Vitomil Zupan - Biography

Biography

Vitomil Zupan was born in Ljubljana, then part of Austria-Hungary. After finishing grammar school, he entered the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Ljubljana. Due to his restless spirit he was able to finish his studies only in 1958. Already before the outbreak of World War II, he travelled all across the Mediterranean, the Near East and Northern Africa earning his money as a sailor, a ship's stoker, a house painter in France, a skiing instructor, a professional boxer and other. After his return to Slovenia in the late 1930s, he became active in the Sokol athletic movement, which also had a strong political nature. Zupan belonged to the leftist democratic wing of the movement. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Zupan joined the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. He participated in several underground activities in the Italian-occupied Ljubljana. In 1942, the Italian Fascist authorities arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp Čiginj near Tolmin and later to the Gonars concentration camp. In 1943, he escaped and joined the partisan resistance. At first, he actively participated in the fighting units. There, he met with the later philosopher and literary theorist Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, with whom he established a strong friendship. Later he was transferred to the cultural section of the resistance, where he wrote propaganda plays and collaborated with the essayist and playwright Jože Javoršek, poet Matej Bor and novelist Igor Torkar.

After the war, Zupan worked as the chief editor of the cultural programme of Radio Ljubljana till 1947, when he fully dedicated himself to writing. That year he also received his first Prešeren Award, the highest prize for artistic and cultural achievements in Slovenia, for his novel Rojstvo v nevihti ("Birth in a Storm"). In 1948, he and his former co-worker at Radio Ljubljana were arrested by the Communist state authorities. His former collaborator in the partisan cultural section Jože Javoršek was arrested too. Zupan was tried on several serious charges, including spying, antipatriotic activity, anti-government conspiracy, immoral acts, murder, and attempted rape. In a show trial, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released in 1955, but he could only publish his works under a pseudonym Langus.

Beginning from the early 1960s, Zupan was again able to publish his works, some of which gained wide recognition. In 1980, his novel Menuet za kitaro (A Minuet for Guitar) was used by the Serbian director Živojin Pavlović as the basis for his film See You in the Next War (Slovene: Nasvidenje v naslednji vojni, Serbian: Doviđenja u sledećem ratu). In 1984, he was bestowed with the second Prešeren Award for his lifetime work.

Zupan died in Ljubljana in 1987 and is buried in the Žale cemetery.