page_title: Alojz Gradnik
section_title: Influence and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Alojz Gradnik / Influence and legacy
caption_attribution_description: Šmartno, village in Goriška Brda area, Slovenia
context_page_description: Alojz Gradnik was a Slovenian poet and translator.
context_section_description: Today, Gradnik is considered the most important Slovenian poet in the interwar period, next to Oton Župančič, and one of the most important Slovene poets of the 20th century. In his lifetime, however, he was mostly disregarded by critics. With his traditional style and conservative worldview, he remained outside the contemporary literary mainstream. However, he influenced the work of some highly talented non-conventional authors such as Lili Novy and France Balantič.
  After the establishment of the Communist regime in Yugoslavia after 1945, his position deteriorated. Gradnik was an anti-Fascist, he sympathised with the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People, and even wrote several poems about the Yugoslav People's Liberation War in Slovenia. Nevertheless, his deep Christian religious sentiment and his magical realistic style were seen as reactionary by the Communists. His membership in the High Tribunal for the Security of the State, which condemned several Communist activists, was a further reason for his fall into disgrace during Josip Broz Tito's regime. He did not suffer any persecution, but he was pushed away from public life. Between 1945 and 1967, he published mostly translations and none of his new poetry was published. There was no public commemoration upon his death and he was not included in the canon taught in schools. In Yugoslavia, no street or institution was named after him until 1990. Nevertheless, many of his poems gained much popularity in his home region and a local school in the Italian commune of San Floriano del Collio was named after him in the late 1970s.
  Gradnik was rediscovered in the late 1980s, when he was elevated to a truly national poet for the first time. He became a major source of influence for the younger generations of postmodern authors, such as Brane Senegačnik, Nevin Birsa, Aleš Šteger, and others.
  Since mid-1996, an annual festival has been held in August in his home village of Medana, called Days of Poetry and Wine (Dnevi poezije in vina), to which young international poets are invited.
caption: A village in the Gorizia Hills, a major inspiration for Gradnik's poetry
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