Dialogi
Eurozine
Dialogi
2002-12-01
Summary for Dialogi 11-12/2002
In his editorial on the recent elections in Slovenia, literature editor Robert Titan Felix writes about the paradoxes of democracy: the division between the ruling class and the ruled, the metaphysics that convinces us that we rule our own lives, and the fact that we vote despite our mistrust of pre-electoral promises.
Theatre critic Primoz Jesenko interviewed puppeteer Robert Waltl, who these days is practically guaranteed an award for acting and animation at every puppet festival at which he appears with his Mini Theatre. This private puppet theatre has become a meeting point for puppeteers from Slovenia and abroad, and Waltl is an example of a successful artist working outside the institution. That was the main theme of the interview: the hard life of artists working outside the institution in comparison with the secure position of those regularly employed within it.
Publicist Miroslav Slana Miros restores the memory of the forgotten revolutionary and writer, Ivan Vuk Starogorski (1882-1939) and his exceptional life. Jernej Sever uses the examples of Antigone and Poe's Stolen Letter to discuss the problem of intersubjectivity and the related question of inter-personal interaction, stretching the issue further to the functioning of the social and cultural spheres of our modern, globally oriented society. In his essay Fast Food Window to the World, poet and gourmet Uros Zupan writes about the smell of fast food restaurants that followed him in his youth on his travels through European and American cities, and which has now reached Ljubljana, to offer a personal piece of America to everybody.
The literary section features new short stories by Ales Car, Marcello Potocco and Milan Petek, and poems by Robert Titan Felix and Vid Sagadin. There is also a translation of Seltsame Materie (Peculiar Material), a short story by the Hungaro-German writer Térezia Mora. Fine art critic Boris Gorupic writes about Jure Mikuz's Blood and Milk, in which the author analyses the depiction of Mary with the naked breast on the fresco in the Church of St Primus and Felix near Kamnik, one of the most representative religious frescoes from the period between the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Slovenia. There are also evaluations of two books of philosophy: Tomaz Grusovnik writes about The Basis of Arithmetic by Gottlob Frege, and Karolina Babic about The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. The literary critic Klemen Pisk assesses two books of poems: Rhythm in Hands by one of Slovenia's most interesting young poets, Primoz Cucnik, and a translation of Stone Pillow by the outstanding Macedonian poet, Risto Jacev.
The e-mail diary was written by Marko Jesensek, professor of Slovene language history at the Faculty of Education in Maribor and currently also the very busy president of the Slavicist Society of Slovenia.