Slovenskoargentinski pesnik Vinko Žitnik

The purpose of the paper is to present the life and work of Vinko Žitnik, a poet who has remained practically unknown in his homeland despite the relatively high artistic level found in some of his cycles and poems. Žitnik belongs to the middle generation of the so-called Slovene political emigrants, those who settled in Argentina by the end of the 1940’ and continued to develop the Slovene culture with a commendable zeal. A short biography of the poet is followed by an outline of the themes treated in all his creative periods. The central part of the study presents the contextual and form al side of Žitnik’s poetry from the early publications in 1928, to his only collection, Pomlad (The Spring) printed in 1937 and well reviewed, through to his last poems, published shortly before his death in Antologija slovenskega zdomskega pesništva (The Anthology of Slovene Emigrant Poetry). Žitnik certainly is one of the more prolific Slovene poets, as he has left, besides the numerous pre- and post-war publications in various domestic and emigrant publications, as m any as for ty unpublished collections containing almost 4000 poems, many of which doubtlessly deserve publication.  V prispevku je podan kratek življenjepis in razvoj pesniške poti Vinka Žitnika, izredno plodovitega pesnika iz Grosupljega, ki se je po drugi svetovni vojni izselil v Argentino. Vsebinska in oblikovna analiza Žitnikovega literarnega dela sloni na številnih pesnikovih objavah v predvojnih domačih listih in literarnih revijah ter v povojnih slovenskih izseljenskih publikacijah. Omenjeni pogled je dopolnjen s podatki iz intervjuja, ki ga je imela avtorica prispevka s pesnikovim nečakom Brankom Žitnikom, s podatki iz dveh kratkih člankov o pesniku ter iz literarnokritičnih ocen, ki so se pojavile v tisku ob izidu objavljene Žitnikove pesniške zbirke iz leta 1937