On September 23, it will be one hundred years since the birth of Mirko Mahnič, a versatile theater creator; director, proofreader, writer, theater historian, critic and chronicler, as well as a longtime associate of the Slovenian Theater Institute or its predecessors.
Mirko Mahnič was a multifaceted and striking personality of Slovenian theater and Slovenian culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was like the director worked in the Ljubljana Drama, the Ljubljana City Theatre, the Slovenian Permanent Theater in Trieste, as well as in Celje, Kranj and Maribor. Famous plays from those years are his own An evening in the reading room in MGL and his Passion of Bishop in Trieste. His role as a lecturer in Ljubljana Drama and also at AGRFT was legendary. With care for the Slovenian (also stage) language, he led generations of actors through the complex labyrinths of dramatic texts and warned them of the various pitfalls. He felt morally bound to speak a natural, authentic, convincing Slovenian word from the stage, without any pathos. For the Slovenian Theater Museum, Mirko Mahnič was indispensable as well as excellent theater historian, critic and the chronicler. For many years he was also co-editor of the museum's Documents and published a series of very important discussions in the publication. He also devoted himself to the theater stage and stage words in some monographs, for example in the book Hope again (1977), v Calls (1981) and Fame (1986). Perhaps Mahnič's most important work as a theater historian is a monograph The position of the Slovenian theater industry 1941–1945 (SGM 2008). With this book, Mahnič gave an important testimony about the time in which the Slovenian nation was condemned to death, but at the same time tragically at odds with itself.
The credo of his writing is humanism, expressed both in the author's attitude towards society and historical changes, as well as in his attitude towards transcendence. With each of his works, Domala put on display his linguistic, cultural, literary, and national views, imbued with spiritual values, ethical imperatives, experiences of the human journey, questions about culture and its humanistic mission: Prešeren's faith (1989), How do you talk? (1986), Rainbows clear dawn (2001), Living Slovenian (1959). With his love for the juicy, catchy Slovenian word, for our people, our land, he invited us to noble omics, culture, nobility, friendship with books. He also spoke about literature: His novel Unspoiled light (2000) is a record of events in culture, the whirlwind of war, peace, freedom, the destinies of people who are burned by the calvary events of the Second World War in Slovenia and after it, the mechanisms of post-war government, the destruction of old homesteads, dehumanizing forces. And he returns to the same theme in his own Records (2008), in which he very vividly and with a slight distance, but at the same time very convincingly describes himself as a Christian socialist in pre-war, war and post-war times, until 1947, when he was fired from his job because of his "characteristics". In recent years, his love for language and especially for Prešeren led him to a cycle of monographs about our greatest poet entitled Prešeren on Silba (2009) and Prešeren's verse: Prešeren na Silba 2 (2013).
Mirko Mahnič died last year at the age of 99, on April 7, 2018.
dr. Štefan Vevar, museum councilor, Slovenian Theater Institute
