Poets

France Prešeren was a Slovene Romantic poet. He is considered the Slovene national poet. Although he was not a particularly prolific author, he inspired virtually all Slovene literature thereafter.

Life

He was born 3 December 1800 (Saturday) in the Upper Carniolan village of Vrba, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy (today in Slovenia), to a relatively well-to-do peasant family. Already as a child, he showed considerable talent, so his parents decided to provide him with a good education.

At the age of eight, he was sent to elementary schools in Grosuplje and Ribnica, run by the local Roman Catholic clergy. In 1812, he moved to the Carniolan provincial capital of Ljubljana, where he attended the State Gymnasium. Already at a very young age, he learned Latin, Ancient Greek, as well as German, which was then the language of education, administration and high culture in most areas inhabited by Slovenes. In Ljubljana, Prešeren's talent was spotted by the poet Valentin Vodnik who encouraged him to develop his literary skills in the Slovene language. As a high school student, he became friends with the future philologist Matija Čop, who would have an extremely important influence on the development of Prešeren's poetry.

In 1821, Prešeren enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, against the wishes of his mother who wanted him to become a priest. In Vienna, he became acquainted with the western canon from Homer to Goethe, but he was most fasc..