Abstract
Nineteenth-century European literatures witnessed the move from classical to modern writing (Barthes). Whereas the novel as a popular form of modern writing represented the national character of core literatures, peripheries instead grounded their nationhood on the epic as a genre of classical writing. Prešeren’s Byronic verse tale of 1836 illustrates a peripheral “modern epic” (Moretti). Fragmented, ambiguous, evoking the epic tradition, novelistic plot, and world history, it is about the compromise of an epic hero and his renunciation of the national cause. While Prešeren’s poem entered the canon as epitomizing the national “essence,” the first Slovenian novel, which in 1866 came across as a compromise between an international form and local perspective (Moretti’s formula), remained popular without being representative of the nation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Starting with the panoramic historical outline of the eighth-century religious combats among the Alpine Slavs in Carinthia and Carniola, the narrative zooms on the besieged Carniolan fortress Ajdovski gradec in the vicinity of the Lake Bohinj where the leader Črtomir, the protagonist, resists to the superior Christian army with a small troop of those faithful to the original Slavic religion. In a series of metafictional turns, the narrator reminds his nineteenth-century addressee about the present-day relics of Črtomir’s fortress and alludes to contemporary tensions within the Slovenian nation as well as the Slovenian relation to the German-speaking rulers and the Slavic world. Historically ornate by epic topoi (Homeric simile, the motives of siege and fratricidal battle in a storm, the patriotic address of the commander to his soldiers), the Introduction concludes with the total defeat of the pagan army, with Črtomir as the only survivor.
- 2.
Defeated and alone, his country having been destroyed and subjugated, Črtomir loses the sense of being and finds himself on the verge of suicide at the bank of the Lake Bohinj. A spontaneous memory of his beloved Bogomila, the former pagan priestess on the Isle of Bled, and images of their pre-war romance, however, avert Črtomir from the act of self-destruction and give him some hope of restoring his private happiness. When he finally meets Bogomila again, it turns out that in the meantime she, too, has converted to Christianity and taken vows out of her care for Črtomir. In resignation, Črtomir who has to renounce his erotic love to Bogomila and sublimate his desire tacitly accepts to be baptized at the Savica waterfall. He forever separates from Bogomila and becomes a Christian missionary stationed in Aquilea.
- 3.
For instance, the narrator uses oscillating designations of Črtomir (he is the youngest among the heroes that defend their country and yet “bears the guilt for all this slaying”) whereas motives with a key causal function in the narrative remain untold or ambiguous. The following stanza featuring Bogomila’s radiant appearance below the waterfall and its impact on Črtomir may be interpreted according to Christian symbolism of rainbow or as a phenomenon of natural beauty: “Now out between the clouds appears sunlight, / Whose rays the pureness of their beauty shed; / On Bogomila pale a rainbow bright, / A heav’nly glow o’er her dear face is spread. / He cannot hide his tears which dim his sight; / He thinks the heav’ns have opened overhead, / And that he stands no more in this world’s realm, / So does this vision him quite overwhelm” (Prešeren 1999: 143).
- 4.
See Chap. 5.
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes towards an Investigation. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster, 127–186. London and New York: Monthly Review Press.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. and Extended ed. London: Verso.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist and Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.
Barthes, Roland. 2009. Writing Degree Zero. Trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang.
Čop, Matija. 1986. Pisma Matija Čopa. Vol. 2, Eds. Anton Slodnjak and Janko Kos. Ljubljana: SAZU.
Furst, Lilian R. 1976. Romanticism. London: Methuen.
Fusillo, Massimo. 2006. Epic, Novel. In The Novel, ed. Franco Moretti, vol. 1, 32–63. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Habjan, Jernej. 2018. The First Slovenian Novel and the Literary World-System. Journal of World Literature 3: 512–523.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Vol. 2. Trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1977. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hroch, Miroslav. 1993. From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation. New Left Review 198: 3–20.
Jurčič, Josip. 1965. Zbrano delo. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Ed. Janez Logar. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije.
Juvan, Marko. 1990. Imaginarij Krsta v slovenski literaturi: medbesedilnost recepcije. Ljubljana: LUD Literatura.
———. 2002a. Uvod: panorama romantične pesnitve. In Romantična pesnitev, ed. Marko Juvan, xv–xxxvii. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta.
———. 2002b. Modernost Krsta pri Savici? In Romantična pesnitev, ed. Marko Juvan, 347–360. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta.
———. 2011. Literary Studies in Reconstruction: An Introduction to Literature. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Kos, Janko. 1970. Prešeren in evropska romantika. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije.
———. 1991. Motivi Prešernovega Krsta pri Savici in evropska literatura. In Prešeren in njegova doba, 143–160. Koper: Lipa.
Lukács, Georg. 1971. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Trans. Anna Bostock. London: The Merlin Press.
Marinčič, Marko. 2011. Križ nad slovansko Trojo: Latinski palimpsesti v Prešernovem Krstu pri Savici. Ljubljana: Slovenska matica.
Moretti, Franco. 1996. Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to García Márquez. Trans. Quintin Hoare. London and New York: Verso.
———. 1999. Atlas of the European Novel: 1800–1900. London and New York: Verso.
———. 2006. Serious Century. In The Novel, ed. Franco Moretti, vol. 1, 364–400. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
———. 2013. Distant Reading. London and New York: Verso.
Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford University Press.
Paternu, Boris. 1977. France Prešeren in njegovo pesniško delo. Vol. 2. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.
Pirjevec, Dušan. 1972. Pri izvirih slovenskega romana. Problemi 10 (109): 31–36.
———. 1997. Problem slovenskega romana. Trans. Tomo Virk. Literatura 9 (67–68): 63–75.
Prešeren, France. 1965. Zbrano delo. 1. Ed. Janko Kos. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije.
———. 1999. Poems. Trans. Tom M.S. Priestly and Henry R. Cooper. Klagenfurt: Hermagoras-Verlag.
Rajan, Tilottama. 1980. Dark Interpreter: The Discourse of Romanticism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Žirmunski, Viktor. 1978. Bajron i Puškin. Leningrad: Nauka.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1987. Jezik, ideologija, Slovenci. Ljubljana: Delavska enotnost.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Juvan, M. (2019). A Compromise “World Text”. In: Worlding a Peripheral Literature. Canon and World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9405-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9405-9_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-32-9404-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-32-9405-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)