Day of Slovenian Culture, Presern Day (08/02)

On February 8, Slovenia celebrates the Day of Slovenian Culture, also called Prešerna Day (Slovene). Prešernov dan).

France Prešeren (December 3, 1800 — February 8, 1849) — outstanding Slovenian poet, founder of the literary Slovenian language, representative of romanticism, also wrote in German.

The son of a farmer and gardener from the village of Vrba, Preshern grew up on his father's farm. He was educated at the insistence of his mother, who dreamed that his son would become a priest. Not feeling a calling to do so, Franze went to Vienna to study law in order to then take up an official position in Laibach (Ljubljana). He began writing poetry in 1824, and in 1827 his first publications appeared. Preshern immediately became a famous poet. Having received a doctorate in law, he tried to get a job in the civil service, but could not get a place because he was not German (Slovenia was then part of Austria). Eventually, he became an assistant attorney.

In the 1830s, Preshern experienced the death of several close people and friends, as well as an unhappy love for the girl to whom his most famous poems are dedicated. By the early 1840s he was already an alcoholic. But even the poems created while intoxicated were so good that they were on the lists (not everything was allowed to be published by Austrian censorship). In 1844, «Zdravica» (literally translated «tost») was written, the seventh stanza of which was banned during the poet’s lifetime, and has now become the words of the national Slovenian anthem.

In 1846, the Austrian government finally allowed Prešern to practice his own lawyer and allocated him a plot in the city of Kranj. There was enough work, I even had to hire additional clerks. The poet first began his married life — with the maid of his late friend, who by that time had given birth to two sons with him. However, prosperity and calm came too late — Preshern was already terminally ill and died of cirrhosis of the liver on February 8, 1849.

Prešeren's merit is that he showed that his native language is in no way inferior to the languages of Western Europe, that in Slovenian you can create wonderful poems of various genres: ballads, gazelles, poems. The wreath of sonnets, a special form of versification that combines 15 sonnets into one work, was translated into Russian by Fyodor Evgenievich Korsh (1889). The first letters of each sonnet in this wreath were folded into an acrostic «K Yulia Primich» — for the girl who rejected the poet.

In 1945, the day of the death of Franz Prešern was proclaimed in Slovenia as the Day of Slovenian Culture, which is currently celebrated throughout the country as a national holiday and is a day off. On this day, various cultural events — exhibitions, concerts, lectures, readings, etc. take place. And on the eve of the holiday, February 7, the ceremony of presenting the Franz Prešern Prize for significant achievements in the field of culture and art takes place.

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