France Prešeren

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Image:Si2eur.jpg France Prešeren (December 3, 1800 - February 8, 1849) was a Slovenian poet.

He is considered to be the leading poet of Slovenian poetry, acclaimed not only nationally or regionally, but also according to the standards of developed European literature. Prešeren was one of the best European Romanticists. His fervent, heartfelt lyrics, intensely emotional but never merely sentimental, have made him the chief representative of the Romantic school in Slovenia.

He was born in the village of Vrba, Slovenia, to a rural family. His mother wanted him to become a priest, but he never went into clergy. He studied philosophy and later law at the university in Vienna. After acquiring a Dr. iur., he got employed as an assistant at a law firm in the provincial Austrian capital of Laibach (today known as Ljubljana). He never managed to become an independent lawyer.

He wrote poems in his spare time. His most famous work, Sonetni Venec (A Garland of Sonnets) was directly inspired by his unhappy love for Julija Primic (Germanized "Julia Primitz") and the death of his close friend, the poet Matija Čop (Matthias Tschop). Understandably, many of the verses in this work are full of bittersweet passions. Sonetni Venec was written in an interesting format: the last line of one sonnet becomes the first line of the next, making all fourteen sonnets in the collection an intertwining "garland" of emotional lyricism; one sonnet cannot exist without the other. The first lines of the fourteen sonnets form another sonnet, and the first letters of these lines form the words "Primicovi Julji", "to Julija Primic".

Around 1836 Prešeren finally acknowledged that his love for Julija would never be returned. Though he would later go on to marry Ana Jelovšek, Prešeren confessed upon his deathbed that he never forgot Julija.

The seventh stanza of Prešeren's poem Zdravljica (A Toast) has been the Slovenian national anthem since 1991. His poems were translated into several languages. He also wrote a lot in German. When some of his poems were first published in the newspaper, they were printed in both Slovenian and German versions, which further proves his poetical genius.

He died on February 8, 1849 in Kranj, Slovenia. The 8th of February is now called Prešeren Day and is the Slovenian Cultural Holiday. Prešeren also appears on the Slovenian 1000 tolar banknote. Prešeren Square in Ljubljana contains a statue of the poet which forever gazes on a bas-relief of Julija high on the wall of a building across the square.

His name is sometimes Germanized as "Franz Prescheren", especially in older documents from the time Slovenia was ruled by the Austrians.