At the age of 108, the Trieste writer Boris Pahor has died, Radio Slovenia reported on Monday, the 30th of May. Throughout his life, Pahor warned of the dangers of totalitarian regimes, as he was also a victim of said regimes. His most famous work is the book Nekropola (Necropolis), in which he described his own experience of being detained in a war camp and which also made him famous throughout Europe. He was also the recipient of numerous awards.
Boris Pahor is considered one of the most important Slovenian writers. He lived in Italy as part of the Slovenian minority and had been warning about the dangers of totalitarian regimes throughout his life, of which he was a victim as well. Pahor is also the most translated Slovenian author, and last but not least, also a great man and a great Slovenian.
He could also be described as an academic and a fighter for the Slovenian language. His many works have been translated into French, German, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Finish and Esperanto. His most translated book is Nekropola (Necropolis), a novel about the writer’s life in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. He was also mentioned on several occasions as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Boris Pahor was a declared anti-fascist and a witness to the fascist violence against Slovenians in Italy and the suffering in German concentration camps during the Second World War. He was a staunch advocate of nationality as a primary social identity.
A fighter for freedom and the messenger of love
Pahor was born into a Slovenian family in Trieste, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. His father, Franc Pahor, moved to the said city from Kostanjevica in Kras and was employed there as an official of the Austrian administration. IN 1919, the new Italian authorities fired him, and he was forced to work as a street vendor. His mother, Marija Ambrožič, was from Mala Pristava near Šentpeter (now Pivka) and was born in Materija. In his childhood and adolescence, Boris Pahor witnessed the growth of nationalist ideology when the fascists burned down the Slovenian National Hall in Trieste in 1920.
Politically persecuted for condemning the massacre of home guards
In 1975, Pahor and Alojz Rebula published a pamphlet in Trieste entitled Edvard Kocbek: The Witness of Our Time, which included an interview with the Slovenian poet and thinker Edvard Kocbek, in which he condemned the extrajudicial killing of 11,000 Carinthian Slovenian home guards, whom the British returned to Yugoslavia. The publication caused quite a stir in Yugoslavia, and as a consequence, Kocbek was anathematised and excluded from public life. The magazine Zaliv (Gulf), which published the book, was banned in Yugoslavia, and they also banned Pahor from crossing the border for one year and after that for two more, up until 1979. The first time he crossed the border after being banned was in 1981, when he attended Kocbek’s funeral. In 1989, Pahor published Kocbek’s memoirs with the publishing company Slovenska matica in a book called Ta ocean strašno odprt (This ocean scarily vast), thus contributing to the rehabilitation of the poet’s public image.
Pahor also wrote about his experience in a concentration camp in the novel Necropolis (1967), which was translated to French in 1990, and later to many other languages as well. Among his other famous works are also Grmada v pristanu (The Mound in the Harbour), Mesto v zalivu (The Town in the Bay), Zatemnitev (The Eclipse), Parnik trobi nji (The Steamship Trumpets for Her) and Trg Oberdan (Oberdan Square). In 1966, he founded the magazine Zaliv with other like-minded people, in which he defended the traditional democratic policy against the one-party system of the former Yugoslavia.
The writer was also the winner of the Prešeren Award (1992), the Silver Badge of Honour of the Republic of Slovenia (2000), and the French Legion d’Honneur (2007), as well as the honorary title of Cultural Ambassador of Slovenia, which he received on his 102nd birthday.
Several politicians have responded to the news of Pahor’s death, among them also Prime Minister Janez Janša, who wrote the following on Twitter: “One of the greatest SLOVENIAN writers has died. ‘Before you express a desire for friendship with other nations, you must first introduce yourself and tell them who you are.’ (The 2nd and the 7th stanzas of Prešeren’s A Toast). Rest in peace, Boris Pahor.”
Minister of Defence, Matej Tonin, also paid tribute to Pahor on Twitter, writing: “A great Slovenian died, a world-class writer and a tireless fighter against all totalitarianisms. He believed in the future. With his testimonies, he sought to ensure that the horrors of war would never happen again. Rest in peace, may the Slovenian earth rest lightly on you.”
Sara Kovač
