KOMEDIJA (veseloigra v enem dejanji)
ŠTEVILO OSEB: 7 (3ž 4m), lahko tudi pevski zbor
KRAJ IN ČAS DOGAJANJA: Grad blizu slovenskega mesta, osem dni pred odkritjem Vodnikovega spomenika v Ljubljani (1889).
Besedilo je izšlo v letu praizvedbe. V Slovenskem gledališkem inštitutu imamo v arhivu Dramatičnega društva (sig. DD 709) pet slabo ohranjenih izvodov. Obraba je posledica praktičnega gledališkega dela: knjižice so uporabljali režiserji, inspicienti in igralci, ki so pripravljali uprizoritve.
Najbolj zanimiv je cenzurni izvod z rokopisnim dovoljenjem za uprizarjanje iz leta 1904. Na naknadno oštevilčeni četrti strani so se ohranila natančna navodila o črtanju teksta in cenzorjevi popravki ter pripisi. Cenzorjevo dovoljenje je bilo vpisano 20. januarja 1904, torej le dan pred premiero.
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Vošnjakova narodnobuditeljska igra Svoji k svojim je bila napisana za posebno priložnost kot del Vodnikove proslave v »sijajno razsvetljeni dvorani čitalnice ljubljanske.« Na letaku praizvedbe je napovedana na koncu igre apoteoza Vodnikova…pri kateri sodelujejo iz posebne prijaznosti gg. člani telovadnega društva Sokol in oddelek gg. čitalniškega zbora pevcev.
Komedija se je torej v zadnjem prizoru prelevila v zanosen izraz narodnega ponosa, ki se je zaključil s prepevanjem Vodnikove Ilirije oživljene in telovadbo.
Igro je režiral Josip Kocelj (Gecelj), na odru Souvanove hiše pa so se 29. junija 1889 pred nastopom pevcev in telovadcev zvrstili nekateri najznamenitejši slovenski igralci tistega časa (režiser Kocelj v glavni vlogi, ob njem pa Danilo, njegova bodoča žena Avgusta Gostič, Gizela Nigrin in drugi).
Naslednjo uprizoritev je v novem Deželnem gledališču 26. novembra 1892 režiral Ignacij Borštnik.
Ponovno so delo uprizorili v istem gledališču 21. januarja 1904, tokrat v cenzurirani različici. Večer so si zamislili kot slovesnost ob Vošnjakovi sedemdesetletnici, veseloigri To their own pa sta sledili še enodejanki Jeftejeva hči and V medenih tednih. Vošnjak, ki je po dolgih letih odsotnosti spet prišel v Ljubljano, si je tokrat svojo komedijo lahko ogledal v režiji češkega umetnika Františka Liera, ki je bil kot režiser in igralec pet sezon angažiran v ljubljanskem gledališču.
6. marca 1912 so komedijo uprizorili še v celjskem gledališču v režiji Rafaela Salmiča. Z njo so se poklonili avtorjevemu spominu: Vošnjak je umrl nekaj mesecev pred tem, 21. oktobra 1911.
Josip Vošnjak (1834-1911), a writer and physician, was one of the most prominent Slovenian politicians and cultural workers of the second half of the 19th century. In 1867, he was elected as a deputy to the Styrian Provincial Assembly, where in the following decade he advocated for linguistic equality and a United Slovenia, as well as for Slovenian territorial and administrative unity. From 1873 to 1885, he was a deputy to the National Assembly in Vienna, and from 1877 until his retirement (1895) he was a deputy to the Carniolan Provincial Assembly. As a leading politician of the Slovenian Liberal Party, he advocated the importance of education and Slovenian economic independence; he participated in the establishment of domestic banks and cooperatives. As a politician and publicist, he advocated for the improvement of the unbearable social conditions of the peasant and working-class population. He was among the founders of the Slovenska matica (1864) and the newspaper Slovenski narod (1868). He wrote articles for it on the economy, finance, politics, social and medical issues, and also on culture. He also published professional and literary contributions in Slovenski gospodarje, Ljubljanski zvon, in publications of the Mohorjeva družba and elsewhere. In the late 1960s, he successfully performed at Slovenian camps, and later he actively participated in raising funds and erecting monuments to important Slovenians, in the establishment of the Glasbena matica, the Cyril-Methodov družstva and the Pisateljsk družstva. As a member of the Dramatic Society, he helped in the creation and development of Slovenian theatre.
