FAMOUS CROATS 2011 - GRIGOR VITEZ

GRIGOR VITEZ (1911– 1966) Grigor Vitez is the first modern Croatian children’s poet, author of six poetry collections and a book of children’s stories, editor of children’s books and periodicals, translator, teacher, educator and literary thinker. He initiated and edited three children and youth library series (Vesela družba, Biblioteka Vjeverica, Biblioteka Jelen) and two children periodicals (Pionir, Radost), he wrote program studies about child, childhood and literature in the context of childhood and in his literary and publisher’s work strongly advocated humanity, reason and justice against tyranny, heartlessness and oppression. Grigor Vitez was born on15 February 1911 in Slavonic village Kosovac near Nova Gradiška. He finished elementary school in Okučani, middle and Teacher Education School in Nova Gradiška and Pakrac. At early age he began to create poems, but several initial failures (whereof very suggestively and wittyly writes his daughter Olga Vitez Babić in his biographic notes) almost discouraged him from further writing poetry. Having finished Teacher Education School he began to work as teacher in Slobodna Vlast near Đakovo, and then also in Voćin and Golinci near Orahovica, where he joined the National Liberation War. After the war he changed his teaching job and got a position in the Ministry of Education as Head of the Education Department. Though, the vocation of poetry prevailed and in 1956 he published his first collection of children’s poetry Prepelica (Quail), today considered a turning point in Croatian poetry for children, actually the beginning and the focus of modern children’s poetry. In poetry collections that followed, Sto vukova (Hundreds of Woolves, 1957), Kad bi drveće hodalo ( If trees could walk 1959), Iza brda plava (Behind the hill, blue 1961), Hvatajte lopova (Catch the Thief 1964), Gdje priče rastu (Where Stories Grow, 1965) and Igra se nastavlja (The Play Goes On 1966), his poetic expression and language playfulness became more perfect and he created quite new poetics based on language games, number nursery rhymes, nonsense spoken poetry and later on landscape as an independent theme, on productive relationship between child and animal and on the affirmation of new educational science with the child in focus. In the collection of stories Bajka o glinenoj ptici i druge bajke i priče ( A Fable on Clay Bird and Other Stories,1964) he even more strictly sticks to the humanistic engaged narativeness and story telling in witty miniatures. Parallelly with his literary work Vitez is also active “around literature”, especially as the editor of various educational editions and just in that decade of intensive publishing of children’s poetry starts to work with the publishing house Mladost, where he stays till the end of his life initiating an exceptionally influential children’s library series Vjeverica and the library series Jelen, aimed at teenagers. In the library series Vjeverica he publishes classic literature and contemporary authresses and authors of world and Croatian literature for children, as well as children’s literature by other Yugoslav authors. This is the reason why this publishing series - owing to his competency and dedicatedness soon became the central medium of children’s literature and culture in Croatia, but also in wider area within Yugoslavia. In the library series Vjeverica for the first time the translated works by children’s authors Erich Kästner, Felix Salten, Astrid Lindgren, Lewis Carroll, Ferenc Molnár and many other, today classics of children’s world literature, were published. Vitez’ great creative, educational and productive energy in the period after the Second World War till his death was one of the drivers of children’s culture in Croatia and Yugoslavia, and for his literature and “around literature” work he received many prises. He died in Zagreb on 23 November 1966 as a classic of Croatian children’s poetry, its initiator and its most influential author and has kept this symbolic place in Croatian children’s literature till today. In the year after his death (in January 1967) Croatian Association Naša djeca (Our Children) established the Annual Award Grigor Vitez for the best literary text in Croatian children’s literature and the best illustrated picture book or children’s book. Till today this award has remained the most important and most influential award for children’s literature and illustration in Croatia. Symbolic inheritance of Grigor Vitez can be recognised in Croatian children’s literature and culture on many levels, from children’s poetry - where his influence as concerns motifs, ideas and formal verse plan is lasting and undisputed - through the entire body of literature for children and its social framework and influence - to continuous dedication of children’s literature toward the ideals of humanity and joy. Dubravka Zima