Boris Pahor
Encyclopedia
Boris Pahor (born 28 August 1913) is a Slovene writer from Italy
. He is considered to be one of the most influential living authors in the Slovene language and has been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
. A concentration camp survivor, he is most famous for his literary descriptions of the life in the Nazi concentration camps
and of the life in his native city, Trieste
.
Pahor was born to a Slovene-speaking family in Trieste
, then the main port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the capital of the Austrian Littoral
. His father moved to the city from the nearby Kras
region and was employed as a civil servant in the Austro-Hungarian administration. In 1919, he was fired by the new Italian military authorities, and had to work as a costermonger
.
During his childhood and young age, Pahor witnessed the growth of nationalist and totalitarian ideologies, against which he has fought a life-long intellectual battle in the name of Christian humanist and communitarian
values.
In July 1920, he witnessed the Fascist squads burning down the Slovene Community Hall (the Narodni dom) in Trieste. The event had a profound impact on him. He would later frequently recall this childhood memory in his essays, as well as in one of his late novels, Trg Oberdan ("Oberdan Square", from the name of the square on which the Narodni dom stood, named after Guglielmo Oberdan
, a 19th century Italian radical nationalist terrorist from the Austrian Littoral
).
He attended a Slovene-language high school in Trieste from 1919 to 1923, when all Slovene and Croat
schools in the Julian March
were abolished by the Gentile
school reform. He continued his education in Italian
. He enrolled in a Roman Catholic
seminary
in Koper, then also part of Italy, and graduated in 1935. He continued to study theology in Gorizia
, but quit in 1938. During his studies in Gorizia, he was shocked by the brutal assassination of the Slovene choirmaster Lojze Bratuž
, who was assaulted, kidnapped, tortured and killed by Fascist squads on Christmas Eve of 1936. He later referred to the event as a turning point in his personal growth, confirming his dedication to anti-Fascism and the Slovene national cause.
During his stay in Koper and Gorizia, he began to study standard Slovene. At the time, all public and private use of Slovene in the Julian March was prohibited and the relations between Slovenes living in Fascist Italy
and those from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
were forcibly cut off. Pahor nevertheless managed to publish his first short stories in several magazines in Ljubljana
(then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) under the pseudonym Jožko Ambrožič. In 1939, he established contact with the Slovenian personalist
poet and thinker Edvard Kocbek
. Kocbek introduced him to contemporary literary trends and helped him to improve his use of standard Slovene.
Pahor returned to Trieste in 1938, where he established close contacts with the few Slovene intellectuals that still worked underground in Trieste, including the poet Stanko Vuk and some members of the Slovene militant anti-fascist organization TIGR
.
. In 1941, he was transferred to Lombardy
, where he worked as a military translator. At the same time, he enrolled at the University of Padua
, where he studied Italian literature
.
After the Italian armistice in September 1943, he returned to Trieste, which had already fallen under Nazi
occupation. After a few weeks in the German-occupied city, he decided to join the Yugoslav resistance forces
active in the Slovenian Littoral
. In 1955, he would describe these crucial weeks of his life in the novel Mesto v zalivu ("The City in the Bay"), a story about a young Slovene intellectual from Trieste, wondering about what action to take confronted with the highly complex personal and political context of World War II
on the border between Italy and Slovenia.
On 21 January 1944, he was captured by the Slovene Home Guard that handed him over to the Nazis who first imprisoned him in the Coroneo jail in Trieste and then (on 28 February 1944) sent him to Dachau. From there he was transported to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines
(Markirch) and Natzweiler-Struthof
in Alsace, then again to Dachau, Mittelbau-Dora
, Harzungen
and finally to Bergen-Belsen
, which was liberated on 15 April 1945. The concentration camp experience became the major inspiration of Pahor's work, frequently compared to that of Primo Levi
, Imre Kertesz
, or Jorge Semprún
. Outside Slovenia, his best-known work is probably Nekropola (Pilgrim Among the Shadows), a novel in which he remembers the internment while walking through Natzweiler-Struthof as a visitor, analysing with intensive scrutiny the human relations in the camps.