Vošnjak's first dramatic attempt in German, which he also staged, dates back to his student years. After completing his medical studies in Vienna, he returned to his native land, switched from German to Slovenian in his writing, and wrote a tragedy in verse, which has not survived. Vošnjak's early literary attempts and publications, encouraged by his friend and colleague Josip Jurčič, were interrupted by a steep political career. He took up writing again when he completed his second term in the National Assembly, i.e. after his fiftieth birthday. Literary historians note that during this time he completed previously conceived or planned texts, including the novel Twins (1889) and numerous dramatic works that he submitted to the Dramatic Society a few months after the novel's publication. For these texts, which in terms of form and content belong more to the 1870s, France Koblar used the term "late reading drama" (Slovenian Drama I, 1972, p. 139). Vošnjak, who after 1885 set about working for the Slovenian theatre with all his energy and diligence, wrote these texts for the small, cramped stage of the Ljubljana reading room, which was revived in the years after the fire of the Estates Theatre and before the construction of the new theatre building (1887 – 1892), so that it must be written in his defense that his drama is not "late reading room" only in the sense of content and form, but is literally reading room. When the opportunity finally arose for the Slovenes to get their own theatre, Vošnjak actively participated in this project as a councilor in the Carniolan Provincial Assembly and treasurer of the Dramatic Society. As a young politician, he attended the opening of the National Theatre in Prague in 1868 and appeared as a speaker, and at the age of almost sixty, he also lived to see the opening of his home theatre.
Vošnjak, who participated in discussions about the repertoire conundrums of Slovenian theatre during this period, also tried to solve them with his own dramatic texts: he offered the Dramatic Society five mostly lighter texts or comedies. Foam, To their own and Minister's letter were also staged this year, comedies A hundred years ago and Women's victory but they failed to make it to the stage during this period.
The next type of Vošnjak's plays is closely related to his attempts at a Tolstoyan story with material from the lives of ordinary people with directly expressed moral teachings (Condemned, You father to the threshold, your son across the threshold, Two neighbors, Blessed are the merciful...). He developed his version of Mohorian literature not only in prose experiments, but also in drama. Thus, a rural version of the bourgeois play was created. To their own, which he published in the Calendar of the Society of St. Mohor (1891). This also includes two texts that were published in the book collection Slovenske večernice Sodružbe sv. Mohorje. Game Walnut, subtitled Scenes from Farm Life, was published in volume 45 (1991), a short story in one act Let's not give up! and in volume 53 (1901).
The third set of Vošnjak's dramatic works and his literary peak are represented by the plays Beautiful Vida (book edition and performance 1893) and Doctor Dragan (1894), which was not performed at the time of its creation due to problematic content. Compared to earlier texts, these are works that are complex in content and form, characterized by more contemporary tones and motifs, although they remain trapped in melodramatic sentimentality and euphemism.
During this time, they put on stage Coal mine (1994), a less successful and accomplished work, according to literary history, depicting a strike in a coal mine.
With their contemporary content and complexly drawn characters, the aforementioned Vošnjak plays indicated the rapprochement of Slovenian dramatic literature with modern European literary trends, a rapprochement that was only fully realized by Ivan Cankar.
FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE SLOVENIAN THEATRE INSTITUTE: VOŠNJAK'S WORKS IN BOOK EDITIONS AND A SELECTION OF MATERIALS ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In 1889, a one-act play was published To each their own. In the same year, as the first booklet of the Vošnjaks Collected dramatic and narrative writings published novel Twins, printed in the National Printing House in Ljubljana. Of the planned five volumes, only three were published. The other two were printed by the Celje printing house of Dragotin Hribar, the former manager of the National Printing House in Ljubljana. Drama Beautiful Vida was published in 1893, Doctor Dragan and a year later.
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Singing game Coal miner It was never fully printed. France Koblar included the work in an anthology Older Slovenian drama (1951). He decided to publish the second act; he merely summarized the other three.
In the last years of his life, Vošnjak published Memories in two volumes (1905, 1906). The work was republished in 1982 by Slovenska matica. The selection was made by historian Vasilij Melik, who is also the author of the accompanying study.
The first and only volume of the book collection Slovenska meščanska dramatika was published in 1996. The editor and writer of the foreword, Igor Grdina, decided to publish Vošnjak's Doctor Dragan and Matches Anton Funtek.
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Vošnjak's dramatic work was discussed by Frank Wollman in the book Slovenian drama (1925) and France Koblar in Slovenian playwrights (1972). It also has an important place in Dušan Moravec's monograph Townspeople in Slovenian drama (1960).
