UDK 821.111(73).09 Faulkner W.:82.09(497.4) 
SLOVENE REACTIONS TO WILLIAM FAULKNER'S 
WRITING 
Natafo Intihar Klancar 
Abstract 
The article deals with Slovene reactions to William Faulkner's writing: a lot of critical attention 
was given to the author twice, namely after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and after 
his death in 1962. The articles and reviews published in Slovene magazines and newspapers focused 
on themes, characterization, style and structure of his novels. Thus the Slovene reading public got the 
chance to get to know one of the greatest novelists of 20th century, his troubled, decaying, socially, 
racially,-religiously and ·historically challenged-American-South-and through it ~themselves andtheir 
attitude toward the world and its problems. Faulkner also had a strong influence on some of the Slovene 
writers of 1950s and 1960s: they adopted his themes and writing techniques, namely a cyclic structure 
of the novel and stream-of-consciousness technique, thus forging the new Slovene modernist fiction 
that started to emerge from the late 1960s onwards. 
It should be mentioned right at the beginning that Faulkner's attitude toward 
critics and their reviews was rather unconventional and unorthodox, for the author did 
neither recognize nor read them, the consequence being he did not want to and could 
not take their comments into consideration when working on his novels. Gwynn and 
Blotner's Faulkner in the University- Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 
1957-1958 combines a series of interviews with Faulkner at the time when he was a 
lecturing professor at the above-mentioned university and at the same time offers an 
insight into the author's thoughts on various subjects. Let us take a closer look at an 
excerpt focusing on his view regarding the critics' influence on him: 
There's nothing anybody can tell me I don't know about it, and the critic, 
nor I either, can improve it any by that time and the only way to improve it 
is to write one that will be better next time, and so I'm at that and I prob-
ably just don't have time to read the critics. (60) 
Furthermore: 
I don't read [them]. I'm too busy[ ... ] I'm sure it would be valuable, but the 
writer, if he's as busy as I am and has got as much that he needs to say as I 
have and knows he never will live long enough to say it all, he ain't got time 
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to read what anybody else says about his work because he already knows 
what it is-it ain't good enough, that's why he's writing another. (90) 
Faulkner does not stop there but goes on to confess: "I don't read the critics. I don't 
know any literary people" (Gwynn, Blotner 1959: 65). It might be true that Faulkner 
did not spend (much or any of) his time dealing with critical responses but it should 
be pointed out that these same literary circles did spend quite some time analyzing his 
works, both in his native country and in Slovenia where numerous articles and reviews 
can be found in magazines and newspapers, concentrating on themes, characterization, 
style and structure of his writing, as discussed in the article. Most of these written 
records appeared no sooner than after 1950 (it was in the same period that Slovene writ-
ers adopted Faulkner's themes and writing techniques), when Faulkner - as the fourth 
American, following in the footsteps of Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill and Pearl Buck 
- was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 
It is this honorable event that the critic Vlado Habjan looks at in his article "Nekaj 
misli o sodobni ameriski knjifovnosti" (Some Thoughts on Contemporary American 
Literature) published in the newspaper Primorski dnevnik. Habjan calls the readers' at-
tention to the fact that the younger generation of American writers cannot measure up 
to the acknowledged and respected literary creators, such as William Faulkner, Ernest 
Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and (before them) Walt Whitman, Theodore Dreiser and 
Sinclair Lewis, who all reachedtheir glory _abroad first, :whernas 11at_ive lit~rnry rec;gg11i~ 
tion came later. Habjan thinks: "The most problematic among them all, the melancholic 
and pessimistic Southerner William Faulkner right [now] received the highest award a 
novelist in the Western world can win" (Habjan 1951: 4). 
Habjan puts into perspective the authors of the so-called "Lost Generation" with 
the ones blossoming in the 1950s, he concludes that the former enjoy the fruits of their 
labor, "while the young authors still have to strive for success with critics and publish-
ers to acquire at least a basic understanding of their problems and their way of writ-
ing" (Habjan 1951: 4). The article moves on to introduce a few young authors, whom 
''American criticism according to its usual practice diminishes their quality and calls 
them "The New Lost Generation" (Habjan 1951: 4), but at the same time optimistically 
wonders which one of them is to become the new Steinbeck, Dreiser or Faulkner, sug-
gesting John Dos Passos, Erskin Caldwell, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote and Eudora 
Welty as the possible candidates. The older generation of writers has been living in 
the spotlight and enjoying their fame, whereas the younger generation of novelists will 
have to face the hardships of getting there and direct all their efforts toward becoming 
recognized and famous. 
