Russian Literature XIV (1983) l-1 6

North-Holland

THE CROATIAN AVANT-GARDE

ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

The concept of avant-garde is still not acclimat-

ized in Croatian literary historiography. The histo-
riography that has been based upon the emphasis of
historical continuity of national literature from its
beginnings is not well-disposed towards the acceptance
of a notion that essentially acknowledges its discon-
tinuity. Equally unfavourable is the literary atmos-
phere in the literature that in the course of the nine-
teenth century programmatically subjected its texts to
the need of continuity and defence of the own nation
and rarely permitted programmatic manifestations of a
nihilistic nature, that characterized avant-garde
movements in European literatures, to come into con-
tact with national traditions. Such manifestations
were acknowledged in the periphery in relation to the
main current of Croatian literature. It is character-
istic, for example, that the most important program-
matic text at the time of constitution of the Croatian
left-wing avant-garde, KrleHa's Hrvatska knjiirevaa la5
(1919) (The Croatian Literary Lie), is not pointed outeven
in recent anthologies of programmes and manifestoes
(Sicel 1972). More, but also with some caution, has
been said about Croatian expressionism as a movement
or stylistic category (Ekspresionizam [Expressionism]
1969; Expressionismus 1970; VuEkovie 1979; Z.Konstan-
tinovie 1973). The periodical Zenit (Zenith, 1921-1926),
issued in Zagreb, was studied chiefly with regard to
its international relations (ZmegaE 1969; Flaker 1968).
The concept of avant-garde is accepted only at a later
date, sometimes with a very broad meaning however, as
a designation for phenomena not necessarily labelled
by prolific movements (Ivanisin 1975). The emphasis
upon the national continuity is characteristic of Cro-
atian historiography also in these cases; itis heavily

0 304-3479/83/$3.00 0 1983 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

2 AZeksandar FZaker

stressed, from the phenomena of avant-garde to those

that underline their "autochthony" (Franie 1969).
While not accepting the notion of "autochthony" as
disproportional in the investigation of literary-his-
torical processes, especially when the word refers to
the 20th century, we must nevertheless accept the
challenge that the literary historian is confronted
with, when he faces the structures that are, owing to
the retardation of the literary process in the 19th
century, labelled as anticipations of structural dis-
tortions within the formation that particularly tends
towards, and emphasizes destructuration. Thus, the
introduction of trivial-romantic motifs and stylistic
complexes into the structure of a novel that is based
upon realistic premises and that abounds in popular
idiomaticness (for example Ante KovaEie, U registra-
turi [In the Registry],1888), may appear to us, due to
its grotesqueness of treatment, from the "standpoint
of present time" (Petrovic 1972), as a preliminary
phenomenon of avant-garde prose. At the same time, it
is not at all accidental that reference is made to the
late romanticist attitude of the lyrical subject in
the poetry of Silvije Strahimir KranjEevie, in the
lack of national "Promethean" romanticists in the first
half of the 19th century, by actual representatives of
Croatian poetic avant-garde from Janko Polie Kamov
(1910) to Miroslav Krlesa (1930) and Tin Ujevie (1933),
where Krlesa especially emphasizes the anachronism of
KranjEevie's appearance in the European literary pro-
cess (Krlega 1932:5-12).
Particular attention should be given to those anti-
nomies in the literary activities of A.G.Matos that
bring this writer closer to the avant-garde. This re-
bellious aesthete, who introduced French aesthetic cri-
teria into Croatian literature, depending upon his
newspaper-work dehierarchized in fact the structure of
Croatian literature by his impressionistic feuilletons.
Moreover, the untenableness of his aestheticism reveal-
ed itself even in his own poetry - in its noticeable
irony and grimaces - up to the poem "Mbra" ("Nightmare",
1907), in which the catastrophical cataloguing of mod-
ern civilization, till the dethronement of "God the
tyrant, an old executioner" (before Majakovskij's
Cloud in Zrousers), is motivated by the hallucinations
of the lyrical subject and also by the poet's con-
sciousness of the untenability of traditional poetical
forms:
0, za ovu patnju nema - nema jamba,
Ova tragedija nema ditiramba!
(1973:v52)
 The Croatian Avant-garde

[Oh, for this suffering there is no iamb,

This tragedy has no dithyramb!]

