Biography Essay

Poet and publicist, religious reformer and social revolutionary—ultimately an internal exile speaking with more force than any of his contemporaries —Edvard Kocbek lived an eventful, controversial life that in recent years has become emblematic of the fundamental dilemmas facing Slovenia in the twentieth century. Since the early 1980s, as Slovenes have begun to take stock of their recent past without the government- imposed biases of previous decades, Kocbek's name has begun to appear virtually everywhere—from overviews of Slovene literature to histories of World War II and the Yugoslav Communist regime to general intellectual histories of the century. There is a growing acknowledgment of his importance in crystallizing the issues that have divided his society. It was in Kocbek's outspoken nature to spearhead opposition to abuses of power, whether they emanated from the Catholic church or the Communist Party, and yet he...