DISSOCIATION OF THE ROMANTIC SUBJECTIVITY IN THE POETRY OF SIMON JENKO BASED ON TRANSLATIONS OF MILORAD ŽIVANČEVIĆ

Abstract

In this paper  we analyse poetic cycles and poems of a post-romanticist Slovenian poet Simon Jenko (1835-1869) translated from the Slovenian into Serbian by dr. Milorad Živančević. As the founder and editor of the special edition Slovenian Literature in Matica srpska, professor Živančević published Jenko's collection Poetry and Prose in 1975 with an introduction of dr. France Bernik. This edition has gained a wide reception  both in  academic and scholar community and in the readership of the former Yugoslavia. The concept of the edition aimed to represent  canonical authors of the Slovenian literature from Protestant Reformation to the contemporary literary scene.

      Regarding the poetry of Simon Jenko we  discusse  types of his verse, form and style that is rooted in the oral tradition of the Slovenian poetry but is also comparable to the Serbian Romantic poets Branko Radičević, J. J. Zmaj, Djura Jakšić and partly Laza  Kostić, whish the translator also had in his mind. The apparent simplicity and ease of Jenko's  verse can be misleaded by the Serbian readers because he uses topoi and formulas of  the oral poetry in a subversive way, anticipating quite opposite meaning  than artistically demanding Romanticism of France Prešeren. In Jenko's lyrics  love has been presented as a current and short-lived, more as a daily experience of a subject that leads to disintegration and dissociation of Romantic eternal, idealistic love, approaching to Biedermeyer and early Realism on the one hand, and Impressionism on the other.