Platonism in Slovenian Culture and Literature

Abstract

This article examines the importance and development of Platonism in Slovenian culture both in philosophical and scientific thought and in poetic and literary creation. In philosophy, given the prevailing Aristotelianism and the empiricism of the Enlightenment, it was, with a few exceptions, barely recognizable: toward the end of the nineteenth century, Anton Mahnič’s aesthetics took up Plato’s doctrine of the beautiful, but remained within the confines of the Aristotelian tradition of thought. It was only after 1990 that philosophical thought began to open up more to the ideas of Plato and the Neoplatonists. Platonism, however, left clear traces in Slovenian poetry and literature, first in the poetry of the great Romantic poet France Prešeren and his first interpreter Josip Stritar, then most strongly and originally in the prose and dramatic works of Ivan Cankar, in the poetry of Srečko Kosovel, and in the works of the poets of the young Catholic circle of the 1920s. With some notable exceptions, literary Platonism was rarer in the post-World War II period; the play Antigone by Dominik Smole was one of the most visible creations of this kind. Only after 1990 did Platonism revive more strongly in the poetry of younger generations, catching up with the simultaneous resurgence of Platonism in philosophy.