Lonesome Poplar Tree
Selected Poems
Published on 24. July 2017
283 pages
978-961-6995-28-3 (ISBN)
Description
Though Murn's oeuvre ranges from erotic pieces to poems about the countryside, from atmospheric and reflective to narrative poems, the boundaries between these categories are often blurred. His most acclaimed works are his countryside lyric poems and atmospheric pieces. The former, seemingly echoing the simplicity of folk songs, render the townsman's dream of a bucolic idyll. Murn plays through a vast repertory of metres and rhymes, sometimes harking back to traditional folk forms, such as ballads or romances, sometimes even switching to free verse. His atmospheric poems, on the other hand, paint miniature impressions - usually melancholy ones - of natural scenes. Noteworthy is Murn's masterful use of sound devices, from general euphony to expressive sound repetition.
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The oeuvre of Josip Murn (pen name Aleksandrov, 1879-1901) belongs to the Slovene variant of neo-romanticism, the moderna period (1899-1918). It rests on subjectivity with its moods, emotions and dreams, a subjectivity which finds its impressionistic voice in short atmospheric or confessional poems with symbolic undertones. The poet published no book in his short lifetime: his début collection, Pesmi in romance (Songs and Romances), was published posthumously in 1903. The contents were selected by the poet's friend and renowned literary historian, Ivan Prijatelj, whose introduction was the first aesthetic evaluation of the author's work. Murn's popularity rose after the Great War and peaked after World War II, when his poetry decisively influenced the poets of Slovene intimism. Today Murn is considered a major national lyric poet, the one who salvaged Slovene poetry from the grip of national and social ideologies, internalising it completely (https://litteraeslovenicae.si/).
