Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 43 No. 1, 2017.
Original scientific paper
BETWEEN TITANISM AND POPULAR THEATRE: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN BYRON AND KRLEŽA
Lucia Leman
Abstract
Inspired by Ivo Vidan’s brief note on the connexion between Byron and Krleža, this study offers an innovative reading of Krleža’s early work, seeing it as a dialogue with the British Romantic poet. With the exception of Professor Vidan, the bulk of criticism dedicated to Krleža’s intellectual formation tends to overlook the significance of Krleža’s numerous references to Byron, starting with his early diaristic prose and continuing throughout his prolific literary and dramatic career. Most studies dedicated to the influences of Nietzsche and the nineteenth-century Hungarian poets on young Krleža shy away from mentioning the Byronic intertext as a sine qua non for both the German philosopher and the literary and political discourse of Hungary in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Not to mention the role of Byron’s poetry in Lenin’s Russia, ardently supported by Krleža. Apart from contributing to the contemporary Krleža studies by expounding on Krleža’s familiarity with Byron’s works and his fluency in the Byronic thought, this essay adds to the knowledge of Byron’s reception in Central Eastern Europe, especially in Croatia, still an uncharted land in terms of Byron studies.
Keywords
Krleža; Byron; titanism; leninism; cosmopolitism; Croatian anti-mythos
Hrčak ID:
192181
URI
Publication date:
8.5.2017.
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