Drago Jančar

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Drago Jančar

Born April 13, 1948(1948-04-13)
Maribor, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now in Slovenia)
Occupation Writer, Essayist, Playwright
Literary movement Postmodernism, Magical realism
Influences
Influenced

Drago Jančar (born 13 April 1948, Maribor) is a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist and public intellectual. Jančar is one of the most prolific and famous contemporary Slovene writers.

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[edit] Life

He was born in Maribor, an industrial center in what was then the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Slovenia. His father, originally from the Prekmurje region, was an ex partisan. Jančar studied law in his home town. As a student, he became chief editor of the student journal Katedra; he soon came in conflict with the Communist establishment, because he allowed some critical articles on the ruling regime to be published. He had to leave the journal and found a job as an assistant at the Maribor daily newspaper Večer. In 1974 he was arrested by Yugoslav authorities for bringing to Yugoslavia a booklet entitled V Rogu ležimo pobiti ("We Lie Killed in the Rog Forest") that he had bought in nearby Austria and lend to some friends to read it. The booklet was a survival account of the Kočevski Rog massacres perpetrated by Tito's Communist regime in May 1945. He was sentenced to a year imprisonment for "spreading hostile propaganda", but was released after three months. Immediately after the release he was called up for military service in southern Serbia, where he was subjected to systematic harassment by his superiors due to his "criminal file".

After completing the military service, Jančar briefly returned to Večer, but was allowed to perform only administrative work. He decided to move to Ljubljana, where he became acquainted with several influential artists and intellectuals who were critical of the cultural policies of the Communist establishment, among whom were Edvard Kocbek, Ivan Urbančič, Alenka Puhar, Dane Zajc, Jože Snoj, Tomaž Šalamun, Marjan Rožanc, Rudi Šeligo and others. Between 1978 and 1980, he worked as a screenwriter in the film studio Viba Film, but quit because he was censored in the adaptation of Vitomil Zupan's script for Živojin Pavlović's movie Farewell until the Next War. In 1981, he was employed as a secretary of the Slovenska matica publishing house, where he now works as an editor. In 1982, he was among the co-founders of the journal Nova revija, which soon emerged as the major alternative and opposition media in Socialist Slovenia. He also became acquainted with Boris Pahor, the Slovene writer from Trieste who wrote about his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. Pahor had a profound influence on Jančar, who has frequently pointed out his indebtedness to the writer from Trieste, namely in the essay "The Man Who Said No", published in 1990 as one of the first comprehensive assessments of Pahor's literary and moral role in the post-war era in Slovenia.

Initially, Jančar wasn't allowed to publish his works, but after the gradual liberalisation after Kardelj's and Tito's death in the late 1970s, he could work as a screenwriter for theater and film. In mid 1980s, he gained initial success with his novels and short stories, and his plays gained recognition throughout Yugoslavia. From the late 1980s on, he started gaining recognition also in other countries, especially in Central Europe, but also in Spain and Italy.

[edit] Work

Jančar started writing already as a teenager. His first short novels were published by the magazine Mladina.

Jančar's prose is influenced by modernist models. One of the central themes of his works is the conflictual relationship between individuals and repressive institutions, such as prisons, galleys, psychiatric hospital and military barracks. He is famous for his laconic and often highly ironic style, often making use of tragicomical twists. Most of his novels are set around concrete events of circumstances in Central European history, which he sees as an exemplification of the human condition.

He also writes essays and columns, commenting on current political and cultural events. During the war in Bosnia, he voiced his support for the Bosnian cause and personally visited the besieged Sarajevo to bring supplies for the civilian population collected by the Slovene Writers' Association. He later wrote an essay, entitled "Short Report from a City Long Besieged" (Kratko poročilo iz dolgo obleganega mesta), in which he reflected on the War in Yugoslavia and the more general question of the ambiguous role of intellectuals in ethnic, national and political conflicts.

Throughout the 1990s, he led a polemics with the Austrian writer Peter Handke regarding the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

[edit] The public intellectual

Between 1987 and 1991 he was the president of the Slovene P.E.N. Center and used his position to support the emergence of democracy in Slovenia. During the JBTZ-trial in 1988, he was one of the organizers of the first free public political rally in Slovenia after 1945, held on the central Congress Square in Ljubljana. During the first democratic elections in 1990, he actively campaigned for the presidential candidate Jože Pučnik. During the Slovenian War of Independence, he helped, together with several other writers (especially Aleš Debeljak and Tone Pavček), to rally international support for Slovenia's independence.

In the late 1990s, he organized, jointly with historian Vasko Simoniti, an exhibition entitled Temna stran meseca ("The Dark Side of the Moon"), which dealt with human rights violations in Slovenia during the Communist dictatorship. In the year 2000, he caused a controversy with the essay entitled "Xenos and xenophobia", published by Slovenia's most widely read daily newspaper Delo, in which he accused the Liberal media of inciting xenophobia and Anti-Catholicism (Jančar himself is an agnostic). These were however accusations he had been repeating since 1994, when in the essay "Egyptian Pots of Meat" he accused the Liberal media of having helped the rise of the chauvinistic Slovenian National Party.

Although he never actively participated in politics, he publicly supported the Slovenian Democratic Party in the general elections of 2000 and 2004.

[edit] Recognition

Jančar's novels, essays and short stories have been translated into 18 languages and published in several Europen and Asian countries and in the United States. His dramas have also been staged by a number of foreign theatres, while back home they are frequently considered the highlights of the Slovenian theatrical season. Jančar has received a number of literary awards, including the Prešeren Award, Slovenia's most prestigious literary award, the European Short Story Award (Augsburg, 1994) and the Herder Prize for literature in 2003. Since 1995, he has also been member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

He lives and works in Ljubljana.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Novels

  • Petintrideset stopinj (Thirtyfive Degrees, 1974)
  • Galjot (Galiot, 1978)
  • Severni sij (Northern Lights, 1984)
  • Pogled angela (Angel's Gaze)(1992)
  • Zvenenje v glavi (Ringing in the Head, 1998)
  • Katarina, pav in jezuit (Katerina, 2000)
  • Graditelj (The Builder, 2006)

Plays

  • Disident Arnož in njegovi (Dissident Arnož and his Band, 1982)
  • Veliki briljantni valček (The Great Brilliant Waltz, 1985)
  • Vsi tirani mameluki so hud konec vzeli ... (All Mameluk Tyrants had a Bad End..., 1986)
  • Daedalus (Daedalus, 1988)
  • Klementov padec (Klement's Fall, 1988)
  • Zalezujoč Godota (After Godot, 1988)
  • Halštat (Hallstadt, 1994)
  • Severni sij (Northern Lights, 2005)

Essays

  • Razbiti vrč (The Broken Jug, 1992)
  • Egiptovski lonci mesa (Egyptian Pots of Meat, 1994)
  • Brioni (Brioni, 2002)
  • Duša Evrope (Europe's Soul, 2006)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References