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| 1824-27 |
First attempts at writing poetry |
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rešeren's first poetic attempts were
made in 1824. He wrote a rhyming student joke to comfort
one of his school friends who was unhappily in love, entitled
Zarjovena d'vičica (A Rusty Virgin). Soon after, more
serious poems appeared, such as Povodni
mož (The River Man), Lažnivi
pratkarji (The Lying Almanac-Makers) and a translation
of Bürger's poem Lenora. He wrote a whole notebook full
of other 'Carniolan' poems, but after he had them reviewed
by Jernej Kopitar, he destroyed all but the three mentioned.
Kopitar, as a court librarian and censor, was then the
unquestionable authority; after reading Prešeren's poems,
he advised the poet to leave them for a few years and
then revise them. Some literary historians have wondered
whether this unfavourable opinion from Kopitar set back
the beginning of Slovene secular poetry by a number of
years. Whatever, Prešeren the poet appeared publicly for
the first time relatively late, in 1827, when he published
the poem Dekletom
(To Girls) in Ilirski list. In it, he rebukes the
proud Zalika,
the daughter of the owner of the Dolenc inn, which Prešeren
often visited with his friend Andrej Smole. Prešeren was
strongly attracted to Zalika,
but she showed no interest in him; this became the pattern
of the poet's romantic life. Prešeren experienced considerable
upheavals in his life at that time; conditions in his
home village in particular started getting increasingly
complicated. The family farm was falling apart, so his
father was forced to hand it over to his son-in-law, Jože
Vovk, a rather rough character. He soon introduced his
own kind of order to pri Ribičevih; even the poet's mother
and father soon had to leave. France was completely overlooked
in the legacy, and his other sisters and brother received
almost nothing. Prešeren experienced this as a sort of
exclusion from the family. He was quite upset by what
occurred, but at the same time was strengthened by it.
He finished his studies more quickly and graduated in
the spring of 1828. He became a 'doctor of law', and before
returning to Carniola, he made a rare longer visit abroad.
With his protégé, Count Emanuel, he went to Lysice
in Moravia, where he stayed for a few months, and then
returned to Ljubljana. To mark the occasion he was given
a gold watch, the only possession he was able to bequeath
to his two children.
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