The newspaper Slovenski porocevalec published Janez Gradisnik's article "Nov 
roman Williama Faulknerja" (William Faulkner's New Novel) that also deals with the 
fact that Faulkner earned recognition as a talented author by foreign literary critics first, 
the American critical response following later. Gradisnik believes the reason for this 
lies in the duality of understanding and perceiving Faulkner's work. The Americans 
saw parallels between his complicated, bloody and painful stories and the decline and 
decay of the American South, while Europe "in this same world of passion, violence, 
corruption, malice, hatred and killing" (Gradi8nik 1951: 4) noticed a new dimension and 
14 
found something new - something which reacts to the changes of the modern world and 
is the consequence of today's way ofliving or is the real exhibition of "the decomposed, 
worn out man of the twentieth century" (Gradisnik 1951: 4). 
In her article "Pisateljska pot Williama Faulknerja" (William Faulkner's Literary 
Path) Marta Gliha summarizes the critics' opinion "that after Edgar Allan Poe Ameri-
can South has not had a writer of such a profound insight about its social conditions 
and touching human destinies" (Gliha 1951/1952: 172). Both authors share the love of 
"horror, anxiety, feelings of life that lead people to despair, violence and crime" (Gliha 
1951/1952: 172). Then the article touches upon another aspect of Faulkner, namely his 
composition and style. "[T]he power of fantasy, the vivacity of character description 
and narrative congestion" (Gliha 1951/1952: 174) are prominent in his early works, 
whereas later on he experimented with form: the composition is fragmented, the style 
becomes exotic, even bombastic, full of rhetoric and countless repetitions. The length 
and complexity of sentences pose a great problem for the reader whose reading ability 
and understanding of the text is threatened. 
Anton Ocvirk's article "William Faulkner in njegov roman Krik in bes" (William 
Faulkner and his novel The Sound and the Fury) was published in the fortnightly review 
for intellectuals Nasi razgledi and- as the title suggests - focuses on the above-mentioned 
novel. The critic enumerates the main characteristics of the novel, namely the difficul-
ties of style, the complexity of events and their distorted chronology where past and 
present go hand ih hand. Otvirk also spends time dealing with the characters who reveal 
themselves to the reading public only step by step, their personalities coming forth only 
eventually and through close reading. He is rather poetic in saying that: "everything in 
the novel is as if it were enchanted and moves [ ... ] in a sort of foggy atmosphere, filled 
with horror and concealed pain" (Ocvirk 1952: 22). The readers can get a full insight 
into the work as a whole only after they have finished reading the novel, i. e. after all 
the thoughts, ideas and images that caused anxiety, uneasiness and agitation throughout 
the reading process have been settled down and have found a logical explanation. 
As for the presentation of characters, Ocvirk emphasizes the characterization of 
literary persons in general and argues that Faulkner's approach is direct, natural and 
concrete, his characters are shown in all their complexity which gives a feeling of disorder 
and confusion and as such disables the reader to read quickly and without any burdens. 
Therefore Faulkner's writing appears "confused and artificial, [even] pathological" (Oc-
virk 1952: 22) to all who are used to the conventional way of story-telling and narrating, 
having the expectations concerning unity and coherence of plot and characters. 
The author states that not only characterization can cause reading problems, there 
is also the specific literary technique used by Faulkner and based on the contemporary 
guidelines of realists and surrealists of the 19th and 20th century. Ocvirk describes the 
development of the modern novel form and dwells on Marcel Proust as a pioneer and 
the most typical representative. The critic states that the modern novel gives prominence 
to inner will and intentions, to memories and thoughts that stay hidden until they are 
triggered off by the right stimulus and/or motive and then cause a man to react. 
