Archives for April 14th, 2005

Prešeren birth house in Vrba, Slovenia.

There is a famous poem by Slovenia’s greatest poet, France PreÅ¡eren, known as O Vrba! It’s from his sonnets of unhappiness (sonetje nesreÄ?e) and starts like this:

O Vrba! sreÄ?na, draga vas domaÄ?a,
kjer hiÅ¡a mojega stoji oÄ?eta;
de b’ uka žeja me iz tvojga svéta
speljala ne bila, goljfiva kaÄ?a!

Here are two very different readings of the opening lines:

• O Vrba! performed by Pavle Ravnohrib (Slovenian style)

• O Vrba! performed by Jurij Zrnec (Serbian style)

There’s an English translation of the poem here. And you can take a neat virtual tour of PreÅ¡eren’s old house in Vrba here.

(Thanks Miran!)