1. Alojz Gradnik was a Slovenian poet and translator.
21 Facts About Alojz Gradnik
1. 2.
Alojz Gradnik's father was a Slovene from Trieste who came from a poor working-class background, but created considerable wealth by winemaking.
3.
Alojz Gradnik's mother was an ethnic Friulian from the County of Gorizia and Gradisca.
4.
Alojz Gradnik lived in a student home run by the Catholic Church.
5.
Alojz Gradnik was later appointed member of the High Court for the Security of the State, in which political trials were conducted.
6.
The court was located in Zagreb and during his stay in the Croatian capital, Alojz Gradnik enjoyed the company of Croat intellectuals like the writer Vladimir Nazor, historian Antun Barac, and poet Ivan Goran Kovacic.
7.
Alojz Gradnik was a polyglot: besides Slovene, he was fluent in Italian, Friulian, German, Serbo-Croatian, English, and French.
8.
Alojz Gradnik spoke Russian, Hungarian, and Spanish, and knew Latin and Ancient Greek.
9.
Alojz Gradnik studied several oriental languages, such as Sanskrit, Persian, Bengali and Mandarin.
10.
Together with Izidor Cankar and Ivan Pregelj, Alojz Gradnik belonged to the second generation of modernist authors in Slovenian literature.
11.
Alojz Gradnik was most influenced by the work of the poet Josip Murn Aleksandrov, and was probably among the first to acknowledge Murn's poetic genius.
12.
Alojz Gradnik later moved away from decadentism, rediscovering his Roman Catholic faith and turning to more mystical themes, maintaining a simple and plain language.
13.
Alojz Gradnik wrote patriotic songs, in which he conveyed intimate sentiments of pain, hope and frustration for the tragedies in the contemporary Slovenian history.
14.
Alojz Gradnik was very influenced by the visual arts, especially painting and sculpture.
15.
Alojz Gradnik wrote a book on the Slovene impressionist painter Rihard Jakopic and maintained a close friendship with the painter Ivan Grohar, the illustrators Riko Debenjak and Miha Males, and the sculptor Jakob Savinsek.
16.
Today, Alojz Gradnik is considered the most important Slovenian poet in the interwar period, next to Oton Zupancic, and one of the most important Slovene poets of the 20th century.
17.
Alojz Gradnik was an anti-Fascist, he sympathised with the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People, and even wrote several poems about the Yugoslav People's Liberation War in Slovenia.
18.
Alojz Gradnik's membership in the High Tribunal for the Security of the State, which condemned several Communist activists, was a further reason for his fall into disgrace during Josip Broz Tito's regime.
19.
Alojz Gradnik did not suffer any persecution, but he was pushed away from public life.
20.
Alojz Gradnik was rediscovered in the late 1980s, when he was elevated to a truly national poet for the first time.
21.
Alojz Gradnik became a major source of influence for the younger generations of postmodern authors, such as Brane Senegacnik, Nevin Birsa, Ales Steger, and others.