Matej Bor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matej Bor in the 1930s

Matej Bor [matéj bòr] was the pseudonym of Vladimir Pavšič (born April 14, 1913 in Grgar, Nova Gorica , † September 29, 1993 in Laibach ), a communist Slovenian poet , translator , journalist and Yugoslav partisan in World War II .

Life

Matej Bor was born as Vladimir Pavšič in the village of Gargaro (ital. Gargano, Slov. Grgar) in what is now the Slovenian Isonzo Valley near Gorizia in the then Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca in the province of coastal land of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a place that is today part the Slovenian Občina (municipality) Nova Gorica is. After the area fell to Italy after the fall of the Habsburg Empire in 1920, the family moved to Cilli , where Vladimir Pavšič attended high school. He then studied Slovenian and Slavic philology at the Ljubljana University until 1937, then worked in Marburg an der Drau as a journalist and then for a year as a teacher in the Gottscheer Land .

Resistance fighters

When the Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia in the Balkan campaign in April 1941, he fled from Marburg, which was occupied by the Germans, to Laibach, which was occupied by the Germans, and in the summer of the same year joined the communist-led partisan resistance of the Slovenian Osvobodilna Fronta (OF), where he worked in the field of culture and propaganda worked and distinguished himself as one of the most important poets of the OF Liberation Front. Several of his battle songs became immensely popular, and his Heißa, Brigaden! became the unofficial Slovenian partisan anthem. The first use of the pseudonym Matej Bor , under which he continued to write and was known even after the end of the war , also fell during this time .

The partisan "Nina" (Erna Jamer), a Slavist like him, became his wife. In Hornwald the Gottschee, where in 1942 the leadership of the Osvobodilna Fronta, the High Command of the Slovene partisan, printers and other technical infrastructure and also in accordance with the resettlement of the German population almost deserted area Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia were, they were together the violent attacks by the Italians. Due to a serious illness, Bor had to go to Ljubljana and hide there for a while. After the capitulation of Italy , he was given the job of chief propaganda officer of the XV. Division of the partisan army, which he performed brilliantly. He also wrote some of Bor's most beautiful poems, painful love poems, after his wife died in November 1943 in a battle with the Catholic and anti-communist Slovenian Domobranzen , which were cooperating with the German Wehrmacht ; the painful poems caused by his personal loss were, however, not conducive to propaganda work. After the end of the war, however, Matej Bor was awarded the honorary majors rank of the new Yugoslav People's Army ( Jugoslovenska narodna armija or Slovenian Jugoslovanska ljudska armada ) because of his achievements and merits .

Publicist and Activist

In 1944 he went to Belgrade , which had just been liberated by units of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army , where he worked in the Slovenian department of Radio Free Yugoslavia with fellow authors Igo Gruden , Edvard Kocbek and Anton Ingolič . In 1945 he returned to Ljubljana and devoted himself to writing and literary translation from English and German, activities that were honored by being awarded the highest Slovenian award for cultural work, the Prešeren Prize, in 1947 and 1952. In 1965 he was honored with membership in the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts , and in the 1960s and 1970s he was also long-time President of the Slovenian PEN Club , a position that was not an easy one as the PEN organization was a thorn in the eyes of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia , which was the centralist Yugoslav Communist Party, which suspected cleavage approaches in its own Slovenian PEN section.

During the period of Tito communism , the highly respected Matej Bor often used his influence to help dissidents and also supported several movements that ran counter to the official party line. Bor caused a considerable stir in the 1960s when he publicly criticized the imprisonment of the Serbian writer Mihajlo Mihajlov (1934-2010). Bor was also one of the main pioneers of the Slovenian environmental movement in the early 1970s and campaigned for the preservation and preservation of Slovenia's cultural heritage, for example by fighting against the demolition of historic Ljubljana buildings such as the Peter Kosler House. He also directed the platform for the rehabilitation of the victims of the Stalinist show trials in Slovenia - the Slovenian Dachau trials of 1947/48 - and in 1984 he helped the author Igor Torkar (pseudonym of Boris Fakin) to publish a novel in which the author processed his experiences of twelve years imprisonment in the island concentration camp of Goli otok , to which the former Dachau prisoner was sentenced after his return as an alleged Gestapo agent in 1948.

Descendant of the Venetians?

