DRAMA
Subtitle: A play in four acts
NUMBER OF PERSONS: 27 (5 women, 12 men) and girls, men, children
PLACE AND TIME OF EVENT: The Selška Valley and the surrounding area during the Turkish invasions.
SOURCE: The text is included with Krek's game. Three sisters published by the Catholic Educational Society of Selce in 1910. Sheet music is also printed on pp. 57 and 58.
John the Evangelist Krek (1865–1917) was a politician, priest, theologian, publicist and writer of numerous professional, historical, theological and literary works. He was a long-time member of the National and Provincial Assembly, and he devoted himself primarily to improving the social situation of farmers and workers. He founded associations, cooperatives, loan companies, vocational schools, consumer chains for the supply of labor, employment agencies (employment agencies), pension funds, cultural and sports associations. By economically saving the Slovenian peasant population, he influenced the reduction of emigration. In his political program, which he understood as Christian socialism, he advocated for the economic and political survival of Slovenians, which, in his opinion, depended on improving their social situation and the successful all-round organization of economic and cultural life. He supported the demand for universal and equal suffrage and emphasized the importance of education, including informal education. His most important treatises include Black beeches of the farmhouse (1895). In the work he analyzed the agriculture and economy of many countries. Krek's most extensive monograph, which consists of more than six hundred pages, is Socialism (1901). In the work, he gave his view of the history and development of socialist ideas and movements. Krek's biographers have recorded several thousand speeches and around six thousand articles, and he also wrote poems, prose, and plays.
First dramatic attempt St. Cyril and Methodius set foot on Slavic land (1885) was followed by a series of plays with exclusively male roles; the author wrote them for performance in societies that had exclusively male (or exclusively female) membership in his time: Justice has been served. (1892), Gypsy magician (1897) and Municipal drum (published 1908, written at least ten years earlier).
He later wrote the same number of plays with mixed casts: Turkish cross (1910), Three sisters (1910), drama St. Lucia (1913) and With the army (2017).
Krek did not have great literary ambitions. Most of his plays were written at the initiative of friends and members of societies for the needs of their theatrical creation. In the Slovenian Christian-Social Association, which he founded, he organized the publication of Collections of folk games, in which two of his burkas were also published. Due to the abundance of his other works, he did not attend the staging of his texts, but the information has been preserved that he participated as an actor in Slovenian amateur performances in Vienna (On the 50th anniversary of Dr. Janez Evangelista Krek, 2017, p. 49).
KREK'S VERSION OF JOANNE OF ORLEANS
The theme of Turkish invasions, kidnappings and Janissaries became one of the most important themes of Slovenian literature with Jurčič. Yuri Kozjak (1864), and the main female character was introduced into the story of Turkish raids on the Slovenian countryside by Jakob Sket with Miklovo Zalo (1884). The story of Sket was dramatized by Jakob Špicar in the early years of the 20th century (1907). His text was performed with great success by the Jesenice Sokoli in February 1909, and it was soon well received in Ljubljana and on many other stages across Slovenia. At the same time, a different play with a similar theme was beginning its theatrical campaign in Selce. This time, Krek wrote the text for the first time with female and male roles: they were to be played by the villagers of Selce, which he considered his home and where he also spent part of his youth. The play mentions almost all the places and hamlets between Blegoš, Jošt, Soriška planina and Črna prstja.
All the women in The Turkish Cross are brave and determined, and show no fear of men – including the Turks. They are sometimes also harsh and blunt (which is even more typical of the heroines of Krek's play). Three sisters).
Ursula is in many ways reminiscent of the Virgin of Orleans, except that she fights against the Turks. From the very first scene, her special mission is at the forefront: the salvation of her brother. Ursula is also given the power of vision, and she goes into battle at the head of her army, carrying the banner of salvation that she embroidered at Mary's behest.
Young Uršula, whose father has recently died, is talking to her aunt and friend about the unfortunate fate of her family. When she was still little, the Turks killed most of the villagers and kidnapped her brother Jožek. Uršula has two suitors: the local Pavle – who has to wait a little longer before she will listen to him, because she has set herself the task of saving her brother first – and the Lutheran preacher Gizebert, the illegitimate son of the Count of Turjak. She firmly rejects the Protestant, sometimes called Luther's Martin, but usually just Dihur.
In the second act, the story moves to the Turkish camp under the command of Juzuf Pasha. The marauders, preparing for battle, capture Štrigalica, who was selling dry goods and repairing farm tools in the villages. This time, Krek took advantage of his knowledge of his native language: the eloquent craftsman expresses himself in the singing dialect from the Ribnica area, in contrast to the peasant-speaking majority. Krošnjar manages to escape from the Turks, but Dihur joins them as a guide, and in exchange for his services, they are supposed to hand over the kidnapped Uršula.
When the battle rages in the third act, all of Dihur's plans fail. Uršula mobilized the entire surrounding population, who killed the Turks and captured their commander. Dihur judges himself, and the gathered people learn that Jusuf is Uršula's kidnapped brother Jožek, who begins to carve a cross into the rock as a sign of his return to the Christian faith.