Janez Mencinger

• Born: March 26, 1838
• Birthplace: Brod, Bohinj, Slovenia
• Died: April 12, 1912
• Place of death: Krško, Slovenia

Biography

Janez Mencinger was born in the village of Brod in Bohinj, Slovenia, on March 26, 1838. He began writing poetry while he was still in high school, publishing several items in the newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice, which also published his long poem “V spomin Prešernu” (In Memory of Prešeren) in 1858. He went to university in Vienna, where he befriended several notable, including Simon Jenko. He began studying Slavic philosophy, but switched to law in 1858, against the wishes of his parents, who refused to support him financially thereafter, forcing him to make a living with his pen.

From 1859 to 1865, Mencinger was an active contributor to the newspaper Slovenski glasnik, which published most of his early prose works. His work, both fiction and nonfiction, espoused the newly fashionable cause of raising national awareness and education. In 1862 he continued his studies in Graz, graduating in 1864. He worked for a law firm in Brevice, and passed the bar examination in 1871. Thereafter, he worked independently as a lawyer in Kranj and Krško, working assiduously to support his large family. He remained an ardent patriot but declined any active involvement in politics except at a local level; he was a member of the municipal council in Kranj and served a term as mayor of Krško from 1894 to 1896. In Kranj, he was also a member of a reading society, becoming its president in 1874. He lived a quieter life once he had moved to Krško, but resumed writing there in 1880 when his children had grown up.

In 1881, Mencinger founded an “academy”: a club of intellectuals devoted to the composition of humorous poems and lectures. He first achieved wide recognition with lone of his satirical short stories, a parody of Anton Koder’s novel Luteranci (the Lutherans), severely criticizing its “sledgehammer prose.” The controversy in which it involved him gave rise to further works in the same vein. His lectures included “O zmotnjavah” (on mistakes) (1881) and “O ob nem dr vanem zakoniku v sedmem zacramentu” (on the general national code of the seventh sacrament) (1882).

The two works that won Mencinger his enduring literary fame, and established him as a key figure in Slovenian literature, were novels that he produced late in life, when his eyesight was failing and he was suffering considerable disillusionment with his own career and the nationalistic ideal he had embraced in his youth. His “fairy tale for old people,” Abadon, is a quasi-utopian novel dramatizing a defensive manifesto for liberal Catholicism. The imaginary travelogue Moja hoja na Triglav (My Hike to Triglav)—he took care to make it plain that he had never actually been to Triglav—is an allegory of ideals unattained, and perhaps unattainable.

The house where Mencinger grew up in the village of Brod is now a protected monument. He died on April 12, 1912, in Krško.