Interview: Slovenian Poets
‘Europe is caught in an ethical crisis’
The Odd Magazine caught up with a group of four poets from Slovenia who visited Kolkata last winter. Iztok Osojnik, Barbara Korun, Alenka Jovanovski and Tone Skrjanec had talks at the Indian Museum, Alliance Francaise and Jadavpur University. Here are excerpts from our conversation.
From Left: Iztok Osojnik, Barbara Korun, Tone Skrjanec and Alenka Jovanovski
Odd: Tell us about the poetry culture in Slovenia.
Alenka and Iztok: Poetry enabled us to bring forwards the feelings of independency, sovereignty, our cultural and historic identity, and played a very important role till we suddenly became independent. Then various new socio-political and economic tendencies took over. Slovenia, despite being a tiny country, is rich with cultural diversity. Slovenian culture further flourished during the socialist regime when the government strongly backed creative exercises. Rabindranath Tagore’s humanitarian views, too, had greatly influenced some of the major Slovenian poets, including Srečko Kosovel. Tagore’s birthday is celebrated every year there.
Odd: What were pros and cons of culture being funded by the State? What did it seek in exchange?
Iztok: Sponsoring culture and sport and various kinds of creative activity was part of the agenda during the socialist regime. Art was considered very important. Yes, you should not take them for criticism. They were adverse to political criticisms. But on every other aspect of life, we could really express ourselves freely. There were no fencings around. You could go anywhere, come back anytime, could easily have your passports done and even accept international donations.
Alenka: Yugoslavia was a buffer zone between Western capitalism and Communism. That was kind of an advantageous situation. However, during the neo-liberal regime that sponsorship level is decreasing day by day.
Odd: What happened after Slovenia became Independent?
Alenka: From a huge country of Yugoslavia, we became a tiny one of only 2 million people. We found ourselves amid fenced gardens, among yourselves. There was lack of infrastructure to generate economy. These were created in various forms. The educational system that was inherited from the socialist regime was going well until a few years ago. Then, it started It is in disaster now and the social care is vanishing fast.
Iztok: In the 1950s, a writer who has got a 16-page book published used to get an amount equivalent of two months’ salary. Over the past five decades, the amount is now 20 times less. And in political programmes, culture has vanished.
Odd: What is unique about Slovenian culture?
Iztok: Influence of four great cultures. The Ottoman, Germans, Slavek, Roman – we are the living proof of multicultural existence. It is this cultural diversity that binds us. We have living experiences with a variety of culture prevailing
across Europe. That is why Slovenia is more tolerant to Muslim immigrants than most of Europe.
Odd: Political tension is quite evident in many of your works that we read. It seems like you are living on a disturbed territory. We also got a sense of identity crisis.
Barbara: I’m not sure if there are identity crises. I try to trace my personal and historical past. I hold diverse identities in myself. I have tried to explore in my poetry the relation between me and the society. The way Slovenia put wires on the face of the refugees, the wires are symbols of the mental condition in our society. There is less and less money and will to do good for the public. The social state is withdrawing. There is great pressure on every individual to survive. The form of socialism that we had had taken care of the basic necessities. But now, the quality of life has drastically descended.
Iztok: The migration crises have got us faced with an immense humanitarian problem. The country is taking moves to tighten border controls because it lacks the strength to accommodate this huge number of immigrants. But the action has huge humanitarian cost and we are confronting an ethical crisis. It is disturbing to see our country closing its borders on the face of hapless people queuing up for an entry.
Odd: Is Alenka’s posing nature as a foil to the disturbances that is outside?
Alenka: The observation about nature is not true for all my poems. And I don’t think nature is something where we come to take refuge from the socio-political tension. Instead, nature itself is part of socio-economic politics. Let me tell you a story. We have several springs of mineral water in our country. Our politicians sold all of them to multinational companies for about 100 years. We cannot escape the fact that nature itself is in danger.
Barbara: Yes, everywhere. We are destroying the planet.
Odd: Is this why ‘the soft shirt’ becomes Tony’s homeland? And we get pink plastic flowers forget everything else?
Tone: You see, the soft shirt is better than the pink plastic flower. I never developed the idea of comfort. The soft shirt is kind of a homeland because the other homeland I have – the socio-political-economic situation of Europe – is the one I no longer identify with.
Odd: What according to you is central to the Slovenian identity?
Iztok: The question of identity is not longer necessary. Rather, it’s essentially a regressive idea. It’s a 19th century invention. It was very important to their time. People needed to recognise in their societies something unique, especially in the face of the eternal colonial situation. Development of nationalistic ideas became necessary for them. But now, any kind of identity of that sort is essentially regressive because we live in a global world which ought not to have isolated groups. We have to find our equality on different levels. There is no identity crisis because there is no identity in the first place.
Odd: Barbara said she is a staunch feminist. We would want to hear from her about the state of women in Slovenia.
Barbara: They are the worst sufferers of the present crisis. Majority of them are really struggling because unemployment rate is highest among women. The men are working 10-12 hours a day and women are home. Even the educated ones can’t get jobs. Employers prefer not to take them to avoid maternity leaves and issues related to the child. So, we have the classic situation that prevailed a century ago.
