Vladimir Bartol

Infobox Writer
name = Vladimir Bartol


caption =
birth_date = birth date|1903|2|24|mf=y
birth_place = Trieste, Austria-Hungary (now in Italy)
death_date = death date|1967|9|12|mf=y
death_place = Ljubljana, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now in Slovenia)
occupation = Writer
genre =
movement =
magnum_opus =
influences = Nietzsche, Klement Jug, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Dostojevski, Josip Vidmar, Anton Novačan
influenced = Dušan Jelinčič, Igor Škamperle
website =
footnotes =

Vladimir Bartol (february 24 1903 – september 12 1967) was a Slovenian writer, most famous for his novel "Alamut". Alamut was published in 1938 and translated into numerous languages, becoming the most popular work of Slovene literature around the world.

Biography

Bartol was born on February 24, 1903 in the village of Sveti Ivan ("San Giovanni" in Italian), now a suburb of Trieste (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), as the third child out of seven to Gregor Bartol, a post office clerk, and Marica Bartol Nadlišek, a teacher, editor and femminist author. His parents offered their children extensive education. His mother introduced him to painting, his father to biology. In his autobiographical short stories, Bartol described himself as an oversensitive and slightly odd child with a rich fantasy life. He was interested in many things: biology and philosophy, psychology, art, and of course theatre and literature. As a scientist, he collected and researched butterflies.

Vladimir Bartol began his elementary and secondary schooling in Trieste and concluded it in Ljubljana, where he enrolled at the University of Ljubljana to study biology and philosophy. In Ljubljana, he met the young Slovene philosopher Klement Jug who introduced him to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Bartol also gave special attention to the works of Sigmund Freud. He graduated in 1925 and continued his studies at Sorbonne in Paris (1926–1927), for which he obtained a scholarship. In 1928 he served the army in Petrovaradin (now in Serbia). From 1933 to 1934, he lived in Belgrade, where he edited the "Slovenian Belgrade Weekly". Afterward, he returned to Ljubljana where he worked as a freelance writer until 1941. During World War II he actively participated in the resistance movement. After the war he moved to his hometown Trieste, where he spent an entire decade, from 1946 to 1956. Later he was elected to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences And Arts as an associate member, moved to Ljubljana and continued to work for the Academy until his death on September 12, 1967. He is buried in the Žale cemetery in Ljubljana.

Bibliography

* "Lopez" (1932, a play)
* "Al Araf" (1935, a collection of short stories)
* "Alamut" (1938, a novel), translated into Czech (1946), Serbian (1954), French (1988), Spanish (1989), Italian (1989), German (1992), Turkish, Persian (1995), Arabic, Greek, Korean and other languages. An English translation finally appeared in 2004 by Scala House Press in Seattle, USA, ISBN 0-9720287-3-0. As of 2003 it is being translated into Hebrew and Hungarian.
* "Tržaške humoreske" (1957, a collection of short stories)
* "Don Lorenzo" (1985, a story)
* "Mladost pri Svetem Ivanu" (2001, an autobiography)

See also

* Slovenian literature
* List of Slovenian writers
* List of Slovenes

External links

* [http://www.uvi.si/eng/slovenia/background-information/vladimir-bartol/ Slovene Government Public Relations and Media Office Article]