MERHAR Alojzij - Silvin Sardenko

MERHAR Alojzij (pseudonym: Silvin Sardenko) was a Slovenian Roman Catholic priest, poet, writer, playwright, and editor (15 June 1876, Ljubljana – 21 February 1942, Ljubljana).

He was born to father Valentin and mother Helena (née Bergant). After completing grammar school in Ljubljana, he studied theology and was awarded a doctorate in canon law in Rome in 1906. He then worked as a chaplain in various places. From 1908 onward he served as a catechist at the grammar school and teacher training college in Ljubljana, and in 1924 he became a cathedral canon.

He began publishing his first poems in Angelček and Vrtec, and later in Ljubljanski zvon and Dom in svet, the latter of which he also edited from 1922. Merhar competed unsuccessfully with the poets of the Modernist movement. His lyric poetry is formally skillful verse-making; in content it is a mixture of piety and unfulfilled eroticism, veiled in a mystical cloak. His skillfully crafted and singable verses are rhythmically schematic, decorative, and filled with traditional biblical symbolism.

In addition to poetry, Merhar wrote short stories, children’s plays, legends, biblical biographies, religious stage pieces (performed by church associations), educational tales, and memoirs. Of literary-historical value are his secondary-school reminiscences and the collected testimonies Okoli Ketteja in Murna.