One of the main Faulkner's priorities when writing, similarly to Marcel Proust, 
James Joyce and John Dos Passos, is his wish to penetrate deep into human conscious-
ness and to find out all the mysteries that pervade the man's inner side and prevent 
15 
them from a simple and logical insight and explanation. Internal monologue as a new 
narrative technique developed as a consequence of new tendencies to illustrate the inner 
workings of the human mind at work, to record the internal or emotional thoughts or 
feelings of an individual, to show the man's inner side in all its complexity, to show the 
fights and processes that go on there. Ocvirk believes that it is one of Faulkner's main 
ideas to represent through the use of this literary technique the characters' conscious-
ness, his subconscious and conflicts between them, thus creating a living and breathing 
mechanism that pushes people into certain (re)action(s). 
Further on Ocvirk expresses his opinion that the majority ofFaulkner's characters 
are common, simple people who follow their instincts primarily. Dark forces raging in 
their subconscious cannot be controled, they occupy their "owners" to the maximum 
and bring them to crime: "They all stand on the verge of grand, peaceful life as genuine 
outcasts - lonely but proud and rebellious" (Ocvirk 1952: 22, 23). They differ from 
Proust's and Joyce's heroes not only by the exceptionality and intensity of their experi-
ences but also (and mostly) by the high level of consistency and tension through which 
they constantly express themselves. The critic suggests that the heroes are haunted by 
their ideas and as a consequence their actions are highly dependent on them. These 
ideas are hidden deep in their subconscious and represent the essence and center of 
their being, weaved into the past which follows them closely. 
For Proust the past is something that yet needs to be searched for and found, 
whereas for Faulkner it is "the living force that penetrates directly into the subconscious 
and influences it" (Ocvirk 1952: 23). Supporting this view, the hero's monologues in-
tensify and enumerate, giving Faulkner the ability to build tension. Ocvirk is very clear 
in this thoughts that it would be inaccurate and inadequate to see Faulkner's heroes and 
their actions through the struggle between consciousness and subconscious only, the 
critic points out that a wider perspective should be taken where the hero's needs, wishes, 
distresses, problems, discomforts, misfortunes, dilemmas, delusions and mistakes should 
be seen also as a consequence of conflicts with environment and society. I share Ocvirk' s 
opinion that the hero cannot and should not be seen as an individuum only, but should 
be put in social perspective where his actions, reactions and living in general should 
be observed. It is this wider dimension that can give us a better understanding of both, 
Faulkner's works and his characters and can thus enable us to get closer to understand-
ing this great writer and the message he was trying to convey. 
Similar themes also haunt Herbert Griin in his article "Zapiski o Faulknerju" 
(Notes on Faulkner), where he admits that Faulkner's difficult novels should be read 
many times in order to grasp their meaning fully. The characteristics of modern novel 
contribute largely to the complexity of Faulkner's writing, which Griin deals with in 
detail. His article focuses on both, Hemingway and Faulkner, the latter being introduced 
to the Slovene reading public no sooner than at the beginning of the 1950s. The critic 
draws the attention to the fact that in modern American novel "it is about evil passions, 
here people pursue and kill each other, they hate and love each other with biblical, basic 
drive [where the core ofFaulkner's heroes is made up of] bootleggers, racial and religious 
fanatics, unreasonable lovers, criminals, and the like" (Griin 1953: 50, 51). 
Griin - similarly to Ocvirk above - spends some time dealing with Faulkner's 
narrative technique. He is of the opinion that it is: "a jungle [where] images, events, 
16 
conflicts, memories, feelings, thoughts, stories are accumulated in a hard-to-follow and 
pathless arrangement" (Griin 1953: 51). He mentions Faulkner's typical use of moving 
the narrative into the past through the mechanism of memory where the thread of the 
narrative is lost and clung to another, whereas at the end this thick and at first glance 
unconnected ball of thread is untwined and it gets its meaning, individual threads are 
untied, ended, wiped out, destroyed or lost. 
The complicated narrative technique is also in the focus ofKajetan Kovic's article 
"Moderni avtorji v izdajah Cankarjeve zalozbe" (Modern Authors in the Cankarjeva 
zalozba Publishing Company Editions) published in a magazine mainly intended for 
librarians Knjiga. American authors Faulkner and Hemingway are put to the foreground, 
the former through his novel Light in August where two intertwining stories are presented 
and based on the chronology and sequence of events by which the author manages 
to create a dramatic effect of showing the dark secrets of life in the South, "trapped 
between deeply rooted passions of racial and religious fanaticism" (Kovic 1955: 540). 
