FAMOUS CROATS 2005 - 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF AUGUSTIN TIN UJEVIĆ

TIN UJEVIĆ (July 5th, 1891 – November 12th, 1955) The year 1955, its second half, was tragic for the Croatian literature and culture: Tin Ujević, Mihovil Kombol, Antun Barac, Milan Marjanović, Dragutin Boranić – all of them died. Too many for a modest national culture. Tin (Augustin) Ujević was born in Vrgorac on the 5th of July 1891, i.e. the feast of the Holy Brothers, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. He wrote ironically, mocking himself that this was the reason the day was chosen to be a popular holiday. His father was a teacher and the family used to move from smaller places in the province to larger ones, in the vicinity of towns. He started attending elementary school in Imotski and completed it in Makarska. Then he continued his education in Split, in the classical grammar school, lived in the junior seminary and started preparing for priesthood. He gave up the idea and enrolled the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1909. In Zagreb Ujević started socializing with Antun Gustav Matoš, regarding him as his teacher (calling him ‘Rabbi’) and referring to himself as his disciple (‘Discipulus’). Following a public polemic they split in 1911. Ujević developed from an adherent of the Party of Rights and an aggressive representative of this party to a supporter of the unification of Southern Slavs, particularly Croats and Serbs, which was the subject of his public lecture in Belgrade and he also published a booklet (which he did not sign). He went to Paris in 1913 where he promoted his political ideas, but after being disappointed by the behaviour of the representatives of the Yugoslav committee and the Serbian diplomacy, in 1917 he stopped his engagement in politics forever. This is when he dedicated himself to the study of French and other literatures. After World War One he stayed in Zagreb for a short time, and then lived for a longer period in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Split and Supetar on the island of Brač. In 1940 he returned to Zagreb where he made his living as a writer and led a bohemian way of life. From 1941 to 1945 he did not publish a single book and lived from earning his living as a journalist and translator. Despite this fact he was sentenced to five years of imposed silence, i.e. forbidden to publish. In the last days of the year 1950 he had a selection of his collections published in Zagreb, under the title Rukovet (‘Handful’). The book was edited by Jure Kaštelan and Ujević was again brought into the centre of literary interest of both his readers and the general public hungry for excitement. He died on the 12th of November 1955. Tin Ujević contributed ten poems to the famed collection of Croatian modern poetry Hrvatska mlada lirika (‘Croatian new lyric poetry’), (1945). There you can also find his celebrated poem Oproštaj (‘Farewell’) with the opening line that reads ‘Here, in the midst of the port of our blue (sea )....’. The first individual collections of his poems were published in Belgrade: Lelek sebra (‘Slave’s wail’), (1920), and Kolajna (‘Necklace’), 1926). His third collection, Auto na korzu (‘Car on the promenade’) was published in Nikšić in 1932. He made himself known to the Croatian readership and literary criticism by the completely new poetics in the collection Žedan kamen na studencu (‘Thirsty stone on the water-well’) published by Matica Hrvatska (Croatian Matrix). Collections of articles and studies Ljudi na vratima gostionica (‘People at the pubs’ doors’) and Skalpel kaosa (‘Scalpel of chaos’) demonstrated the extent of his interest in all the problems of culturology of the past and the modern times. The announced book of poetic prose Zapisi s mramornog stola (‘Notes from the marble table’) was never published. After the collection Rukoveti, the only collection of poems published in his lifetime was Žedan kamen na studencu (1954). His collected works, Sabrana djela (1963 - 1967) were published in 17 sizable volumes. Individually and within selected works, Izabrana djela, numerous editions of his poems, essays and studies were published. The poetic opus of Tin Ujević is diverse and manifold. His early poems are still in the shadow of the Croatian Modernism, the verses preserve strict forms in the themata and structure. In his early collections one can already see his maturing in the themata and the poetic expression, primarily when encountering the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Love and disappointment, suffering and pain, solitude and anxiety, all these are expressed by verses of deeply-felt symbolic emotions. Later collections show a prevalence of reflectivity over emotionality. In the poems from this period the verse is liberated from the fetters of strictness, the metaphorical blossoms into a fullness of amazement, the poems often become unintelligible, or at least unclear, but deeply enclosed by the presentiment of fortitude regarding the essence of what has been expressed. In his feuilletons and essays Ujević demonstrated a huge, encyclopaedic knowledge of everything that he touched upon in his writing and pondering, whether he wrote about literature or philosophy, philology or politics, natural sciences of religious beliefs. He translated poetry and prose from numerous languages, and his translations can be counted among the ideal examples of mastery. His poetry and prose work is the uppermost achievement of Croatian literature from the first half of the 20th century. Ivo Frangeš, writing about his work, particularly about his poetry, said: “Never has Croatian lyric poetry penetrated so deep into the subconscious, the sagacious, the mysterious, never has it moved through the dark provincial environment where we are faced by contrasts, struck by scorching ice and cooled by burning flames. The poetic Croatian language has all of a sudden broken away from the shackles of the folklore background and has been carried away by the experience of many centuries of singing about themes of love, death and the tragedy of man’s existence, superiorly expressing the essential about the essentials”.