Matej Bor
Encyclopedia
Matej Bor was the pen name
of Vladimir Pavšič (14 April, 1913 - 29 September, 1993), who was a Slovene poet
, translator, playwright
, journalist
and partisan.
near Gorizia
, in what was then the Austrian
County of Gorizia and Gradisca and is today part of the Slovenia
n municipality of Nova Gorica
. After the Italian annexation of the Julian March
in 1920, the family moved to Celje
, which was then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After finishing his studies at the Celje High School, Vladimir enrolled at the University of Ljubljana
, where he studied Slovene and Slavic philology. After graduation he worked as a journalist and professor
in Maribor
.
When the Axis powers
invaded Yugoslavia
in April 1941, he escaped from Nazi-occupied Maribor to the Italian-occupied Province of Ljubljana
. In the summer of the same year he joined the Communist-led partisan resistance, where he worked in the area of culture and propaganda. During the People's Liberation War he emerged as one of the major poets of the Slovene resistance
. Several of his battle songs became hugely popular. One of them, Hey, Brigades, became the unofficial anthem of Slovene partisan forces during World War II
. It was during this period that he started to use the pseudonym Matej Bor, which he continued to use also after the war.
In 1944, he moved to Belgrade
which had just been liberated by the Yugoslav partisans. There he worked at the Slovene section of Radio Free Yugoslavia, led by Boris Ziherl. Among his colleagues in Belgrade were the authors Igo Gruden
, Edvard Kocbek
and Anton Ingolič
. In 1945 he moved back to Ljubljana
, where he dedicated himself to writing and translating. He received the highest recognition for cultural achievements in Slovenia, the Prešeren Award
in 1947 and again in 1952. In 1965 he became a member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. In the 1960s and 1970s he was the president of the Slovenian section of the International P.E.N..
During the period of Yugoslavia
, he often used his influence to help dissidents or to sponsor causes challenging official policies. In the 1960s, he publicly criticized the imprisonment of the Serbian
dissident writer Mihajlo Mihajlov. He was one of the founders of the environmentalist
movements in Slovenia
in the early 1970s. He also voiced his support for the heritage protection movement which fought against the demolishing of historic buildings in Ljubljana (such as the Kozler's Palace
). In the late 1970s and early 1980s he led the platform for the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist show trials in Slovenia (the so-called Dachau trials of 1947). In 1984 he helped the writer Igor Torkar
to publish a novel on his experiences in the Goli Otok
concentration camp.
In the 1980s Bor researched and attempted to translate Venetic
inscriptions by using Slovene and its dialects. Together with Jožko Šavli
and Ivan Tomažič, he advocated the theory of the Venetic origins of Slovenes
, claiming that the Slovenes are the descendants of a pre-Roman
Slavic
-speaking people called the Veneti. None of the three men were linguists, and the theory was soon rejected by scholars, but launched a long controversy in which Bor played a prominent role.
He died in Ljubljana.
. The book was republished in several editions and was translated into the major European languages and contributed to Bor's popularity outside Yugoslavia.
Bor also wrote twelve plays
and a number of literary works for children and youth. He was a regular contributor to publications for children and teenagers such as Ciciban, Pionir, Pionirski list, Najdihojca (a supplement of the journal Delo
), Mali Rod (Klagenfurt
) and The Voice of Youth (Chicago
). He also wrote the screenplay for the film
Vesna
, which was released in 1954. He translated a number of works by Shakespeare
into Slovene.
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
of Vladimir Pavšič (14 April, 1913 - 29 September, 1993), who was a Slovene poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, translator, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and partisan.
Biography
Matej Bor was born as Vladimir Pavšič in the village of GrgarGrgar
Grgar is a village in western Slovenia in the municipality of Nova Gorica. It is located under Mount Sveta Gora, above the Soča Valley and beneath the Banjšice Plateau....
near Gorizia
Gorizia
Gorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
, in what was then the Austrian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
County of Gorizia and Gradisca and is today part of the Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
n municipality of Nova Gorica
Nova Gorica
Nova Gorica ; 21,082 ; 31,000 ) is a town and a municipality in western Slovenia, on the border with Italy...
. After the Italian annexation of the Julian March
Julian March
The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...
in 1920, the family moved to Celje
Celje
Celje is a typical Central European town and the third largest town in Slovenia. It is a regional center of Lower Styria and the administrative seat of the Urban Municipality of Celje . The town of Celje is located under Upper Celje Castle at the confluence of the Savinja, Ložnica, and Voglajna...
