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Sonnet 1 Notes
line 1, Jernej Kopitar, an eminent Slovenian linguist and scholar, persuaded Preseren to burn practically all of his earliest poetry. lines 6/7, Mateja Cop, a poor but respected and erudite scholar who promoted and encouraged Preseren's career as a poet. Cop drowned in 1835, a great blow to the poet. line 7, The Carniolan Bee, a Slovene literary journal which, in 1830, was the first to publish Preseren's work. lines 8/9, the Slovenian language was considered common and inferior to the German spoken by most educated Slovenians at the time. line 11, pesmi is Slovene for poems. line 14, although Preseren's poems were popular in his lifetime, they were forgotten for a time and rediscovered years after his death. |