The Autumn of My Youth

When readers pick up Kosovel’s works, they are mostly astonished that so young a person created so much in such a short time. Similar is true for his correspondence, which provides hints about the reasons for such creative wealth: from it, a sensitive, educated, meticulous, focused, critical young person full of plans, goals and ideas emerges, marked and restrained by the environment and time in which he creates. So, between the lines, we can also sense loneliness, sadness, melancholy that seem to be particularly present in his correspondence with his Tolmin colleague, the poet and future activist Fanica Obid. Almost every single one of their letters mentions autumn that becomes a metaphor of the youths’ inner landscape, robbed of a relaxed youth because of the crude (post-)war time.  “The times are miserable, let us, at the very least, be full of life,” writes Srečko in one of his letters. All without exception are full of reading recommendations, musings about literature and the meaning of art, exchanges about the women’s question and patriotic activity, and descriptions of intimate, emotional, spiritual experiences. Through letters, they meet, get to know each other, become close, get to love each other. The words they use to express affection for each other invite us to fantasise about what they could become to each other if …

The correspondence between Srečko Kosovel and Fanica Obid is, among those that have been preserved, the richest and the most complete: in itself, it functions like a story, a script for a play. On the occasion of the Kosovel Year, when their letters will be published by Mladinska Knjiga, with Aleš Berger serving as the editor, they will also transform into a performance – a small, intimate, but charged with the sense of the time and their life in them. Two young actors, students will help create it; they will be directed by Patrizia Jurinčič Finžgar, who is a full-time SNT Nova Gorica ensemble member but has been dedicating herself to authorial projects and directing for several years.

In our letters, there was more than just “romance”, perhaps it was like two voices that found each other, spoke and responded to each other. Perhaps even more: two forces that lived their weird life amidst loneliness and distance.

_{Srečko Kosovel (From a letter to Fanica from 3 November 1924)}