Ivan Sivec
Ivan Sivec is a Slovenian writer, author, lyricist and storyteller. He lives and works in Mengeš.
He wrote more than 150 novels and more than 3,000 lyrics for popular music, which made him the most prolific writer in the history of Slovenian literature. He is most known for his historical novels – on Carantania, the ancient Slovenian homeland, on Romans in this part of the empire, on the Counts of Celje, for his collection of Slovenian Castle Stories, for his travelogues and for his biographical novels about Slovenian writers, poets, musicians and other artists. Several of his novels, especially for the youth have been made into feature films and TV series. His work was described as a new realism which borders on documentary.
Life
Ivan Sivec was born in Moste pri Komendi, Upper Carniola to father Andrej Sivec from Moste pri Komendi, a farmer, and Marija Sivec from Preserje pri Radomljah, a farmeress. Ivan had two older brothers: Ciril, born 1938, and Andrej, born 1941. As a child he was sent to school a year earlier, at the age of 6. At 10, he read his first longer book, Pod svobodnim soncem by Fran Saleški Finžgar. During the primary school he often performed in poetry recitations and school plays. Ana Razpotnik, teacher of Slovenian, encouraged him to publish in Ciciban, Pionirski list and to the regional newspaper Gorenjski glas . In 1967, he majored in electrical engineering from a four-year technical secondary school in Ljubljana and got a job as a radio broadcasting technician at the Radio-Television of Slovenia, also in Ljubljana. While he was a secondary school student, Radio Ljubljana aired several of his fairy tales, humorous stories and feuilletons. In the same time he also collected descriptions of folk customs and traditions for the ethnologist Niko Kuret of the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology, and had a regular column about it in Gorenjski glas.In 1973, he enrolled in Slovenian studies at the Faculty of Arts of the Ljubljana University and graduated in 1978 through Argentina, along the routes of the anthropologist William W. Howells through Namibia, of the priest and mountaineer Janko Mlakar across European mountains, including Jungfrau, following the paths of the Aboriginal Australians, of the Maori people in New Zealand and the voyages of the poet France Prešeren in Slovenia, Austria and Moravia.
Work
Slovenian literary historian Helga Glušič characterized Sivec work as a new realism with a touch of documentary.The rural story Pesem njenih zvonov , published in 1972, was his first longer text. It appeared in the rural weekly Kmečki glas in 1970 as a feuilleton and became so popular that it was also published as a book. It was very well received by the readers which encouraged Sivec to take up writing and to become one of the most productive and most widely read Slovenian writers. The Song of her Bells is a traumatic family story, which the father told the writer only when he came of age, and it is about the writer's uncle, his love to the village beauty and the later tragic events. Just before the wedding the uncle was picking linden flowers from a tree for his bride and fell from it to his death. According to literary historian Miran Hladnik, known for analysis of Slovenian rural stories ... with this book Sivec gave the reader, who had previously only been offered a socially critical or existentialist variant of farm life, a real, romantic, popular peasant story, about which the literary critics and historians will hardly write anything good, but the reader nevertheless enjoys it again and again. Even if he or she is aware that the story is unusual, improbable, unrealistic, out-of-date or even copied from old popular works. The book was reprinted in 1982, 1992 and 2011.
Sivec continued to write rural stories and novels, influenced mainly by the 19th and early 20th century Slovenian romantic and literary realists Josip Jurčič, Janko Kersnik, Ivan Tavčar, Fran Saleški Finžgar, and adventure stories by Jack London.
Among his most popular books are historical novels : the Carantania trilogy ; a tetralogy about the Romans in Slovenia ; pentalogy about the Counts of Celje ; the first European Iron Age novel – Showdown at the Full Moon; a collection of Slovenian Castle Stories ; biographical novels ; the collection Dotik srca .
Branko Gradišnik encouraged Sivec to start writing for the youth and the first such work was the adventure novel Pozabljeni zaklad. A three-part television series was based on it, and a feature film in 2001, directed by Tugo Štiglic; it received the "Golden Roll", Slovenian "most-watched film" award. Feature films and TV series were made after three more of his novels: Vlomilci delajo poleti, Zakleta bajta and Princ na belem konju.
In Sivec biography on the site of the Slovenian Writer's Association his work was classified in 13 groups:
- historical novels
- biographical novels
- books about music
- long short stories and novellas
- memoirs
- travelogues
- humorous stories
- adventure novels
- socio-psychological novels
- the Happy family collection
- sports-themed books
- books for younger readers
- picture books for the youngest
Sivec wrote more than 3,000 lyrics for popular music and two monographs on the development of folk music in Slovenia, as well as several biographies of the Slovenian folk musicians such as Avsenik Brothers and Lojze Slak. He also published several collections of lyrics, including Pod cvetočimi kostanji , 2012.
He also published several picture books for children, including Rooster Skating School and The Magic Triangle. He has published three books for the very young, including the contemporary fairy tale Holiday on Mars. Sivec presents his books at school Reading badge events and literary evenings, and also acts as a keynote speaker. So far, he participated in more than a thousand such performances, mainly in Slovenia, but also during his overseas travels, for the Slovenian expats.
Since 1987, he has been a member of the Slovenian Writers' Association. In 1996 he became the first president of the Society of poets of Slovenian music. In 2019, Sivec was awarded Slovenia's Order of Merit, for his 'extremely extensive, diverse and resounding opus, which nurtures the national consciousness'.