(This is the first comprehensive volume of his work to app...)
This is the first comprehensive volume of his work to appear in English and presents the entire creative arch of Zajc’s vision from early poems to his mature work. Having been incarcerated in communist jails, Zajc’s political resistance to the dictatorial regime gives his work an urgency that propels the reader into a vertigo of sinister and evil. His poems speak of the profound solitude that is the destiny of contemporary man, using the vocabulary of the natural world and of bodily sensations to illuminate both the mortal and lethal aspects of the human condition.
Dane Zajc was a Slovenian poet and writer. He served as president of the Slovene Writers' Association from 1991 to 1995.
Background
Dane Zajc was born as Danijel Zajc on October 26, 1929, in Zgornja Javoršica, Moravce, Slovenia. He was a son of Stanislav Zajc and Pavla Zajc. His father died at the hands of the Nazis when Dane Zajc was 13 years old. Zajc also had two brothers who fell in the partisan resistance.
Education
Dane Zajc dropped out of school during the war years. After 1945 he continued his education in a special course for young war victims in Domžale. Later he continued his education in Kamnik and Gornja Radgona.
In 1947, Dane Zajc enrolled in the Poljane Grammar School in Ljubljana. He completed his high school with external exams only in 1958. He was not allowed to enroll at the university.
Dane Zajc started his career as a writer in 1948 when he published his first poem in Mladinska revija journal. Together with Lojze Kovačič, Viktor Blažič in Janez Menart Zajc founded the youth literary magazine called Mi, mladi. However, in 1951 he was sentenced to three months of jail time for a “verbal offense.” In 1953, after some military duty, Zajc got a job working at a post office, and two years later he worked at a youth library, where he remained until his retirement in 1989.
Dane Zajc served on the editorial board of the new Ljubljana journal, Revija 57, a publication that was banned after its sixth issue due to its antisocial realist viewpoint. In 1964, he served as editor for another journal, Perspektive, which was banned for its pro-democratic beliefs. After that Zajc withdrew from public life and continued to write poetry and plays. In 1981, he was a Fulbright scholar and worked at Columbia University.
Dane Zajc published his first collection of verse, the privately printed Pozgana trava (“Burnt Grass”), in 1958. In 1961, he published his second collection of poetry, titled Jezik iz zemlje (“Tongue of the Earth”). Later he published such collections of poetry as Uhijavci kac (“Snake Killers”) and Glava sejavka (“Sowing Head”). In addition to poetry and plays, Zajc authored several popular children’s books.
Bad experiences with the Yugoslav Communist regime affirmed Dane Zajc skepticism against the Communist ideology, turning him into a lifelong anti-Communist. In the late 1980s, he became a vocal supporter of the Slovenian Democratic Opposition.
Membership
Dane Zajc served as president of the Slovene Writers' Association from 1991 to 1995.
Connections
Dane Zajc married Helena Sobar Zajc. The marriage produced two sons.
Father:
Stanislav Zajc
Mother:
Pavla Zajc
Wife:
Helena Sobar Zajc
Son:
Lenart Zajc
Son:
Zlatko Zajc
References
Dictionary of Literary Biography 181: South Slavic Writers since World War II
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