FAMOUS CROATS, Tonko Maroević

Tonko Maroević A writer and art historian, artist and scientist, academician Tonko Maroević was the personification of the best in contemporary Croatian culture. Present at the highest academic levels and in the media, the custodian of criteria, he connected professions, environments and times. Art historian Radovan Ivančević said that "painters paint and writers write for Tonko Maroević", and he indebted this country and people with his poetic, essayistic, critical, translation, editorial, encyclopedic, lecturing, mentoring work, and incomparable erudition and tolerance. He was born in Split on 22 October 1941. His paternal home town Stari Grad, Roman Ager Pharensis and Petar Hektorović's Tvrdalj were his homeland and point of origin, but early on, he chose the library as his true as his true geographical domicile. When he first came to Zagreb with his father as a little boy and saw the old University Library, he decided on where he would live. He completed the Classical Grammar School in Split, and in 1963 he graduated in comparative literature and art history in Zagreb. He was an assistant to Professor Milan Prelog, and until his retirement - in fact, for the rest of his life - he was employed at the Institute of Art History. He received his doctorate in 1976 ("Croatian Literature and Fine Arts from Modern to the Present"). He has lectured at many universities in the country and abroad, held many public positions (Vice President of Matica hrvatska, Croatian P.E.N. Centre, etc.). In 2002 he became a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was also a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts. He published his first, notable book of poems, Primjeri (Examples) in 1965, followed by eight more collections. From "modeling" syntax to classical expression, he is characterized by an abundance of associations and references, a lively dialogue with the literature and culture of the world. He loved the form of sonnets and especially loved applying it his occasional poems. He compiled two anthologies of contemporary Croatian poetry and two anthologies of Catalan poetry. He was the greatest connoisseur of old Croatian literature. He also dealt with the connections between Croatian and Italian literature. He has published six books of literary criticism and essays, as well as a huge number of translations from Italian, Catalan, Spanish, French and Slovenian. The translation of Borges resulted in the book Borgesov čitatelj (Borges' Reader). His famous translation of Dante's Vita nova with Mirko Tomasović, and their Plavca nova, an anthological selection from Marulić's poetry (1971), was, during the Croatian Spring, one of the reference points of the self-consciousness of the Croatian people. Maroević was the co-author of several theater plays (the most famous being Stilske vježbe (Stylistic Exercises) with Tomislav Radić). He edited a dozen selected and collected works of modern Croatian writers, especially for Matica's Stoljeća hrvatske književnosti (Centuries of Croatian literature). At least as extensive was his work in the field of art, where the bibliography of his scientific and professional papers exceeds the four-digit number. He contributed countless forewords and afterwords to both classics and young authors, and more than twenty capital monographs, from Nives Kavurić-Kurtović, Marina Tartaglia, Kosta Angeli Radovani, Vojin Bakić, Zlatko Bourek to Miroslav Šutej and Ivan Lesiak. He received numerous awards, including the Vladimir Nazor Award for his life's work, and the coveted Goranov vijenac (Goran's Wreath) for his poetry. Italy awarded him the medal "Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana". He died on 11 August 2020 in Stari Grad and Croatia has seldom been so united in tribute and grief. This text has barely scratched the surface relating to the volume of Maroević's work, but it shows, at least to some extent, why Croatian Post included Tonko Maroević in the list of famous Croats. Academician Željka Čorak