Aleš Debeljak

Gospodar solz

Language: slovenian

Translations: german (Der Herr der Tränen)

Gospodar solz

Naj bo: naj tvoja ušesa zaenkrat še ne slišijo prhutanja kavk,
ki žlebove stražnih stolpov prekrivajo kot sad neba. Zdaj tiho
gnije. Naj korak ti meri neizčrpno dno v sprejemnici akademije:
tu sapa odposlancev iz daljnih ambasad vzgaja nek stari sen.

Sen o pokrajinah brez konca, kjer isto ime izgovarjajo z istim
strahom. Naj otrdi ti slina v kristal. Naj se ti roka nikogar ne
dotika nežno. Naj prerokujejo prihodnost ti junaki, ki so ilirske
hribe prekoračili in na bregu toplega morja legli v sipine. Sami,

neizbežno. Naj plima za trenutek pljuskne čez slavne razvaline,
ki so vojske jih pustile za seboj. Naj smrtno resno poveljniki
poslušajo ukaz spomina, ki gosti se kakor vosek. Z njim boš

zapečatil dediščino bolečine, ki zlagoma narašča v zbranih delih
kraljevskih pesnikov. Proti obalam razdeljenega otoka bežijo s
tabo. Prepozno bo, ko pod surovo zvezdo upognil boš koleno.

Aleš Debeljak

photo © Jože Suhadolnik

* 25.12.1961, Ljubljana, Slovenia
† 28.01.2016, Peračica, Slovenia

Aleš Debeljak (b. 1961 in Ljubljana) graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana and received his Ph.D. in Social Thought from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, New York. He was a Senior Fulbright fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study-Collegium Budapest.

Debeljak, one of the leading Central European poets, published eight books of essays and six books of poems in his native Slovenian. His books of poems in English translation include Anxious Moments (1994), Dictionary of Silence (1999) and The City and the Child (1999). His non-fiction books include Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia (1994) and Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms (1998) and a comprehensive anthology The Imagination of Terra Incognita: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 (1997) which he edited.

photo © Jože Suhadolnik

A translator of a book of selected poems by John Ashbery and of a book on sociology of knowledge, he won the Prešeren Foundation Prize (Slovenian National Book Award) and Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize-Tel Aviv and Chiqyu Poetry Prize, Tokyo. His books have appeared in English, Finnish, Japanese, German, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovak, and Italian translation.

A contributing editor of Prague Literary Review and Verse and a member of the advisory board at the Davies Publishing Group (Colorado), Debeljak is also a general editor of Terra Incognita: Writings from Central Europe, a book series published by White Pine Press, Buffalo, New York. Debeljak teaches at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana and directs Center for Religious and Cultural Studies. In the spring 2002 semester, he was a visiting professor at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.

He was married to the columnist, translator and American-Slovenian writer, Erica Johnson, with whom he had three children. He died on 28 January 2016 in a car crash.

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