LJILJANA BABIČ: Walt Whitman in Yugoslavia
VELIMIR GJURIN: Semantic Inaccuracies in Three Slovene Translations of King Lear
VOLUME X (1977):
META GROSMAN: T. S. Eliot on the Reader and Poetry BERNARD J. JERMAN: The Death of Robert Browning
STANISLAV ZIMIC: EI gran teatro del mundo y el gran mundo del teatro in Pedro de Urdemalas de Cervantes
VOLUME XI (1978):
LENA PETRIC: Carl Snoilsky och Slovenien
DRAGO GRAH: Das Zeitgerüst in Döblins Roman Berlin Alexanderplatz JERNEJA PETRIC: Louis Adamic as Interpreter of Yugoslav Literature TOMAŽ LOŽAR: The Little Journal of Kenneth Patchen ERIC P. HAMP: Further Remarks on the Celtic Names of Ig
VOLUME XII (1979):
STANISLAV ZIMIC: El Juez de los divorcios de Cervantes
RADOJKA VERČKO: Time, Place, and Existence in the Plays of Samuel Beckett 84
MARIJA BOLTA: Some Problem Areas for Slovene Students of English ERIC P. HAMP: On Ljubljana OHG Glosses
VOLUME XIII (1980):
TINE KURENT: The Modular Composition of King Arthur's Table Round LUDOVIC OSTERC: La guerra y la paz segun Cervantes STANISLAV ZIMIC: El labirinto y el lucero redentor
KENNETH RICHARDS: Satire and Values in James Shirley's The Lady of Pleasure LENA PETRIČ: Alfred Jensen och Slovenien I.
VOLUME XIV (1981): In Memoriam Drago Grah
DRAGO GRAH: Das Menschenbild im Werk Friedrich von Gagerns
KARL J. R. ARNDT: Smolnikar's Beziehungen zu Georg Rapps Harmoniegesellschaft
WALTER MOSCHEK: Schillers Frühwerk Kabale xmd Liebe: Ästhetische Auseinandersetzung des Dichters mit seiner Umwelt
MIRKO JURAK: Cultural Interrelation between Slovenia and America in Vatroslav Grill's Med dvema svetovoma (Between the Two Worlds)
STANISLAV ZIMIC: Sobre la classificacion de las comedias de Cervantes
ATILIJ RAKAR: Quattro poesie omonime: Un tema e le sue implicazioni (per una lettura di Saba)
T. L. MARKEY: Semantic Space, Heuristic Procedures, and Naturalness VARJA CVETKO: AI. Sara und Jadhu
VOLUME XV (1982):
ANTON JANKO: Zwei Wigalois-Fragmente aus Ljubljana
KLAUS SCHUMANN: Begegnung im Zenit: Iwan Goli und Ljubomir Micič im Spiegel einer »vergessenen« Zeitschrift
NEVA ŠLIBAR-HOJKER: Ilse Aichingers Hörspiele der Spätphase
META GROSMAN: The Literary Criticism of Denys Wyatt Harding
ATILIJ RAKAR: I concetti di malattia e di salute nei romanzi di Italo Svevo
METKA ZUPANČIČ: Les Generateurs picturaux dans I'ecriture simonienne
LENA HOLMQUIST: Alfred Jensen och Slovenien II
STOJAN BRACIČ: Zum Wesen der Modalität in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache VOLUME XVI (1983):
STANISLAV ZIMIC: El sentido satirico del Auto de las Gitanas
STANISLAV ZIMIC: La farsa dos Almocreves: Relevancia dramatica y moral del titulo
ATILIJ RAKAR: La stagione Sabiana di Figure e Canti
LEA CAHARIJA-LIPAR: Pasolini: Vittoria dei miti personali sul programma
KATICA IVANIŠEVIČ: Classical Bohemia and the Beat Generation: A Comparison of Their Attitudes Towards Life and Society
JASNA MAKOVEC: Zu Entwicklungstendenzen im Satzbau der deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart unter besonderer Berücksichtigimg der Ausrahmung
VOLUME XVII (1984):
SONDERBAND: INGEBORG BACHMANN
ROBERT PICHL: Zum literarischen Nachlass Ingeborg Bachmanns: Ergebnisse einer ersten Übersicht
MIRKO KRIŽMAN: Ingeborg Bachmann in einem Vergleich mit der österreichischen dichterischen Tradition
SIGRID SCHMID-KORTENSCHLAGER: Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie als utopisches Modell im Prosawerk von Ingeborg Bachmann
NEVA ŠLIBAR-HOJKER: Entgrenzung, Mythus, Utopie: Die Bedeutung der slowenischen Elemente in ihrem Werk
ANTON JANKO: Anmerkungen zu slowenischen Übersetzungen einiger Gedichte Ingeborg Bachmanns
HANS HOLLER: Krieg und Frieden in den poetologischen Überlegimgen von Ingeborg Bachmann
KURT BARTSCH: »Es war Mord«: Anmerkungen zu Mann-Frau Beziehung in Bachmanns Roman Malina
JAN-PETER DOMSCHKE: Die Träume des Herrn Laurenz
VOLUME XVIII (1985):
LUDOVIK OSTERC: Justicia y honradez del gobierno de Sancho Pansa
STANISLAV ZIMIC: Estudios sobre el teatro de Gil Vicente: Obras de critica social y religiosa: Quem tu farelos? — O juiz de Beira
ATILIJ RAKAR: L'ultima parte del Canzoniero Sabiano
META GROSMAN: Denys Wyatt Harding on Entertainment and on Reading
VOLUME XIX (1986):
TINE KURENT: La Signature gematrique de Rabelais per les nombres 66 et 99
MARCO ANTONIO LOERA DE LA LLAVE: Intencionalidad y fantasia meontolo-gicas en sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
JANEZ STANONIK: Letters of Marcus Antonius Kappus from Colonial America I
RADO L. LENČEK: Kopitar's »Letter to the Editor« in the American Journal The Biblical Repository
KARL J. R. ARNDT: George Rapp's Harmony Society and Its Influence on Friedrich Engels (John Finch's Report on Rapp's Harmony Society)
ANTON JANKO: Die Rezeption Rilkes in Slowenien
VOLUME XX (1987):
TINE KURENT: Die Darstellung des Sephiroth in Goethes Faust I und bei Dürer JANEZ STANONIK: Die deutsche Literatur im Mittelalterlichen Slowenien ATILIJ RAKAR: La Voce di Trubar e la sua eco alle porte d'Italia JANEZ STANONIK: Letters of Marcus Antonius Kappus from Colonial America IL LUDOVIC OSTERC: Dulcinea y su papel
KARL J.R. ARNDT: A Letter of Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar to Wilhelm Rapp META GROSMAN: The Pluralistic World of Huckleberry Finn HENRY A. CHRISTIAN: An Afterword to Louis Adamic's Lucas, King of Balucas ROBERT GRIFFIN: Jung's Science in Answer to Job and the Hindu Matrix of Form
Natisk pričujoče publikacije je omogočila Raziskovalna skupnost Slovenije. Uredniški odbor se ji iskreno zahvaljuje.
The printing of the present publication has been made possible with the financial support of the Interdisciplinary Research Commtmity of SR Slovenia. The Editorial Board expresses in this place its sincere thanks.