Everything about Karel Destovnik Kajuh totally explained
Karel Destovnik Kajuh (
19 December 1922 -
22 February 1944) was a
Slovene poet,
translator and
national hero.
Life and work
Kajuh was born in the
Lower Styrian town of
Šoštanj as the eldest child of Jože Destovnik and Marija Vasle. The
sobriquet Kajuh comes from his grandfather's birthplace in Skorno near
Šmartno ob Paki.
After finishing primary school in
1933, he enrolled in the prestigious
Celje High School. In
1934 he became member of the
Young Communist League of Yugoslavia. He was expelled from school because of »participation in the dissemination of communist ideas«, as was stated in the official explanation. He continued schooling in
Maribor.
Kajuh started writing poems before
World War Two. He began publishing his poems in the youth literary magazine
Slovenska mladina. Some of his best poems from this period with social, political and love themes were published in this journal:
Otrok slovenski (Slovene Child),
Slutnja (Premonition),
Norec (Madman),
Pesem delavca o svoji ljubici (A Worker's Poem on his Beloved One),
Vseh mrtvih dan (Day of All the Dead),
Otrokovo pismo Jezuščku (A Child's Letter to Jesus),
Novoletni sonet (A New Year's Sonnet),
Kmečki otrok vprašuje (The Question of Peasant's Child),
Moj stric (My Uncle), etc. Kajuh was also a prolific translator. Expecially noteworthy are his translations from
Czech, particularly of the authors
Jiří Wolker,
František Halas,
Ivan Olbracht and
Jaroslav Seifert.
He was arrested by the
Yugoslav authorities at the end of January
1941 and sent to prison in
Ivanjica in
Serbia, where he remained until mid February. On 6 April 1941, the first day of
Axis invasion of Yugoslavia Kajuh volunteered to the Yugoslav Army defend his country. On April 28 of the same year, after the
Nazi German occupation of norhern
Slovenia, he was arrested by the
Gestapo and imprisoned in
Slovenj Gradec. He was released in May and he hid in the
Savinja Valley before escaping to
Ljubljana, where he joined the
Slovene resistance forces.
His revolutionary and simple love poetry was very popular among
Slovene partisans. He used his poetic talent in order to mobilize people into fighting against the occupying forces and inspiring them hope of a return to freedom. The first comprehensive collection of his poems was published in
1945 in
Ljubljana, edited by
Mile Klopčič.
Kajuh was in touch with his contemporary Slovene literary scene. He maintained contacts with renowned authors such as
Tone Seliškar,
Matej Bor and
Prežihov Voranc. He also met with
Oton Župančič who was considered at the time to be the most important poet in Slovene language. Although the details of their meetings remain unknown, the young poet apparently left a huge impression on Župančič, who stated his enthusiasm for Kajuh's work.
After joining the
Partisans, Kajuh became the leader of the cultural section in his military unit, the
XIVth Slovene Partisan Division. On
6 January 1944, the Division left the region of
White Carniola in the
Province of Ljubljana where it was stationed in order to reach the
Lower Styria through the
Croatian soil. They reached their final destination on
6 February of the same year, facing a massive German offensive and a bitterly cold winter. The cultural section of the unit was based in a house in the small locality of
Žlebnik. The house was attacked by a German patrol and Kajuh was one of the first to be killed.
On
21 July 1953, Kajuh was declared a national hero of
Yugoslavia.
A primary school in
Ljubljana and the Kajuh Literary Prize are named after him, as are several streets and squares throughout
Slovenia. In
Celje, a whole
town district is named after him. Together with
Matej Bor and
Edvard Kocbek, Kajuh is regarded as one of the most important poets of the
Anti-Fascist Liberation War in the
Slovene Lands.
Sources
- Emil Cesar, Karel Destovnik Kajuh, Ljubljana 1979
- http://www.dogaja.se/opis/karel_destovnik_kajuh/2567
Further Information
Get more info on 'Karel Destovnik Kajuh'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://karel_destovnik_kajuh.totallyexplained.com">Karel Destovnik Kajuh Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
