The Affirmation of Modernity through the Classical Myth in Slovenian Poetry after the Second World War
The Affirmation of Modernity through the Classical Myth in Slovenian Poetry after the Second World War

Summary/Abstract: No-one knows exactly when the myth originated. It came into Greek literature from prehistoric times, transmitting itself through oral tradition. A later distinction reminds us that mýthos is a narrating, or, more precisely, a story narrating speech in verse, the speech of poets from time immemorial, in opposition to which lógos, a written speech in prose, came to establish itself in antiquity, particularly in its discursive, argumentative form assumed in the writings of philosophers. Therefore, the classical myth is, paradoxically, a myth ante litteram that existed even before antiquity came into being as an era of the historical existence of Greeks and Romans. It is a speech, a story of gods and men from prehistory that stood at the beginning of Greek literature and – this we do know – became its core. This story permeated Greek epic, lyric and tragic poetry, and in this poetry attained its classical form. Since then, the stories of Odysseus, Prometheus, Oedipus, Antigone, and so on, have been circulating and are being interpreted in European literature.

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