Veno Taufer

SONETA IZ CIKLA ROTITVE 6

Language: slovenian

Translations: german (Sonett aus dem Zyklus Beschwörungen 6 ), serbian (6. SONET IZ CIKLUSA ZAKLINJANJA)

SONETA IZ CIKLA ROTITVE 6

padajo letala ljudje listje
v zubljih pada perje dlaka
kaplje v curkih besede padajo gnije

dež ki plitek propada
v mlakah in ni je
cvetne zvezde ki ne bi padla

v prah s prahom ki se seseda
na pot na travnik na gozd
na mesto da se skrije plošča in beseda

kjer vztrajata molčeči čas in kraj
kjer ni vetra od nikoder slišati tod
ko se ne večeri niti svita v jutru

in sta zaprašena up in strah da bi klic in dih
zbrisal prahce barv in ne premaknil kril metulju

Veno Taufer

photo © Jože Suhadolnik

* 19.02.1933, Ljubljana, Slovenia
† 20.05.2023, 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.

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Translations:

Sonett aus dem Zyklus Beschwörungen 6

6. SONET IZ CIKLUSA ZAKLINJANJA

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