Between April 1945 and December 1946, he recovered at the French sanatorium at Villers-sur-Marne (Île-de-France
).
military administration. In 1947, he graduated from the University of Padua with a thesis on the poetry of Edvard Kocbek. The same year, he met Kocbek for the first time. The two men were united in their criticism of the communist regime in Yugoslavia and established a close friendship that lasted until Kocbek's death in 1981.
In 1951 and 1952, Pahor defended Kocbek's literary work against the organized attacks launched by the Slovenian Communist establishment and its allies in the Free Territory of Trieste
. This resulted in a break with the local leftist circles, with whom Pahor had been engaged since 1946. He grew closer to Liberal Democratic
positions and in 1966 he founded, together with fellow writer from Trieste Alojz Rebula
, the magazine Zaliv ("The Bay"), in which he wanted to defend the "traditional democratic pluralism
" against the totalitarian cultural policies of Communist Yugoslavia
. The magazine Zaliv was published in the Slovene language in Trieste in Italy outside of reach of Communist Yugoslavian authorities. This enabled Zaliv to become an important platform for democratic debate, in which many dissidents from Communist Slovenia
could publish their opinions. Pahor dissolved the magazine in 1990, after the victory of the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia
in the first free elections in Slovenia after World War II.
Between 1953 and 1975, Pahor worked as a professor of Italian literature in a Slovene-language high school in Trieste. During this time, he was an active member of the international organization AIDLCM (Association internationale des langues et cultures minoritaires) which aims at promoting minority languages and cultures. In this function, he traveled around Europe discovering the cultural plurality of the continent. This experience strengthened his communitarian and anti-centralist
views.
Pahor also publicly supported the political party Slovene Union
and has run on its lists for general and local elections.
, in which Kocbek publicly condemned the summary killing of 12,000 Slovene Home Guard war prisoners by the Yugoslav Communist regime in May and June 1945. The book caused a great scandal in Yugoslavia and served as a pretext to launch a massive denigration campaign against Kocbek by the state-controlled Yugoslav media. Kocbek, who lived in Yugoslavia, was put under constant communist secret service surveillance until his death in 1981. The journal Zaliv, which published the book in Italy, was banned in Yugoslavia. Pahor, who lived in Italy and was an Italian citizen, was banned from entering Yugoslavia for several years. He was able to enter Yugoslavia only in 1981, when he was allowed to attend Kocbek's funeral.
In 1989, Pahor published his memories on Kocbek in the book Ta ocean strašnó odprt ("This Ocean, So Terribly Opened"). The book was published in Slovenia by the prestigious Slovenska matica
publishing house, with the preface by the renowned historian Bogo Grafenauer
. As such, it marked one of the first steps towards the final rehabilitation of Kocbek's public image in post-Communist Slovenia.
, the highest recognition for cultural achievements on Slovenia, in 1992. In May 2009, Pahor became a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
.
In March 2010, the Slovenian National Television Broadcast produced a documentary film on Pahor's life, entitled "The Stubborn Memory" (Trmasti spomin). The documentary features several famous public figures who talk about Pahor, including two Slovene historians from Trieste, Marta Verginella
and Jože Pirjevec
, the Italian writer from Trieste Claudio Magris
, the French literary critic Antoine Spire, the Italian journalist Paolo Rumiz, and the Slovene literary historian from Trieste Miran Košuta.
In March 2010, Boris Pahor was also proposed by several civil associations as an honorary citizen of the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana
. However, the proposal stalled at the commission for awards of the City Municipality of Ljubljana
who decided not to forward the proposal to the Ljubljana city council for a vote. Pahor himself has stated he does not want to become the Ljubljana's honorary citizen as through the history after World War I the Slovenia's capital city has never supported the Slovenian Littoral
as it should.
In May 2007, he received the French order of Legion of Honour.
In January 2008, the Italian journal La Repubblica
published an influential article entitled Il caso Pahor ("The Pahor Case"), deploring the fact that the author had remained unknown in Italy for so long and blaming the Italian nationalist milieu of Trieste for it:
In February 2008, Pahor was invited as a guest on Italian national television
for the first time, where he was interviewed in the popular Sunday talk show Che tempo che fa
.
