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Louis Adamic
(1898-1951)
One hundred years ago, on 23
March 1898, a
third child was born to peasant parents at Praproce Castle near Grosuplje.
Lojze received his education in Grosuplje
and Ljublijana. It was a time of student demostrations. The Austrian army shot Rudolf Lunder and Ivan Adamic, his
relative. When Lojz was expelled from school at the
age of fifteen, he emigrated to the United States of America. He started as a worker at the
newspaper Glas Naroda
(The Voice of People) and soon rose to be a reporter. He spent World War I
as a volunteer in the American army in Europe. After the war he traveled around the United States of America and the Far East. He attracted a lot of public
attention with his book Dynamite (1931) which is still considered to
be a textbook of the class fights in the USA. The next year he published the book Laughing
in the Jungle and was awarded a Guggenheim prize for it. Thus Louis Adamic won recognition in the USA as a writer, editor, translator and a
versatile politically engaged and publicly active person. His work, writing
about the problems of the time in America and in Slovenia, and particularly his support of the
Yugoslav partisan movement brought him many new friends and dangerous
opponents.
He returned to his old homelands
twice. In 1932 Adamic became acquainted with the
writers and progressive movement in Slovenia and proceeded
against King Alexander's dictatorial regime with his book Native's Return.
The book was prohibited in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia immediately after its
publication in 1934. During World WarⅡ he interceded as the honorary
president of the Slovene - American National Council (SANS) with the Amrican administration and President Roosevelt for he
Slovene National Liberation Struggle. After the war, in 1949, he visited his
homeland again. This time to find out more about the reality of the new
Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. The fruit of his research work was a book The
Eagle and the Roots. It was because of this book that he was most likely
shot by his enemies on 4 September 1951. The book was published in the USA posthumously in 1952. In the Slovene
language, the book entitled Orel in korenine in the Slovene translation appeared
only in 1970, eighteen years after the publication of the English original. Adamic objective writing did not suit the purposes of
authority expecting praises.
His work has been translated into
several other languages. The centenary of his birth will be commemorated by
the publication of three Adamic's books in the
Japanese language: Laughing in the Jungle, Lucas, King of Balucas and Struggle (1935). The French
translation of Laughing in the Jungle (Le rire
dans la jungle) is still waiting for a
publisher.
Tine Kurent
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