The linear flow ofFaulkner's narrative is disrupted, his novel abundant in contents and 
structurally complex. Kovic shares a wide critical consensus in his thinking that the 
world cannot be understood on the basis of external factors and circumstances only, 
but mainly and mostly through "an internal atmosphere of human beings who move in 
dark circles of faith" (Kovic 1955: 541). It is precisely the apparent racial prejudice and 
unsolved passions that drag from one generation to another and eventually seal Joe's fate. 
There is Christmas who is internally shaken, unstable, insecure, his thoughts blurred, 
and there is Lena who is full of living power and energy that help her overcome all her 
difficulties. Kovic states that by using such different characters Faulkner demonstrates 
the dual quality of living and existing in the American South: on the one hand he offers 
an ethically charged accusation of negative, uncontroled human passions and deeply 
rooted: prejudice, on the other he leaves a ray of light by keeping faith in human existence 
and survival. All the above-mentioned characteristics "help promote the artistic power 
of his novel which belongs to one of the summits of contemporary world literature" 
(Kovic 1955: 542). The meaning of Faulkner's work and modern novel in general is 
touched upon by Kajetan Kovic in his "Leposlovna bilanca 1945-1970" (Literary Re-
view 1945-1970) published in the regional newspaper Veeer. The author comments on 
the works of Faulkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Joyce, Wolfe and others. He sees and 
recognizes the great power of these novels on Slovene reading public whose horizons 
widened. Moreover, a brand new and different world opened to the readers with the 
help of high-quality translations. 
Faulkner serves as the main topic also in a contribution by Stanko Klinar. The article 
"Faulkner in pisateljevanje" (Faulkner and Writing) was published in the fortnightly Nasi 
razgledi and is in fact a summary of the famous interview given by Faulkner to Jean Stein 
in 1956 for The Paris Review. It deals with various subjects, for example with Faulkner's 
contempt for journalists who keep asking personal questions and with Faulkner' s attitude 
toward art. According to him, the artist "is above the critic - for the artist is writing 
something which will move the critic. The critic - on the contrary- is writing something 
which will move everybody but the artist" (Klinar 1956: 421). Faulkner's writing belongs 
to the area of psychological novels, a detailed discussion of the subject is given in Klinar's 
article "Psiholoski roman 1900-1950" (Psychological Novel 1900-1950) published in 
17 
Nasi razgledi. Klinar emphasizes the authors' (Faulkner included) orientation toward the 
heroes' inner world, their memories, experiences, feelings and imagination. Faulkner's 
power lies in the fact that through his heroes he reveals the secrets of the world to the 
readers. The third article on Faulkner by Klinar was published in Nasi razgledi under the 
title "Nekaj misli o Williamu Faulknerju" (Some Thoughts on William Faulkner). In it 
the author writes about the Slovene reading public and their enthusiasm growing over 
the translation ofFaulkner's Light in August (Svetloba v avgustu). The novel arouses the 
feelings of frustration based on fragmented, non-chronological forms and techniques 
used but nevertheless the reader can - using all the information from the novel - feel a 
certain connection, unity and coherence in the end. 
Faulkner and his literary achievement are again put under thorough inspection in 
articles by Rapa Suklje. Her article simply entitled "William Faulkner" and published 
in Nasi razgledi examines the lively critical response to Faulkner that only happened 
twice in the States: first after the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and 
second after his death. Suklje offers a summary of Faulkner's biography and novels. 
She also mentions his writer-in-residence position at the University of Virginia where 
he participated actively in question-and-answer sessions which are collected and pub-
lished in Faulkner in the University - Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 
1957-1958. The critic thinks that Faulkner is neither a powerful orator nor a profound 
thinker, but it is the power of his written work directly connected with digging through 
nlimari subconscious that makes him unique and special. According to Suklje practically 
all Faulkner's writing is based on trying to discover and understand family relations 
in the American South through different generations, the dynamics being built on the 
black-white relationship, especially miscegenation when "white owners' blood mixed 
with their black slaves' to such an extent that the whites and the blacks are often actu-
ally brothers; and this is the special, quiet tragedy of his imaginary Yoknapatawpha" 
(Suklje 1962: 275). 
