STRITAR Josip

STRITAR Josip (real name: Jožef Stritar), Slovenian poet, writer, playwright, critic and translator, * March 6, 1836, Podsmreka near Veliki Lašče, † November 25, 1923, Rogaška Slatina, Slovenia.

He first attended elementary school in Velike Lašče, where he met Fran Levstik for the first time, and finished the school in Ljubljana. He also attended high school in Ljubljana. After graduation, he continued his education in Vienna as a student of classical philology. During this time, he earned money as a home tutor for wealthy Viennese families, with whom he traveled a lot in Europe and greatly expanded his horizons. He finished his studies in 1874 and passed the professorship exam in 1878. He worked as a high school professor until his retirement in 1901. In addition to classical languages, he also taught German, French and literal theory.

In 1923, he moved to Rogaška Slatina, where he lived in Villa Jakomir (today Stritarjev dom). He died there the same year, on November 23. He is buried in the Navlje Memorial Park in Ljubljana.

He tried his hand at all literary types, genres and forms, as he dealt with poetry, storytelling, drama, youth literature, satire, literary criticism and essay writing, and he was also very important as an editor. From 1870 to 1880, he published and edited the first Slovenian art magazine Zvon in Vienna, in which he brought up, among others, the poet Gregorčič. Stritar's most famous poetic work is the satirical Vienna Sonnets / Dunajski soneti (1872). Among the prose works, the stories Svetinova Metka and Rosana and the novels Sodnikovi, Zorin and Gospod Mirodolski stand out. He also dabbled in drama (Logarjevi), and in his old age he wrote for young people (Pod lipo, Jagode, Zimski večeri, Lešniki).

In 1866, together with Josip Jurčič and Fran Levstik, he prepared an edition of Prešeren's Poems and gave them the highest value in the introduction. This famous introduction is considered the first Slovenian literary essay. Stritar deserves a lot of credit for cultivating the Slovenian language. During the time of editing magazine Zvon, he was a central figure in Slovenian literary life. Along with Levstik and Jurčič, Stritar is considered the most important figure in Slovenian cultural life in the second half of the 19th century. In 1919, he was elected an honorary member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.