Born: Zagreb, Croatia (then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), 7 July 1893. Education: Educated at Lucoviceum military academy, Budapest. Military Service: Served in the Serbian Army, 1912: suspected of spying, expelled from Serbia and arrested by the Austrians; served in the Austrian Army during World War I. Family: Married Bela Kangrga. Career: Communist Party from 1918: expelled, 1939; rehabilitated by Tito, 1952; founded the periodicals Plamen [Flame], 1919, Knjizevna republika [Literary Republic], 1923-27, Danas [Today], 1934, Pecat [Seal], 1939-40, and Republika, 1945-46; director, Lexicographic Institute, Zagreb, from 1952; editor, Pomorska enciklopedija, 1954-64, Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, 1955-71, and Enciklopedija Leksikografskog savoda, 1955-64. Deputy, Yugoslav National Assembly. President, Yugoslav Writers Union; vice-president, Yugoslav Academy of Science and Art. Died: 29 December 1981.
Publications
Collection
Sabrana djela [Collected Works]. 1980-.
Fiction
Tri kavalira gospoice Melanije [Three Suitors of Miss Melania]. 1920.
Magyar kiralyi honved novela [Short Story on the Royal Hungarian Homeguards]. 1921.
Hrvatski bog Mars [The Croatian God Mars]. 1922.
Novele. 1923.
Vrazji otok [Devil's Island]. 1924.
Povratak Filipa Latinovicza. 1932; as The Return of Philip Latinovicz,translated by Zora Depolo, 1959.
Hiljadu i jedna smrt [A Thousand and One Deaths]. 1933.
Novele. 1937.
Na rubu pameti. 1938; as On the Edge of Reason, translated by Zora Depolo, 1976.
Banket u Blitvi [Banquet in Blitva]. 3 vols., 1938-64.
Tri domobrana [Three Homeguards]. 1950.
Zastave [Banners]. 4 vols., 1967.
The Cricket beneath the Waterfall and Other Stories, edited by Branco Lenski. 1972; as Cvrcak pod vodopadom, i druge novele, 1973.
Baraka pet be i druge novele (collection). 1976.
Verse Pan. 1917.
Tri simfonije [Three Symphonies]. 1917.
Pjesme 1-3 [Poems]. 3 vols., 1918-19.
Lirika [Lyrics]. 1919.
Knjigapjesama [A Book of Poems]. 1931.
Knjiga lirike [A Book of Lyrics]. 1932.
Simfonije [Symphonies]. 1933.
Balade Petrice Kerempuha [Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh]. 1936.
Pjesme u tmini [Poems in Darkness]. 1937.
Plays
Hrvatska rapsodija [Croatian Rhapsody]. 1918.
Golgota [Golgotha] (produced 1922). 1926.
Vucjak (produced 1922). 1923.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (produced 1925).
Adam i Eva [Adam and Eve] (produced 1925).
Gospoda Glembajevi [The Glembays] (produced 1929). 1928.
U agoniji (produced 1928; revised version produced 1959). 1931.
Leda (produced 1930).
Legende [Legends] (includes 6 plays). 1933.
U logoru [In the Camp] (produced 1937).
With Vucjak, 1934.
Maskerata [Masquerade] (produced 1955).
Kraljevo [The Kermess] (produced 1955).
Kristofor Kolumbo (produced 1955).
Aretej; ili, Legenda o Svetoj Ancili [Aretheus; or, The Legend of St. Ancilla] (produced 1959). 1963.
Saloma [Salome] (produced 1963).
Put u raj [Journey to Paradise] (produced 1973). 1970.
Other
Izlet u Rusiju [Excursion to Russia]. 1926.
Eseji [Essays]. 1932.
Moj obracun s njima [My Squaring of Accounts]. 1932.
Podravski motivi [Motifs of Podravina]. 1933.
Evropa danas [Europe Today]. 1935.
Deset krvavih godina [Ten Years in Blood]. 1937.
Eppur si muove. 1938.
Knjigaproze [A Book of Prose]. 1938.
Dijalekticki antibarbarus [A Dialectical Antibarbarian]. 1939.
Knjiga studija iputopisa [A Book of Studies and Travels]. 1939.
Goya. 1948.
O Marinu Drzicu [On Marin Drzic]. 1949.
Zlato i srebro Zadra. 1951; translated as The Gold and Silver of Zadar, 1972.
Djetinjstvo u Agramu godine 1902-1903 [Childhood in Agram]. 1952.
Kalendar jedne bitke 1942 [Almanac of a 1942 Battle]. 1953.
Kalendar jedne parlamentarne komedije [Almanac of a Parliamentary Comedy]. 1953.
O Erasmu Rotterdamskom [On Erasmus of Rotterdam]. 1953.
Sabrana djela [Collected Works]. 27 vols., 1953-72.
Davni dani [Long Bygone Days]. 1956.
Eseji [Essays]. 1958. Eseji [Essays]. 6 vols., 1961-67.
Razgovori s Miroslavom Krlezom [Conversations with Miroslav Krleza]. 1969.
99 varijacija lexicographica [99 Lexicographic Variations]. 1972.
Djetinjstvo 1902-1903 i drugi zapisi [Childhood and Other Pieces]. 1972.
Panoramapogleda, pojava ipojmova. 5 vols., 1975.
Dnevnik [Diary]. 5 vols., 1977.
Tito 1892-1937-1977, with Edvard Kardelj. 1977.
Eseji i clanci (essays). 1979-.
Iz nase knjizevne krcme. 1983.