In December 2009, the mayor of Trieste Roberto Dipiazza
offered Pahor an award, highlighting his role in the field of culture, his sufferings during Nazi occupation and his opposition to the Yugoslav Communist regime. Pahor however refused the award, criticizing the mayor for not having mentioned his opposition to Italian Fascism
. The case created a controversy on the local level in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
and resonated in the Italian press. Many renowned Italian left wing intellectuals, like the astrophysicist and popular science
writer Margherita Hack
, voiced their support of Pahor's decision. The Trieste-based Association of Free and Equal Citizens (Associazione cittadini liberi ed uguali) supported Pahor's refusal of the award, and offered him an alternative award, highlighting Pahor's anti-Fascist "during and after World War II
".
On 26 April 2010, the Austrian government
bestowed the Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class on Boris Pahor. This is the highest award that may be bestowed on a foreigner in Austria. Pahor was conferred the award for raising awareness about the dangers of Fascism. , five of his books have been translated into German.
In December 2010, a theater adaptation of Pahor's novel Necropolis, directed by the Trieste Slovene director Boris Kobal, was staged in Trieste's Teatro Verdi, sponsored by the mayors of Trieste and Ljubljana, Roberto Dipiazza
and Zoran Janković. The event was considered a "historical step" in the normalization of relations between Italians and Slovenes in Trieste, and was attended by numerous Slovenian and Italian dignitaries. After the performance, Pahor declared that he can finally feel a first-rate citizen of Trieste.
who has frequently pointed out his indebtedness to Pahor, especially in the essay "The Man Who Said No", published in 1993 as one of the first comprehensive assessments of Pahor's literary and moral role in the post-war era in Slovenia.
Pahor's major works include the Vila ob jezeru (A Villa by the Lake), Mesto v zalivu (The City in the Bay), Nekropola (Pilgrim among the Shadows), a trilogy about Trieste and the Slovene minority in Italy (Spopad s pomladjo - A Difficult Spring, Zatemnitev - Obscuration, V labirintu - In the Labyrinth), and Zibelka sveta (The Cradle of the World).
and in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. In 2007, he publicly supported the candidacy of the Liberal politician Mitja Gaspari
for president of Slovenia
.
In 2009, he ran on the list of the South Tyrolean People's Party
as a representative of the Slovene Union
for the European Parliament
.
as the mayor of Piran
on the basis of his ethnicity. He stated that it is a "bad sign if one elects a foreigner for mayor." The statement echoed in the Slovenian and Italian media, and Pahor was accused of racism by some. He rejected these accusations saying he has nothing against Bossman being black; he clarified his statement by saying that he would rather see a mayor from one of the autochthonous ethnic groups from the region, either a Slovene or Istrian Italian
.
Besides Slovene and Italian, he is also fluent in French
.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. He is considered to be one of the most influential living authors in the Slovene language and has been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the national academy of Slovenia, which encompasses science and the arts and brings together the top Slovene researchers and artists as members of the academy....
. A concentration camp survivor, he is most famous for his literary descriptions of the life in the Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
and of the life in his native city, Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
.
Early life and education
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
, then the main port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the capital of the Austrian Littoral
Austrian Littoral
The Austrian Littoral was established as a crown land of the Austrian Empire in 1849. In 1861 it was divided into the three crown lands of the Imperial Free City of Trieste and its suburbs, the Margraviate of Istria, and the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, which each had separate...
. His father moved to the city from the nearby Kras
Kras
Karst ; also known as the Karst Plateau, is a limestone borderline plateau region extending in southwestern Slovenia and northeastern Italy. It lies between the Vipava Valley, the low hills surrounding the valley, the westernmost part of the Brkini Hills, northern Istria, and the Gulf of Trieste...
region and was employed as a civil servant in the Austro-Hungarian administration. In 1919, he was fired by the new Italian military authorities, and had to work as a costermonger
Costermonger
Costermonger, or simply Coster, is a street seller of fruit and vegetables, in London and other British towns. They were ubiquitous in mid-Victorian England, and some are still found in markets. As usual with street-sellers, they would use a loud sing-song cry or chant to attract attention...
.
