FAMOUS CROATS 2008 - SILVIJE STRAHIMIR KRANJČEVIĆ (1865 – 1908)

SILVIJE STRAHIMIR KRANJČEVIĆ (1865 – 1908) One of the greatest Croatian poets of the 19th century: his role in Croatian poetry is similar to the one Baudelaire had in French lyric poetry. He was born on February 17, 1865 in Senj, the town that had essentially marked his early verses. After having rebelled against the authoritative school rules and was denied the right of sitting for the graduation examination, he was sent from the seminary in Senj to Rome, to the Germanico-Hungaricum Institute, in order to study theology and prepare for the clerical vocation. This short sojourn in Rome left an indelible trace on Kranjčević and later also on his poems. Eight months after his arrival in Rome he realized that he had no vocation for the priesthood and he returned to Zagreb and enrolled a pedagogical course. He was granted a teacher’s diploma in the year 1886. As he had no graduation certificate he could not work in Croatia. So Kranjčević left for Bosnia where he worked in Mostar, Livno, Bijeljina, all up to the time when he met the teacher Ela Kašaj whom he married. Kranjčević published his first poem Zavjet [The Pledge] in 1883 in the magazine Hrvatska vila [Croatian Fairy] that was at that time led by Eugen Kumičić and the poem was enthusiastically welcomed. The importance of the appearance of a new star on the literary horizon is best illustrated by the fact that the mentioned poem was placed in the magazine immediately after Kumičić’s article About the Novel, that means in the place of honour. The time when Kranjčević made his appearance was the era of the novel that the writers used to write in order to solve the then current political and social problems, while the love poems and patriotic verses were placed on the other side. Kranjčević’s first collection Bugarkinje [ Bugarkinje is a traditional name given to elegiac folk songs in our country] was published in the year 1885 and announced by the new, fresh elements the restoration of the lyric poetry of that time in the Croatian circles. The first poem of the collection, Hrvatskoj [To Croatia], contains key elements of Kranjčević’s lyric programme; he did not start, like Harambašić, from expressing national awareness and collective euphoria, but he linked patriotism with the issues of freedom of the humankind generally. In Sarajevo he was the editor of Nada, a literary magazine, from 1895 to 1903: the magazine attracted the most eminent Croatian writers and thus became the most important literary magazine of the Croatian pre-modernist movement, The Moderna. Immediately after his marriage to Ela, thirteen years after he had published Bugarkinje, he submitted his collection Izabrane pjesme [Selected Poems] for printing. In the year 1902 he had the book Trzaji [Quivers} printed, while the last book, Pjesme [Poems] were published posthumously, seven years later. The poet’s image that his poetry is imbued with was to be liberated from slavery, emerge and break through, not only as an individual but as a people as well. In Kranjčević’s poetry one can find poems that narrate a “great historical event”: Noć na Foru [A Night on the Forum], or “a great historical personage”: Mojsije [Moses]. However there are poems that are the predecessors of the Croatian literary Impressionism and carry certain spiritual states like in the poem Iza spuštenih trepavica [Behind the Lowered Eyelashes. The Croatian patriotic lyric poetry up to the time of Kranjčević developed under the influence of Kip domovine [The Statue of Motherland] written by Štoos and Hrvatska domovina [Croatian Motherland] written by Mihanović, both of whom show social conditions, i.e. heroism and its beauty. While these two poems explicitly named the motherland and its people, in the case of Kranjčević the awareness about the national feelings was strengthened, he turned to the universal. His patriotic poems were not written to order but were the voice of a free and self-aware person. Kranjčević was a poet who inherited and continued the poetic expression of Preradović and Šenoa but at the same time he perfected it. In this way he laid the foundations for the development of the future expression. What can be observed in his poetry is the language of Marulić, Gundulić, but also an announcement of the expressions of Ujević, Kamov and Matoš. Kranjčević is a permanent source of inspiration for the Croatian literary critique, and the number of his readers has decreased at no moment, neither have the themes of his poems stopped being real. He was interested as a poet in all the problems and hardships of his people and he expressed them supported by Biblical and classical parables, symbols from the history of Christianity and Jewish people, and their allegories suited the fundamental human issues about the universe, life, the discord between ideal and reality, about the purpose of man and nature, about faith, Church, God, death, sin, happiness, justice, freedom, … All these visions that can be apprehended and understood in his verses have emerged from the harsh reality of Croatia from the time of the Khuen-Héderváry regime; all the suffering, pain and problems that his homeland and the people suffered, Kranjčević experienced very intensely through his poetic sensitivity. Around the year 1903 he started ailing and had to be subjected three times to surgery surgery for bladder stones. After unsuccessful treatment in Sarajevo, at the end of the year 1906 he went to Vienna. After eight months of being severely ill he returned home where his agony started. He died in great pain and finally found his peace on October 29, 1908.