Although the poem To the Poet is one of the pinnacles of Prešeren’s artistic expression, numerous interpreters have had difficulties with its extreme pessimism. In accordance with the belief that one should first and foremost recognize the »sharp-sighted eagle« in Slovenia’s
first national poet, interpreters have attempted to re-evaluate this pessimism through the cult of the poetic mission. An empirical reception test has demonstrated that the structure of the poem actually enables diverse, even completely illogical understandings of rhetorical
questions, most probably on account of the psychological influence of negation.
|
