Page 141 - 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
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Women’s Poetic Discourse in the Context of Post-war Ideologies 141
healthy optimism with the vision of sacrificing oneself for higher and im-
personal goals.
Initial critical response to the collection resulted in a long-term stig-
matisation, censorship, and even artistic self-censorship of the author.
Two years after the publication, the negative reception was still wide-
spread, even in high political circles. Edvard Kardelj, for example, said
the following during the fifth plenary assembly of the Central Commit-
tee of the Slovene Communist Party in February 1951:
Let us give the people an opportunity to think and show what they can do.
Afterwards, however, a hard criticism has to hit those phenomena which
are negative and they have to be silenced. There is no need to silence the
poor Revček Andrejček, but the sour poems … of Marija Žnidaršič and Ada
Škerl” (in Zadravec and Grdina 174).
Until 1952, Škerl’s poetry appeared in Novi svet with a selection of po-
ems, but her next collection of poems entitled Obledeli pasteli (Shaded
Pastels) in which she followed her own poetics was published only sixteen
years later. This collection did not attract as much attention as the first
one, mostly because it was published at a time when modernist poetry
was already at its height and when readers were less interested in person-
al lyricism. She also lost her job at the publishing house which published
her collection and became literary as well as socially marginalised. She
was almost completely forgotten until the last decade of the 20th century.
In 1992, a selection of Ada Škerl’s poems entitled Temna tišina (Dark
Silence) from both previous collections as well as some previously unpub-
lished poems was published. It was edited by Kajetan Kovič who also con-
tributed an introductory essay. After this publication, several memoires
and testimonies by Škerl and favourable articles by others (Alenka Puhar,
Drago Bajt, Denis Poniž) who stressed that the poet remained forgotten
were published alongside several interviews. In 2004, poets Barbara Ko-
run, Barbara Simoniti, and Maja Vidmar organised a commemoration,
an attempt at rehabilitating Škerl’s poetry and a symbolic gesture by fe-
male poets rediscovering their predecessors and reframing the tradition
of female writing.8Senca v srcu was never reprinted, but Mladinska knji-
8 The event was organised as part of a series of literary events called Besedovanja, de-
signed by Barbara Korun and Barbara Simoniti in order to promote women poets on
the peripheries of the literary memory. Such understanding of the women poets has
further consequences. Erasure of women from the literary memory or their silencing,
to use the expression proposed by Tillie Olsen in 1978 in her book Silences, results in
a lack of referential figures and traditional role—models for later generations of fe-
healthy optimism with the vision of sacrificing oneself for higher and im-
personal goals.
Initial critical response to the collection resulted in a long-term stig-
matisation, censorship, and even artistic self-censorship of the author.
Two years after the publication, the negative reception was still wide-
spread, even in high political circles. Edvard Kardelj, for example, said
the following during the fifth plenary assembly of the Central Commit-
tee of the Slovene Communist Party in February 1951:
Let us give the people an opportunity to think and show what they can do.
Afterwards, however, a hard criticism has to hit those phenomena which
are negative and they have to be silenced. There is no need to silence the
poor Revček Andrejček, but the sour poems … of Marija Žnidaršič and Ada
Škerl” (in Zadravec and Grdina 174).
Until 1952, Škerl’s poetry appeared in Novi svet with a selection of po-
ems, but her next collection of poems entitled Obledeli pasteli (Shaded
Pastels) in which she followed her own poetics was published only sixteen
years later. This collection did not attract as much attention as the first
one, mostly because it was published at a time when modernist poetry
was already at its height and when readers were less interested in person-
al lyricism. She also lost her job at the publishing house which published
her collection and became literary as well as socially marginalised. She
was almost completely forgotten until the last decade of the 20th century.
In 1992, a selection of Ada Škerl’s poems entitled Temna tišina (Dark
Silence) from both previous collections as well as some previously unpub-
lished poems was published. It was edited by Kajetan Kovič who also con-
tributed an introductory essay. After this publication, several memoires
and testimonies by Škerl and favourable articles by others (Alenka Puhar,
Drago Bajt, Denis Poniž) who stressed that the poet remained forgotten
were published alongside several interviews. In 2004, poets Barbara Ko-
run, Barbara Simoniti, and Maja Vidmar organised a commemoration,
an attempt at rehabilitating Škerl’s poetry and a symbolic gesture by fe-
male poets rediscovering their predecessors and reframing the tradition
of female writing.8Senca v srcu was never reprinted, but Mladinska knji-
8 The event was organised as part of a series of literary events called Besedovanja, de-
signed by Barbara Korun and Barbara Simoniti in order to promote women poets on
the peripheries of the literary memory. Such understanding of the women poets has
further consequences. Erasure of women from the literary memory or their silencing,
to use the expression proposed by Tillie Olsen in 1978 in her book Silences, results in
a lack of referential figures and traditional role—models for later generations of fe-