During his childhood and young age, Pahor witnessed the growth of nationalist and totalitarian ideologies, against which he has fought a life-long intellectual battle in the name of Christian humanist and communitarian
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
values.
In July 1920, he witnessed the Fascist squads burning down the Slovene Community Hall (the Narodni dom) in Trieste. The event had a profound impact on him. He would later frequently recall this childhood memory in his essays, as well as in one of his late novels, Trg Oberdan ("Oberdan Square", from the name of the square on which the Narodni dom stood, named after Guglielmo Oberdan
Guglielmo Oberdan
Guglielmo Oberdan, was an Italian irredentist. He was executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph, thus becoming a martyr of the Italian unification movement.- Biography :He was born in the city of Trieste, then part of the Austrian Empire...
, a 19th century Italian radical nationalist terrorist from the Austrian Littoral
Austrian Littoral
The Austrian Littoral was established as a crown land of the Austrian Empire in 1849. In 1861 it was divided into the three crown lands of the Imperial Free City of Trieste and its suburbs, the Margraviate of Istria, and the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, which each had separate...
).
He attended a Slovene-language high school in Trieste from 1919 to 1923, when all Slovene and Croat
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
schools in the Julian March
Julian March
The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...
were abolished by the Gentile
Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of Benedetto Croce. He described himself as 'the philosopher of Fascism', and ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini. He also devised his own system of philosophy, Actual Idealism.- Life and thought :Giovanni...
school reform. He continued his education in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. He enrolled in a Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
in Koper, then also part of Italy, and graduated in 1935. He continued to study theology in Gorizia
Gorizia
Gorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
, but quit in 1938. During his studies in Gorizia, he was shocked by the brutal assassination of the Slovene choirmaster Lojze Bratuž
Lojze Bratuž
Lojze Bratuž, italianized name Luigi Bertossi was a Slovene choirmaster and composer from Gorizia, killed by the Italian Fascist squads...
, who was assaulted, kidnapped, tortured and killed by Fascist squads on Christmas Eve of 1936. He later referred to the event as a turning point in his personal growth, confirming his dedication to anti-Fascism and the Slovene national cause.
During his stay in Koper and Gorizia, he began to study standard Slovene. At the time, all public and private use of Slovene in the Julian March was prohibited and the relations between Slovenes living in Fascist Italy
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
and those from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
were forcibly cut off. Pahor nevertheless managed to publish his first short stories in several magazines in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
(then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) under the pseudonym Jožko Ambrožič. In 1939, he established contact with the Slovenian personalist
Personalism
Personalism is a philosophical school of thought searching to describe the uniqueness of a human person in the world of nature, specifically in relation to animals...
poet and thinker Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...
. Kocbek introduced him to contemporary literary trends and helped him to improve his use of standard Slovene.
Pahor returned to Trieste in 1938, where he established close contacts with the few Slovene intellectuals that still worked underground in Trieste, including the poet Stanko Vuk and some members of the Slovene militant anti-fascist organization TIGR
TIGR
TIGR, abbreviation for Trst , Istra , Gorica and Reka , with the full name Revolutionary Organization of the Julian March T.I.G.R. was a militant anti-Fascist and insurgent organization active in the 1920s and the 1930s in the eastern Italian border region known as the Julian March.The...
.
Resistance fight and imprisonment
In 1940, Pahor was drafted into the Italian army and sent to fight in LibyaLibya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. In 1941, he was transferred to Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
, where he worked as a military translator. At the same time, he enrolled at the University of Padua
University of Padua
The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...
, where he studied Italian literature
Italian literature
Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....
.
After the Italian armistice in September 1943, he returned to Trieste, which had already fallen under Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
occupation. After a few weeks in the German-occupied city, he decided to join the Yugoslav resistance forces
Partisans (Yugoslavia)
The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...
active in the Slovenian Littoral
Slovenian Littoral
The Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
. In 1955, he would describe these crucial weeks of his life in the novel Mesto v zalivu ("The City in the Bay"), a story about a young Slovene intellectual from Trieste, wondering about what action to take confronted with the highly complex personal and political context of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
on the border between Italy and Slovenia.
