The expression of Weltschmerz, an emotion enveloping nineteenth-century Europe, is characteristic of Stritar’s early poetry. It was a time marked by Pessimism, a philosophy that distanced itself from the traditional Catholic worldview. Arthur Schopenhauer developed it into a doctrine, which was followed by many artists, including Josip Stritar. His Weltschmerz presented itself as a rift between an ideal, altruistic life, and reality, which is filled with pain and senseless suffering. In his poems, he described such a world as a “vale of tears” – a world that does not find salvation from its ills until the afterlife in God’s presence. Nevertheless, Stritar was not a true representative of the vale-of-tears concept, as he did not sincerely believe in finding salvation, which led to great disapproval and criticism from Catholic leaders in the cultural milieu at the time. Although he was strongly associated with being a student of Schopenhauer’s school of thought, most of his melancholy and worldview were products of his own reflection and personal experience, highlighted in poems written between 1869 and 1880, which I aim to explore further in my thesis.
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