CROATIAN FAIRY WORLD - SVAROŽIĆ

It is said that all one can imagine can also exist. The power of imagination, in other words creativity, is probably accommodated in a definition of a human being. Namely, it represents a pledge of freedom no matter the extent of boundaries the reality imposes on us, no matter the extent of geometry determining our cells, there always exist a possibility of escape through the bars. It only takes to call to mind a visual image of it. More complex of an image created by a man is only that “certain indefinable something” triggering man’s imagination. That “certain something” consists of light and justice, love and manifold compensations. It has been imagined in many different ways. One of the amazing supernatural parallel universes, universes made of hope and promises, in our language and memory were created by Ivana Brlić Mažuranić (1874 – 1938). Reaching out to the ultimate boundaries of ethical introspection, in a way we could say, to the limits of human existence, she created numerous creatures and plots intermediary which she enabled us, a tribe of illiterates up to the boundaries of time, to read a particular type of Bible. Her Tales from Times Past and Stories and Fables represent in fact a translation of the Bible into the language of more innocent images. That «more innocent language» calls for a complex translator’s procedure if one desires to accommodate it in a stereotype and corruptive receptive channels of a grown up person’s world (so called reality). After all, a very resonance of names as Svarožić or Stribor, and tracing the resonance of the sound S, Sitivrat, triggers in our mind a series of images, those in which are deposited healing resources of freedom, ladders of evasion, spikes and ropes for climbing up a mountain beyond the clouds, a comet mapping a path to the wood of cognition. By uniting various traditions (sacred or always sacred) of myths, Ivana Brlić Mažuranić herself accommodated in a Croatian tradition a whole mythical world, sufficient for centuries of patient work of sorting and processing it. Even if in the Croatian history of imagination were nobody but I.B. Mažuranić, we would be satisfied. Among characters accommodated in the invented (consequently possible) better world of values and virtues, the antagonists Svarožić and Bjesomar without any doubt stand out. One is the ruler of criteria and the other hindrance to his communication with humans. One is proclaiming truth and encourages remembrance and the other is doing his best to impose oblivion. One reveals a true meaning of life as a virtue of love, and the other by his speckled worlds of temptation makes considerable effort to obscure that simple path. One is appearing as a young sun, made of golden light, the other is even stripped of description, mentioned only as a gathering fog in a distance. All the attributes are born not by him but by his picturesque assistants. A «Golden Lad» Svarožić (exceptional appearance of wisdom in a young body) is personification of the Lord. Bjesomar a counter-balance to Svarožić, bearer of a principle of evil, depicted without even a trace of earnestness: indeed, with a certain element of humour with heartfelt compassion, what is particularly true for the members of his small but violent retinue. As much as the activity of evil imposes serious consequences within a global frame, outside this borders it is powerless. The entire seriousness is focused and concentrated on a hard ascent of love and the best continue to pay the highest price. In an unbelievably modest way Ivana Brlić Mažuranić interprets human free will, a meaning of suffering, a power of redemption. In the character of Svarožić she depicted only some of the countless and hard to describe faces of the Lord; she created Bjesomar to enable us to gaze at that very light without fear of going blind; and the Croatian spiritual heritage she accommodated into a global treasure.