On 21 January 1944, he was captured by the Slovene Home Guard that handed him over to the Nazis who first imprisoned him in the Coroneo jail in Trieste and then (on 28 February 1944) sent him to Dachau. From there he was transported to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines
Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines
Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.-Geography:Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines nestles in the massif of the Vosges Mountains, where it occupies the beautiful V-shaped valley of the Lièpvrette...
(Markirch) and Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
in Alsace, then again to Dachau, Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi Germany labour camp that provided workers for the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory in the Kohnstein, situated near Nordhausen, Germany....
, Harzungen
Harzungen
Harzungen is a municipality in the district of Nordhausen, in Thuringia, Germany....
and finally to Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
, which was liberated on 15 April 1945. The concentration camp experience became the major inspiration of Pahor's work, frequently compared to that of Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
, Imre Kertesz
Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"....
, or Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún Maura was a Spanish writer and politician who lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. From 1953 to 1962, during the era of Francisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiled Communist Party of Spain, but was expelled...
. Outside Slovenia, his best-known work is probably Nekropola (Pilgrim Among the Shadows), a novel in which he remembers the internment while walking through Natzweiler-Struthof as a visitor, analysing with intensive scrutiny the human relations in the camps.
Between April 1945 and December 1946, he recovered at the French sanatorium at Villers-sur-Marne (Île-de-France
Île-de-France (région)
Île-de-France is the wealthiest and most populated of the twenty-two administrative regions of France, composed mostly of the Paris metropolitan area....
).
The Cold War years
Pahor returned to Trieste at the end of 1946, when the area was under AlliedAllies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
military administration. In 1947, he graduated from the University of Padua with a thesis on the poetry of Edvard Kocbek. The same year, he met Kocbek for the first time. The two men were united in their criticism of the communist regime in Yugoslavia and established a close friendship that lasted until Kocbek's death in 1981.
In 1951 and 1952, Pahor defended Kocbek's literary work against the organized attacks launched by the Slovenian Communist establishment and its allies in the Free Territory of Trieste
Free Territory of Trieste
The Free Territory of Trieste was to be a city-state situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, created by the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II and provisionally administered by an appointed military governor commanding the peacekeeping United...
. This resulted in a break with the local leftist circles, with whom Pahor had been engaged since 1946. He grew closer to Liberal Democratic
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
positions and in 1966 he founded, together with fellow writer from Trieste Alojz Rebula
Alojz Rebula
Alojz Rebula is a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist and translator, who lives and works in the Province of Trieste, Italy. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.-Life:...
, the magazine Zaliv ("The Bay"), in which he wanted to defend the "traditional democratic pluralism
Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture. Cultural pluralism is often confused with Multiculturalism...
" against the totalitarian cultural policies of Communist Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. The magazine Zaliv was published in the Slovene language in Trieste in Italy outside of reach of Communist Yugoslavian authorities. This enabled Zaliv to become an important platform for democratic debate, in which many dissidents from Communist Slovenia
Socialist Republic of Slovenia
The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until 1990...
could publish their opinions. Pahor dissolved the magazine in 1990, after the victory of the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia
Democratic Opposition of Slovenia
Democratic Opposition of Slovenia, also known as the DEMOS coalition was a coalition of democratic political parties, created by an agreement between the Slovenian Democratic Union, the Social Democrat Alliance of Slovenia, the Slovene Christian Democrats, the Farmers' Alliance and the Greens of...
in the first free elections in Slovenia after World War II.
Between 1953 and 1975, Pahor worked as a professor of Italian literature in a Slovene-language high school in Trieste. During this time, he was an active member of the international organization AIDLCM (Association internationale des langues et cultures minoritaires) which aims at promoting minority languages and cultures. In this function, he traveled around Europe discovering the cultural plurality of the continent. This experience strengthened his communitarian and anti-centralist
Centralized government
A centralized or centralised government is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject...
views.
Pahor also publicly supported the political party Slovene Union
Slovene Union
The Slovene Union is a centrist Italian political party representing the Slovene minority in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Its name in Slovene means literally "The Slovene Community", but the denomination "Slovene Union" is used in other languages....
and has run on its lists for general and local elections.
