France Prešeren

France Prešeren (1800 to 1849) was a Slovene poet whose work is widely regarded as some of the most important in Slovene literature, and he is often called the greatest Slovene classical poet. His poems have been translated into many languages, and after his death he became the leading name of the Slovene literary canon. His lyric poetry joined two sorrows, his own unhappy love for his muse Julija Primic and the plight of a subjugated homeland, and it also dealt with the suffering of humanity. One of his motifs, the hostile fortune, was adopted by Slovenes after the Second World War as a national myth. He lived in Carniola and at first thought of himself as Carniolan before gradually taking on a broader Slovene identity. He wrote primarily in Slovene but also in German, and he lived in conflict with the civil and religious establishment and with the provincial bourgeoisie of Ljubljana.