PEOPLE'S PLAY (scene from peasant life)
NUMBER OF PEOPLE: 6 (2 women 4 men)
PLACE AND TIME OF EVENTS: A farmhouse in a Slovenian village in the 1880s.
The text was printed in Calendar of the Society of St. Mohor for the common year 1891, which is kept at the Slovenian Theatre Institute under the signature K 1796.
FROM CASTLE ROOMS TO A FARMHOUSE
Vošnjak explained in the introductory note to the play that he had already written a play with the same title in 1889, which is not suitable for performing at those folk festivals on farms where they do not have trained performers...(p. 41). He also simplified the text by reducing the number of performers from eight to six.
"Parlor game" To their own he did not find it suitable for simple people, so he adapted it for rural performers and audiences. If we compare the play, we find that he retained only the basic plot (a girl and two suitors) and the original conflict (good Slovenians against a dishonest and treacherous German scoundrel), but he rewrote everything else.
Game To their own from 1889 is a dramatization of a political slogan Everything for the nation, society and freedom, while in the newer version the emphasis is primarily on Christian values and only then on Slovenianness. The negative suitor this time despises Slovenians and prefers everything German over Austrian, but is also a godless man who does not go to church for nothing. The text also explicitly supports the Society of St. Mohor:
She has given away so many beautiful books that we will be reading all winter. May God preserve her for the benefit of the nation. (p. 43)
Instead of a ceremony to open the Guide's Monument, the events revolve around the establishment of a branch of the Society of St. Cyril and Methodius, who ensures that we preserve the Catholic faith and our nationality. (p. 44)
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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At the request of the priest, the village mayor, Podlipnik, is handed an invitation from the Cyril Methodius Society to establish a branch by his young neighbor Jože. Podlipnik hesitates whether to sign the document or not, since all responsibility will fall on him, but the young man enthusiastically convinces him:
In fourteen days there will be a meeting and they will come, I know, from near and far, all the honest men of our faith and blood. Oh, what joy it will be when hundreds of us are gathered, all of one mind, all of one heart, all zealous for the faith, the home, the emperor. (p. 42)
Jože wants to marry Podlipnik's daughter. The mayor likes the young neighbor, but even in this case he is hesitant and uncertain: the mayor's mother has warmed up to the village horse breeder Jurij Kričač and insists that he be his daughter's groom, even though the girl likes Jože and doesn't like Kričač at all.
The mayor decides to test both suitors with a trick. He keeps the dowry in a savings account. When he announces that the account has been stolen, the hypocritically eloquent groom immediately withdraws, but his neighbor Jože doesn't care about the money at all and even when the mayor reveals his scheme, he wants to give it up. He fell in love with the girl because of her piety, pure heart and diligence, and all these qualities are worth more than piles of gold.
It is fitting that the mayor's closing words are:
After the wedding, we will establish a branch of St. Cyril and Methodius. Let usYes, they will not tempt us. We are invincible as long as we hold to the old motto: All for the faith, the emperor's house, and let us stand firm as God has placed us: Our own to our own! (p. 47)