Veno Taufer

BILA JE VODA KI SE JE VRTELA

Language: slovenian
Translations: german (WAR EINMAL EIN WIRBELWASSER), slovak (Bola voda čo sa krútila )

BILA JE VODA KI SE JE VRTELA

bila je voda ki se je vrtela
vrtela da je pela
prišel je v blisku in gromu

ni dal žejnim piti
ne veselim govoriti
govoril je o potopu

v vrtincu središče je tajil
utapljajočemu ni pomolil
bruna iz svojega očesa

v vsakem sem in v vsakem si
riba ki beži ali za ribo hiti
zver ki kroži uročena od plena

moč v tvoji je samoti
vanjo se potôpi
žejna bo tvoja žeja reka

veselo tvoje bo veselje veter
žalostne tvoje solze bodo zvezde
postal boš kar že si vesolje

os sveta skoz globočine položena
želja in up utopljena
spokojna duša in morje

gladina naj miruje
da se stvarstvo ogleduje
sklonil se je in nagnila se je os

poševno je zdrsel s sveta
ki je hotel da bi si bil podoben
svet je bil in hudoben
ki do dna zaril je nos

žalost žeja lakota
tarejo vodenjake
gledajo v oblake
v oblake v oblake

Written: 1986
© Veno Taufer
From: Vodenjaki
Ljubljana : DZS
Audio production: Študentska založba / Beletrina

Veno Taufer

photo © Jože Suhadolnik
* 19.02.1933, Ljubljana, Slovenia
lives in: , Slovenia
Veno Taufer, born in 1933 in Ljubljana, is a poet, playwright, essayist, translator with M. A. in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana. Editor of the literary magazine Review 57 (Revija 57) until it was banned in 1959, Taufer was also a manager of the experimental theatre group Oder 57. For many years he worked as a journalist (BBC-London, Ljubljana) before founding and directing the International Literary Festival Vilenica in the early 80’s which was then in the communist governed Slovenia understood as an important part of the engagement for the democratization as well as in the case of Taufer’s Committee for Freedom of Speech and Writing, the first “unofficial” public body of Civil society, he in 1985 initiated in Slovene Writers’ Association.

photo © Jože Suhadolnik
In 1989 Taufer was co-founder of the first Slovene democratic party and co-author of the 1989 May Declaration, the basic document of the pluralistic democracy in Slovenia and of its independence. Taufer has published 16 poetry collections of which the first one, Leaden Stars, in 1958 had to come out as a “samizdat”. The seventinth, Second Sonnets, is due to come out next spring.

He is as well author of several books of plays and essays. His poetry has been included in many anthologies (World Poetry, Norton, New York, 1999, Gods and Mortals, Modern Poetry on Classical Myths, Oxford Univ. Press, 2001, ect.) and published in separate books in several countries (Waterlings, Northwestern Univ.Press, 2000, etc.). His translations, among others authors, of T.S.Eliot, Wallace Stevens, E. Pound as well as G.M.Hopkins and Ted Hughes were met with high acclaim.

Taufer’s poetry represents a linguistic turn in modernist poetry and was, with its cross referenced structure and explorations of linguistic possibilities, a harbinger of postmodernist writing in Slovenian literature. His poetry attempts to express the paradoxes of fleeting existence that faces being and nothingness on the top of the ruins of metaphysics and historical eschatologies. Through palimpsestic and semantic indeterminacy Taufer’s verses are trying to bring into awareness the experience of fragility and fragmentariness of any truth.

In 1996, Taufer won the Great Prešeren Prize for his oevre and in 1995 he was awarded a prestigious international Central European Award in Vienna. Among others international and Slovene awards should be mentioned the international Hungarian “Bethlen Gábor” (Budapest, 1989) and the “Branko Miljković” award for the best Yugoslav poetry collection (1988) as well as “Jenko” award for the best Slovene poetry book (1987). Laureate of The Lucić’s Sonnets’ days on Island Hvar (Croatia 2002) and International Prize "Jan Smrek" for poetry (Bratislava, 2002)

President of the Slovene P.E.N. Center as well as Chair of the Writers for Peace Committee of the International P.E.N.
Publications

  • Ravnanje žebljev in druge pesmi

    1979

  • Vodenjaki

    1986:

  • Svinčene zvezde

    (Als "Samisdat"-Druck)

    1958

  • Jetnik prostosti

    1963

  • Vaje in naloge

    1969

  • Podatki

    1972

  • Prigode (izbor)

    1973

  • Pesmarica rabljenih besed

    1975

  • Sonetje (izbor)

    1979

  • Pesmi (izbor)

    1980

  • Tercine za obtolčeno trobento

    1985

  • črepinje pesmi

    1989

  • Nihanje molka (izbrane pesmi)

    1994

  • Še ode

    1996

  • Kosmi

    2000

  • Rotitve

    2003

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