FAMOUS CROATS,Miljenko Smoje

Miljenko Smoje There are few writers in Croatian culture who can be said to have created their own native land. One of them is without doubt Miljenko Smoje, a journalist, screenwriter and novelist from Split. In his writing, Smoje did not only describe central Dalmatia; he created it: he constructed its media image, created its mythology, immortalized its mentality, codified its language. If there is a repository of ideas, sounds and faces of Dalmatia that is permanently imprinted on both Croatian and (ex)Yugoslav audiences, a significant part of that repository is precisely the work of Miljenko Smoje. Miljenko Smoje was born in 1923 in Veli Varoš, Split, to a fishing family. After a short teaching career, he joined “Slobodna Dalmacija” as a journalist. He quickly established himself as a gifted reporter with a lively language, insightful observations and witty style. He traveled through Dalmatia, wrote reports and humorous stories. With his reporting work, he reaffirmed the Central Dalmatian Chakavian and returned its rightful place in the media. By the mid-1960s, he was already a popular and well-read local journalistic star. In 1971, he published his first book, “The Legend of Hajduk” created on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the football club from Split. This touching and humorous chronicle has gone beyond its occasional function and serves as a novelistic chronicle of Split. Smoje achieved the greatest fame through the new medium of television. In 1970, Zagreb TV produced the TV series “Naše malo misto” (Our Little Town) – a chronicle of a fictional town in central Dalmatia from the 1930s to the 1960s. The series gained enormous popularity and the status of a classic with regular reruns. Smoje managed to novelize the series in an eponymous novel. In 1980, Smoje once again wrote a more expensive, more ambitious series “Velo misto” (The Big Town) for Zagreb TV, which follows the history of Split and the football club Hajduk from 1910 to 1945. Smoje novelized this series as well, and the resulting novel is often held in higher regard than the series. In the following period, Smoje worked constantly as a stage writer and screenwriter for films and TV dramas. However, he never stopped being a journalist. Until his death, he published columns, reports and humorous stories in “Slobodna Dalmacija”, and then in the “Feral Tribune”. He died in 1995 at the age of 72 from cancer, and his last text – published only a few days before his death – ended with the word “write”. Jurica Pavičić, writer, columnist and film critic