CROATIAN LITERATURE: MARIJA JURIĆ ZAGORKA

Motif: A Figure of Marija Jurić Zagorka, an illustration from Grička vještica, (The Witch of Grič), Typography Ltd., 1936 The first Croatian professional woman journalist and one of the most widely read Croatian women writers, whose works, even nowadays, are borrowed in equal numbers to those of the world-known mistress of crime novels, Agatha Christie, according to some data was born on January 1, 1873 in Negovec near Vrbovec. She was born as one of four children in the affluent family of the estate manager of Baron Rauch. She attended the elementary school in Varaždin and Zagreb where she proved to be an exceptionally talented and intelligent child. At the age of fifteen she left school and since that time her only school was the rough reality of life. Baron Rauch suggested that Zagorka should continue her education in Switzerland which he offered to pay for, however, her parents had not allowed it but married her off, still under-age, to a Hungarian railway clerk and sent her to Hungary. After three years of married life Zagorka suffered a nervous breakdown, ran away from her husband and courageously started on her own path. Ever since that time she nurtured in her heart a loathing for social injustice, the alienated aristocracy who at that time faithfully served foreigners and the discrimination of women, all of which was to leave a powerful trace in the literature of this fearless, for a long time suppressed and disputed woman writer whose works have been named pulp literature for a long time. She returned to Zagreb after seven years of absence and also died there on November 30, 1957. This return marked the beginning of her literary and journalist career but also the start of her living alone, leading an independent life which meant that she was making her living solely by writing. Nowadays Zagorka has been acknowledged the merit not only for the spreading of the Croatian reading circle but also for the creation of a type of prose style without which Croatian literature would have probably been significantly incomplete and fragmentary. She was a woman of letters who had by her example made the first step in the breaking up of prejudices that journalism and politics were reserved for members of the male sex only. Marija Jurić started her journalist career with the text Egy Percz [One moment] published in 1896 in the Zagreb daily papers Obzor [Horizon]. Following the recommendation of her patron, Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, she became member of the editorial board of the aforementioned daily paper though she had to encounter disapproval and abhorrence of her male colleagues. Consequently Zagorka was given a separate room so that none of the visitors should see her just because she was a woman. As a matter of fact, at that time, not only in the area of Croatia but even in the more developed countries, a woman journalist was a rarity. She could write whatever she wanted but only hidden under a pseudonym; she consequently published her texts as Jurica Zagorski, Petrica Kerempuh, Iglica [small needle],.... At the time when two of the editors of Obzor were in prison, Zagorka (her most favoured pseudonym) was made editor of the paper, showing a high level of intelligence that had only additionally strengthened her unfavourable position among her male colleagues. Ste reported about political events, she also reported from Budapest, wrote reports from the parliament... Duboyer, a journalist from Le Figaro who met her in Budapest, wrote: “I was surprised by an unusual thing in the Hungarian parliament. There a young Croatian woman is sitting, reporting for the Zagreb paper Obzor, giving information to her Hungarian, German, Russian, Italian, English, Polish and other colleagues – even me - and being ardently engaged in political arguments for the benefit of her homeland. A little monster of talent and capability who had made the Croatian parliament the most progressive in Central Europe.” She based the plots of her novels on the documentary material that she could find in the archives of Zagreb, Vienna and Budapest. Her novels were published in instalments in Obzor, and their popularity is best proved by the fact that the readers used to get up early in the morning in order to secure their copy of the paper at the newsstand which had definitely contributed to the growth of their edition. In her novels – let us list only the best known among them: Witch of Grič, Gordana, Daughter of Lotrščak, Duchess from Petrinjska Street, Fiery Inquisitors, etc. –indicate the outstanding skill of forming the plot, and here we refer to very her comprehensive novels and an imposing gallery of romanesque characters who were the readers’ favourites, primarily owing to their constant desire for good fortune but also her permanent fight against evil. Unfortunately, with her literary contemporaries Zagorka had never encountered approval; Gjalski, for instance, called her literature pulp fiction for cowgirls. Zagorka is famous not only on account of her literary work but also because of her fearless social-political engagement and her fight for the rights of women. She held numerous lectures on these subjects, however, even here she encountered numerous obstacles or, to put it in other words, derisive smiles of her male colleagues who had an antagonistic attitude to such type of fight. This was exactly one of the reasons that no one had in these years investigated the work of this presently very popular and widely read woman writer. Decades had to pass until the work of this courageous mistress of the pen had become acknowledged in harmony with the growing interest for popular literature, i.e. the change of opinion of the academic circles about the function of trivial commonplace novels. The reception of Zagorka’s work finally emerged in the second half of the 20th century, or, to be more precise, the opus of Marija Jurić Zagorka was first truly assessed in the scientific monograph of Stanko Lasić. In the first part of the monograph the author deals with the biographic data until the year 1910 when her first novel, Duchess from Petrinjska Street was published. In the second part of the monograph he deals in detail with this novel, which for Lasić means a break with Šenoa’s manner of writing, i.e. the static storyline; this is caused by the fact that Zagorka makes the romanesque structure of the Croatian novel dynamic. The evaluation of Zagorka’s feminism has become possible after accepting the pluralist values in society, which first and foremost refers to the acceptance of feminism and women’s literature. The woman writer who had been at the margin of Croatian literature for years only because she was a woman, who suffered systematic harassment and derision of her male colleagues, at the end of the 20th century she finally got her deserved place in the pleiad of Croatian writers. Zagorka’s greatness lies first and foremost in the literary value of her works in whom Vienna and Zagreb, as well as all the characters have been described as if they were alive; the greatness further lies in her courageous fight for the rights of women which she entered both with body and soul, despite all the obstacles that she had encountered. All those who want to feel the spirit of her time can experience it in Tkalčićeva Street in Zagreb where you can find the street sculpture of this mistress of bestsellers and nowadays the most widely read Croatian woman author. Zagorka’s enlightened, patriotic and literary engagement for the general public can be best illustrated by her words: “Yes, it is true! I write for the public, for the wide strata – because I am part of them and that’s that. Yes, it’s true! I extend preferential treatment to the instincts of the wide strata of the public because theirs are mine, too. And what are their instincts that are mine, too? Freedom! – Justice! – Desire for honesty! – Wish for goodness and a firm belief that goodness at one time must overpower evil! And who is this public? Who are the wide strata I wrote to and I keep writing to? Those that have ideals - carry flags, who let themselves be thrown into jails for them, be even shot! They are very, very elevated strata and serve them, be allowed to and be able to write to them, is a great honour and enormous mercy.” Like the majority of women who had achieved their career at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Marija Jurić Zagorka has only recently experienced an almost unanimous recognition from the ranks of the profession; the readership continues to love her though this loyalty has never been argued.