Slovenia - An Article by Boris Jez
The following is the translation of article by Boris Jez, Sobotna Priloga, Delo, 28th June 2003, Ljubljana, Republic of Slovenija.
Beautiful Villages, Beautifully Disintegrating
A few days ago I met Janko Smole who, although he must be around eighty, doesn't seem to be touched by the years. I once spent a long time explaining to a student who Janko Smole was, because young people aren't very interested in the recent past, even less if they get a whiff of socialism and workers' co-operatives. There would therefore be no point in explaining that in these old times, there existed a financial expert with a world-wide reputation - Janko Smole. This gentleman now made a very humble request: Could I possibly direct a little attention towards the charity concert he was organising at Cankarjevdom concert hall, and incidentally, could I also mention the English singer Shirlie Roden, who was supposedly a big friend of Slovenia. This name didn't mean anything to me, in the same way I might not have heard of a film star, ballet dancer or opera singer.
A while later, I was driving my car towards Bovec, and I suddenly heard a deeply moving, beautiful song about Liza Cernuta on the radio. Shirlie Roden was singing it. Liza Cernuta was an old lady from Log Pod Mangrtom (Log beneath Mangrt Mountain) who was seen on television the day before the fatal landslide, vehemently asserting that she would not leave. And she didn't leave. During the night, the landslide swept her and her house down the valley towards the Soca River. An unrecognisable landscape of mud, branches and stones remained. Shirlie Roden sang so movingly about this tragedy - which was simultaneously an act of heroism, tenacity and rebellion - so deeply, softly and empathetically, that I immediately asked myself if any of our female singers would be able to write and perform such a song so convincingly.
This actually isn't, nor would it be important. What is more important is that Log is not just some remote village, but that it has reached out into the English culture. Shirlie Roden is singing about Log and Liza Cernuta. This is an unexpected and soul-stirring event, creating a sense of globalisation and Europeanisation which finally speaks to us of how the European global community is mutually linked. Finally, after all, it is not such a bad thing. In such a constellation, Log is not an isolated and deserted village any longer, but is, as McLuhan would say, part of the Global Village.
It is also important that the village is not left to the mercy of local and Ljubljana bureaucrats, but that somebody with heart is also protecting it. Of course, I am not only talking about Log. There are hundreds of Slovenian villages from Prekmurje to the coast, from the Karavanke Alps to the Kolpa river, each one with their Liza Cernuta. Now for example, there is drought that will throw thousands of peasants into despair, and their destiny lies in the hands of some kind of yodelling Rural Assemblies which are nothing more than parasitical associations who use more for themselves than for helping the peasants and for the farmers' progress.
What do we get from these so-called regional politics? Absolutely nothing, except two hundred regions with egotistical mayors who talk high or low politics, depending on their intellectual level, while people are left with landslides, droughts, floods, closed factories..... In the past fifteen years, this state has done nothing to revitalise the countryside, which represents ninety per cent of Slovenia. This English singer is singing about Log Beneath Mangrt, but it doesn't reach the cultural consciousness of Slovene children, because the central educational system doesn't bother about local rural folklore, and I won't even waste words here mentioning the local officials.
It is so different from, for example, Norway, where they will sacrifice half of the state budget just to preserve some village and its culture, or Switzerland, which preserves mountain meadows and pastures... Our agriculture is a long way from the 'biodiversity' propagated there; quite to the contrary, it has become the apparatus of well-paid bureaucrats who pour money into the worse kind of cattle-raising and dairy farming. In truth, the villages are decaying. Every village has their own landslide, their own Liza Cernuta - and in its own way, every village is Liza Cernuta, stubborn, relentless, but it will be swept away....
We need to express gratitude and respect to charitable people like Janko Smole; even more of this should be offered to Shirlie Roden and her like, because this is what raises morale most, not some of Minister of Agriculture Mr. But's subsidies. The villages and the 'cultural landscape' in Slovenia need to be rehabilitated and returned to the people's consciousness as a substratum of our culture. If this doesn't happen one way or the other, we might really be one of the most highly-developed European states, as has been predicted, but with an urban sub-culture of graffiti and beercans. It hasn't yet happened to the Irish or the Finnish.
Some say that Log Beneath Mangrt is the most beautiful Slovene village - a real mountain paradise with Mangrt and Jalovec in the background. How can we allow the most beautiful village to decay?
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© Shirlie Roden, 2005 - 2008.
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