Images of love in the poetry of the first lesbian poet Ljudmila Poljanec

Abstract

The article focuses on erotic intimacy and the postromantic representation of love in the poetry of Ljudmila Poljanec (1874-1948), the first Slovene lesbian poet, who published her only collection of poetry Poezije (Poems) in 1906. The article analyses the representation of homoerotic desire and the thematisation of love in the autobiographic cycles Ob Adriji (By the Adriatic) and Baronesi Sonji (To the Baroness Sonja), in which she switched from realism to impressionism.

I will focus on the idealised picture of a woman in her poems. Later, love became a source of suffering and a reason for Christian guilt.

Keywords

• Ljudmila Poljanec
• Slovene poetry
• representation of lesbian love in literature
• Slovene Moderna