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DRAMA
SUBTITLE: A Lament in Five Acts
NUMBER OF PEOPLE: 14 (5 x 9 m)
A4 format typescript (29 x 20 cm). The text has a front title France Prešerin, the cover contains information about authorship (Luiza Pesjakova – Črtomir Zorec), title, subtitle and information about the place and year of publication (Kranj 1970). There is also a handwritten note on the SLOGI library copy (sig. II 828) (a gift from Črtomir Zorac on March 8, 1972).
Poet and writer Luiza Pesjak she was born in 1828 as Aloisia Crobath. Her father, Blaž Crobath, an older study colleague and employer of France Prešern, was friends with the most important Slovenian intellectuals: even as a child, Aloisia met all the prominent intellectuals, politicians and artists of her time from Ljubljana and elsewhere (a poet lived in Crobath's apartment for a while and political exile, Pole Emil Korytko). In childhood and growing up, she was distinguished by above-average intelligence, education and refinement. Her sense of the beautiful and the good, her love of art and the impressions of meeting charismatic and talented people inspired her to write literature at an early age. All of her poetic and prose attempts were in German, as she had not yet mastered Slovenian until the 1960s, the era of the national renaissance. In contrast to many Slovenian creators who started writing in German and later switched to Slovenian, her "mother tongue" was not Slovenian. Her mother was Polish, and the logical choice of language in a mixed, albeit Slavic, marriage was German. In her circle, in addition to German, most of them had a very good command of French, and they also learned other languages. As a woman, Luiza could not attend a classical gymnasium, but she nevertheless received a thorough education. In addition to the curriculum of women's educational institutes, she worked on her brother's high school curriculum for several years, and many instructions were also available to her: France Prešeren was also among her home teachers.
At twenty, she unexpectedly lost her father, got married and devoted herself to her family. During this time, her literary creation faded into the background. However, more than ten years later, with the help of a local teacher who taught her five daughters, she improved her Slovenian to the point where she was able to actively participate in Slovenian cultural life. At the time of his first Slovenian publication of the song Which I love (1864 in Bleiweis News) began to actively cooperate with the Ljubljana reading room. In her work, she was encouraged by the most prominent Slovenian artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Fran Levstik, who corrected her Slovenian literary attempts, was on the other hand very critical of her translations of Prešern into German. Despite this, he eagerly urged her to write memoirs about artists and cultural figures whom she had met as a child. She was also very active as a colleague of Stritarjev Zvon. Stritar also corrected her Slovenian texts as an editor, but it is interesting that they corresponded in French. Despite all the described literary activities, Luiza Pesjak was mainly a children's and youth writer. She published poems and stories for children mainly in the newspaper Vrtec from the beginning of the publication of the magazine until her final withdrawal from public and literary life (from 1871 to 1893). At the same time, she also published texts in German youth and family magazines. She wrote all the time in both Slovenian and German. A large part of her oeuvre is bilingual, as she also published prose works for adults simultaneously in Slovenian and German.
In the last period of her work, she wrote a lot for The Ljubljana Bell, where she was invited by editor Fran Levec. Among other texts, she published memoirs From my childhood (1886). The text consists of three chapters (meetings with France Prešern, Emil Korytko and Stanko Vraz), and it ends with a poem dedicated to all three role models.
Her most extensive text is a novel Beata's diary, which was published in 1887.
CREATION FOR THE THEATER AND COLLABORATION WITH THE DRAMATIC SOCIETY
Even before the founding of the Dramatic Society, Luiza Pesjak adapted two short dramatic texts for the Ljubljana reading room. Both merry-go-rounds, Svitoslav bunny and Poison, were published in 1865.
She wrote the text for the reader's needs Slovenia Guide (1866) and a shorter dramatic text In Koprivnik, which was published in the Yearbook of the National Reading Room in Ljubljana (1872, with the subtitle: a dramatic scene presented in the solemn speech of the Ljubljana reading room Guide to commemorating the 4th day of the feast 1872).
In the collection Slovenska Talija, she published a translation of the merry play A party girl (1870, vol. 14) and one-act plays My late one (1873, vol. 23).
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The highlight of the author's work for the theater was the premiere and printing of the libretto Gorenje nightingale (1872).
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In different periods, the literary work of Luiza Pesjak received more or less attention, but thanks to new and new settings Gorenjski slavček she never quite sank into oblivion. Reading records of her work, we get the impression that interest in her is growing. We also collected some literature in our library.
More recent literature, records and analysis are available online:
- The forgotten half: portraits of women of the 19th and 20th centuries in Slovenia
- A little German, a little Slovenian
- Narrative texts by Slovenian women writers -contemporary Zofka Kveder
- Contributions of Slovenian short stories to the genre image of 19th century prose
- Lujiza Pesjakova – student of the great master of Slovenian poetry
The poet and writer Črtomir Zorec (1907-1991) began his professional career as a teacher and principal at the Secondary Textile School in Kranj, and continued as a curator and later director of the Gorenje Museum (1962-1971). In addition to local history texts, he published articles about the life and work of France Prešeren, which he also collected in a book In Prešeren's footsteps (1964). The fruit of his engagement with the great poet is, among other things, the arrangement of Prešeren's house in Kranj and the erection of the Kranj Prešeren monument.
In addition to domestic studies and literary history, he was also involved in theater and drama. He worked with the Prešeren Theater as a playwright, director and editor of the theater paper. Among his works for the theater is also a reworking and addition of a tragedy Prešerin, which was preserved among the manuscripts in the legacy of Luiza Pesjak (NUK, Ms 488). Črtomir Zorec wrote the fifth act, which, according to information in secondary literature, should have taken place in 1849 and depicted Prešeren's illness and death.
