Jezik in slovstvo

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Jezik in slovstvo
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Andrej Šurla

Minilo je sedemdeset let od izida Jarčeve zbirke Človek in noč
Seventy Years After the Publication of Miran Jarc's Collection Man and the Night

Slovenski sinopsis
English synopsis
English summary

Slovenski sinopsis

Okoli velike noči leta 1927 je Miran Jarc v samozaložbi izdal pesniško zbirko Človek in noč. Vanjo je zbral pesmi iz obdobja med letoma 1917 in 1925. O pesniški knjigi je razmišljal že prej; o tem priča kar nekaj zgodnejših rokopisnih zbirk. Ogrodje Človeka in noči z vsemi nosilnimi pesmimi je tako nastalo že na prelomu desetletja. Skupni imenovalec Jarčeve poezije je težnja po pesniškem dokumentiranju lastnega svetovnonazorskega zorenja, ki se ves čas dogaja kot prepletanje hrepenenja in zavesti o spoznavnem relativizmu. Zunanja forma mora odražati vsebinski naboj, disharmonična sodobnost zato ne dopušča nikakršnega formalnega artizma, zlasti ne modnega sonetizma. Zbirka je izšla v času kritične slovenske polemike z ekspresionizmom in je vzbudila pozoren odziv na vseh tedanjih literarnokritiških straneh.

English synopsis

Around the Easter of 1927, Miran Jarc published his collection of poems Man and the Night (Človek in noč). In it he collected the poems he wrote between 1917 and 1925. He had played with the idea of publishing a collection before, which is evident from several earlier manuscript collections. The main grid of Man and the Night with all the key poems had been produced in the late 1910s --- early 1920s. The common denominator of Jarc's poems is a tendency towards documenting in poetry the maturation of his philosophical views, which was happening as a constant intertwining of yearning and awareness of the relativity of knowledge. The external form has to reflect the internal charge of the content. Therefore the disharmonious modernity does not allow for any formal artism, especially not the fashionable sonnetism. The collection appeared at the time of the critical Slovene polemic with expressionism and met with a lot of attention among literary critics.

English summary

Literary history places Miran Jarc (1900-1942) between the periods of expressionism and New Reality. Thus he may be considered an important Slovene representative of the so-called modern lyric poetry, as his literature seems to be above all an attempt at surpassing nihilism through poetry.

In the vast body of Jarc's poetry, prose, dramas, texts on literature and critical texts, the central place indisputably goes to the poetry. The three collections of poems represent the three stages of Jarc's poetic, and above all philosophical development.

Man and the Night is his first collection, cotaining his 1917 - 1925 lyrical poems. He published it by himself at Easter in 1927, i.e. at a time when, with the prevailing preference for New Reality, he had already publicly renounced expressionism.

The increasing maturity of the poems throughout the collection is supported by the author's increasingly articulate view of poetry. He demands of the poet to be unrelentlessly self-critical: the poet should only speak out when »he feels the need and internal justification for it«; the expression should be formally economical, free of decorative wordiness, focused on the central message. The target of Jarc's direct attacks was especially the fashionable sonnetism.

In his text on Izidor Cankar's novel S poti, the 19-year old poet developed his own typology of writers. He divided them into »individualists« (Byron, Verlaine, Ivan Cankar) and »classicists« (the Parnassians, Flaubert, Izidor Cankar): the art of the former is pervaded by an insatiable yearning to solve the eternal conflict with reality, while the latter managed to put an intellectual distance between themselves and this tragic inner turmoil. Jarc views his own art as an endeavour to reach the point of understanding. And its basis, as he wrote in a private letter as early as 1919, is »symbolism« and »the theory of relativity« (the reality around us is a reflection of a higher reality, while the power of knowing is always only relative).

Responses to Man and the Night reflect the various models of the Slovene literary criticism of the 1920s and 1930s. The Catholic circle saw in Jarc a God-seeking man, but they differed in their judgements on the free form of this poetry (France Vodnik did interpret it as a conscious, period-appropriate objection to any form of art for art's sake). The Liberal Mirko Pretnar recognised in it a stamp of the infinite night encompassing the contemporary time, from which the poet did not seek to escape into religious feelings, but persisted in a stubborn individual confrontation with it. Josip Vidmar had doubts about how genuine Jarc's cosmic fear was, perceiving it as too naive and sought-after. Ten years later, Ivo Brnčič offered a sociological interpretation of the collection as an organic poetic expression of the social anarchy of the 1920s.