The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud

"At the very time when I was writing this, shall I say, novel about the trumpet and the cloud, there was a fierce controversy between Vidmar and Ziherl about realism and fiction. It was a very lively debate, in which even the Soviet critic Lipšic got involved, and then I wrote in the novel about the trumpet and the cloud that, in the end, all fiction is nothing but a different, subjectively expressed realism."

Statement by Ciril Kosmač for the Third Programme of Radio Belgrade, 1968

The relationship between realism and fiction permeates the whole of The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud, whether the work is described as a novella, a short story or a novel. In the text, Ciril Kosmač writes two stories. The first is the story of the writer Majcen, who goes to the farm to have peace to write a short story. The second story is the one that takes place in Majcen's head - the story he finally wants to put on paper. It is the story of Temnikar and Temnikarica fr om Tolminsko, who each sacrificed their lives in their own way in the Second World War. The relationship between the two stories is built on contrasts. The story of the writer Majcen is set in contemporary times, when Kosmač was writing the work itself, and the internal narrative of Temnikar is set in 1943. And while Majcen wanders through the undulating Dolenjska region during the blooming summer, Temnikar embarks on his first and last heroic journey on a snowy Christmas day, among the sharp edges of the Tolmin landscape. And if Majcen is clearly written as a kind of Kosmač's alter ego, who in many replicas acts as a direct medium for Kosmač's views on the writer's work and ethical dilemmas, Temnikar is a classic (fictional) literary protagonist. But it is precisely in this relationship that Kosmač does not draw sharp distinctions, but rather offers a space for reflection on what it even means for something to be made up "out of the head", as he puts it, and what is really "real" in literature.

In The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud we can thus highlight two central themes: 1) the creation of the artist - the process of creating a new work, the role of the artist in society, and 2) what it means to be a hero in war, how a hero is "made", what a hero is like, and what the consequences of his actions are. Of course, the text also gives us an insight into wh ere the roles of the hero and the writer/artist meet and where they diverge, and finally, what their role is in society. This question is also the starting point for the creative process of making a play. How do we put on stage a work that is already so rounded and complete in its literary value? Given that Kosmač is undoubtedly a master of narrative language and style, which flows so smoothly from sentence to sentence, what can we add to it in the medium of theatre without losing its narrative power? And why? While the answer to such a question is never easy, the motivation for staging it is nevertheless clear to some extent: because we believe that this story is worth telling and hearing again. Not only because the text raises the question of individual duty, of the extreme experience of war, but also because it is this text, with its double structure, that allows theatre-makers to discover their own position and responsibility in the world at the beginning of their journeys. It probably goes without saying that as individuals we bear the responsibility of what the future will look like in relation to what our work looks like today. But we also have a responsibility towards the past. Indeed, in order to understand the present, confronting our collective past is inevitable.

Source: https://www.mini-teater.si/si/articles/3995/balada-o-trobenti-in-oblaku