200 Years Since Poet France Prešeren Was Born

December, 2000

Under the slogan Prešeren's Year, the year 2000 is being celebrated in Slovenia as the Year of Culture. The festivities started on the National Day of Culture on 8 February, and came to a climax on 3 December, 200 years to the day from when Slovenia's greatest poet France Prešeren was born. Through his contribution to national culture, Prešeren is one of the most significant figures in Slovenian history, becoming over time a type of synonym for it.

Throughout this year, declared by the Government to be the Year of Culture under the slogan Prešeren's Year, a series of cultural events has been held in Slovenia and abroad, dedicated to the famous poet and Slovenian culture in general. Approximately EUR 957,000 has been set aside to finance cultural projects relating to Prešeren on behalf of the Ministry of Culture.

Formal celebrations took place around the country on Sunday and culminated in the main commemoration featuring famous Slovenian actors held in Ljubljana's cultural and congress centre Cankarjev Dom. The audience was addressed by writer and former culture minister Rudi Šeligo. Festivities started on 8 February 2000, when the National Day of Culture is celebrated in Slovenia every year. Slovenia has celebrated 8 February, the day of Prešeren's death, as its national cultural holiday since 1945. Celebrated as an official holiday, the National Cultural Day shows the important role and special place which art and culture have always held within the Slovenian nation.

The main event marking the cultural year of France Prešeren took place in Ljubljana on the 200th anniversary of his birth on 3 December.

The anniversary was also marked by other events all over Slovenia. An international symposium France Prešeren - Culture - Europe organised by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and its Institute for Slovenian Literature and Literary Sciences took place on 30 November and 1 December. Several Slovenian and foreign experts presented their papers at the symposium, describing Prešeren in various contexts. Slovenian National Museum opened an exhibition entitled Prešeren-Poet, Neither Rich nor Famous on 3 December. The Slovenian Cinematheque will show the premiere of the first episode of a series on Prešeren's life, directed by Franci Slak, on 4 December.

More than 50 academic, literary, theatrical, musical and other events in honour of Prešeren organised by the Slovenian Fund for Amateur Cultural Activities are listed for November and December. On the occasion of Prešeren's birthday, new editions of translations of his poems into foreign languages have been published.

In Kranj, Prešeren's town, where the poet spent his last few years, the Gorenjska Museum has prepared its annual exhibition 'Fine Artists for Prešeren's Town' in the Town Hall in the main square in Kranj and in the offices of the City Municipality of Kranj. The Cultural Association Our Slovenia, a civil movement for presenting and preserving Slovenia's natural and cultural heritage, aided by the restoration company Ulrih&Co, on 3 December unveiled a statue of Prešeren in the poet's birth village of Vrba. The new statue is in fact a bronze cast modelled after the plaster original by the sculptor Franz Ksaver Zajec from 1865. The culture and art association KUD France Prešeren from Ljubljana again organised Prešernovanje upon the poet's anniversary, this time celebrating his 200th birthday. Between 1 and 8 December, Trnovo is thus the site of many literary and musical events dedicated to the memory of the poet.

The 16th Annual Book Fair took place in Ljubljana's Cankarjev dom cultural and congress centre from 29 November to 3 December. Along with the 200th anniversary of the birth of France Prešeren, the show also honoured the 450th anniversary of the first Slovenian book. Around 80 exhibitors took part in the show, that also included seminars on the design of Slovenian books, benefits of government funding in book publishing, Slovenian bookstores and book retailing on the WWW. Side activities at the show included exhibitions, discussions on theatre and an auction of old and rare books. An official web site dedicated to France Prešeren has been set up on the Internet by the Slovenian publishing company Pasadena and the Ministry of Culture. Information on the poet's life, work and contemporaries is available in the one place at www.preseren.net. The site, which includes Prešeren's work with some poems also in audio format, versions of his poems recited by famous Slovenian musicians, and video materials, will also appear in English and German versions that are to be set up shortly.

The Message of Zdravljica

The Slovenian national idea has always been closely tied to the nation's most prominent writers, including the author of the first two Slovenian books Katekizem and Abecednik (Catechism and the Alphabet Book, 1550), Primož Trubar, and the poet France Prešeren. Whilst Trubar, a Protestant reformer, built the foundation stones for the Slovenian literary language with works published in the mid-16th century, Prešeren, a widely renowned figure of European Romanticism, proved with his writing that the Slovenian language was equal to other European languages. In the pre- March revolution period, Prešeren made his contribution to overcoming language regionalism: he asserted the right to a unified written language for all Slovenians and opposed attempts to blend it into an artificial Illyrian Yugoslav language. Through his many works, Prešeren established Slovenia's first national programme. The choice of Prešeren's Zdravljica (The Toast) for the national anthem made Prešeren the symbol of this national spirit and its relationship to literary creativity.

Along with Zdravljica (The Toast), today's Slovenian national anthem, his most famous poems are: Sonnet about Vrba, Ballad of Triton and Baptism on the Savica - one of his most famous epic poems.

The seventh stanza of Zdravljica (A Toast), a lengthy poem by France Prešeren is used as Slovenia's national anthem. The poem was set to music decades ago by Stanko Premrl. Zdravljica, a toast to all good- hearted people, was written in 1844, and in it the poet declares his belief in a free-thinking Slovenian and Slavic political awareness, promoting the idea of a Unified Slovenia, which the March revolution in 1848 elevated into a national political programme.