Jože Snoj (17 March 1934 – 7 October 2021) was a Slovenian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

. He was awarded the 2012

Prešeren Award The Prešeren Award ( sl, Prešernova nagrada), also called the Grand Prešeren Award ( sl, Velika Prešernova nagrada), is the highest decoration in the field of artistic and in the past also scientific creation in Slovenia. It is awarded each yea ...

for his lifetime work and rich literary opus. He was born in Maribor, then part of the

Kingdom of Yugoslavia The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија; sl, Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was a state in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 until 1941. From 1918 ...

, into a wealthy Slovene family. His uncle,

Franc Snoj Franc Snoj (28 January 1902 – 22 April 1962) was a Slovenian politician and economist. He was a minister without portfolio in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1938 and 1939. During the Second World War, together with the other members of the Yugosl ...

, was a prominent member of the Slovene People's Party and a minister in the Royal Yugoslav Government. In April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia he escaped with his family from the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

to the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

-occupied

Lower Carniola Lower Carniola ( sl, Dolenjska; german: Unterkrain) is a traditional region in Slovenia, the southeastern part of the historical Carniola region. Geography Lower Carniola is delineated by the Ljubljana Basin with the city of Ljubljana to the n ...

. From there, the family had to flee again to

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the are ...

in order to escape persecution by the Communist-led partisan movement. In 1947, his uncle Franc Snoj was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in a staged trial together with other liberal and social democrats who tried to organize a legal opposition to Josip Broz Tito's Communist regime (the so-called Nagode's trial). These experiences deeply influenced Jože Snoj's later literary opus. After graduation in Slavic philology at the

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana ( sl, Univerza v Ljubljani, , la, Universitas Labacensis), often referred to as UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 39,000 enrolled students. History Beginnings Although certain ...

he started working as a reporter for the newspaper ''

Delo ''Delo'' (russian: Дело) is a business oriented online media in Ukraine, belonging to ekonomika+ media holding. ''Delo'' was the first daily in Ukraine, publishing its real print circulation (13.000 - 15.000) and trying to introduce Western e ...

''. Together with

Dane Zajc Dane Zajc () (26 October 1929 – 20 October 2005) was a Slovenian poet and playwright. He served as president of the Slovene Writers' Association (1991–1995), and was awarded the prestigious Prešeren Award for lifetime achievement (1981). To ...

Gregor Strniša Gregor Strniša (18 November 1930 – 23 January 1987) was a Slovenian poet, playwright, and songwriter. He is considered one of the most important Slovene-language poet of the second half of the 20th century. He spent most of his life away from ...

, Dominik Smole, Marjan Rožanc, and others, he was part of the generation which, influenced by the "modernist turn" of the poet

Edvard Kocbek Edvard Kocbek () (27 September 1904 – 3 November 1981) was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, member of Christian Socialists in the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation and Slovene Partisans. He is considered one of the best au ...

, strongly challenged the

literary canon The term canon derives from the Greek (), meaning "rule", and thence via Latin and Old French into English. The concept in English usage is very broad: in a general sense it refers to being one (adjectival) or a group (noun) of official, authent ...

established by the

Communist regime A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Cominte ...

. In 1963 he published his first collection of poetry, ''Mlin stooki'' ("The Mill with Hundred Eyes"), which was strongly criticised by the literary establishment for its supposedly

decadent The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...

and

nihilist Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...

content. Snoj later moved closer to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, expressing religious and metaphysical preoccupations in works as ''Žalostinka za očetom in očetnjavo'' ("Elegies for Father and Fatherland") and ''Duhovne pesmi'' ("Spiritual Poems"). Among his novels, the most famous are ''Gavženhrib'' ("Gallows Hill"), an autobiographical novel about his war childhood, in which he explores the sources of evil, and ''Jožef ali zgodnje odkrivanje srčnega raka'' ("Joseph or the Early Revelation of the Heart Cancer"), in which he used the ancient

archetypal The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that o ...

figure of

Joseph Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...

in a magical realist setting, in which modern and archaic intermingle.

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Bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snoj, Joze 1934 births 2021 deaths Slovenian poets Slovenian male poets Writers from Maribor Slovenian novelists Slovenian male short story writers Slovenian short story writers Slovenian essayists Slovenian Roman Catholics Prešeren Award laureates Slovenian children's writers Veronika Award laureates Levstik Award laureates University of Ljubljana alumni

See also

References

External links