DUST
By Tone Škrjanec
there were some average dreams.
there were two long waves, which were.
they were of the type that were cutting the lake.
there was some night, it was completely silent,
actually everything was closed,
no problems,
everybody was healthy, no cancers,
no similar deadly troubles,
just the usual fucking, and none of the who loves who,
who stuck what and where into who,
it was truly beautiful, it was a long smooth lake,
tiny colourful lights everywhere,
there were two grayish pigeons, a bunch of ducks, they were black
with white beaks, and a flock of tomtits on our balcony,
5-10 fluttering grams. my body aches.
I won’t say anything, I won’t speak,
my peace is the silence of the guilty one, darkness outside,
it’s cold, and who cares, I care,
it’s not all the same to me, my muscles ache,
my body is telling me something,
some old story which everybody knows,
I know it too, atleast I have a hunch
on some slightly metaphysical level.
nothing is serious to me, my body is the one I rent,
I don’t feel like being anything.
I feel awful, I sit in a car and feel awful,
it’s totally silent, perhaps that’s why,
just the engine can be heard and the breathing.
to me a lot doesn’t mean that much. To me a lot of self-admiring giants
are just weak Arabic version of a Saturday walk,
to me sometimes being small means a lot,
that I’m actually forever infinitely small,
it hurts me when my dearest ones think
I can handle electricity, all those trivial installations,
that sit silent and listening isn’t a statement
and that I like to be lost in thoughts, go silent, that everyday vanities are inborn to me,
and I let them be just a funny obsession,
that dust on objects is a serious matter that doesn’t forgive,
tyhat the world is becoming a more simple-minded idea with each passing day,
and unfortunately not just the fact that everything happens by the way,
a little remark, a few camels, some tiny animals,
a barely sensible perception of something that was never quite for real.
I’m the one that stood by some grave the other day
it was the same grave from years ago, when I wa talking
nonsense somewhere inside of me;
look, look what is happening to me, but nothing did,
almost nothing special, just we were dying piece by piece.wWe were standing there and the world wasn’t waiting, it was just there
somewhere,
like some fucking eternity that knows everything, that understands everything
but in fact doesn’t get it at all. It’s cold outside and there’s snow
snd I wish I was happy but it somehow doesn’t work,
something always gets in the way, it happens all the time, always these structures,
even though we are always beautiful, we always have our naked body
which glitters like a star.
always beautiful as a star.
and I don’t want to go home.
MONIKA LEWINSKY, A YOUNG INTERN TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
Washington, D.C., 20TH Century
By Barbara Korun
Your esteemed dick, Mister President,
is absolutely stunning. Don’t take me wrong, but consider this:
I’m touching the sacred power of my homeland,
The world’s greatest, most prominent.
In kindergarten, my mom
already told me:
Monica, you were born for greatness!
Don’t take me wrong, Sir, but your cock
is phenomenal! Majestic, well hung,
furiously rising, a pure throbbing power!
With a tender skin, quivering, so vulnerable
In its prowess. My breasts, bursting
with patriotic ardour:
I’d give my life to liberate it, to set it free!
I’m on the verge of bursting into tears.
Just like on my first day of school, when they raised
the American flag. All my past, my unhappy mother,
my father abandoning us, me, unable
to jump over the jump rope in the courtyard – all of these
has melted away, vanished
in one fantastic vision: to serve God and my country!
God, who has chosen
us to be carriers of His message:
universal love. He chose us, young Americans,
and you, our paterfamilias.
Oh, my teenage dreams are finally becoming true,
this is what I was born for
when I scribbled big
on the covers of my school notebooks:
America, here I come!
HOW THE BIRCH TREE LIVES
For Simona KopinŠek
By Alenka Jovanovski
Behind your parents’ house, at the top of the hill
when the wind has spoken.
Your wind, imprinting in its flow,
the wind that never flees.
You said: >>The birch is my favourite, <<
the softest, finest,
Venus’s tree that shivers for the ones that cannot,
each time the double beds groan in the dark
swallowing muffled cries, gulping back tears,
those tender, unrelenting fine hairs sweep off the dust.
Only because it’s embroidered with sun
it doesn’t succumb to the flickering shadows,
It doesn’t attack them (even that would be violence),
but fastens them to itself till they loosen their grip.
It pins them to space lengthening them
into infinitely thin strings.
This is birch’s testament.
If she dances she dances for balance.
If she stays she stays to make audible
glittering into transformation.
>>Hello, birch,<< you said,
And the roots took the left and right side
And removing flesh they unclasped my ribs.
What was disclosed can’t be clothed in words.
We share it whenever it comes.
SPRING IN NICARAGUA
for Jane McKie, who polited my English
By Iztok Osojnik,
1
for three days she hasn’t written any poems
And she has this terrible headache that nothing is wrong with me
A contemporary poet works on a project
And her project considers freedom without power
So I went up there on a volcano Mombacho, it was thursday I think
I drove up an old Mercedes benz truck
Full of coffee beans
So, what else is new? There are many interesting poetesses here
But when dancing i danced all by myself. You wait until 2 a.m. and
Then in one of the back alleys you lift your skirts
And do a kind of flamenco for those who committed suicide
In filip’s poem. A tower of suicides in his poem reminds one of the response of andy
Warhol to the widespread critical claim that his art is not serious enough. Death
Is not serious, only violence is and nobody would commit a suicide
when not forced to do it. Even in a poem. I see it as gestures of speech
Filled up with some cotton shirts and maybe, maybe, maybe a tiny bit of anger
Parrésia is the word of the day of the week of the month of the century
Or even better of the event
To be frank this poem has not developed into what it did not hope it would
But then none of them do
The same happens with relationships