Ljubljana
I spent last week delivering a series of lectures in my adopted second home, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ljubljana is the city where I spent two year-long Fulbright professorships. I have friends in the English and philosophy departments at the University of Ljubljana, as well as at the two international schools located within the Slovene school system. (My own children attended these schools.) I look up a number of former students and other friends every time I visit. Teaching in Slovenia has been and continues to be one of the richest experiences of my life.
Last year when I was at the University, I gave lectures on Jonathan Swift, Tom Jones, and Jane Austen. The talks helped give me the idea for this website. This year my focus was primarily on film, although I did give one talk on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony for an “American Ethnic Literature” class (taught by my friend Jerneja Petric). I also gave four lectures on the theme of “Women in Film” (organized by Eva Bahovec in Philosophy and Milica Gaber in Sociology), and I lectured on Thelma and Louise and on films chosen by the students at Bezigrad High School (including Avatar, The Bourne Identity, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, The Breakfast Club, and Donnie Darko).
Today’s post is not strictly on “literature and life.” Rather, I want to figure out why it is so meaningful to visit and share one’s expertise. I was worried for a while that I did it to boost my ego. But while ego is always a threat, I think the reason is more interesting than that.
When I go to Slovenia, I am able to interact with what is best in my friends. Because we only have a short time together, we are determined to make the time meaningful and talk mostly about big stuff. All the little irritants that drag at me in my home community are absent—or rather, I can afford to ignore them—and so the space seems very clean and pure.
It reminds me of doctors who take two-week vacations to attend to patients in places like Haiti and other developing nations. They work 12-14 hour days in often tough conditions, and yet they are fed by the experience. Suddenly they are reconnecting with the dreams of service that directed them into the medical profession in the first place. They aren’t worrying about insurance forms or hospital politics or all the other complications in their lives. They can focus solely on helping people get better.
When I am in Slovenia, I focus mainly on helping others explore new worlds, and I allow them to guide me to new worlds within myself.
It’s interesting to think about Jesus in this light of visiting. Early in his ministry he was listened to when he went out into the world. In fact, he became a star. But when he returned to his home community, he was only the son of Joseph. In fact, when he got up in church and claimed to have a special relationship with God, he almost got stoned. “No many is a prophet in his own country,” he remarked.
So I feel I am listened to when I visit to Slovenia, just as I listen to the thinking of my friends there. The visits are free of the friction of life that is an inevitable part of community. But does that mean that my visits are superficial? After all, friction is inevitable when people come together to make a world.
Superficial doesn’t strike me as the right word. But maybe vacation does. When we go on vacation, we find a quiet that allows us to focus on important soul matters that we have forgotten about. Our subsequent goal, however, should then be to enrich our own home communities with what we’ve learned. Fostering community, after all, is our real goal in life.
And that, in fact, is what occurs whenever I return from Slovenia. The first time I visited, I discovered what it means to be an American. I developed a new appreciation for American literature and became more understanding of America’s shortcomings. I concluded that all countries have their strengths and weaknesses, mine among them.
The second time I visited, I radically revised the way that I see and teach literature. Suddenly works of the imagination became more practical, furnishing me with life lessons. I became less tolerant of pure theory, and I returned to the States teaching in an entirely new way.
My Slovene friends—Urska, Cvetka, Natasa, Igor, Mirjana, Ksenja, Ljuba, Tamara, Mladen, Eva, Uros, Jerneja, and others—helped me get there. We make each other feel special because we sense the strength that lies within each other. Then we try to put that strength into practice, using it to cut through our weariness and disillusion. Life is renewed.