In the eighties Matej Bor turned to the ancient Venetian theory , which Jožko Šavli took up again, and tried to use Slovenian dialect words to prove that the pre-Roman Venetian inscriptions in northern Italy and on the Carinthian Gurina plateau are proof that the Slovenes are by no means immigrant Slavs, but rather Slavic descendants of those Venetians. Bor like Šavli and also Ivan Tomažič saw themselves accordingly as their descendants, as they explained in a joint book that also appeared in a German translation in Vienna. Since none of the proponents of this hypothesis had the necessary linguistic or historical scientific prerequisites for such a work, Slovenian and international philologists and historians quickly and flatly dismissed such ideas as the fantasies of amateurs, but the claims and apparent evidence found in certain circles of Slovenia such as Also enthusiastic reception in Slovenian emigrant circles in Australia, Argentina, Canada or the USA and with easily convincing book reviewers:

“We learn that Slovene dialect in particular offers the missing key for a meaningful understanding of Venetian, Phrygian , Rhaetian and Iapodic inscriptions and even allows a partial reconstruction of Venetian grammar. The task had escaped all previous venetologists in a superficial way, and for his pioneering work the reviewer would like to propose Matej Bor as a candidate for acclaimed academic applause. […] Before Bor's work, there were views of the Venetian language, which are reflected in 200 short inscriptions from the five centuries BC. Chr. [...] is preserved, far apart, [...] since no venetologist had a thorough knowledge of the Slovene dialect. But this is precisely where the genius of Bor's contribution lies. (From English) "

Elsewhere the same author says: “We stand on the threshold of a new world of knowledge regarding the prehistory of Europe and the Mediterranean”, and boldly concludes that Bor's decipherment of those rune-like Venetian inscriptions

"Have the potential to upgrade the assessment of Slovenian linguistics in such a way that one day those Alpine dialects may be collectively welcomed as the 'mother of the Slavic languages'."

At the same time, however, the enthusiastic author admits:

"I'm really just an innocent academic bystander whose only interest is to learn a little more about early European prehistory."

Unconditional approval also from Australia:

"The Slovenian linguist Matej Bor [...] claimed that the origin of 'Venet' [...] was actually 'Slo-venet' (Slovenets = a male Slovene), derived from 'slovo' (word) or 'sloviti' (to speak) . This form has been preserved to this day. [...] The fact that Germans still use the word 'Wenden' ('Venedi') for their Slavic neighbors confirms the connection between the two terms. […] Based on the premise that the Adriatic Venetians spoke Proto-Slovene […] he discovered many words in the inscriptions buried over two millennia that are still in use in Slovene dialects, as well as those that are present in modern literary Slovene and clearly represent derivatives. […] For years Matej Bor had studied the problem of the Venetian writing. Contrary to the prevailing doctrine, he did not believe in an Italian, but a Slavic origin of the Venetian language. […] The Venetian language was Old Slavic, or more precisely Proto-Slovenian, a predecessor of modern Slovenian. A linguistic continuity from the Adriatic Venetians to today's Slovenian is therefore now certain. "(From English)

The thought that the discovered similarities might be partly Indo-European root kinship due to an Indo-European original language , partly lexical or semantic borrowings from substrate languages , partly pure coincidence, partly also arbitrarily assumed sound changes, is evident in these circles hardly anyone came. Matej Bor, however, played a prominent role in the subsequent controversy, which, however, basically centered on the Slovenian view of history by Jožko Šavli.

Literary man

Before that, however, Bor had published a number of collections of poetry that made him probably the most important Slovenian poet of the second half of the 20th century. During his activity in the resistance, an underground publisher of the partisan army published 5,000 copies of its first collection, Previharimo viharje (for example: “We must defy the storm”) as the first anti-fascist poetry to appear in print in occupied Europe. In 1959, Šel je popotnik skozi atomski vek ( meaning “A wanderer went through the atomic age”), an apocalyptic reflection on environmental disasters, was published. The book went through several editions and was translated several times, which led to a certain awareness of Bor outside of Yugoslavia. Bor's writings have now appeared in more than a dozen languages ​​and nearly 1,000 copies are in international libraries.

Bor also wrote twelve plays, wrote the screenplay for a film ( Vesna , 1954) and also devoted a considerable part of his creative power to children and young people through literary works specially intended for young people and as a regular contributor to children's and youth magazines not only in his home country , but also from Mali Rod from Klagenfurt or The Voice of Youth in Chicago.

As a literary translator he conveyed William Shakespeare ( Richard III , Henry V ) to his homeland .

Publications

Poetry

  • Previharimo viharje ("We must defy the storm", 1942; expanded new edition under the title Na Partizanski Straži , i.e. "On Partisan Watch").
  • Pesmi ("Poems", 1944).
  • Pesmi ("Poems", 1946).
  • Bršljan nad jezom ("Ivy over the dam") 1951 LCCN 55022217.
  • Sled naših senc (“The trace of our shadows”, 1958).
  • V poletni travi . ("In the summer grass", 1963).
  • Podoknice tišini (“Serenades to Silence”, 1983).
  • Med viharji in tišino ("In the storm and quiet". Poems, 1988).
  • Sto manj en epigram ("Hundred Less an Epigram", 1985).

