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Tomaž Šalamun

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Tomaž Šalamun
Born(1941-07-04)July 4, 1941
Zagreb
DiedDecember 27, 2014
Ljubljana
OccupationPoet
LanguageSlovene
NationalitySlovenian
Alma materUniversity of Ljubljana
Literary movementNeo-avant-garde
Notable awardsPushcart Prize, Prešeren Fund Award, European Prize for Poetry
SpouseMetka Krašovec

Tomaž Šalamun is a leading name of the postwar neo-avant-garde poetry in Central Europe[1] and internationally acclaimed absurdist[2] Slovene poet, whose books have been translated into twenty-one languages, with nine of his thirty-nine books of poetry published in English.[3] He has been called a poetic bridge between old European roots and America.[4] Šalamun is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is married to the painter Metka Krašovec.

Life

As members of Slovene minority in Italy (1920-1947), Šalamun’s mother's family joined thousands of Slovenes who left their homes because of the forced Italianization and moved from Italy to Yugoslavia, where he was born in 1941 in Zagreb. His father’s family came from Ptuj, where his grandfather had been a mayor.[5] After his family moved to Koper, the local high school teachers of French language and Slovene language made him interested in language. In 1960, he began to study art history and history at University of Ljubljana. His mother was an art historian,[6] his brother Andraž is an artist, while his two sisters are Jelka a biologist and Katarina a literary historian.

Work

In 1964, as editor of a literary magazine Perspektive he published his iconoclastic poem, Duma '64 (Thought '64), which was one of the reasons why Perspektive was banned and Šalamun was arrested by Titoist regime because one of its hard-liners, Ivan Maček Matija, recognized himself in the (dead) cat from the poem (the name Maček is cat in English).[6] He spent five days in jail and came out something of a culture hero, but he refrained from including the poem in his first poetry book, which appeared in 1966 in a samizdat edition, full of absurdist irreverence, playfulness, and wild abandon.[5][7]

DUMA '64
Screwed by the Absolute,
gorged with virgins and other deadly wounded,
I love you, O my fellow-creatures, you who are humble godfather's flash of wit;
I love you, O you complete personalities of sweet observations; in my spirit, mercy has moved.
O you, owners of mental grief,
O you, fawning intellectuals with small sweaty hands,
O you, logicians - vegetarians - with a diopter of minus fifteen,
O you, rectors with muzzles on your snouts,
O you, ideologists with your prostitute ideologies,
O you, academicians who chew gingerbread from Skofja Loka as well as punctuations,
O you, mummies who applaud passions and sufferings in an academic way,
You, Pascals who are trying hard and you Bachs who have succeeded,
O you, lyricists who are drying up with delight,
O you, gardeners - the rationalists and swallows,
O Thou, Socialism a la Louis XIV, or with idea of how to prevent cruelty to animals,
O you, hundred thirty five constitutional bodies, or what to do with the carrion cat in order not
to have it stink,
O you, revolution of all the people's masses, or where is the sanatorium to cure us of impotence.
I have walked throughout our country and got an ulcer;
country of Zimpermanns and of their pimply lady-adorers,
country of servants, myths and pedagogy;
O you, steady Slovenians, you, object's of history who caught a cold.

Poetry collections translated in English

He has had several collections of poetry published in English, including The Selected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun (Ecco Press, 1998); The Shepherd, the Hunter (Pedernal, 1992); The Four Questions of Melancholy (White Pine, 1997); Feast (Harcourt, 2000), Poker(Ugly Duckling Presse), Row! (Arc Publications, 2006), The Book for My Brother (Harcourt), Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008, translated by Brian Henry), There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair (Counterpath, 2009), and On the Tracks of Wild Game (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012). American poets that influenced him include Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Walt Whitman.[1]

International reception

America

In July 1970, he was personally invited to exhibit his work at the MOMA. [8] Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa, including one year in the International Writing Program from 1971-1972, and has lived for periods of time in the United States since then.[3] During 2005-2007, he was teaching at University of Pittsburgh.

Slovenia

For a time, he served as Cultural Attaché to the Consulate General of Slovenia in New York. Literary critic Miklavž Komelj wrote:[9] "Šalamun’s inventiveness with language has, indeed, never been more dynamic than in his most recent books. But in this dynamism there is also a monotone quality, which the poet makes no attempt to hide. It is as if this ecstasy resulted from spinning endlessly in a circle, like the whirling dervishes—a religious order, incidentally, that was founded by the mystic Rumi, one of Šalamun’s favorite poets....It seems that the intensity of Šalamun’s language lies precisely in the endless insistence of its pulsation."

Prizes

He has won a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Slovenia’s Prešeren Fund Award and Jenko Prize. Šalamun and his German translator, Fabjan Hafner, were awarded the European Prize for Poetry by the German city of Muenster. In 2004, he was the recipient of Romania's Ovid Festival Prize.[10]

Profiles

Work

Interviews and review

2011 Symposium

  • 2011 Slovenska medkulturna neoavantgarda: poezija in svet Tomaža Šalamuna, Koper, Ljubljana, Zagreb.

References

  1. ^ a b Colm Tóibín (2004) The comet's trail, Guardian
  2. ^ Martín López-Vega (2013)La poesía total de Tomaz Salamun, El Cultural
  3. ^ a b "University of Iowa - International Writing Program - Šalamun".
  4. ^ Tomaz Salamun - Poet,philosopher, 'monster', The Hour, 13 May 2001
  5. ^ a b Robert Hass (2004) Tomaž Šalamun: An Introduction, Poetry International.
  6. ^ a b Tomaž Šalamun is this year's Vilenica festival author, Primorske Novice
  7. ^ Michale Thomas Taren Translator on Tomaž Šalamun poetry. Transom Journal.
  8. ^ Michale Thomas Taren Tomaž Šalamun Acclaimed Slovenian Poet. Blue Flower Arts
  9. ^ Miklavž Komelj on Tomaž Šalamun Transom Journal.
  10. ^ Tomaž Šalamun's page on Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts website.

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