LAPITCH-LITTLE SHOEMAKER

LAPITCH THE LITTLE SHOEMAKER

Lapitch the Little Shoemaker (Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića) is children’s novel by the most famous Croatian woman writer Ivana Brlić Mažuranić (1874 - 1938). The granddaughter of the first Croatian governor commoner and poet Ivan Mažuranić, she grew up in the atmosphere of spiritual creation and got married also into equally so old and intellectual family Brlić from Slavonski Brod. She began to write literature for her own children, but she was soon recognised first in Croatian literature and thereafter her works were translated in forty foreign languages. She was a Nobel Prize candidate and was nicknamed Croatian Andersen.
The apprentice Lapitch is a shoemaker’s apprentice, an orphan delivered to bad tempers of his master Mrkonja and quite kindness of his wife. When the master’s injustice becomes too much to bear, Lapitch runs away into the world followed by the dog Bundaš. In several short and endless days, in the world where remoteness was not difficult to reach - already at the outskirts of the town - Lapitch meets many good and bad people and with his humanity affects their fates always for better. On his way he meets a girl from circus, Gita and her parrot. After numerous adventures it is discovered that Gita is in fact Marica - a long time ago kidnapped daughter of the master Mrkonja. Transformed by gratitude and happiness into another kind of person, Mrkonja will offer home to both, Marica and Lapitch. And, in far future Lapitch and Gita - as he will always call her - will found their own family and be good parents to their children and little apprentices.
To today’s generations who tremble over destinies of various virtual heroes it is not difficult to grasp that the history consists of real and fictional beings. To the latter in Croatia belongs also the history of the apprentice Lapitch. Already for hundred years, from the moment he was created by Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, he has been participating in growing up of children and keeping the magic of childhood in souls of grown ups. How is it possible that the shoemaker’s apprentice, the boy Lapitch managed to survive the whole century in which the world has undergone such remarkable changes?
The world in which Lapitch lives is a small world. In it everything is within hand’s reach and familiar. However, when we look at it closer - as with magnifying glass - at this tiny, everyday's inventory - a tripod chair, awl, maize cob, a blue star painted on the little house, parrot, a pair of little boots… Ivana Brlić Mažuranić reveals strange dimensions of the seemingly familiar; endless interspaces and an interval made of small steps; a possibility to produce miracle with few common gestures and objects - like the appearance of Gita, dog Bundaš and parrot on the flower decorated cart. The simplicity of the presented world is paralleled with the simplicity of words. Like in Tales of Long Ago (Priče iz davnine) and in Fables and Fairy Tales (Bajke i basne), Ivana Brlić Mažuranić expresses the deepest life experiences, the hardest to shape truths in most direct sentences and images.
This is a talent given only to the greatest. Solidarity, forgiveness, sacrifice for others, faithfulness, closeness with the entire nature (in this case called Bundaš) put in motion Lapitch’s personality. The whole story, excellently constructed as a small crime fiction, functions on the spring of goodness. And that spring is contagious, it takes everybody on board. And the light wings that are given to lessons which are in no way easy are a result of tender and transparent humour interwoven through the book from its first to last sentence.
To the success and readability of Lapitch the little Shoemaker contributes also the modernity of rhythm in its composition. The exchange of the swiftly sketched images has something in common with the nature of today’s media. There is no superfluous talkativeness, just the clearness of each stroke; the logic of action development; the closing of each initiated motif; happy ending deeply motivated by moral merits of characters - all this keeps the book alive in competing with the technically superior means of story telling; since, the most suggestive medium is one's own imagination, here immensely engaged by the authoress. Every our home, every our day seen from the perspective of Lapitch and with Lapitch becomes a possible scene of miracle and adventures where without love for other beings there is neither success nor award.
The apprentice Lapitch has turned his first hundred years. Croatian Post wishes us all the best for his birthday.

Željka Čorak