The "Zaliv affair"
In 1975, Pahor and Alojz Rebula published a book in Trieste, entitled Edvard Kocbek: pričevalec našega časa ("Edvard Kocbek - the Witness of Our Epoch"). The book contained an interview with the Slovene poet and thinker Edvard KocbekEdvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...
, in which Kocbek publicly condemned the summary killing of 12,000 Slovene Home Guard war prisoners by the Yugoslav Communist regime in May and June 1945. The book caused a great scandal in Yugoslavia and served as a pretext to launch a massive denigration campaign against Kocbek by the state-controlled Yugoslav media. Kocbek, who lived in Yugoslavia, was put under constant communist secret service surveillance until his death in 1981. The journal Zaliv, which published the book in Italy, was banned in Yugoslavia. Pahor, who lived in Italy and was an Italian citizen, was banned from entering Yugoslavia for several years. He was able to enter Yugoslavia only in 1981, when he was allowed to attend Kocbek's funeral.
In 1989, Pahor published his memories on Kocbek in the book Ta ocean strašnó odprt ("This Ocean, So Terribly Opened"). The book was published in Slovenia by the prestigious Slovenska matica
Slovenska matica
Slovenska matica , also known as Matica slovenska, is the second-oldest publishing house in Slovenia, founded in the 19th century as an institution for the scholarly and cultural progress of Slovenes...
publishing house, with the preface by the renowned historian Bogo Grafenauer
Bogo Grafenauer
Bogo Grafenauer was a Slovenian historian, who mostly wrote about medieval history in the Slovene Lands. Together with Milko Kos, Fran Zwitter, and Vasilij Melik, he was one of the founders of the so-called Ljubljana school of historiography.- Early life :He was born in Ljubljana in a well...
. As such, it marked one of the first steps towards the final rehabilitation of Kocbek's public image in post-Communist Slovenia.
Recognition in Slovenia
After 1990, Pahor gained widespread recognition in Slovenia. He was awarded the Prešeren AwardPrešeren Award
Prešeren Award is the highest decoration in the field of artistic and in the past also scientific creation in Slovenia awarded each year to one or two eminent Slovene artists...
, the highest recognition for cultural achievements on Slovenia, in 1992. In May 2009, Pahor became a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the national academy of Slovenia, which encompasses science and the arts and brings together the top Slovene researchers and artists as members of the academy....
.
In March 2010, the Slovenian National Television Broadcast produced a documentary film on Pahor's life, entitled "The Stubborn Memory" (Trmasti spomin). The documentary features several famous public figures who talk about Pahor, including two Slovene historians from Trieste, Marta Verginella
Marta Verginella
Marta Verginella is a Slovenian-Italian historian from Trieste, and one of the most prominent contemporary Slovene historians.- Biography :She was born in Trieste, Italy, where she attended Slovene language schools...
and Jože Pirjevec
Jože Pirjevec
Jože Pirjevec is a Slovene historian from Italy. He is one of the most prominent diplomatic historians of the west Balkans region, and member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts....
, the Italian writer from Trieste Claudio Magris
Claudio Magris
Claudio Magris is an Italian scholar, translator and writer.Magris graduated from the University of Turin, where he studied German studies, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978.He is an essayist and columnist for the Italian newspaper...
, the French literary critic Antoine Spire, the Italian journalist Paolo Rumiz, and the Slovene literary historian from Trieste Miran Košuta.
In March 2010, Boris Pahor was also proposed by several civil associations as an honorary citizen of the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
. However, the proposal stalled at the commission for awards of the City Municipality of Ljubljana
City Municipality of Ljubljana
The City Municipality of Ljubljana, also the City of Ljubljana is one of eleven city municipalities in Slovenia. Its center is Ljubljana, the largest and capital city of Slovenia.- Administrative division :...
who decided not to forward the proposal to the Ljubljana city council for a vote. Pahor himself has stated he does not want to become the Ljubljana's honorary citizen as through the history after World War I the Slovenia's capital city has never supported the Slovenian Littoral
Slovenian Littoral
The Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
as it should.
Recognition in Italy and elsewhere
In the last decade, his works have attracted an international attention and have been translated into the major European languages. In 2007, his novel Necropolis was published by the Italian publishing house Fazi editori, which opened him the way to the Italian reading public.In May 2007, he received the French order of Legion of Honour.
