FAMOUS CROATS 2006 - JOSIP KOZARAC

JOSIP KOZARAC (1858 – 1906) Josip Kozarac is a writer whose name can be found on the pages of almost all historical textbooks and reviews of Croatian literature. He was born in Vinkovci on the 18th March, 1858. His father died when Kozarac was very young and his mother took over the entire care for her son. In his native Vinkovci he completed his elementary and high-school education. He showed special affinity for natural sciences and literature. He enrolled and graduated in forestry (1876 – 1879) being supported in his education by the Border-land scholarship, and then worked as a forester in Vinkovci, Vrbanja, Nijemci, Županja, Rajić, Jasenovac and Nova Gradiška. He lived and worked in Lipovljani from 1885 to 1895 when he left for Vinkovci to become senior forester there. He was acknowledged to have been one of the best foresters whose debates about forests were familiar to many scientists of western European countries and Russia. As a young man he was often ailing (typhoid, tuberculosis, rheumatism, deafness). He died in Koprivnica on the 22nd August, 1906. Among his works the following should be definitely mentioned: Priče djeda Nike [Grandpa Niko’ stories] (1880), novels Mrtvi kapitali [Dead Capital] (1890), Među svjetlom i tminom [Between light and darkness] (1891), the short story Tena [Tena] (1894), Tri ljubavi [Three loves] (1894) and the psychological study Oprava [Dress] (1899). The most typical short story among the works of Josip Kozarac is definitely Slavonska šuma [Slavonian forest] (1888) which, by its refined literary notes, reminds some critics of a poem in prose (B.Inhof). Almost everybody who had written about Slavonska šuma called it “a marvellous creation” that illustrated in the best possible way how the very being of Kozarac was interwoven with the Slavonian landscape, as well as the way the natural atmosphere was woven into the structure of his being. Slavonska šuma personifies the perseverance, steadiness and tranquillity of the Slavonian man who in the face of all times has strength enough and spiritual energy for a new beginning. The social themata in other prose works of Kozarac has been expressed through the encounter of the domicile population with newcomers, and can be found in the novels Mrtvi kapitali and Među svjetlom i tminom. Josip Kozarac again wrote about Slavonia in the short story Tena, where through the female title character he symbolically pointed out the natural female beauty that would be destroyed and exposed to suffering on account of her ardour, human naiveté and desire for comfort. Metaphorically looking, Tena’s way of instinctive survival represents an attempt that would stress the change not only in the private relations but in the associated Slavonian social-political milieu. The extremely carefully developed plot of this story depicts the moral paradigm of the character and the Slavonian milieu, where the main character finally succeeds in rallying her forces and restoring her position after almost completely going to the bottom. The regional elements of the story become evident in the language, the mentality of the characters, the economic relations in a Slavonian village, as well as through the ethical-moral metamorphosis of the Slavonian village and its peasants that has occurred as the consequence of social changes. The third phase of Kozarac’s creation brought him into modernism, and on this trail he wrote the stories Donna Ines (1890), Mira Kondolićeva (1895), Oprava as well as his youthful memories entitled Tri ljubavi. The connecting thread among them is the author’s attempt to achieve psychological modelling of the characters whose behaviour has been determined by inner desires, yearning and longing. In his stories and novels Kozarac tried to develop a personal poeticism of permanent identifying of man and space. Helena Sablić Tomić