France Vodnik was a Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

n literary critic, essayist, translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 and poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 from Ljubljana

Ljubljana

Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...

. He was mostly active in the interwar period

Interwar period

Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....

, when Slovenia was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...

. He was the younger brother of the poet and critic Anton Vodnik

Anton Vodnik

Anton Vodnik was a Slovenian poet, art historian, and critic. He was one of the most notable representatives of Slovene Catholic expressionism in the interwar period....

.

France Vodnik was one of the main exponent of Slovene Christian left

Christian left

The Christian left is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice....

 intellectuals who gathered around the journal Križ na gori (Cross on the Mountain). Together with the poet and thinker Edvard Kocbek

Edvard Kocbek

Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...

, Vodnik was one of the first Slovene Roman Catholic intellectuals to profess the Personalist philosophy.

Vodnik emerged in the 1920s as a literary critic and columnist in the liberal conservative journal Dom in svet

Dom in svet

Dom in svet was a Catholic cultural and literary journal in Slovenia, published from 1888 to 1943. Its long-running rivalry with the national-liberal journal Ljubljanski zvon was a major feature of Slovenian cultural life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; historian Péter Krasztev...

. By the mid 1930s, he was considered one of the most influential Slovene critics, together with the left liberal Josip Vidmar

Josip Vidmar

Josip Vidmar was a prominent Slovenian literary critic and essayist. Vidmar is remembered because of his role in the Slovenian resistance during World War II, and for his influence in the cultural policies of the Titoist regime in Slovenia from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s.He was born in...

 and the Marxist Ivo Brnčić

Ivo Brncic

Ivo Brnčić or Brnčič was a Slovenian author, essayist and literary critic of Croat origin, particularly notable for his assessment of the midwar Slovenian literature. Most of his works were published posthumously....

, with whom he frequently polemized. He was a strong supporter of Slovenian cultural and political autonomy within Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

.

He also published a collection of poetry, entitled "The Fighter with God" (Borivec z Bogom), mostly composed of religious and mystical poems.

After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, his influence was largely reduced. In the first post-war

Post-war

A post-war period or postwar period is the interval immediately following the ending of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date...

 decades, he mostly worked as a translator, mostly from Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

. Among other, he translated works by Sienkiewicz, Stefan Żeromski

Stefan Zeromski

Stefan Żeromski was a Polish novelist and dramatist. He was called the "conscience of Polish literature". He also wrote under the pen names: Maurycy Zych, Józef Katerla and Stefan Iksmoreż.- Life :...

, Jerzy Andrzejewski

Jerzy Andrzejewski

Jerzy Andrzejewski was a prolific Polish author. His novels, Ashes and Diamonds , and Holy Week , have been made into film adaptations by the Oscar-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda...

, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Maria Dabrowska

Maria Dabrowska

Maria Dąbrowska was a Polish writer.Dąbrowska was a member of the impoverished landed gentry. Interested both in literature and politics, she set herself up to help people born into poor circumstances. She studied sociology, philosophy, and natural sciences in Lausanne and Brussels and moved to...

, Jan Dobraczynski

Jan Dobraczynski

Jan Dobraczyński was a Polish writer and publicist. During the Second Polish Republic, he was a supporter of the Stronnictwo Narodowe and Catholic movements...

, Kazimierz Moczarski

Kazimierz Moczarski

Kazimierz Damazy Moczarski was a Polish writer and journalist, officer of the Polish Home Army...

, and Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem

Stanisław Lem was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has...

 into Slovene. He also compiled a Slovene-Polish dictionary, published in 1977. In the 1960s and early 1970s, several collections of his essays were published.

He died in Ljubljana.

Major works

• Slovenska religiozna lirika ('Slovene Religious Lyrical Poems', editor); 1928.
• Prešernov svetovni nazor ('Prešeren's World View'); 1929.
• Borivec z Bogom ('The Fighter with God'); 1932.
• Ideja in kvaliteta : kritike in eseji ('Idea and Quality: Critiques and Essays'); 1964.
• Kritična dramaturgija ('Critical Drama Theory'); 1968.
• Prevrednotenja ('Revaluations'); 1971.
• Od obzorja do obzorja ('From Horizon to Horizon'); 1972.
• Dialektika in metafizika slovenstva ('The Dialectics and Metaphysics of Slovene-ness'. Collections of essays from the 1920s and 1930s); 1983