Ratne teme. 1983.
Sa urednickog stola. 1983.
Editor, with others, Danas [Today]. 2 vols., 1971.
Critical Studies:
Studien zur Romantechnik Miroslav Krlezas by Sibylle Schneider, 1969; La Vie et l’oeuvre de Miroslav Krleza by Marijan Matkovic, 1977; Miroslav Krleza und der deutsche Expressionismus by Reinhard Lauer, 1984; Die Gestalt des Kunstlers bei Miroslav Krleza by Andreas Leitner, 1986; The Writer as Naysayer: Miroslav Krleza and the Aesthetic of Interwar Central Europe by Ralph Bogert, 1990; On the Edge of Reason, translated by Zora Depolo, 1995; Literature, History, andPostcolonial Cultural Identity in Africa and the Balkans: The Search for a Useable Past in Farah, Ngugi, Krleza, and Andric by Dubravka Juraga, 1996.
Miroslav Krleza was the dominant figure in 20th-century Croatian literature. As the writer of novels, short stories, poems, essays, journals, travelogues, polemics, and memoirs, and as the editor of a series of leftist literary journals, he had a considerable influence on his contemporaries. His search for an enlightened humanism brought him to communism after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but he was never an obedient Party member who marched uncritically, following the Party policy. His criticism of the Marxist dogmatism and of the notion of Socialist Realism in the arts as well as his outspoken demands ”for freedom of artistic expression, for the simultaneous existence of differing schools and styles, for liberty of choice and independence of moral and political convictions” left their lasting mark on the cultural climate of post-World War II Yugoslavia.
Krleza began his literary career as a poet celebrating in pagan terms the triumph of life over the powers of darkness, mysticism, and death. However, World War I brought a dramatic change in his outlook. His war poems evoke in a series of striking expressionistic images the idea of the futility of life and the absurdity of death and have as their underlying theme one of Krleza’s favourite notions, that of the supremacy of stupidity over reason in human life. The same theme, articulated as dehumanization caused by the horrors of the war, is central to his collection of short stories Hrvatski bog Mars [The Croatian God Mars], in which the useless squandering of lives of the Croats enlisted to fight for Austria in the war of 1914-18 is depicted in a dramatic and memorable narrative.
The poetry he continued to write in the 1920s and 1930s shows an increased social awareness and concerns itself primarily with the themes of social protest. The peak of his career as a poet was reached by the publication of his Balade Petrice Kerempuha [Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh], a collection of poems written in the dialect of north-western Croatia, used by the writers of the 17th and the 18th centuries. It is a unique satirical saga of Croatian history. Although overwhelmed with suffering, injustice, blood, and the symbol of gallows, the Croatian past is approached without any romantic illusions and rather treated in a bitter but mocking tone of Rabelaisian laughter.
In his youthful plays, published in a collection entitled Legende [Legends], Krleza used historical figures and themes as means of handling underlying themes of his time. His reputation as a dramatist was established with the piece Golgota [Golgotha], a socialist play set in a shipyard, and enhanced with two anti-war plays, Vucjak and U logoru [In the Camp]. The best known, and the best, of his plays make up his Glembay trilogy: Gospoda Glembajevi [The Glembays], U agoniji [In Agony], and Leda constitute an organic unity with the short stories of the same cycle. The plays and the short stories combine to portray the rise and decline of a rich Croatian family against the background of the agony of a dying civilization (the Austro-Hungarian empire). Ibsenesque in character and scope, these plays were written in the best vein of psychological realism.
Povratak Filipa Latinovicza (The Return of Philip Latinovicz) is the most popular of his four novels. It tells a story of an expatriate artist who, in a moment of personal and creative crisis, returns to his native Panonia to establish his paternity. But his pilgrimage turns into a quest for his own identity and a scathing portrayal of provincial decadence and his struggle to confront it. Na rubu pameti (On the Edge of Reason) is a novel of a model citizen who falls from society’s grace after speaking his mind. Abandoned by both his family and his friends, persecuted and jailed, put into an asylum, he finishes as a lonely and desperate man listening in his hotel room to the discordant and meaningless sounds coming from the radio. Krleza’s two other novels provide an imaginative and critical portrait of both Yugoslavia and Europe in the first decades of the 20th century, and make some major political, social, and psychological statements about the predicament of modern man. Banket u Blitvi [Banquet in Blitva] shows Krleza as a political satirist at his best. It is a political-allegorical novel with various references to those European countries (including his own) where, after World War I, people were deprived of their freedoms and democratic rights by military dictatorships. The vivid and dramatic story of a struggle between a dictator and a courageous political idealist is interspersed with typical Krleza polemics, soliloquies, and conversations with the intention of showing the amoral nature of politics in general. Zastave [Banners] spans the period between 1912 and 1922 in Croatian and Yugoslav history. The novel is built upon one of Krleza’s recurring themes, that of the conflict between a father, a loyal and acquiescent servant of the Establishment, and his only son, the embittered, freedom-loving rebel. Their precarious relations are designed to bring out a psychological and ideological drama caused by the disillusionments of the two generations in the political upheavals of the early 20th century.
Alongside the best of Krleza’s creative writing may be set the best of his non-fiction prose: the essays which reflect his vast reading and his moral and intellectual integrity; the two books of memoirs, Djetinjstvo u Agramu godine 1902-1903 [Childhood in Agram] and Davni dani [Long Bygone Days]; the account of his visit to the USSR in 1925, IzletuRusiju [Excursion to Russia].
