The purpose of the article is to present the role and the perception of women in emigration as they reveal in their artistic activity or more precisely, in their poetry. From that aspect, the contribution presents the most important poetesses in emigration and deals in detail with the poetic opera of Milena Šoukal (Chicago, U.S.A.), Pavla Gruden (Australia) and Milena Merlak-Detela (Vienna). Their poems are presented in view of thematic and style and from the aspect of longing for the homeland, which reveals as a permanent theme in all Slovene emigrant poetry. The author compares the abundant yearning symbolic and metaphoric of the female emigrant poetry with motives of yearning with some Slovene poets and writers in the native land and finds some parallels and influences, for example France Prešeren, Ivan Cankar, and others. In the poems of Milena Šoukal, the longing for homeland is most frequently expressed by a symbol of a bird with a mutilated wing, or a symbol of the tenth child that had to leave home. In her last poems, the longing is connected with longing for conciliation with the homeland where the poet uses biblical symbolic of the four riders of the Apocalypse. In the haiku poems of Pavla Gruden, the longing for the homeland exhibits in her associative reminiscence of the native land: the scent of its air, soil, trees and its landscape. In other poems, the yearning for homeland is presented through picturing of longing because of remoteness from closest relatives, which especially deepens at Christmas time and in Easter; Catholic symbolic of an overfilled chalice and of a set sail that would bring the traveller home expresses it. In the poetry of Milena Merlak-Detela, the longing is not so much focused on returning to the native land; the author longs for purity of life of her childhood out of the tragedy of dwelling in which she found herself, guiltless and as prey of painful, brutal events in the world. She expresses the longing with symbols of the sun that in foreign parts does not warm as before, with a symbol of lost spring water, a symbol of caught shipwrecked people, and with sadness because of detachment from the homeland and from the grave of her mother.
A review of the poetry of Slovene poetesses in emigration shows that the motive of longing for the homeland is in emigrant situation more frequent and absorbed, particularly if it is a consequence of a forcible departure in the period after World War II, and an expression of fear that the native land is for an emigrant person for always lost. In that time, the motive of longing in female poetry frequently transgresses to poetic metaphor of seeking human’s homeland in religious ontological sense. In a way, the breath of Slovene homeland exhibits even with the youngest generations of displaced persons, born abroad who create in the languages of the new homelands – in Spanish, English, German, and other. Despite changed motifs, it shows in combination of temperaments of two worlds and in disguised anxiety as a heritage of bitter past of the ancestors.Namen članka je pokazati na vlogo in občutje žensk v zdomstvu, kot se razkrivata v njihovi umetniški dejavnosti, natančneje v njihovi poeziji. S tega vidika prispevek prikaže najpomembnejše slovenske pesnice v zdomstvu in nato natančneje obravnava pesniški opus Milene Šoukal (Chicago, ZDA), Pavle Gruden (Avstralija) in Milene Merlak-Detela (Dunaj). Njihove pesmi predstavi tematsko-slogovno, z vidika tematike hrepenenja po domovini, ki se pokaže kot konstantna tema vse slovenske zdomske poezije. Bogato hrepenenjsko simboliko in metaforiko ženske zdomske poezije avtorica članka primerja z motivi hrepenenja pri nekaterih slovenskih pesnikih in pisateljih v domovini ter ugotavlja nekatere vzporednice in vplive, na primer Franceta Prešerna, Ivana Cankarja idr. V pesmih Milene Šoukal se hrepenenje po domovini najpogosteje izraža s simbolom ptice s pohabljeno perutjo, s simbolom desetnice, ki je morala od doma, v zadnjih pesmih pa se povezuje s hrepenenjem po spravi z domovino, pri čemer pesnica uporabi svetopisemsko simboliko štirih jezdecev Apokalipse. V haikujih Pavle Gruden se hrepenenje po domovini kaže v njenem asociativnem spominjanju na domovino: na vonj njenega zraka, zemlje, dreves in njene pokrajine. V drugih pesmih se hrepenenje kaže tudi v slikanju domotožja zaradi oddaljenosti od najbližjih svojcev, ki se poglobi zlasti o božiču in ob veliki noči; izraža se s krščansko simboliko prenapolnjenega keliha in razpetega jadra, ki bi popotnika privedlo domov. V poeziji Milene Merlak-Detela hrepenenje ni toliko usmerjeno k vrnitvi v rodno pokrajino, temveč pesnica iz tragedije bivanja, v kateri se je brez svoje krivde znašla kot plen mučnega, brutalnega dogajanja v svetu, hrepeni po čistosti življenja svojega otroštva. Hrepenenje izraža s simboli sonca, ki v tujini ne greje tako kot prej, s simbolom izgubljene studenčnice, s simbolom ujetih brodolomcev in z žalostjo zaradi odtrganosti od domovine in od groba svoje matere.
Pregled poezije slovenskih ženskih pesnic v zdomstvu kaže, da je motiv hrepenenja po domovini v zdomskem položaju pogostejši in bolj poglobljen, še posebej če je posledica nasilnega odhoda na tuje v obdobju po drugi svetovni vojni in izraz bojazni, da je domovina za zdomskega človeka za vselej izgubljena. Takrat v ženskem zdomskem pesništvu motiv hrepenenja po domovini pogosto prestopa v pesniško metaforo iskanja človekove domovine v religioznem, ontološkem smislu. Na svoj način se dih slovenske domovine kaže celo v najmlajših rodovih razseljenih oseb, rojenih že na tujem, ki ustvarjajo že v jeziku nove domovine – v španščini, angleščini, nemščini idr. Kljub spremenjeni motiviki se kaže v kombinaciji temperamentov dveh svetov ter zastrti tesnobi kot dediščini trpke preteklosti prednikov