In January 2008, the Italian journal La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
published an influential article entitled Il caso Pahor ("The Pahor Case"), deploring the fact that the author had remained unknown in Italy for so long and blaming the Italian nationalist milieu of Trieste for it:
Forty years were needed for such an important author to gain recognition in his own country. (...) For too long, it was in someone's interest to hide that in the "absolutely Italian" city of Trieste there was somebody able to write great things in a language different from Italian.
In February 2008, Pahor was invited as a guest on Italian national television
RAI
RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...
for the first time, where he was interviewed in the popular Sunday talk show Che tempo che fa
Che tempo che fa
Che tempo che fa is a popular Italian television talk show hosted by the Italian television host Fabio Fazio and is broadcast live on Saturdays and Sundays on the Italian State TV Channel Rai Tre in Milan since 2003....
.
In December 2009, the mayor of Trieste Roberto Dipiazza
Roberto Dipiazza
Roberto Dipiazza is an Italian entrepreneur and politician, mayor of Muggia in 1996-2001, and mayor of Trieste in 2001-2011.-Career:...
offered Pahor an award, highlighting his role in the field of culture, his sufferings during Nazi occupation and his opposition to the Yugoslav Communist regime. Pahor however refused the award, criticizing the mayor for not having mentioned his opposition to Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
. The case created a controversy on the local level in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli–Venezia Giulia is one of the twenty regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The capital is Trieste. It has an area of 7,858 km² and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is...
and resonated in the Italian press. Many renowned Italian left wing intellectuals, like the astrophysicist and popular science
Popular science
Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
writer Margherita Hack
Margherita Hack
Margherita Hack is an Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honor.-Biography:...
, voiced their support of Pahor's decision. The Trieste-based Association of Free and Equal Citizens (Associazione cittadini liberi ed uguali) supported Pahor's refusal of the award, and offered him an alternative award, highlighting Pahor's anti-Fascist "during and after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
".
On 26 April 2010, the Austrian government
Austrian Federal Government
The Austrian Federal Government is a collective body of the highest-ranking officers of the Austrian executive branch. It consists of the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor and the other federal ministers of the cabinet...
bestowed the Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class on Boris Pahor. This is the highest award that may be bestowed on a foreigner in Austria. Pahor was conferred the award for raising awareness about the dangers of Fascism. , five of his books have been translated into German.
In December 2010, a theater adaptation of Pahor's novel Necropolis, directed by the Trieste Slovene director Boris Kobal, was staged in Trieste's Teatro Verdi, sponsored by the mayors of Trieste and Ljubljana, Roberto Dipiazza
Roberto Dipiazza
Roberto Dipiazza is an Italian entrepreneur and politician, mayor of Muggia in 1996-2001, and mayor of Trieste in 2001-2011.-Career:...
and Zoran Janković. The event was considered a "historical step" in the normalization of relations between Italians and Slovenes in Trieste, and was attended by numerous Slovenian and Italian dignitaries. After the performance, Pahor declared that he can finally feel a first-rate citizen of Trieste.
Literary achievements and influence
From the 1960s, Pahor's work started to become quite well known in Yugoslavia, but it did not gain a wide recognition due to the opposition from the Slovenian Communist Regime, which saw Pahor as a potential subversive figure. Nevertheless, he became one of the major moral referents for the new post-war generation of Slovene writers, among others Drago JančarDrago Jancar
Drago Jančar is a Slovenian writer, playwright and essayist. Jančar is one of the most known contemporary Slovene writers. In Slovenia, he is also famous for his political commentaries and civic engagement.-Life:...
who has frequently pointed out his indebtedness to Pahor, especially in the essay "The Man Who Said No", published in 1993 as one of the first comprehensive assessments of Pahor's literary and moral role in the post-war era in Slovenia.
Pahor's major works include the Vila ob jezeru (A Villa by the Lake), Mesto v zalivu (The City in the Bay), Nekropola (Pilgrim among the Shadows), a trilogy about Trieste and the Slovene minority in Italy (Spopad s pomladjo - A Difficult Spring, Zatemnitev - Obscuration, V labirintu - In the Labyrinth), and Zibelka sveta (The Cradle of the World).
