Prešeren

France Prešeren
The 1850 oil portrait of France Prešeren by the German painter Franz Goldenstein.
Born	(1800-12-03)3 December 1800 Vrba, Carniola, Habsburg Monarchy (now Slovenia)
Died	8 February 1849(1849-02-08) (aged 48) Kranj, Austrian Empire (now Slovenia)
Occupation	Poet, lawyer
Language	Slovene; some in German, too. The Poezije collection was translated into French. Individual poems were translated to English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Bengali, as well as to all the languages of former Yugoslavia.
Nationality	Carniolan, Slovene
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable works	The Baptism on the Savica O Vrba Sonnets of Misfortune A Wreath of Sonnets Zdravljica

France Prešeren (pronounced [fɾanˈtsɛ pɾɛˈʃeːɾən] ( listen)) (2 or 3 December 1800 – 8 February 1849) was a 19th-century RomanticSlovene poet, best known as the poet who has inspired virtually all later Slovene literature and has been generally acknowledged as the greatest Slovene classical author. He wrote some high quality epic poetry, for example the first Slovene ballad and the first Slovene epic. After death, he became the leading name of the Slovene literary canon.

He tied together the motifs of his own unhappy love with that of an unhappy, subjugated homeland. Especially after World War II in the Slovene Lands, one of Prešeren's motifs, the "hostile fortune", has been adopted by Slovenes as a national myth, and Prešeren has been described being as ubiquitous as the air in Slovene culture.

During his lifetime, Prešeren lived in conflict with both the civil and religious establishment, as well as with the provincial bourgeoisie of Ljubljana. He fell victim to severe drinking problems and tried to take his life on at least two occasions, facing rejections and seeing most of his closest friends die tragically. His lyric poetry dealt with the love towards his homeland, the suffering humanity, as well as his unfulfilled love towards his muse, Julija Primic.