Ivan Hribovšek

Ivan Hribovšek (June 19, 1923 – 1945) was a Slovene poet, philologist, and translator.

Hribovšek was born into a well-to-do family of farmers and officials in Radovljica. He spent his early youth on a farm together with his younger sisters and brother. After completing elementary school in Radovljica, in 1934 he enrolled in the St. Stanislaus Institute, the episcopal upper secondary school in Šentvid, Ljubljana. His father died in 1936. In high school, he contributed to two newsletters produced in manuscript: Jutranja zarja (The Dawn) and Domače vaje (Home Exercises).

In 1941, during the German annexation of Upper Carniola, he returned to Radovljica and joined a group of Christian Socialists affiliated with the Liberation Front. In 1941, he translated the entire text of Sophocles' play Antigone. In 1942, he was the editor of an underground newspaper produced by the Christian Socialists called Vogelni kamen, of which two issues were published. He continued his education in Villach, where he graduated in 1943, and the same year he went to Vienna to study classical philology. There he wrote poetry and translated ancient classics, especially the poet Catullus.

Hribovšek participated in the underground patriotic newsletter Dunajske Domače vaje, under the leadership of Janez Remic, together with other Slovenian literati who were studying at the University of Vienna at the time. The magazine ceased publication due to the conscription of his colleagues into the army, but Hribovšek devoted himself intensively to editing his pseudonymous collection of manuscript poetry. The quiet, reserved, and sometimes depressed poet avoided conscription for several months by wandering between Radovljica and Vienna, but in December 1944 he had to decide between serving with the Germans, the Partisans, or the Home Guard, and he chose the Home Guard. However, it was also rumored among the Home Guard that he had escaped from prison back to Carinthia, was returning to Yugoslavia to rescue his comrades, and was killed in one such action.

In 2010, Hribovšek was accepted as a canonical poet in the collection Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in pisateljev (Collected Works of Slovenian Poets and Writers). His poetry was influenced by the Slovenian poetic tradition (Jenko, Kette, and Kocbek), Hölderlin, and Rilke. In his writing, he also made references to ancient lyric poetry. His collection consists of 42 poems and two translations. In the first part, he collected poems about experiencing the spiritual dimension of nature, the second part of the collection is about love, and in the third part he included poems with existential themes, hardships related to war, and the question of life and death. Hribovšek wrote poems in rhyming quatrains and sonnets, and he also used free verse. His papers are held by the National and University Library of Slovenia, the Archiepiscopal Archives of Ljubljana, and private archives.