Poezija in smrt. Pesnikovo sta življenje

The book explores the close association between death and poetry as it has been reflected from the beginnings of poetry till today. Although merely hinted at in the present volume, the role played by death in the history of literary production is an obvious one. Diverse approaches elaborate on the concepts of topicalisation, imagination and constellation of death-related motifs and themes in literature, thus opening up fundamental poetological crossways. Death as the basic matrix of human thought manifested in poetry becomes a poetry fixture. Paradoxically, poetry, which is capable of ontological and eschatological dimensions, replies to questions about the so-called eternal truths with life – again in the language of poetry. This forms the subject of the second half of the monograph. The book is a collection of studies and reflections authored by scholars and poets, which afford a deeper insight into the creativity of several Slovenian and non-Slovenian poets (F. Prešeren, G. Leopardi, A. S. Pushkin, C. Baudelaire, W. B. Yeats, A. Gradnik, A. Akhmatova, G. Strniša, V. Memon), transcending a monolithic conception of poetry.