Janko Kersnik

Kersnik, Janko 

Born Sept. 4, 1852, in Brdo; died July 28, 1897, in Ljubljana. Slovene writer; lawyer by training.

Romantic traditions were strongly expressed in Kersnik’s first novella, In Zerinje (1876). Later he studied the technique of I. S. Turgenev and other Russian and western European realists. His novels Cyclamen (1883) and Agitator (1885), as well as his novellas Rošlin and Vrjanko (1889) and Nouveaux Riches (1893), portray the daily life of provincial Slovene bureaucrats, bourgeois and gentry circles, and the intelligentsia; they reveal the false patriotism of these groups and their careerism and philistinism. In his novellas Testament (1887) and The Sins of the Fathers (1894), and particularly in the cycle of short stories Peasant Pictures (1882–91), Kersnik gave a true picture of the Slovene countryside. His work represents a great feat of Slovene realism in the 19th century.

WORKS

Zbrano delo, vols. 1–5. Ljubljana, 1947–52.
In Russian translation:
“Smert’ krest’ianina.” In the collection Povesti i rasskazy iugoslavskikh pisatelei, vol. 1. Moscow, 1959.

REFERENCES

Prijatelj, I. Janko Kersnik, njega delo in doba. Ljubljana, 1910.
Boršnik, M. “Kersnik.” In her book študije in fragmenti. Maribor, 1962.