The Cold War Years
Pahor returned to Trieste at the end of 1946, when the area was under Allied military administration. In 1947, he graduated from the University of Padua with a thesis on the poetry of Edvard Kocbek. The same year, he met Kocbek for the first time. The two men were united in their criticism of the communist regime in Yugoslavia and established a close friendship that lasted until Kocbek's death in 1981.
In 1951 and 1952, Pahor defended Kocbek's literary work against the organized attacks launched by the Slovenian Communist establishment and its allies in the Free Territory of Trieste. This resulted in a break with the local leftist circles, with whom Pahor had been engaged since 1946. He grew closer to Liberal Democratic positions and in 1966 he founded, together with fellow writer from Trieste Alojz Rebula, the magazine Zaliv ("The Bay"), in which he wanted to defend the "traditional democratic pluralism" against the totalitarian cultural policies of Communist Yugoslavia. The magazine Zaliv was published in the Slovene language in Trieste in Italy outside of reach of Communist Yugoslavian authorities. This enabled Zaliv to become an important platform for democratic debate, in which many dissidents from Communist Slovenia could publish their opinions. Pahor dissolved the magazine in 1990, after the victory of the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia in the first free elections in Slovenia after World War II.
Between 1953 and 1975, Pahor worked as a professor of Italian literature in a Slovene-language high school in Trieste. During this time, he was an active member of the international organization AIDLCM (Association internationale des langues et cultures minoritaires) which aims at promoting minority languages and cultures. In this function, he traveled around Europe discovering the cultural plurality of the continent. This experience strengthened his communitarian and anti-centralist views.
Pahor also publicly supported the political party Slovene Union and has run on its lists for general and local elections.
Read more about this topic: Boris Pahor
Famous quotes containing the words cold, war and/or years:
“To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people’s consciousness, the people’s conscience, freedom and so forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen—this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)