Current activities
Pahor lives and works in his native city of Trieste. He is still very active in the public life, both in SloveniaSlovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
and in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. In 2007, he publicly supported the candidacy of the Liberal politician Mitja Gaspari
Mitja Gaspari
Mitja Gaspari is a Slovenian economist, banker, and politician. He is currently serving as Minister for Economic Development in the centre left government of Borut Pahor....
for president of Slovenia
President of Slovenia
The function of President of the Republic of Slovenia was established on 23 December 1991, when the National Assembly of Slovenia passed a new constitution as a result of independence from Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....
.
In 2009, he ran on the list of the South Tyrolean People's Party
South Tyrolean People's Party
The South Tyrolean People's Party is a regionalist Christian democratic political party active in the Italian province of South Tyrol.Founded in 1945, the SVP represents the German-speaking population of the province, as well as Ladin speakers. Since the first election of the Provincial Council in...
as a representative of the Slovene Union
Slovene Union
The Slovene Union is a centrist Italian political party representing the Slovene minority in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Its name in Slovene means literally "The Slovene Community", but the denomination "Slovene Union" is used in other languages....
for the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
.
Controversies
In December 2010, Pahor criticized the election of Peter BossmanPeter Bossman
Peter Bossman is a Ghanaian-born Slovenian doctor and politician. He is currently serving as mayor of Piran, a city and municipality in Slovenian Istria in south-western Slovenia. A member of the centre-left Social Democrats, he defeated the incumbent mayor Tomaž Gantar in the October 2010 mayoral...
as the mayor of Piran
Piran
Piran is a city and municipality in southwestern Slovenia on the Gulf of Piran on the Adriatic Sea. It is one of the three major towns of Slovenian Istria. The city resembles a large open-air museum, with medieval architecture and a rich cultural heritage. Narrow streets and compact houses give...
on the basis of his ethnicity. He stated that it is a "bad sign if one elects a foreigner for mayor." The statement echoed in the Slovenian and Italian media, and Pahor was accused of racism by some. He rejected these accusations saying he has nothing against Bossman being black; he clarified his statement by saying that he would rather see a mayor from one of the autochthonous ethnic groups from the region, either a Slovene or Istrian Italian
Istrian Italians
Istrian Italians are the ethnic group in the northern Adriatic region of Istria, related to the Italian people of Italy. Historically they are descendants from the original Latinized population of Roman Istria, from the Venetian-speaking settlers who came to Istria during the Republic of Venice,...
.
Personal life
Pahor was married to the deceased author Radoslava Premrl, sister of the Slovene anti-Fascist resistance hero Janko Premrl Vojko.Besides Slovene and Italian, he is also fluent in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Sources and references
- Article on Pahor in La Repubblica
- Drago JančarDrago JancarDrago Jančar is a Slovenian writer, playwright and essayist. Jančar is one of the most known contemporary Slovene writers. In Slovenia, he is also famous for his political commentaries and civic engagement.-Life:...
, "Das eigene Gesicht : über Boris Pahor und die slowenische Frage Europas", in Literatur und Kritik, n. 417/418 (2007). - Drago Jančar, "Različen po svojih obrazih", in DeloDeloDelo is the largest national daily newspaper in Slovenia. It was established on May 1st, 1959, when two newspapers Ljudska pravica and Slovenski poročevalec merged. Nowadays, it is the most influential and credible daily newspaper in Slovenia...
, y. 49, n. 86 (April 14, 2007). - Drago Jančar, "Uporni človek" (1993).
- Marija Pirjevec & Vera Ban Tuta (ed.), Pahorjev zbornik (Trieste: Narodna in študijska knjižnica, 1993).
- Boris Šuligoj, "Italijanom povedal, kakšno je "vreme" v Trstu" in Delo, y. 50, n. 41 (February 20, 2008).
- Wilhelm Baum: "Triestiner Wirklichkeiten. Über den Triestiner Schriftsteller Boris Pahor", in: Bücherschau 183, 2009, pp. 12–16.