Smiljan Rozman

Biography

In September 1950 Rozman, a young teacher, was called up for military service. Soon afterwards he was accused of chauvinism and of “anti-army sentiment”, and a court in Zagreb sentenced him to three and a half years in prison for false testimony. He served the sentence in Bosanska Gradiška.

He was born on 28 January 1927 in Celje. The family soon moved to Šmarje pri Jelšah: his father was a tax collector, and the family often changed address. Smiljan finished primary school in Radovljica and attended secondary school in Ptuj and Maribor. By some accounts he grew up in Maribor; by others his childhood was spent moving between these towns. During the Second World War the family was expelled to Serbia, to Kragujevac, while Rozman himself was sent on forced labour to Germany and France. After the war he returned to Maribor and entered the teacher training college, from which he graduated in 1949. There was no money for his studies: his father could not support six sons, and Smiljan earned his own living. He worked in a factory, appeared in films, and played drums, saxophone and clarinet. In the evenings he attended drawing classes that Maribor artists had organised on the initiative of the painter Maks Kavčič. He wanted to study painting, but because of a shortage of teachers he received, together with his diploma, a posting to a primary school in Lepoglava, in Croatia.

The sentence of 1950 ended that job as well. His mother, Marija, secured his release, and after a year and a half he was freed, but he was no longer allowed to teach.

In 1953 Rozman enrolled at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana to study psychology and education. He had begun publishing as early as 1948, in Mladinska revija, and later printed stories in the journals Svit, Mladi poti, Beseda, Nova obzorja and Naša sodobnost, while in newspapers and weeklies he wrote feuilletons on topical subjects. He was a member of the Slovene Writers’ Association and of Slovene PEN.

His first books place him among the pioneers of Slovene postwar prose. The novels “Someone” (Nekdo, 1958), “The Ruin” (Ruševine, 1965) and “The Graveyard” (Pokopališče, 1968) deal with the depersonalisation of people in war, and they are written with avant-garde techniques. In “The Coast” (Obala, 1959) and “The Company” (Druščina) the action takes place by the sea, in “The Town” (Mesto, 1961) in old Maribor. His plots are simple, and the hero is usually a “little man” from surroundings the author knew. In the later works the characters are psychologically deeper, and there is more humour and grotesque. There were also comic collections, for example “On the Conveyor Belt” (Na tekočem traku, 1962).

For children and young people he wrote a great deal and adjusted his books to the reader’s age, bringing in elements of the detective story, the adventure tale and the fairy tale. Such are “Hunting the Stolen Millions” (Lov za ukradenimi milijoni, 1969), “The Magic Typewriter” (Čudežni pisalni strojček, 1966) and “Wanderer the Cloud” (Oblaček Pohajaček, 1978). Some pieces were printed in the magazines Ciciban and Pionirski list.

Besides prose, Rozman wrote radio and television plays, often based on his own books. He wrote the scripts for the puppet films “Intermezzo” and “Don Pedro”, for the animated film “Winter Story” (1962), and for the short feature films “The Café” (1975) and “The Bass Player’s Monday” (1986). He also devised the stories for the ballets “Lysistrata” (1975) and “The Wire” (1976).

The Prežih Award went to the novels “Someone” and “The Town”; in 1965 the Prešeren Foundation Award went to “The Company”, and in 1968 the Levstik Award to the book “Tejč the Reporter Reports”. For his radio plays he received five awards. Smiljan Rozman died in Ljubljana on 15 March 2007.