Ivan Minatti

Ivan Minatti
Born	(1924-03-22)22 March 1924 Slovenske Konjice, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (now in Slovenia)
Died	9 June 2012(2012-06-09) (aged 88) Ljubljana, Slovenia
Occupation	poet, translator
Nationality	Slovenian
Literary movement	Slovene Intimism
Notable works	You Have to Love Somebody (poem collection), The Pain of the Unexperienced (poem collection), I Listen to the Silence Inside Me (poem collection)
Notable awards	Prešeren Fund Award 1964 for the poem collection You Have to Love Somebody Sovre Award 1972 for the translations of Kočo Racin and Izet Sarajlić Prešeren Award 1985 for the poem collection I Listen to the Silence Inside Me Veronika Award 2009 for his life work

Ivan Minatti (22 March 1924 – 9 June 2012) was a Slovene poet and translator. He started writing poetry before the World War II, but principally belongs to the first post-war generation of Slovene poets. He is a representative of Slovene Intimism.

Life

Minatti was born in 1924 in Slovenske Konjice in the eastern Slovenia. His family moved first to Slovenj Gradec and then to Ljubljana while he was still a child. He attended grammar school in the city, finished it in 1943, and then started medical studies, but postponed them to join the Partisans in 1944. After the war, he started Slovene studies at the University of Ljubljana and graduated in 1952. He worked as an editor at Mladinska Knjiga publishers until his retirement in 1984. He became a regular member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1991. He died in Ljubljana at the age of 89 years.

Work

Minatti's poems, influenced by the horrors of the war, are lyrical and deal with the modern-age resignation and melancholy. According to the poet Boris A. Novak, his work meant a radical break with the collectivist post-war poetry and the start of a personal poetry, making Minatti one of the breakthrough Slovene poets of the 20th century. The poet and translator Veno Taufer characterised him as a rock-steady and at the same time of a soft heart and ascribed his success to his expression of human as well as social distress in the post-war Communist Slovenia.

Awards

Minatti won the Prešeren Fund Award in 1964 for his poetry collection You Have to Love Somebody (Template:Lang-sl). In 1972, he won the Sovre Award, bestowed to best translations to Slovene, in 1972, for his translations of lyrics of the Macedonian poet Kočo Racin and the Bosnian poet Izmet Sarajlić. In 1985, he won the Prešeren Award for his poetry collection I Listen to the Silence Inside Me ([Prisluškujem tišini v sebi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)).

Poetry collections

• From the Way ([S poti] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1947)
• And the Spring Comes ([Pa bo pomlad prišla] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1955)
• You Have to Love Somebody ([Nekoga moraš imeti rad] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1963)
• The Wind Sings ([Veter poje] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1963)
• The Pain of the Unexperienced ([Bolečina nedoživetega] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1964)
• Poems, ([Pesmi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1971)
• The Face, ([Obraz] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), 1972)
• When I Will be Quiet and Good ([Ko bom tih in dober] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1973)
• The Poems, ([Pesmi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1977) - with Janez Menart and Lojze Krakar
• I Listen to the Silence Inside Myself ([Prisluškujem tišini v sebi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1984)
• Under the Closed Eyelids: Chosen Poems ([Pod zaprtimi vekami, izbrane pesmi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 1999)
• Minatti – Chosen Lyrical Poetry ([Minatti – izbrana lirika] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), 2004)

References

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