18 Facts About Edvard Kocbek

Edvard Kocbek is considered one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Preseren.

The couple moved to Sveti Jurij, where Valentin Edvard Kocbek worked as an organist in the local Roman Catholic church.

Edvard Kocbek attended the German-language high school in Maribor, where he witnessed with enthusiasm the takeover of the town by the Slovene volunteers led by general Rudolf Maister.

Edvard Kocbek later switched to the Slovene-language high school in Ptuj.

Edvard Kocbek developed an early passion for French language and culture.

In 1925, Edvard Kocbek graduated from the Maribor gymnasium and went to a long excursion through Italy together with his close friend Pino Mlakar.

Edvard Kocbek visited Paris, where he met with the French thinker Emmanuel Mounier who introduced him to the personalist philosophy.

Edvard Kocbek however maintained close contacts with Slovene intellectual circles.

In 1937, Edvard Kocbek wrote an article called "Reflections on Spain", in which he attacked the Spanish clergy who supported the pro-Fascist forces of general Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1938, Edvard Kocbek founded a new journal, Dejanje, which soon emerged as one of the most influential journals in Slovenia.

Young poets such as Ivan Hribovsek gathered around Edvard Kocbek and published their work in Dejanje.

Between 1937 and 1941, Edvard Kocbek maintained an ambiguous position towards Communism: on the one hand, he rejected both "left and right totalitarianism", on the other he maintained contacts with both Slovene Communists and the left liberal intellectuals around the journals Sodobnost and Ljubljanski zvon, in an attempt to establish a popular front against the Fascist threat.

Shortly after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Edvard Kocbek was among the founders of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation as member of its Christian Socialist group.

In 1951, Edvard Kocbek published a volume of short stories, entitled "Fear and Courage", in which he touched the issue of moral dilemmas in the Partisan fight during World War II.

Edvard Kocbek died in Ljubljana in 1981 and was buried in the Zale cemetery.

Edvard Kocbek wrote a famous poem for the occasion, entitled A Microphone in the Wall, in which he poetically juxtaposed technology to human activity.

Edvard Kocbek's older son Matjaz Kocbek, became a renowned poet and art theorist, and his younger son Jurij Kocbek was a photographer and graphic designer.

In 2004, the centenary of Edvard Kocbek's birth was celebrated with many events, culminating in an official state celebration with the Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop as the main speaker.