Świat poetycki Gregora Strnisy

Abstract

The book tries to present the specification of that eminent Strniša’s poetry in an all‑embracing, complex way. The author points to the fact, that the value of Strniša’s works is to a large extent connected with the fact that they reflect his consequent process of constructing poetical philosophy. As a result, poetry becomes a peculiar inner world, which combines adversities within itself, shows the existence of many dimensions within its limits, and at the same time transgresses its own limits. The poetry aims at reaching the phenomenon of a human being – on one hand a physical body, limited by space, though constructed of numerous elements dependent on one another, and on the other hand, a mental world characterised by constant openness, directed towards transgression. It is therefore close to Wolfgang Welsch’s ideas of transversality and transversal mind, along with the search of unity and integrity of a subject, which tries to bring multiplicity and individuality together. The pursue of transversion (according to Welsch’s idea) and transgression appears to be an inseparable characteristic of a protagonist in Strniša’s poetry. The poetry aims at presenting the human being in a complex, thorough way, and points to the dependence between the man and the world viewed either individually, or globally. Peculiarity of poetical works of the Slovenian author lies in a thematic circle, which can be reduced to three basic issues: human being, the world, transcendentalism. The poetry seeks the truth about the world and about an individual; the truth which is an integral part of it (of the world, or of the individual), at the same time being a peculiar microcosm, which unifies various aspects of reality in itself. Peculiarity of the poetry is defined by the philosophical worldview of the artist (logic of contradictions; transversality), his literary consciousness (autonomy of the poetical world) and aesthetics (phenomenologist aesthetics), which are expressed in the poems. The main characteristics of the poetry are: 1. Creating an analogical (alternative) world, in relation to the real world, based on identity of being and consciousness of it, along with coexistence of contradictions. The reality created in this way corresponds to the surrealist idea of absolute reality – surreality, in which all the antinomies supplement each other, and different aspects (real, earthly, directly given and spiritual, irrational and potential) of it coexist alongside and intermingle; 2. The use of known forms of writing poems (such as, four‑verse stanza, known also in folk poetry) in order to underline the relative harmony and value of tradition; 3. Considerable reduction of using rhymes, in the favour of just one type of it – assonance, a fact which can be included in the poet’s worldview. Inasmuch, assonance gives wide possibilities of creating unique arrangements of sound associations, what also corresponds to the fact of the author’s creation of many multi‑dimensional arrangements of poetical reality; 4. Developed symbolism and metaphor of poems, which activates the extensive literary and cultural tradition; 5. Domination of metonymy in imagery, what (among other things) gives an effect of budding poetical worlds; 6. Tendency to use ekphrasis, for example, in the cycles: Sence and Stolpi, bringing to mind metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico; 7. High level of philosophical consciousness – his approach towards existentialism (Heidegger, Camus, Marcel), as a thought registering the symptoms of decomposition, in order to unite the world and the man again; 8. Belief in a holistic existence of the world, human being and universe. Strniša’s poetry still requires thorough intertextual and historical‑literary research. The book does not exhaust the topic fully, also due to the fact that the idea behind writing it was to create a more general work, rather than focusing on one particular phenomenon. Due to the fact that there are no thorough monographic elaborations concerning Strniša’s poetry (along with the rest of his output), there has appeared a need to get closer to the poetry in order to, among other things, indicate and describe the characteristics that make up for its distinctiveness, and that surely deserve separate studies.