Miroslav Krleža

Second paper, final draft due

Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981), Croatia, Yugoslavia.

Miroslav Krleža is generally considered the most significant figure in Croatian literature in the 20th century -— a playwright, novelist, essayist, poet and lexicographer —- and one of the all-time big authors in Yugoslav literature. He was born in Zagreb (then still the main city of an Austro-Hungarian province) and was sent to study at a military academy in Budapest. During the First World War he fought in Galicia. Between the wars he lived mostly in Zagreb and Belgrade, founding literary journals and writing prolifically, though his writing was often censored or banned due to his radical, leftist views. He refused to collaborate with the Quisling Ustaša government during the Second World War, and his life was in danger several times. From 1950 to his death he was director of the Yugoslav Lexicographical Institute in Zagreb and also general editor of the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia. He wrote important works in several genres: poetry, such as the dialect “Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh” (the name is as funny in Croatian as in English!), drama (Gospoda Glembajevi (tr. as The Glembajs, 1928), U agoniji (Death-throes, 1928) and Leda (1958)), short stories and novels. Povratak Filipa Latinowicza (The Return of Philip Latinovicz, 1932) is the first and best-known of his novels; Jean-Paul Sartre reputedly said that if he had read it first, he would not have bothered writing his famous existentialist statement, La Nausée. (Note the spelling of Philip’s last name: “w” and “cz” are not used to spell sounds in Croatian, and here they are signs of other languages -— Polish?, Hungarian? -— that along with Croatian were spoken in parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

We will be reading Na rubu pameti (On the Edge of Reason) because Philip is out of print. It's less well-known than Philip, but also full of interest.

Course book: On the Edge of Reason, translated by Zora Depolo.

Questions for reading:

• How does the provincial Austro-Hungarian milieu depicted here differ from the other settings we have seen so far? What does Krleža teach you about it, and what does he assume you already know? Can an author’s attempt to reveal something about a time and place to the people who live there work to reveal that place to someone who has little or no experience of it? What can a polemic that is so specifically located in its own social and historical setting suggest to us about our own society or behavior?
• Consider the role of lists in this novel. What do they do to the narrative flow, and to the reader’s investment in what is happening? (This is not the last time we’ll see lists as prominent features; thinking aboout it now will pay off later as well.) What other authors you know use lists (this way, or in other ways)?
• What can you tell about the author’s politics from this story? Do Krleža’s political concerns overlap areas (such as religion, morality, sexuality, economics) that we would not assign to the realm of “politics”? If so, how does this impact your access to his worldview as a reader?
• Recall the ending of Professor Martens’ Departure; how does this story differ? What do you think happens next?
• How does our narrator’s profession influence the shape and texture of the novel, and/or your perception of him and his perceptions?
• What is the role of sex in the novel? (For Krleža to handle it so bluntly in the 1930s was considered as shocking as his politics!) How does sexual attraction (or repulsion?) impact gender relations?
• How does the ending make the whole of the novel change shape or acquire new aspects?

Other books by Krleža:

• Povratak Filipa Latinowicza, 1932. The Return of Philip Latinowicz, translated by Zora Depolo, 1959, available in Tripod.
• The Cricket beneath the Waterfall and Other Stories, 1972.
• Banket u Blitvi, 1939. The Banquet in Blitva, translated by Edward Dennis Goy and Jasna Levinget-Goy, 2004.

Works about Krleža:

• Ralph Bogert. The Writer as Naysayer: Miroslav Krleža and the Aesthetic of Interwar Central Europe, available in Tripod.

Web links about Krleža:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/krleza.htm

a detailed article with a long list of his works

http://www.borut.com/library/a_krlezm.htm

a picture and lots of links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Krleza