Dušan Moravec also published an extensive analysis of Vošnjak's drama in issue 43 of Documents of the Slovenian Theatre Museum (1984).
The most comprehensive overview of Vošnjak's literary, political, and cultural activities is the monograph by Malina Schmidt Snoj, published in the book collection Znameniti Slovenci pri Nova revija (2003).
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Enodejanka se začne z idiličnim prizorom v zavetju grajske sobane: veleposestnik, upokojeni sodnik Matevž Pilkovič, in njegov zdravnik, mladi dr. Slavec, šahirata, medtem ko ženski del zasedbe pripravlja večerjo. Zdravnik zmago ljubeznivo prepusti graščaku: tudi zato, ker je zaljubljen v Pilkovičevo hčerko Zoro, ki kroži med kuhinjo in salonom.
V naslednjem prizoru gospodinja Mica Pilkoviču prinese vabilo na Vodnikovo slovesnost, ki ga hišni gospodar ponosno prebere vsem navzočim. Vesel je, da organizatorji niso pozabili nanj: v mladosti se je pogumno boril za narodne pravice in odločilno pripomogel k izboljšanju kulturnega in političnega položaja Slovencev.
Na prireditvi v Ljubljani bodo uprizorili tudi veseloigro Svoji k svojim, kar ga še posebej razvname:
Svoji k svojim? Odkod pa ta naslov? Svoji k svojim! To je moje geslo. Jaz sem ga prvi izrekel, jaz, Matevž Pilkovič, in vesta, kedaj? Leta 1848., ko smo ustanovili v Ljubljani »Slovensko društvo«. Bila je krasna doba, polna svete navdušenosti za narod, za svobodo, za napredek. Sanjarili smo – o kaj smo vse sanjarili! O svetli bodočnosti, o sreči in slavi našega naroda, a ledena reakcija je pokončala naše nade za mnogo let. »Svoji k svojim.« Tega gesla naj se drže Slovenci, naj se drže vsi Slovani in stali bodemo mogočni, kakor trdna skala, ob katero zaman butajo valovi tujih narodov (str. 8).
Graščak nadaljuje z zanosnim recitiranjem Vodnikovih verzov, potem pa zbranim oznani, da prihajata sorodnica Berta in njen sin Teodor, ki ga je hčerki izbral za moža. To je bila namreč ena zadnjih želja pokojne Pilkovičeve žene: sestrična Berta ji je namreč stala ob strani in ji stregla, ko je umirala, zato si je zaželela, da bi se njuna otroka nekoč poročila.
V nadaljevanju zvemo, da se je Teodor za zakon odločil iz koristoljubja, bodočega tasta pa je prepričal, da je vnet narodnjak. Ko snubec zaloti Zoro v Slavčevem objemu, Pilkovič vrže iz hiše oziroma iz gradu zdravnika in gospodinjo Mico, ki se postavi na doktorjevo stran.
Nenadoma prihiti nekdanji Teodorjev sošolec. Von Scherbl, bivši Škrbina, je Teodorja videl v kočiji, ko so potovali skozi bližnji trg; brž je zajahal konja in pohitel na grad. V svojem navdušenju, da je spet našel somišljenika in kamerada, Teodorja nehote kompromitira. Zbranim izda, da sta se na Dunaju kot člana Kranjske Germanije izkazala s svojimi protislovenskimi akcijami. Navdušen je, da mu bo prijatelj delal družbo v tem zaspanem kraju in mu predlaga, da nemudoma ustanovita nemški kazino. Seveda je s tem poročni aranžma preklican in Pilkovič vrže iz hiše še Berto in Teodorja:
Nevesto naj si poišče ta gospodič v Germaniji. Moje geslo je: Svoji k svojim! V hiši slovenski, na zemlji slovenski je gospodar Slovenec (str. 30).
To bo njegov bodoči zet doktor Slavec, ki je že v uvodnem prizoru dokazal svojo lojalnost:
Uverjeni bodite, gospod sodnik, da delo, katero ste Vi pričeli, bodemo mi mlajši nadaljevali. Tudi naše geslo je: svoji k svojim! (str. 8)
Pilkovič hčerko izroči Slavcu, Mica pa je medtem pripeljala sokole in pevce ter jih skupaj z Vodnikovim kipom skrila za zaveso. Ko jo odgrnejo, družno zapojejo Ilirijo oživljeno, Zora pa okrasi Vodnikov kip z lovorjevim vencem. V soboto se bodo skupaj odpeljali v Ljubljano in tam vzklikali:
Slava Vodniku! Slava! In: Svoji k svojim! (str. 32)