, which was then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After finishing his studies at the Celje High School, Vladimir enrolled at the University of Ljubljana
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...
, where he studied Slovene and Slavic philology. After graduation he worked as a journalist and professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
in Maribor
Maribor
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia with 157,947 inhabitants . Maribor is also the largest and the capital city of Slovenian region Lower Styria and the seat of the Municipality of Maribor....
.
When the Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
invaded Yugoslavia
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
in April 1941, he escaped from Nazi-occupied Maribor to the Italian-occupied Province of Ljubljana
Province of Ljubljana
The Province of Ljubljana was a province of the Kingdom of Italy and of the Nazi German Adriatic Littoral during World War II. It was created on May 3, 1941 from territory occupied and annexed to Italy after the Axis invasion and dissolution of Yugoslavia, and it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when...
. In the summer of the same year he joined the Communist-led partisan resistance, where he worked in the area of culture and propaganda. During the People's Liberation War he emerged as one of the major poets of the Slovene resistance
Liberation Front of the Slovenian People
On 26 April 1941 in Ljubljana the Anti-Imperialist Front was established. It was to promote "an international massive movement" to "liberate the Slovenian nation" whose "hope and example was the Soviet Union"...
. Several of his battle songs became hugely popular. One of them, Hey, Brigades, became the unofficial anthem of Slovene partisan forces during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It was during this period that he started to use the pseudonym Matej Bor, which he continued to use also after the war.
In 1944, he moved to Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
which had just been liberated by the Yugoslav partisans. There he worked at the Slovene section of Radio Free Yugoslavia, led by Boris Ziherl. Among his colleagues in Belgrade were the authors Igo Gruden
Igo Gruden
Igo Gruden was a Slovene poet and translator.He was born as Ignacij Gruden in the small fishermen village of Nabrežina near Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca as first of ten children of Franc Gruden and Justina Košuta...
, Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...
and Anton Ingolič
Anton Ingolič
Anton Ingolič was a Slovene writer, playwright and editor.He is best known for his novels and youth literature....
. In 1945 he moved back to Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, where he dedicated himself to writing and translating. He received the highest recognition for cultural achievements in Slovenia, the Prešeren Award
Prešeren Award
Prešeren Award is the highest decoration in the field of artistic and in the past also scientific creation in Slovenia awarded each year to one or two eminent Slovene artists...
in 1947 and again in 1952. In 1965 he became a member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. In the 1960s and 1970s he was the president of the Slovenian section of the International P.E.N..
During the period of Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
, he often used his influence to help dissidents or to sponsor causes challenging official policies. In the 1960s, he publicly criticized the imprisonment of the Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
dissident writer Mihajlo Mihajlov. He was one of the founders of the environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
movements in Slovenia
Socialist Republic of Slovenia
The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until 1990...
in the early 1970s. He also voiced his support for the heritage protection movement which fought against the demolishing of historic buildings in Ljubljana (such as the Kozler's Palace
Peter Kozler
Peter Kozler or Kosler was a Slovene lawyer, geographer, cartographer, activist and manufacturer...
). In the late 1970s and early 1980s he led the platform for the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist show trials in Slovenia (the so-called Dachau trials of 1947). In 1984 he helped the writer Igor Torkar
Igor Torkar
Igor Torkar was the pen name of Boris Fakin was a Slovenian writer, playwright and poet, most famous for his literary descriptions of Communist repression in Yugoslavia after World War II.- Life :...
to publish a novel on his experiences in the Goli Otok
Goli otok
Goli otok is an island off the northern Adriatic coast, located between Rab's northeastern shore and the mainland, in what is today Croatia's Primorje-Gorski Kotar county. The island is barren and uninhabited...
concentration camp.
In the 1980s Bor researched and attempted to translate Venetic
Venetic language
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North East of Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
inscriptions by using Slovene and its dialects. Together with Jožko Šavli
Jožko Šavli
Jožko Šavli was a Slovene author, self-declared historian and high school teacher in economic sciences from Italy....
and Ivan Tomažič, he advocated the theory of the Venetic origins of Slovenes
Venetic theory
The Venetic theory is a widely diffused autochthonist theory of the origin of Slovenes which denies the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps in the 6th century, claiming that proto-Slovenes have inhabited the region since ancient times. Although it has been rejected by scholars, it has been an...
