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  • Anton Tomaž Linhart between the German and the Slovenian language
    Strsoglavec, Đurđa
    Anton Tomaž Linhart (1756-1795), a critical intellectual and scholar of the age of Slovenian Enlightenment, who introduced causal interpretation of history into Slovenian historiography and started ... its scientifical philosophy by his historical work Versuch einer Geschichte von Krain und den übrigen Ländern der südlichen Slaven Österreichs (the first part in 1778, the second part in 1791), was an open-minded man, at first deist under the influence of English philosophers, and afterward agnostic under the influence of French materialists and atheists, a man torn between his work as a scholar and a reformer and between the German and the Slovenian language. Linharts first works were written in German. Miss Jenny Love (1780) is an attempt of a tragedy, written according to the rules of Enlightenment period tragedy, exhibiting the contrast between the corrupted nobility and the middle class. The collection of poems Blumen aus Krain für das Jahr 1781 is Linharts attempt of contemporary classicist poetry in the rococo fashion and after the manner of the Anacreontic and even Pre-Romantic poetry. In 1781 Linhart joined baron Žiga Zois circle of Slovenian Enlightenment figures and started to write intensively in Slovenian. Linhart wrote his first Slovenian-language drama Županova Micka (1789), while his second Slovenian drama called Ta veseli dan ali Matiček se ženi (1790) is the most important literary work of the Slovenian Enlightenment and the most wide-ranging echo of the French revolution in the Slovenian literary production of the 18th century. Linharts dramas Županova Micka and Matiček are a manifesto of Slovenehood and democracy expressed in dramatic form, and a declaration of support to the Slovenian people and their struggle against feudalism. These ideas are made still more explicit in his most important work, in the historical work Versuch einer Geschichte, which strongly influenced on later Slovenian historians and litterateurs. Although Linhart joined the Slovenian (Carniolan) intellectuals who through works written not only in German sought to prove to their northern neighbours that their homeland was not as barbaric as it might seem and who had realized that to articulate properly ones very thoughts and feelings one must use the mother tongue, the Slovenian language in the second half of the 18th century was still too poor and functionally had an inadequate range of register for a work such as Versuch einer Geschichte In that work, as far as the language is concerned, he retained the German cosmopolitan orientation.
    Source: Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne. - ISSN 2084-3011 (Nr 5, 2013, str. 321-332)
    Type of material - article, component part
    Publish date - 2013
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 53746274

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