Suklje also discusses the hero's need to fill the aching void left by the incompe-
tence to stick to religious beliefs based on puritanism, which Faulkner does by clinging 
to nature and to virtues characteristic of Christianity. A few of them are mentioned by 
the critic: love, compassion and self-sacrifice. A sum of all can clearly be seen through 
Faulkner' s writing about the South, the emblems and dilemmas of which are confronted 
directly, openly and without prejudice. Suklje claims that ifFaulkner's Jefferson stands 
for the whole South, than the South represents the whole world and it is "through their 
mistakes and delusions that the writer's faith is shown -faith in man who is 'reparable' 
and therefore worth being shown his deformed face in a mirror" (Suklje 1962: 275). 
In the same year Janka Kos wrote a long preface to the Slovene translation of 
Light in August. In it he sees Faulkner as an important author writing in the stream-of-
consciousness technique (along with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf), he has praise for 
his writing techniques used in the novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, 
namely internal monologue, indirect internal monologue, soliloquy and an omniscient 
narrator. Kos states that in Light in August direct inner monologue was substituted by 
indirect inner monologue that pervades the narrative. According to Kos "the authors' 
attitude towards physical material is not only objectively refreshing or just impartial [ ... ] 
it is actively involved or even participating" (Kos 1962, 10), thus making these passages 
18 
subjective in nature. A traditional approach to narration is rejected, time and place in 
Faulkner' s novel represent a frame inside which everything is included. 
A detailed account of the novel's themes and characters follows, Kos states that 
Light in August is "a combination of opposites, tensions and thrusts, everything in it is 
in constant movement and plotting" (Kos 1962, 19-20). Joe Christmas and people who 
suffer like him could only be saved through understanding based on forgiveness and 
love. He points out that all Faulkner's thinking is set in belief that man's salvation lies 
in closeness with society. Racial dilemmas that pervade the main character's life (and 
the narrative as such) serve as "a fa\:ade [ ... ]that in itself is only a curtain[ ... ] behind 
which real human conflicts can be found" (Kos 1962, 37). 
Women's principle is introduced through Lena whose calm posture, strength 
and patience help her in life. She does not give up and she resembles mother nature. 
Kos believes that Faulkner presents both, female and male principles in the novel, the 
author's attitude is "conservative and even patriarchal" (Kos 1962, 41). Society plays an 
important role in an individual's life for peace, life energy and forgiveness of sins can 
be found in it, a person's destiny is shaped with the help of this very same society. Kos 
ends his preface by establishing that Faulkner manages to answer some basic questions 
of human existence in Light in August. 
As already mentioned, Faulkner's presentation of the American South is based 
on the intertwining of time entities where past and present collide, mix and together 
constitute a significant part of heroes' lives and of the Southern society in general. 
The structural combining of events from the past with those from the present enables 
Faulkner to shift the time frame constantly between the two and to surpass the linear 
and chronological sequence of events. Mirko Jurak, who wrote two articles on Faulkner 
and his work (in 1979 and in 1985), in his article "Tragika modernega cloveka v romanu 
Williama Faulknerja Krik in bes" (The Tragedy of Modern Man in William Faulkner's 
Novel The Sound and the Fury) examines the subject in detail, saying that for Faulkner 
"there is almost not a simple, linear time period, but there is - for his narrative so typi-
cal - retreat into the past about which he talks from either past or present perspective 
and from it highlights both, future and present" (Jurak 2001: 57). It is precisely for these 
reasons that the present is multilayered and closely connected to and intertwined with the 
past, Faulkner's characters being a product of a society of a certain period. Dilemmas, 
anxieties, wishes and needs of Quentin Compson, for example, are typical of a young 
male born in Jefferson in the American South around 1890. His problems arise from 
childhood experience, from his parents' attitude toward him, from racially and socially 
divided Southern society and from its attitude toward traditional values. It can be noticed 
that Quentin is an individuum but still - his story is only a part of a much bigger and 
more universal story that could be applied and understood widely; as a modern man's 
fate. It is in a similar way that Ike Mccaslin from "The Bear" denies his past and the 
cruel heritage from his ancestors. The action is deeply rooted in the society he grew up 
in (elderly parents, boy's spiritual leader and father Sam Fathers) and in his ancestors' 
doings known to him from tales (grandfather manhandling his own mulatto daughter and 
treating her like sexual property). Jurak states that both of the above-mentioned stories 
serve as an example of a wider and more universal problem which arouses considerable 
interest among the reading public. 
