MURN ALEKSANDROV Josip

MURN ALEKSANDROV Josip (March 4, 1879 - June 18, 1901) was born as an illegitimate child of Marija Murn and Ignac Cankar. After graduating in 1898, he went to Vienna with a scholarship from the Chamber of Commerce.

Murn is one of the main representatives of modernism and a contemporary of Cankar, Kette and Župančič. He was not known during his lifetime, but today his works are considered among the most important creations of Slovenian literature. He published poems in the youth newspaper Dijaške vaje, and later in Angelček, Vrtec, Slovenski narod, Slovenec and Ljubljanski zvon. He published under the pseudonyms Lucijan, Anton Jek, Jurij Klas, Kres, Igorjevič, Jaroslav, Pintev and Aleksandrov.

His songs are personal, confessional, moody, only a few are about love or erotic - they were intended for Alma Souvan. The theme is often rural, and the motifs are from nature. He translated some poems from German (Goethe, Mickiewicz).

In 1898, he appeared in the almanac for eighth-graders, Na razstanki, under the title Mlade pesmi / Young Poems, and the collection entitled Pesmi in romance / Poems and Romances was published only after his death in 1903; poems for it were collected and written by Ivan Prijatelj, who was the first to determine the poet's value. The collections Poems and Romances, Lyrical Poems and Letters were collected and edited by Dušan Pirjevec in 1967 in the collection Topol samojoč. Before Pirjevec, Murn was also dealt with by Oton Župančič.