Stage plays

  • Raztrganci ("People in Rags". 1944).
  • Teška vra (" Hard Times", 1946 or Teški časovi , 1948).
  • Bele vode. Vesela pesnitev iz davnih dni. ("White waters. A happy poetry from days gone by", 1950).
  • Vrnitev Blažonovih - Koleze zeme ("The return of the Blaschon wheels of darkness", 1954).
  • Šola noči (“The School of the Night”).
  • Zvezde so večne (“Stars are forever”, 1971).

Youth literature

  • Uganke ('Rätsel', 1951).
  • Slike in pesmi o živalih ('Pictures and Songs of Animals', 1956).
  • Sračje sodišče ali je, kar je ('The court of ravens or what happens, happens', 1961).
  • Pesmi za Manjo ('Songs for Manja', 1985).
  • Ropotalo in ptice ('The Scarecrow and the Birds', 1985).
  • Palčki - pihalčki ('dwarfs', 1991).

Art and factual prose

  • Daljave ("Distant Places", 1971).
  • Odloženi (“ That you no longer need”, 1980).
  • Kritika ("Critique", 1961).
  • Preface to Igor Torkar: Umiranje na obroke (“Death in installments”, 1984).
  • with Jožef Šavli: Our ancestors, the Venetians. Edited by Ivan Tomažič, Ed. Veneti, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-85013-110-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pages 31–46 of the general map of Central Europe 1: 200,000 of the Franzisco-Josephinische Landesaufnahme, Austria-Hungary, from 1887
  2. ↑ Ines Mihev: MATEJ BOR, one of the Founders of the Environmentalists Movements in Slovenia . (PDF; 329 kB) Dravograd (Unterdrauburg) 2009, p. 6 (English, accessed November 1, 2010)
  3. ↑ Ines Mihev: Matej boron , p.7
  4. ^ Information on the website of the Ministry of Culture of Slovenia
  5. ^ Prešerenov Sklad . ( Memento of March 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 80 kB) List of the Prešeren Prize winners of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, accessed on November 1, 2010
  6. ↑ Braving Life's Bitter Sorrows . ( Memento of April 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Slovenia News , December 16, 2003. Retrieved on November 1, 2010.
  7. ↑ Igor Torkar: Umiranje na obroke (d. I. Death on installments ). Delo, Laibach 1984.
  8. ↑ Roland Steinacher: Studies on Vandal History: Equating the ethnonyms Wends, Slavs and Vandals from the Middle Ages to the 18th century . Diss. Univ. Vienna 2002
  9. ^ Matej Bor, Jožko Šavli, Ivan Tomažič: Veneti: naši davni predniki. Ljubljana, Maribor 1989
    Ivan Tomažič (ed.): Our ancestors, the Venetians . Ed. Veneti, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-85013-110-6
  10. ↑ z. B.
    • Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič: The Dissolution of the Slavic Identity of the Slovenes in the 1980s: The Case of the Venetic Theory. Central European University, Budapest 2008;
      Tom MS Priestly: Vandals, Veneti, Windischer: The Pitfalls of Amateur Historical Linguistics . In: Slovene Studies , 19, 1/2 (1997) pp. 3–41
    • Zlatko Skrbiš: 'The First Europeans Fantasy' of Slovenian Venetologists: Emotions and Nationalist Imaginings. In: M. Svasek: Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions . Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, New York 2006
    • Peter Štih: Avtohtonistične in podobne teorije pri Slovencih in na Slovenskem . In: Andreas Moritsch (ed.): Karantanien - Ostarrichi: 1001 Myth. Unlimited history / Zgodovina brez meja 5 , Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Vienna 1997, pp. 47–49.
  11. ↑ Zlatko Skrbiš: The Emotional Historiography of Venetologists: Slovene Diaspora, Memory and Nationalism. In: European Journal of Anthropology , 39, 2002, pp. 41-56
  12. ^ Charles Bryant-Abraham: Review of Veneti: First Builders of European Community. Tracing the History and Language of Early Ancestors of Slovenes by Jozko Šavli, Matej Bor, Ivan Tomazic [sic!]. In: The Augustan Society . 111 (Vol. 26,3), December 1999, pp. 16-22, (§ 3.5)
  13. ^ A b c Charles Bryant-Abraham: Refinements and Future Directions in Venetic Scholarship. (PDF; 211 kB) TheSlovenian.com, accessed November 1, 2010
  14. ↑ Aleksandra Cefarin: The enigma of Venetic culture . Webzine Sloveniana. Institute for Slovenian Studies of Victoria, Melbourne
  15. ↑ Rado Lencek: The Linguistic premises of Matej Bor's Slovene-Venetic Theory . In: Slovene Studies 12, 1 (1990.) pp. 75-86
  16. ↑ Ines Mihev: Matej boron , p. 7
  17. ^ WorldCat Identities
personal data
SURNAME Bor, Matej
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pavšič, Vladimir
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovenian poet, journalist and partisan
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Grgar, Nova Gorica
DATE OF DEATH 29th September 1993
Place of death Laibach