Fran Levstik

Fran Levstik (1831-1887) was one of the most prominent Slovene writers of the nineteenth century. Besides writing poetry and prose, he worked as a playwright, a political activist and the founder of Slovene literary criticism. He wrote during the years when the Slovene lands belonged to the Austrian Empire, and his work remains central to understanding how modern Slovene literature took shape.

Born in 1831 into a peasant family in Lower Carniola, he began studies in theology at the seminary in Olomouc, in Moravia, but never completed them. His first poetry collection, Pesmi (1854), stirred both enthusiasm and strong criticism for being immoral. The book was banned and Levstik was expelled from the seminary. He then earned a living as a teacher at Turn Castle and as an editor of the political newspaper Naprej, and he also helped compile a Slovene-German dictionary.

Levstik tried almost every genre. As a poet he is often seen as too rational and too blunt in expressing feeling. His early verse drew on folk poetry, and later he turned toward German pre-Romantics, Schiller and France Prešeren. He wrote two cycles of poems addressed to women with whom he had romantic relationships, the Poems of Tona and the Poems of Franja, along with the ballad The Fugitive King, which draws on Spanish romances.

His best-known prose is Martin Krpan, a short novel based on a popular Slovene legend. Its humour and polished, stylised language set a model for later Slovene fiction. His travel account A Journey from Litija to Čatež follows the conventions of illustrated Romantic travel books, but its digressions on political and cultural questions turn it into a manifesto for bringing literature to the Slovene people. In criticism, his essay Errors of Written Slovene attacked above all the German loanwords that crept into the language.

His legacy is twofold. He laid the groundwork for Slovene literary criticism and inspired several generations of writers with liberal, national views. He is also remembered in children's literature, since the Levstik Award, given for achievements in that field, is named after him.