Profile der neueren slowenischen Literatur in Kärnten: Monographische Essays by JohannStrutzReview by: Henry R. Cooper, Jun.The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 350-351Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210617 .

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350 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Strutz, Johann (ed.). Profile der neueren slowenischen Literatur in Kdrnten: Mono- graphische Essays. Hermagoras, Klagenfurt, Vienna and Mohorjeva Zalozba, Celovec, Dunaj, I989. I97 pp. Notes. Bibliography. No price available.

No literature, not even Slovene, is too small that subdivisions cannot be made in it, nor any group of authors too young that they cannot be critically scrutinized. That, at least, seems to be the opinion of Johann Strutz, an Assistant in Comparative Literature, with a specialization in Carinthian literature, at the University of Klagenfurt. The volume he has edited contains essays of varying length on twelve contemporary Carinthian authors who write for the most part in Slovene (though some compose in German as well). Six of these authors were born before World War II (between I 902 and I939, to be exact), and six after ( I954-6I ); almost all are poets. The essays are all, however, in German (many translated from the Slovene original by Strutz himself), and citations in Slovene are also everywhere provided with a German translation.

Strutz opens his volume with a lengthy article entitled 'A "Small Litera- ture": On the Sociology and Aesthetics of Recent Slovene Literature in Carinthia', a heavily annotated investigation focusing on Slovene-language writing in Carinthia from I970 on. Strutz sees some improvements in the situation of bilingual authors in Carinthia: more tolerance, and a true cultural symbiosis between German and Slovene. He claims a special character for Carinthian Slovene literature in the 'polyphony' that arises from its bi- cultural, bilingual roots. And he examines at length the role played by journals (especially mladje) in promoting Slovene belles-lettres. At the same time, however, he admits that problems continue to exist for those who would write in Slovene in Austria.

He closes his volume with three very useful appendixes. The first contains a bibliography of (for the most part German-language) studies concerning Slovene language, history and culture in Carinthia; the second is a biblio- graphy of bilingual and translated anthologies of Carinthian Slovene writing; and the third comprises bio-bibliographies of each of the twelve subjects of the volume, along with very brief biographical sketches of Strutz and his eight collaborators.

Between these are the twelve 'monograph essays' of the subtitle, arranged in chronological order from the oldest of the writers, Milka Hartman (b. I 902), to the youngest, Maja Haderlap (b. 196I). Strutz himself wrote the longest of these essays, on Florjan Lipus (b. I937), a prose-writer and the editor of mladje from 1950 to I98I. As in the introduction, the piece is thoroughly annotated and full of Bakhtinian literary terminology. There are two essays by Lev Detela, himself a highly regarded Carinthian Slovene author (onjanko Messner [b. 192I] and Kristijan Mocilnik [b. I 960] ); two by Denis Poniz (on Jani Oswald [b. I957] and Jozica Certov [b. I960] ) - Poniz is a Slovene from Ljubljana; and two by Michael Vrbinc (one on Haderlap, the other on Franc Merkac [b. I 954] ), the youngest of the analysts (b. I 963), who is a high-school teacher in Austria. The remainder are on Valentin Polansek (by Tone Pretnar), Andrej Kotot (by Fabjan Hafner), GustavJanus (by Hans

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REVIEWS 35I

Kitzmiiller), andJanko Ferk (by Neva Slibar); the opening essay on Hartman was written by Maria Spieler. Except for Strutz's, most of these essays are brief. They are all warm appreciations which survey the literary productions of their subjects. On occasion they fail to provide any plot summaries or context, meaning, of course, that the reader who is not familiar with this fairly obscure literature has only the analyst's own opinions to operate with. And all too often the conclusions drawn from these investigations appear somewhat overblown: perhaps, especially with the youngest of the authors, it isjust a bit premature to conduct such probing analyses.

Nevertheless, Profile der neueren slowenischen Literatur in Karnten is to be recommended, for it contains valuable data and some useful insights into a subdivision of Slovene literature that has increasing claims to a history and dignity of its own. Russian and East European Institute HENRY R. COOPER, JUN.

Indiana University Bloomington

Madach, Imre. The Tragedy of Man. Translated by Thomas R. Mark. East European Monographs, 272, Boulder, Colorado, I989. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York. ix + I 48 pp. Illustrations. $ I 6.50.

IMRE MADACH'S The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragedia'ja) has always been a problem play. Since its first publication in i 86 i it has invited a greater variety of conflicting interpretations than almost any other work in the history of Hungarian literature. This is hardly surprising, considering the tragedy's ambitious project: a visionary history of mankind from the Creation to a dystopian future of soulless space travel and the coming of a second Ice Age during the last days of the planet. Its central protagonists are an inquisitive Adam who yearns to know the future of his kind, an ambiguous Eve who wavers between roles of intuition, naivety, selfless devotion and capricious frailty, and a cynical Lucifer, the poetic embodiment of a spirit of total negativity. Ten of the play's fifteen scenes are historical, taking Adam and Eve from ancient Egypt and medieval Byzantium through revolutionary Paris and Dickensian London to a futuristic phalanstery and back again to a landscape outside Eden. Each scene registers the inevitable futility of mankind's pursuit of a particular historical ideal, and Madach's conclusion is equivocal. Broken by his vision, Adam wants to spare mankind its miserable fate by taking his own life, but Eve tells him that she is already with child, and the voice of the Lord implores them both to have faith.

While the debate goes on about whether The Tragedy of Man is a work of hope or pessimism, deep religious faith or cynical impiety, liberal social criticism or ideological conservatism, less attention is generally paid to the drama's problems of style. When Madaich sent his completed manuscript to the most respected poet of the day, Jainos Arany, the response he received tempered enthusiasm for the play's ideas with reservations about the quality of its poetry. Even after the changes Arany made to over one thousand lines of the version we know today, it remains hard to disagree with a comment he made in

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