FAMOUS CROATS, VESNA KRMPOTIĆ

VESNA KRMPOTIĆ (1932–2018), writer and translator. She graduated from the general education secondary school in Zagreb in 1951 and earned a degree in English studies and psychology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1959. She worked at Radio Zagreb from 1960 to 1962, then stayed in India, where she completed her studies in the Bengali language in 1964. In a series of poetry books, alongside the fundamental motifs of love and addressing the other, she reflects influences of Indian spirituality and Eastern mysticism. These are evident, among other things, in the transcendence of individuality and the abstraction of romantic experience, creating, according to most critics, a distinct poetics within the context of modern Croatian poetry (collections Raskorak, 1965; Dvogovor, 1981; Orfelija, 1987, and others). She is the author of several genre-diverse prose works, including Košulja sretnog čovjeka (1981), Pir sunca i mjeseca (1989), Bhagavatar (1990) and Put Jednote (1998), which share an ontological and metaphysical foundation with her poetry. She lived in Cairo from 1967 to 1971, and part of her work is inspired by Egyptian culture (Dijamantni faraon, 1975). She poetically confronted the traumatic experience of losing her son to illness in the collection Ljevaonica za Igora (1978) and explored it in the diary-like prose work Brdo iznad oblaka (1987), which is considered the central work of her creative activity. In the 108×108 edition (2006), the most extensive poetry collection in Croatian literature (11,664 poems), she compiled a series of books titled Stotinu i osam. She also wrote the study Indija (1965). Her plays were performed on Radio Zagreb from 1978 to 1991. She primarily translated from English. She is the compiler of anthologies of Indian and Egyptian literature, as well as collections inspired by the teachings of Sai Baba. She was a professional writer; from the 1960s, she mostly lived in Belgrade, from 1973 to 1977 in Washington and from 1981 to 1983 in Accra. She was awarded multiple times, including the “Vladimir Nazor” Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999. dr. sc. Ljubica Josić, Lexicographer