Review article

The October Revolution and Miroslav Krleža in 1917

Milka Car ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Abstract

The essay considers Miroslav Krleža's short story collection Croatian God Mars taking as a starting point the author's anti-militant attitude and political views at the time. Special consideration is given to the discursive context of the creation of particular short stories during the World War One on the basis of Krleža's journal The Days of Long Ago, and the way the October revolution is reflected in Krleža's early poetics just before the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. For Krleža, one of the principal causes of the Frist World War is „[a] blind mechanics of bourgeois colonial and imperialist bloodsheds“ (Krleža 1962: 68). He contrasts it with his utopian-revolutionary notion of „a gigantic cultural construction of international solidarity“ (Krleža 2001: 401). Besides political statements about the revolution at the time, the article further aims to consider the degree at which the motifs in Krleža's anti-war short stories correspond to his utopian projections of Lenin and the October revolution from his journal and essays.

Keywords

Miroslav Krleža; the October revolution; Lenin; Croatian God Mars

Hrčak ID:

190761

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/190761

Publication date:

15.12.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 1.856 *