Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 41 No. 1, 2015.
Original scientific paper
DESPERATE MEASURES, CRY OF COMFORT, CROATIAN LITERARY EXPRESSIONISM AND WORLD WAR I
Ivica Matičević
; Zagreb, Institute for the History of Croatian Literature, Theater and Music
Abstract
This work is an attempt to catalog, as an elaborated overview, present and describe the importance and function of the theme of World War I in Croatian expressionistic literature. The poetry, prose and drama of literary expressionism mirrors World War I as its main, headlining theme, without which the total body of Croatian expressionistic and avant-garde artistic texts and would be greatly diminished. The work was conducted in descending order of how it represented the realities of war; the feeling of desperation while powerless, underlining the irrational nature of wartime destruction, the ironic reflex of yet another triumph of human stupidity, creating dark images of hopelessness and decay, the fatalistic roundabout of history, melancholy, nihilism, indifference in the light of the inability to effect change, memento mori, etc, are all fundamental characteristics of Krleža's, Strozzi's, Donadini's, Kosor's and Cesarić's works. The central spot in the topic of the Great War belongs to Miroslav Krleža and his poetry (Poems I, II, III; Lyrical poetry [Pjesme I, II, III, Lirika]), prose (Croatian God Mars [Hrvatski bog Mars]), and dramatic works (In the Camp, A Wolfhound, Calvary [U logoru, Vučjak, Golgota]). We're also alerted to the presence of the Great War and the echoes of wartime events in the programmatic texts of the period, which resulted in invocations of a new age and new sensibilities, as well as projecting the New Man as a symbol of salvation, renewal and hope.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
138995
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2015.
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