LUIZA PESJAK AND FRANCES PRESHEREN
The writer's father was friends with Prešeren, who was three years younger than him, already during his student years in Vienna. In 1833, he managed to open his own law office in Ljubljana, and a year later Prešeren was employed by him as a trainee lawyer and head of the office. After a relatively unstable period of changing various jobs, he stayed with Blaž Crobath for more than a decade (1834-1846) - until he left for Kranj. Crobath was extremely sympathetic to Prešeren: they had similar views and many friends in common. Among them, in addition to Matija Čop and Andrej Smolet, was also the young Polish exile Emil Korytko. They were probably so closely related to him because Crobath's wife was Polish. Five children were born to them in marriage. The eldest, Aloisia, who was a talented and curious child, had only limited educational opportunities in the girls' institution, so she also had private tutors; she was also taught history, Latin and English by France Prešeren. As we can read in her memoirs, in the original she and Prešern were reading a novel by the English author Oliver together Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield respectively Vicar of Wakefield, as the title of the later Slovenian translation read. The text had a significant influence on German and Slovenian romances (Tatjana Kopitar: Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield with Slovenes until 1876, Slavic magazine, 12. 1959/60, no. 1-4, p. 194–223).
During Prešeren's tenure, the Chrobaths changed three locations, but in all three cases they lived in the house where they also had business premises. Given that s Prešeren friends and that he was at their house practically every day, his teaching his eldest daughter was understandably and logistically quite simple.
Prešeren also helped young Alojzia or Luiza with preparations for the recitation of verses, which he composed during the feasts in honor of her parents. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Slovenian educated people communicated mostly in German. It is interesting that the young creator was inspired to write poetry by Slovenian poets, but for the first half of her life she only expressed herself in German, so it is completely understandable that Prešeren dedicated exclusively German verses to her.
Prešeren's manuscript of the poem has been preserved Dem Wohlgebornen Fräulein Aloisia Crobath, which the poet dedicated to Luiza for her fourteenth birthday. Below the poem is written the date, June 21, 1842, the day Luiza danced.
Two years later, Prešeren, who was familiar with her poetic attempts, dedicated a text to her An eine junge Dichterin:
Fühlst du Begeist'rung dir den Busen schwellen,
Vom inner'n Gott zum Dichten dich getrieben,
Dann ist dir wahrlich keine Wahl geblieben,
Du mulit dich Sapphos Gilde zugesellen.
Mußt wandeln ihn, des Ruhmes Pfad, den hellen;
Mag bleiben unerhört des Mädchen Lieben,
Mag auch darob dein Lebensglück zerstieben,
Der Tod auch deiner harren in den Wellen.
Doch fühlest du dich frei von solchem Drange,
Dann greife du nach glücklicheren Loosen,
So lang das Jugendroth umfließt die Wange.
Dir winkt der Liebe Pfad, bestreut mit Rosen,
Der Myrtenkranz, der harret deiner, lange
Nicht nach dem Lorbeerreis, dem freudenlosen!
Although they communicated in German, according to the poet's testimony, she had a copy Poetry, who gave it to her, wrote a Slovenian dedication. The following year he praised her German translation of the poem Lost faith (1847), and a year later, at her father's funeral, they probably met for the last time. Blaž Chrobath died in the summer of 1848, followed by Prešeren a few months later.
In the 1960s, parallel to Luiza's learning of Slovenian and her first literary attempts in the Slovenian language, her translations of Prešern into German were also being created. She also published some of them (in periodicals Triglav, Slavische Blätter), and even more of them remained in her handwritten legacy among the translations of other Slovenian poets into German.
Prešeren's introductory talk about love is interrupted by Andrej Smole, who goes with the poet to Dolenčeva's inn. Prešeren, in love, proposes to the innkeeper's daughter Zalika, but it turns out that the girl does not care for him and that the feelings of love are one-sided.
The next act takes place four years later in the hall of the Lyceum Library. In the conversation between Prešern and Čop, the author involves many well-known facts from their lives and the wider cultural events of the 1930s. In the foreground is the dispute with the state censor Jerne Kopitar, the spelling dispute, the Kranjska beelica, linguistics and battles between Slovenian educated people. Prešeren encourages Čopa to write as much as possible, and later they exchange expressions of deep friendly feelings. After the arrival of Miha Kastelic, scriptwriter and editor of Kranjska čbelica, the conversation turns again to current cultural events. Čop rushes to write a reply to Kopitar, and Prešeren confides in Kastelic his plans for writing a tragedy.
Two years later, we move again to Prešeren's apartment. He is visited by a grieving widow whose two daughters have recently died. Prešerna asks him to write an epitaph for their mushroom. When the kind-hearted poet grants her wish, Matija Čop asks him if he will also write grave verses for him. Before rushing to Tomačevo to bathe in the Sava, Čop comforts and cheers up the unfortunate Prešeren, who is drowning in a melancholy mood.
The fourth act is a continuous continuation of the previous one in time and space. Andrej Smole visits the poet and talks to him about Julia. They are later joined by Miha Kastelic, who rushes to his friend to tell him the news of Čop's death.
The fifth act takes place in Kranj on the last day of the poet's life. The innkeeper Mayr, the dean Dagarin, and the merchant Killer are benevolently talking about the gravely ill poet, when Ana Jelovšek enters the inn with her daughter and son. The action continues at the poet's deathbed. Ana begs him to acknowledge their children, and Prešeren assures her that he will arrange everything when he recovers, but then he suddenly dies in front of his children, Ernestina and France.