Izvorni znanstveni članak
Kvirin Vasilj on “the limited world” of Miroslav Krleža
Draženko Tomić
; Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Croatian philosopher Kvirin Vasilj (1917–2006) focused on the physical and metaphysical challenges of the concrete existence of man. Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) is a distinguished figure of Croatian modern literature. Although contemporaries, they most probably never met. On the basis of Vasilj’s writings about Krleža, it appears that he has read much of Krleža’s works, particularly his lyric poetry. By contrast, we might assume that Krleža has not read any of Vasilj’s six hundred bibliographic units, either because his works were not accessible in Yugoslavia, or because of ideological reasons.
The first article in which Vasilj mentions Krleža is a review published in Danica, Chicago weekly, from May 1952, while in the accessible published works Vasilj’s last mention of Krleža dates from 1998. It was in the 1980s that Vasilj became increasingly preoccupied with Krleža’s work. Vasilj never embarked upon a systematic literary-critical analysis of Krleža’s works, yet he published three essays with Krleža as a reference point: “Veličina i bijeda čovjeka – skraćeni svijet M. Krleže” [“The magnitude and misery of man – limited world of M. Krleža”] (1956), “U očajnome svijetu Miroslava Krleže” [“In the desperate world of Miroslav Krleža”] (1973), and “O Krležinu nebu” [“On Krleža’s heaven”] (1979).
In this article Vasilj’s attitude towards Krleža is approached in terms of problem, and not chronologically. From Vasilj’s perspective tackled separately are the artistic and ideological dimension of Krleža’s work.
In his aesthetics Ljepota i umjetnost [Beauty and art], as well as in his other writings, Vasilj admits to Krleža that his verses touch upon the fate of man, even in the poem Plameni vjetar [The fiery wind], whose message he rejects, yet recognises its technical perfection, and on one occasion referred to his artistic style as “rococo.”
On the other hand, Vasilj always warns about the ideological background of Krleža’s works: limited Marxist humanism. He recurrently criticised Krleža’s objections to religion, notably his belief that “the faith in the Divine being is an indirect cause of social poverty in human society.” Most curious he finds “Pjesma iz hrvatske krčme” [“The Poem from Croatian inn”], in which Krleža refers to God as tyrant. Among the rebellious and confusing messages of the poem Plameni vjetar, Vasilj observes that Krleža shows no sympathy for “the pyramids of dead defenders.” Upon his reading of Krleža’s drama Don Quijote, Vasilj remarks that Krleža’s hero is fighting against medieval monsters instead of the totalitarism of the twentieth century. Moreover, Krleža without reservation glorifies Lenin, Stalin, Broz, men who –from Vasilj’s perspective– were the great tyrants of the twentieth century.
Vasilj’s conclusion from 1986 perhaps best epitomises his assessment of Krleža’s work: “What adds a human value to Krleža’s works are the sparks of human transcendence; what prevented them from becoming an ultimate human value is the negation of man’s transcendence.”
Ključne riječi
Kvirin Vasilj; Miroslav Krleža; philosophical criticism of a literary text
Hrčak ID:
221192
URI
Datum izdavanja:
17.5.2019.
Posjeta: 1.017 *