Metaphorical Concepts of Love and the Female in the Poetry Debuts of the Slovene ‘Moderna’

Abstract

Razprava se opira na kognitivno razumevanje metafore in obravnava različne metaforične koncepte ljubezni ter ženske v pesništvu slovenske moderne na primerih knjižnih prvencev: Erotike (1899) Ivana Cankarja, Čaše opojnosti (1899) Otona Župančiča in Poezij (1906) Ljudmile Poljanec, ki ji novejše raziskave pripisujejo mesto prve lezbične pesnice na Slovenskem. Pokazano je, da odmevajo v metaforizaciji erotike in ženske različne estetike literarnih smeri in slogovnih tokov moderne kakor tudi diskurzi o spolu in ženski, ki so zaznamovali duhovno obzorje na prelomu iz 19. v 20. stoletje. Pogojena je tudi z moško in žensko perspektivo.

The present discussion is based on the cognitive understanding of metaphors, examining various metaphorical concepts of love and the female in the poetry of Slovenian ‘moderna’ using examples of the literary debuts Erotika (1899) by Ivan Cankar, Čaša opojnosti (1899) by Oton Župančič and Poezije (1906) by Ljudmila Poljanec, the latter of which was attributed the status of first Slovenian lesbian poet by more recent studies. We seek to demonstrate that the metaphorisation of eroticism and the female reflects various aesthetics of literary streams and stylistic trends of ‘moderna’, as well as discourses of gender and the female, marking the spiritual horizon at the turn of the 20th century. This is also conditioned with the female and male perspective.