Page 137 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 137
Women’s Poetic Discourse in the Context of Post-war Ideologies 137
triangle expressed in the dialogic structure of the collection,4 is presented
ambiguously since its contours are blurred through reader’s assimilation
of different female figures. This is the result of the reader’s identification
with the perspective of the implicit author who is on another discursive
level assimilated to the central lyric personal and with her phantasmatic
identification with another woman.
The eros—thanatos dynamics in Senca v srcu is presented with an im-
pressionistic description of small details and with objective metaphors, at
times nuanced with expressionist images. While describing psychologi-
cal states, the poet dismisses the social context and uses external reality
only as metaphoric and metonymic representation of the subjects’ inner
states. The repeating literary spaces are the foggy night streets, rooms at
night that are permeated with painful silence, snowy urban and rural ar-
eas, twilight forests, and the cemetery—all these spaces are united under
the title’s symbol, that is, the shade. Only a small part of the collection,
some of the poem in the section Their love, contrasts these spaces with
lighter rural scenes.
Almost in the manner of Dickinson, various levels of pain are inter-
twined with a formal framework, consisting of iambic rhythm and con-
sistently using alternate rhyme. This dense structure supports and empha-
sises the theme of the poems. A specific rhythmic and semantic capacity
is gained by repetitions in the form of anaphors and geminations, becom-
ing the prevailing sound process of the entire collection. This deepens the
expression of pain towards a silent lament with occasional silent screams.
Sincere, sophisticated, and disciplined lyricism is the result of the actu-
al experience of death, which the young poet manages to recreate and
rearticulate artistically. Years later, Ada Škerl wrote that this collection
was the “tombstone of a man that my love formed” (Škerl 1998). The aim
of this monument is not to glorify or embellish but is rather a sincere and
authentic recording of the dark sides of love and the experience of rejec-
tion, redundancy, and hopelessness.
While Senca v srcu might compositionally seem as a paradigmatic
collection of European love lyrics, the woman who acts as a central sub-
ject takes the voice and liberates herself from a hundred-years long role of
the ever-silent muse. She does not only perform an inversion of the sta-
tus in the gender and performative dynamics: the male who acts as an
Other does not assume the role of an idealised silent ‘muse’ but performs
4 Polyphony of voices on the level of poetic sections and the whole collection as well as
addressing the reader are poetic devices that the poet used also in the section devoted
to her mother Mrtva žena from the collection Obledeli pasteli (Faded Pastels).
triangle expressed in the dialogic structure of the collection,4 is presented
ambiguously since its contours are blurred through reader’s assimilation
of different female figures. This is the result of the reader’s identification
with the perspective of the implicit author who is on another discursive
level assimilated to the central lyric personal and with her phantasmatic
identification with another woman.
The eros—thanatos dynamics in Senca v srcu is presented with an im-
pressionistic description of small details and with objective metaphors, at
times nuanced with expressionist images. While describing psychologi-
cal states, the poet dismisses the social context and uses external reality
only as metaphoric and metonymic representation of the subjects’ inner
states. The repeating literary spaces are the foggy night streets, rooms at
night that are permeated with painful silence, snowy urban and rural ar-
eas, twilight forests, and the cemetery—all these spaces are united under
the title’s symbol, that is, the shade. Only a small part of the collection,
some of the poem in the section Their love, contrasts these spaces with
lighter rural scenes.
Almost in the manner of Dickinson, various levels of pain are inter-
twined with a formal framework, consisting of iambic rhythm and con-
sistently using alternate rhyme. This dense structure supports and empha-
sises the theme of the poems. A specific rhythmic and semantic capacity
is gained by repetitions in the form of anaphors and geminations, becom-
ing the prevailing sound process of the entire collection. This deepens the
expression of pain towards a silent lament with occasional silent screams.
Sincere, sophisticated, and disciplined lyricism is the result of the actu-
al experience of death, which the young poet manages to recreate and
rearticulate artistically. Years later, Ada Škerl wrote that this collection
was the “tombstone of a man that my love formed” (Škerl 1998). The aim
of this monument is not to glorify or embellish but is rather a sincere and
authentic recording of the dark sides of love and the experience of rejec-
tion, redundancy, and hopelessness.
While Senca v srcu might compositionally seem as a paradigmatic
collection of European love lyrics, the woman who acts as a central sub-
ject takes the voice and liberates herself from a hundred-years long role of
the ever-silent muse. She does not only perform an inversion of the sta-
tus in the gender and performative dynamics: the male who acts as an
Other does not assume the role of an idealised silent ‘muse’ but performs
4 Polyphony of voices on the level of poetic sections and the whole collection as well as
addressing the reader are poetic devices that the poet used also in the section devoted
to her mother Mrtva žena from the collection Obledeli pasteli (Faded Pastels).