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As already seen, a critical response to Faulkner in Slovenia did not come before 
1950s, the same was true for translations of his novels. Another interesting feature is 
that many interviews with Faulkner were also translated into Slovene and appeared in 
the foremost Slovene newspapers and magazines. They described Faulkner's techniques 
and creative process as a whole, thus shaping the Slovene writers' literary opinions and 
efforts. And indeed, quite a few major Slovene authors adopted at least some Faulknerian 
literary methods. 
The first Slovene author to show the influence of these methods was Prezihov 
Voranc (1893-1950), the foremost representative of Slovene social realism. His major 
topics of interest were the hardships of peasant and proletarian families in his native 
Carinthia (Koroska). His attitude towards the subject is critical and intertwined with all 
its social and economic peculiarities, all set in a certain historical frame. One of the key 
instruments is played by the war (the Great War), parallels with Faulkner's Civil War 
can clearly be seen. Carinthia - in the same way as the American South in Faulkner 
- represents the background against which the struggles of a simple man are set, the 
characteristics of the specific region, its people, their way ofliving, acting and speaking 
is of utmost importance for it exercises a strong influence on the heroes. 
Voranc's novels Pozganica (1939), Doberdob (1940) and Jamnica (1945), which 
bear highly symbolic geographical names practically untranslatable into English, rep-
resent a complex social and historical entity of life in Carinthia between the two wars. 
All the novels are told by numerous narrators who "carry the events where the com-
munity's destiny is decided upon and where this destiny is a part of historical process" 
(Kos 1991: 399). 
The cyclic structure of the narrative can clearly be seen in Doberdob, a collective 
war novel where military life behind the front is depicted rather stoically, because Voranc 
avoids the discussion of battlefields as epic places. In his article entitled "Faulknerian 
Literary Techniques in Contemporary Slovene Fiction" Igor Maver noted parallels 
between Doberdob and The Sound and the Fury for both the authors "did not develop 
the situation by incorporating it into a simple linear plot; [they] circled round and round 
it, looking at it from different poins of view, allowing new depth and meaning to be 
revealed with each new episode" (Maver 1993: 169). 
Jamnica deals with the curse of the land and represents tragic life-stories of people 
belonging to all spheres of society. It is set between 1920 and 1935 - at the time of the 
economic crisis. The author sends a clear message that money dehumanizes people and 
makes them morally, socially and generically crippled. A comparison with materialistic 
Jason (and a part of society that shares his opinions) from The Sound and the Fury is 
obvious. Voranc and Faulkner both share the view that materially-striven individuals 
end up morally and ethically destroyed by forces such as violence, brutality, alienation, 
self-deceit, obsession, imprudence. 
Literary style that appears in Jamnica is similar to Faulkner's The Sound and 
the Fury, both being characterized by clear, straightforward style that rests on personal 
(mainly love) destinies of the heroes. The heroes of the two novels are characterized by an 
untamable, violent, instinctive (sexual) world that forces them to speak with gestures and 
deeds rather than words. These people are the people of the region that have been isolated 
and socially self-contained for centuries. They are caught in the society surrounding 
20 
them, their destinies are written and determined by their own personal, biological and 
psychological attributes and qualities. The influence of environment and society with 
its expectations regarding the roles people play should not be overlooked as well. 
