Kocbek Edvard:
Who Am I?
The same thing keeps recurring:
a twitching that I cannot subdue.
From time to time a rhythmical crackling,
as of wood settling throughout the house.
At night and by day an easing of tension,
first in the furniture, then in the floor,
in the wall somewhere, the light fixture, my books.
Each time some place new, each time inevitable,
as though building toward an earthquake or
as though a treacherous power were mounting
and the house might collapse, or somebody
immure in the wall would knock and
step through it at any minute. I swallow
with difficulty, ensnared in creaking.
I sense it acutely and I know: the warm silence
of things, the horrible aloneness of primeval,
wearisome matter. Even now the ocean washes over
England. Even now glowing magma settles
beneath our feet. In the dark I decipher the unknown
writing on the wall. In the dark I see huge eyes,
and in dreams a horrible land of whirlwinds.
Edvard Kocbek
(1904-1981) One of Slovenian most important post-WWII writers. A poet, writer, essayist, and translator. He studied theology, dropped out after two years, and took up the study of Romance languages in Ljubljana, Berlin, Lyon and Paris. After he graduated in Ljubljana in 1930, he taught French. During WWII he joined the National Liberation Front wherein he held various positions as a representative of the Christian Socialist Party. After the war he continued to hold high offices in the Yugoslav federation, yet he was, in a vicious public campaign of character - assassination, forced to withdraw from political life after his prose collection Fear and Courage (Strah in pogum) appeared in 1951, revealing the dark side of the resistance. A winner of the 1964 Prešeren Prize for lifetime achievement, Kocbek published ten poetry books and more than fifteen books of fiction and essays. His memoirs and diaries of the war played a crucial role in the contemporary debate on Slovenian historical self-reflection. His work has appeared in numerous translations, including a Slovenian-English volume of selected poems At the Door in the Evening/Na vratih zvečer (Muses & Co, Quebec 1993).By the same author
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