Slavko Grum

Slavko Grum (born August 2, 1901 in Šmartno pri Litiji [St. Martin bei Littai] , Austria-Hungary , † August 3, 1949 in Zagorje , Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia ) was a Slovenian playwright and prose writer .

life and work

Slavko Grum was born the third child of a working-class family, his father was a foreman in the leather factory in Šmartno . In search of better earning opportunities, the family moved to Novo mesto in 1906 , where Slavko started school and later also graduated from high school. Because of his age, Grum was no longer drafted into military service. From autumn 1919 he studied medicine in Vienna , where he became a passionate theater-goer and supporter of psychoanalysis . After completing his doctorate in 1926, Grum returned to Slovenia , but was spared military service in the SHS state due to a heart defect. He completed the cycle in Ljubljana and established himself as a general practitioner in Zagorje in 1929. In 1933 he also took over the official supervision of the health system in Banschaft ( Banovina ) Zagorje, in his now official function he developed a lively lecture activity. His addiction to morphine, which went back to his student days in Vienna, worsened during the occupation of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers , as did his alcoholism, which is why Grum was sent to Graz by the German occupation authorities for forced withdrawal . The last years of his life are marked by mental and physical decline. In 1946 Grum attempted suicide, in 1948 an inoperable cancer was diagnosed, from which he died miserably. Slavko Grum died the day after his 48th birthday in the isolation ward at Zagorje Hospital.

Slavko Grum made his first literary steps as a high school student; he actually began to write in Vienna. The plays that were written in rapid succession from 1921 onwards have only been partially preserved. His first publication was a prose sketch that appeared in the Ljubljanski zvon in 1922 . From 1925 Grum published with some regularity in the features section of the daily newspaper Jutro . In 1927 he created his minidrama Upornik (The Rebel), in the same year he compiled a selection from his short prose under the title Beli azil (The White Asylum), for which, however, he could not find a publisher. Because of his contact with Vojtĕch Mĕrka , some of his stories first appeared in Slovak or Czech translation. In 1929 he took part in a drama competition in Belgrade with his play Dogodek v mestu Gogi (The event in the city of Goga) and received an award for it. For a short time, the author stepped out of literary isolation. In 1930 the text was published in Ljubljanski zvon, the world premiere at the National Theater in Maribor did not take place until 1931. For the selection of his short prose compiled in the same year under the title Izgubljeni sin (The Prodigal Son), Grum again failed to find a publisher. In 1935 his last fictional text Deček in blaznik (The boy and the madman) appeared, in 1940 his last ever published text, the popular scientific text Resnica o alkoholu (The truth about alcohol).

The writer Slavko Grum is assigned to literary expressionism in Slovenia , in terms of content he operates from an existentialist basic attitude, his characters are completely isolated, autistic beings, the artist appears as a “drawn person” who is constantly aware of the primary meaninglessness of existence . The central topic, which Grum also deals with in his popular science lectures, is the "escape from life" (in which suicide is only one option alongside sleep, hallucination, art, religion, drugs and illness) and the paradoxical envy of those who to hold on to life in agony on the others who have managed to escape. Slavko Grum was, even before Vladimir Bartol , the first Slovenian author to make literary use of the findings of psychoanalysis. Formally, his prose sketches are characterized by their concentrated fragmentation, his letters to Joža Debelak, published in 2001, prove to be literary notes. In terms of drama, too, Grum went beyond the genre boundaries and performance conventions customary at the time, the "drama scene" Upornik turned out to be a highly concentrated mini- drama . In Dogodek v mestu Gogi , Grum is the first Slovenian playwright to focus on the effect of simultaneous stage sets.

Publications (selection)

Drama

• Pierrot in Pierrette , 1921.
• Neusmiljeni odrešenik , 1921.
• Trudni zastori , 1924.
• Upornik , 1927.
• Dogodek v mestu Gogi, drama v dveh dejanjih , Ljubljanski z from 1930.

prose

• Goga. Proza in drame. Edited by Herbert Grün. Maribor, Obzorja 1957.
• Izbrano delo . Edited by Franc Zadravec. Ljubljana, Mladinska knjiga 1968. (Several editions.)
• Zbrano delo. 2 volumes. Ed. By Lado Kralj. Ljubljana, Državna založba Slovenije, 1976.
• Pisma Joži. Ed. By Lado Kralj. Maribor, Obzorja 2001.

In German: The white asylum. Collected prose . Translation from Slovenian, afterword Erwin Köstler . Ottensheim, Thanhäuser 2006.

swell

• Erwin Köstler: "You can only get to us over the canal. The Slovenian writer Slavko Grum." In: Slavko Grum: The white asylum. Collected prose. Ottensheim, Thanhäuser 2006, 161–171.
• Volker Strebel: "A Slovenian Franz Kafka. Slavko Grum opens secret wallpaper doors into a dream world full of loneliness and sober despair: there are no ways out." In: literaturkritik.de No. 9, September 2006, http://literaturkritik.de/id/9784
• "Mind work at Kampnagel." In: Hamburger Abendblatt v. September 13, 2001, https://www.abendblatt.de/archiv/2001/article204890537/Kopfarbeit-auf-Kampnagel.html

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Detailed biographical information in German in: Erwin Köstler: You can only come to us via the canal. The Slovenian writer Slavko Grum. In: Slavko Grum: The white asylum. Collected prose. Translated from the Slovenian by Erwin Köstler. Ottensheim, Thanhäuser 2006, 161–171.
2. ↑ cf. Köstler, You can only get to us via the canal, 163-164, 166-167.
3. ↑ cf. Köstler, You can only get to us via the canal, 164-166.
4. ↑ Grum's complete works appeared in two volumes in: Slavko Grum: Zbrano delo. 1-2. Ed. V. Ladko Kralj. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije 1976.