The second wave of Faulkner's influence on Slovene literature started in the late 
fifties with Ciril Kosmac (1910-1980). His novel Balada o trobenti in oblaku (The Bal-
lad about the Trumpet and the Cloud, 1957) thematically still belongs to the sphere of 
social realism, although Kosmac uses associative, memory and stream-of-consciousness 
technique, typical of Faulkner, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. In his morally-charged 
text Kosmac disapproves of violence and has praise for struggle and sacrifice for oth-
ers. Various stories are interwoven (about a lonely struggle of a determined old man 
and his brave wife, about a weak man, and about the strength and weakness of literary 
creation) and different times and places introduced. It is narrated in a typical humor-
ous style and filled with reflections, grotesque, fantastic and audio-visual elements. 
But - as Igor Maver believes - "despite the introduction of formal and stylistic innova-
tions, [Kosmac's writing] still cannot be considered the true beginning of modernism 
in Slovenia" (Maver 1993: 170). 
Lojze KovaCic (1928-2004) represents modern psychologistic Slovene fiction 
which subjectivizes dreams, visions, symbols, generally the entire inner psychological 
world of Man. Events are described in first person - in the same way as the young man 
experiences them: directly and with all the details and abilities of memory. There are 
plain facts, everyday reality is presented - such as seen by the hero in his conscious-
ness, i., e. with memory laps and jumps, dreams, visions and presumptions. Stream-
of-consciousness technique is used (compare Faulkner), it is realistic, matter-of-fact, 
his prose is autobiographical, it could be said that it is a declaration, an opinion and 
a monologue about one's own self. Reality is presented in its purest form, language 
is genuine and real, descriptions prevail, dialogues are scarce. It feels as if the hero's 
internal monologue moves from matter-of-fact descriptions to poetics. It is these very 
characteristics that link together the novel Deeek in smrt (The Boy and Death, 1968) 
with modernism. 
Still more significant is Dominik Smole (1929-1992) in his psychological cyclic 
novel Crni dnevi in beli dan (Black Days and Broad Daylight, 1958), which shows the 
adoption of several Faulknerian techniques. Apart from the cyclic narrative structure, 
which ensures that almost identical and only slightly modified stories reappear on vari-
ous levels, there is also the 'mad' narrator, the 'prompter' of the protagonists who now 
and then intervenes »in the [protagonists'] action and reduces them to puppets, further 
soliloquy, cinematic montage, involuntary memory, limited omniscient narration, etc.« 
(Maver 1993: 170). Inner states of individuals are presented and the novel is based 
on the main characters' consciousness. Thus everyday dull life is shown through an 
unnamed painter and professor of painting, through unsuccessful actress Maru8a and 
through the little whisperer. The novel can aesthetically and stylistically be described 
as Faulknerian. 
The final consideration ofFaulkner's influence on Slovene literature shows a strong 
and somewhat delayed influence of Faulknerian literary techniques on the novels of 
Rudi Seligo in the late sixties (1935-2004). He deals with an individual's destiny, their 
intimate experience and universal existential, moral and erotic problems that surpass the 
21 
limits of time. Seligo uses his novels and short stories to describe young people, work-
ers and employees, whose problems are shown through the hero's consciousness and 
through perception of the world around her. Triptih Agate Schwarzkobler (The Tryptych 
of Agatha Schwarzkobler, 1968) is written in a consistent reistic manner where Agata's 
moves and deeds are followed as if by video camera. 
In conclusion it can be said that the literary influence of William Faulkner in 
Slovenia was quite significant. The lively critical response in Slovenia as discussed in 
the article - both, about author's life and about his work have proven an inexhaustible 
subject matter that has captivated the readers' imagination. In such a way also Slovene 
readers could get to know one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and at the 
same time form an opinion about the author, his heroes, about the American South of 
the past and of the present and, last but not least, about themselves and about the world 
they live in. 
Slovene authors of the 1950s and 1960s partly followed Faulkner regarding his 
subject matter and themes as well as writing technique and style: cyclic structures 
and stream-of-consciousness technique were adopted in their work, the latter being 
particularly decisive in forging the new Slovene modernist fiction that had started to 
emerge from the late 1960s onwards. These authors introduced heroes who depend on 
the society's demands and expectations, who are in constant battle with themselves and 
the environment, much the same as in Faulkner's writing. 
Ljubljana, Slovenia 
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1951: 4. 
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Note: All the translations from Slovene sources were done by the author of this article. 
The article is partly based on the author's Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Professor Igor Maver. 
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