SLOVENIAN NATION-BUILDING MYTHMAKER: FRAN LEVSTIK’S MARTIN KRPAN.

On the case of the literary tale of Fran Levstik, Martin Krpan (1858), the article illuminates Levstik’s political agenda and literary implementation of the outlaw hero, Martin Krpan, for the needs of Slovenia’s nation-building process, a phenomenon that was characteristic of almost all emerging European nations at the time. An analysis of Levstik’s Martin Krpan reveals a unique phenomenon that was tailored to a specific program: namely, the conscious desire to create a national literary character that would constitute a foundation for both further literary creation and the national political struggle. Levstik was the most prominent writer among the emerging Slovenian intellectual class in the second half of the 19th century. The value of his tale resides in its merging of mythical and literary narratives into a functionally connected organism, the simultaneity of “historical” and “non-historical” elements, and the interaction between symbolic and real ambiguities. Levstik’s structure for both his literary-political program and his tale about Martin Krpan originates in historical realities and cultural memory of the 15th and 16th centuries: economic (transportation), social (peasant revolts), and political (defense against the Ottoman Turks). Levstik combines these elements with the fundamentals of folkloric and ethno-symbolic cultural heritage of that period. In Martin Krpan, Levstik skillfully conceals “historical realities” behind metaphors and symbolism, which is typical of myths. In this way, he provides a path toward the realization of national political ambitions. But the “real” myth Levstik created was more than simply that of Martin Krpan and his adventures. It was more than an argument for the historical origin or vocation of a nation, the defense of the civilization, or the demand for political rights or mimetic narrative prose, i.e. the ability to create a virtual real world. The “real” myth of the literary tale was the elevation of the Slovenian language to the essential distinguishing and constitutive element of the Slovenian nation-building process in comparison with the “Other(s).” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]