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344 | YugoslaVia Vitomil Zupan (1914–1987) An important Slovenian poet, playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, Zupan led a life of adventure and wandering. He saw action, mostly against the Italians, during World War II as a member of the Slovenian Liberation Front. Captured by the Italians in 1942, he was imprisoned in the newly opened concentration camp established by the Italian authorities at Gonars in Udine Province, Italy. He escaped in 1943 and joined Slovenian Partisans with whom he saw further action before being assigned to cultural activities, above all the writing of propaganda plays. It was during this period that he became friendly with the novelist Igor Torkar. After World War II, Zupan worked for Radio Ljubljana until 1947, when he became a freelance writer. In 1948 he was taken into custody as a “suspicious intellectual” and the following year was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He was released, however, in 1954, whereupon he resumed his education , receiving a degree in civil engineering from Ljubljana University in 1958. Soon after, he returned to freelance writing. His most resonant work by far has been the semiautobiographical novel Menuet za kitaro (na petindvajset strelov) (Minuet for Guitar [In Twenty-five Shots], 1975). Set in two time zones—World War II and the postwar year 1973—the novel uses a chance encounter at a Spanish resort between a wartime Slovenian Partisan and a former German officer as a means of contrasting different perspectives on the war (and war in general) and the postwar years. Representative of Zupan’s predilection both for philosophy and sex, Menuet za kitaro served as the basis for the late Serbian director Živojin Pavlovic’s film Dovidjenja u sledećem ratu (See You in the Next War, 1980). Sex was never very far from Zupan’s mind and crops up in several of his most highly regarded works, including Igra s hudičevim repom (A Game with the Devil’s Tail, 1978), about a sexual affair between a middle-aged man and his housekeeper, and Levitan, which was based on Zupan’s own prison experiences. Pubished in 1982, Levitan had been written a decade earlier, but was denied publication at the time because of Zupan’s obvious disdain for the Communist system and his preoccupation with sexual issues. In 2006, the National and University Library in Ljubljana published seven volumes of Zupan’s prison poems from manuscripts contained in its archives. Under the title Pesmi iz zapora (Prison Poems), the collection covers the period 1948–1954. Although embracing a wide variety of forms, subjects, and moods, and reflecting Zupan’s extensive pre–World War II travels throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Near East, the poems by and large shed much less light on his imprisonment than does Levitan. The following excerpts are from Levitan (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1982), YugoslaVia | 345 10–12, 116–19, 207–8, 213–14, 226–27, 228–31, 264–65, 299–302, 336–39, and have been translated from Slovenian by Harold B. Segel. from Levitan In prison I learned very slowly, and the hard way, what politics is and what the political system is. I’m talented against my enemies but really stupid when it comes to the study of politics. However, I did find out a few things. The politics of prison is bicameral. The administration has one line, and the opinion and assessment of the world of the prison, which is neither seen nor felt, a second one. The situation of every prisoner is molded in this press. Each of the two lines tries give or take away morale from the individual. In this press you have to stand on your own two feet. To fall before one of the lines means to fall in general. The individual dares not yield to authority that tries to break the backbone of character, nor does he dare to curry favor of other prisoners. He also dares not make light of the prison world that also lies in wait for moments of weakness. This is a life where what is normal is what both lines consider regular crimes, while a mistake is revenged for many years. Times for the analyses of the individual are interminably many, just as those paid lazy people in authority or those shadows of iron bars. The administration already knows everything that happens, which is why they use their informers who—despite the fact that they are held in contempt by them—nevertheless hand out a reduction...

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