The fantastic in the works of Srečko Kosovel

/, Literature, Blesok no. 51/The fantastic in the works of Srečko Kosovel

The fantastic in the works of Srečko Kosovel

A similar interaction of the soul and light is suggested by the poem Nedelja na vasi (A Sunday in the Country):
Bright blue skies above you, me,
in the fields, meadows, sunshine bright,
like snowy clouds in the sky,
from the soul joy is seething, bursting.

A rainbow bridge spans between us,
a crossing for the souls,
peace, deliverance, silence and repose
will they drink from this land.
The fantastic springs from a close link between the subject and the shining land: the “rainbow bridge” spans between you and me; just as required by a literary work imbued by the fantastic. Kosovel conjures up universal imagery which is somewhere in between – between the material and the immaterial: With the greatest of ease the soul turns into matter and vice versa.: The passage from the subject into the spirit, here occurring metaphorically as a rainbow, which is the emanation of light.
Let us mention another of Kosovel’s many poems singing about light. In the poem Drevo v snegu (A Tree in the Snow) the “first phase” of the fantastic is only at the beginning: The allegory turned into the fantastic; a linguistic expression, which is supposed to convey meaning, here, in fact, has a material meaning (when the sun blazes, the snow turns yellow with the golden sunrays, which have turned into “pure gold.”) Then suddenly something very disturbing barges into the poem: The poet’s subject, from the “landscape of death,” enters this golden, snowy landscape. His loneliness (this person is “his own call and echo”) is paralleled by the loneliness of the “silent and black tree” standing alone in “the gold, in the snow.” Communication between the subject and the object, between the material and the spiritual worlds is limitless; “the silent, black tree” which “eavesdrops on distant places” and “lends them a hand” communicates with a lonely and strange poet’s subject; this comprehensive communication relativizes time and space (“the land of death” is within man’s reach, the tree does not move, yet it eavesdrops on distant places). Mystique and a certain shudder overwhelm the reader in the presence of this wordless, yet general communication of the material and the spiritual worlds in the white and shining golden space.
Sunshine and light in general assume in Kosovel’s poetry great power of transformation, metamorphosis and animation of the material world: “The magic of sunrise,” as it is called in the poem Smeh kralja Dade (The Laughter of King Dada), turns the grey, melancholic reality into a “white pyramid” and is for this reason “dangerous for the state.” With the aid of rays (sun, morning, evening, cheerful, sad, lively, dead rays….) Kosovel takes us on a journey into time and space, bringing us closer to, or taking us further away from, the ethical values on which the world rests, in short – with the aid of light, Kosovel leads us to the cosmic fantastic.
The process of de-realisation, that is, removing the “substance” from objects and their reality, as well as the process of integrating light and its meanings into the content of the poem, are of exceptional importance for our poet of the fantastic. Thus Kosovel’s poetry eventually becomes an increasingly naked form suffused with light. In this context we encounter exceptionally interesting differences between the early and the later poems about autumn. In his early poetry he speaks about “the grey early morning” (Jesen, Autumn), “the heart wallows in the sadness of the October field” (Oktober, October), “everyone has his own way of warding off sadness” (Kraška jesen, Karst Autumn); when “the autumn flower closes its blossom”, “I smile with sadness” and “my dreams are sad.” (Jesen, Autumn). In his period of the “ubiquitous” fantastic, in the collection Integrali, where the language unfolds and becomes loquacious, as it has to “cover” the ubiquitous transformability of the living world of light, sunshine and light in general, there is also clarity in the poems on autumn and the autumnal season instead of melancholy and sadness: “Autumn quiet in me/ and outside. Beautiful / where I think” (Jesensko tiho, Autumn Quiet). In Kons which begins with the verse: “Angry autumn is coming” we also read: “My thought/ shines brighter than the star./ Aimless I walk / and your dog barks / at me.” Objectively, the situation is rather dark and aimless, yet the subject is full of faith, energy, light, brightness. The greatest mobility and lightness of the autumn season is conveyed in the poem Jesen, which begins with the verses: “The green wreath freezes / on a friend’s grave.” Apart from the natural cyclic perpetuation of melancholic feelings, which were awakened in the poet in his early period by the autumn as such, there is an additional reason for a gloomy mood, namely: death of a friend. There is a “green wreath freezing” on his grave. It is true that this poem also contains the verse: “Cold is coming to my heart,” but this is followed by: “Love awakens the spirit.” The tension between “cold” and “love” will continue to intensify, and the poem will conclude on a note of open indecisiveness and indefiniteness; nevertheless, the introduction of cosmic dimensions in a specific autumnal space will somehow shift the entire impression towards bright and silvery spaces. Far from drawing parallels between the grey autumnal colour and the inner melancholy of the subject, the tense, cosmic play of light and shadows of the “ubiquitous” fantastic of Kosovel’s poetry becomes so entangled that there is no solution; thus it remains enmeshed, dual, tense and contradictory.
In the poem Jesenska pokrajina (Autumn Landscape), the last of the Integrali poems on the theme of autumn, it becomes clear how the collectivist and eschatological “faith in humanity” is, somehow naturally and self-evidently, introduced into Kosovel’s poetry through light and cosmos.
A sober man stepping across the field,
cold as the autumn,
sad as the autumn,
Faith in humanity,
A sacred thought to me.
Mute silence is like sadness.
I am no longer sad,
because I do not think about myself.
If we compare this “autumnal” poem with the poem Z delom gradimo (We Build by Working), one Kosovel’s typical poems on the exalted eschatological understanding of the future, we realise an even closer connection between the ubiquitous light and brightness and the poet’s faith in the idea of the social, even socialist, collective happiness in the future. Light is an animator, transforming not only the entire cosmos but also time. And light also ushers in the bright future. On the one hand light is the power of transformation, the force which leads to ubiquitous, yet very abstract, interconnections in the cosmos in space and time; on the other hand it is just another brick of the material world, matter, a means to materialise the abstract world of ideas. Let us first read the poem Nad realnostjo (Above Reality), which Ocvirk may have relegated to the Supplement of Integrali, but it occupied the important last place in the collection. The poem reads as follows:
Above reality there are no
fantastic shadows moving?
These are the shadows of dark blue.
A white door leads to eternity.
I would knock on it gently and go
on the soft carpets
of the velvety blue sky.

I will open the white door.
gingerly I will enter the new,
unconscious future.

Are you coming along, shorthaired girl?
are you coming along?
You are coming, oh, you are coming along?

AuthorMarija Mitrović
2018-08-21T17:23:12+00:00 November 27th, 2006|Categories: Reviews, Literature, Blesok no. 51|0 Comments