, claiming that the Slovenes are the descendants of a pre-Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
-speaking people called the Veneti. None of the three men were linguists, and the theory was soon rejected by scholars, but launched a long controversy in which Bor played a prominent role.
He died in Ljubljana.
Work
Bor published a number of poetry collections. His first collection, called Previharimo viharje, was published during the anti-fascist resistance fight in 1942 by an underground publishing house. In 1959 he published the book Šel je popotnik skozi atomski vek ("A Wanderer Went Through the Atom Age"), an apocalyptic poetic reflection on the environmental disasters in the Atomic AgeAtomic Age
The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is a phrase typically used to delineate the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear bomb Trinity on July 16, 1945...
. The book was republished in several editions and was translated into the major European languages and contributed to Bor's popularity outside Yugoslavia.
Bor also wrote twelve plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
and a number of literary works for children and youth. He was a regular contributor to publications for children and teenagers such as Ciciban, Pionir, Pionirski list, Najdihojca (a supplement of the journal Delo
Delo
Delo is the largest national daily newspaper in Slovenia. It was established on May 1st, 1959, when two newspapers Ljudska pravica and Slovenski poročevalec merged. Nowadays, it is the most influential and credible daily newspaper in Slovenia...
), Mali Rod (Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
) and The Voice of Youth (Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
). He also wrote the screenplay for the film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Vesna
Vesna (film)
Vesna is a 1953 Slovene romantic comedy directed by František Čap. It is considered amongst the most watched Slovene films. It has a 1957 sequel Ne čakaj na maj.-Plot summary:...
, which was released in 1954. He translated a number of works by Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
into Slovene.
Main poetry collections
- Previharimo viharje (1942)
- Pesmi ("Poems", 1944)
- Pesmi ("Poems", 1946)
- Bršljan nad jezom ("Ivy on the Dam", 1951)
- Sled naših senc ("The Trace of our Shadows", 1958)
- Podoknice tišini ("Serenades to Silence", 1983)
- Sto manj en epigram ("A Hundred but One Epigram", 1985)
Youth literature
- Uganke ("Riddles", 1951)
- Slike in pesmi o živalih ("Images and Songs About Animals", 1956)
- Sračje sodišče ali je, kar je ("The Raven Court or Whatever Is Done is Done", 1961)
- Pesmi za Manjo ("Songs for Manja", 1985)
- Ropotalo in ptice ("The Scarecrow and Birds", 1985)
- Palčki - pihalčki ("Dwarves", 1991)
Discography
- Zajček (1968)
- Partizan (1980)
- Jutri Gremo V Napad (1988)
- Hej Brigade (2006) (published posthumly)
English translations
- A Wanderer Went Through the Atom Age, (London: Adam Books, 1959).
- A Wanderer in the Atom Age (Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije, 1970).
- An Anthology of Modern Yugoslav Poetry, edited by Janko Lavrin (London: J. Calder, 1962).
Sources
- Marija Arh, Primernost Borovih pesmi za učence od 1. do 4. razreda OŠ: diplomsko delo (Ljubljana: M. Arh, 1993), 13-15, 48-50.
- Viktor BlažičViktor BlažičViktor Blažič is a Slovenian journalist, essayist, translator and former anti-Communist dissident.He was born in the village of Smolenja vas near Novo Mesto in south-eastern Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1944, he joined the partisan resistance. After World...
, Svinčena leta (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1999). - Janko KosJanko KosJanko Kos is a Slovenian literary historian, theoretician and critic.He was born in Ljubljana in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the son of the painter and sculptor Tine Kos...
, Pregled slovenskega slovstva (Ljubljana: DZS, 2002), 359. - Igor TorkarIgor TorkarIgor Torkar was the pen name of Boris Fakin was a Slovenian writer, playwright and poet, most famous for his literary descriptions of Communist repression in Yugoslavia after World War II.- Life :...
, Umiranje na obroke, preface by Matej Bor (Ljubljana: Delo, 1984). - Ciril ZlobecCiril ZlobecCiril Zlobec is a Slovene poet, writer, translator, journalist and former politician. He is best known for his poems and has published several volumes of poetry...
, Spomin kot zgodba: avtobiografski roman (Ljubljana: Prešernova družba, 1998). - Open Society Archives document on Bor's role in the Yugoslav P.E.N.
- Biography of Igo Gruden with reference to Bor