It is not by chance that precisely Matog himself

informs, critically but also with some understanding
for the Italian model of aesthetic provocation, about
Futurism (Futurizam,1913)and even writes to Marinetti
(1973: IX 264). Matog is finding "futuristic traces" in
the "newest works of Ivo VojnoviE" (1973:1X 2181, ob-
viously in his play Gospodja sa suncokretom (A Lady
with a SunfZower,1912), which is built on motifs from
suspense stories and on "cinematographic" devices (V.
Flaker 19801, but at the same time he is arguing
against an earlier Croatian aesthetic provocation
found in the texts of the very "forerunner of our fu-
turism" (1973: VII 265) - Janko PoliE Kamov. On the eve
of the war, Mat03 was even ready to contribute to a
futuristic review inspired by Italian futurism (Pavlo-
vie 1974).
The significant fact in the history of Croatian
avant-garde is, however, the synchronous advent of
Mates's "Mbra" and Janko Polie Kamov's poetic and dra-
matic texts and thus, by the year 1907 we can mark its
conscious and programmatic appearance. Psovka (The
Curse) and Iztipana hartija (The Pinched Paper), Kamov’s
poetic collections, represent in fact both the mani-
festoes of Croatian antiaestheticism, antitraditional-
ism and opposition to the established hierarchy of
values (dethronement of Moses' "arm (...) black like
inquisition, thoughts absurd like dogma" (1968:37),
and also, after all, demonstrate the possibilities of
Croatian free verse by introducing "biblical" rhythms
(which remind one, however, of Whitman), with direct
appeal to Pjesma nad pjesmama (Song of Solomon). Aes-
thetic, ethical and moral inversion is, just in this
text, stressed by the revolutionary projection into
the future:
Revolution will be his name,
oh unlawful love of ours!
(Pjesma nad pjesmama [Song of
Sobmon], 1968:35)

Spontaneous neologisms and incompatible syntagms as

components of Kamov's turpism shocked Matog in 1907:

There are terse teeth and symbolic fingers in that.

Legs are yawning. His furrows cachinnate.
(Lirika Ziaanja i poezija pljuckanja [Lyrics of
Licking and Poetry of Spitting], 1973:x11, 112).
4 Aleksandar FZaker

As a phenomenon Kamov was indeed avant-gardistic,

if we add the meaning of prematureness to that concept.
Vladimir Cerina, who was not his follower and whose
periodical Vihor (Hurricane, 1914) was not a "blast"
in Croatian literature, wrcte about him apologetically
(Janko PoliE Kamov, 1913) in the climactic year of the
European avant-garde. Canonization followed only after
fifty years.'
It is difficult to define Polif Kamov's literary
genealogy. We read him with KranjEevie's poetry in mind,
but mainly against the background of Croatian national
functionalism, sentimental-idyllic syndrome, catholic
tradition, of the historicism and aestheticism of Cro-
atian art nouveau - as a "cursing" opposition (compare
the poem "P.S." in the Iztipana hartija [The Pinched
Paper]') to the fundamental topoi of Croatian litera-
ture. On the other hand, Ulderiko Donadini, the author
of Lude prize (Mad Stories, 1915), whose artistic de-
sign was done by one of the leading expressionist
painters, Ljubo Babie, gladly uncovers his genealogy.
The narrator of his Dunja (The Quince, 1918) under-
lines the "spheres of the diabolic such as E.Th.A..Hoff-
mann, Barbey d'Aur&illy, Poe, and Baudelaire" (1970:
374). To the list of these names we could add the
equally diabolical Gogol' whose self-destruction be-
came the fundamental motif of Donadini's GogoZjeva
smrt (GogoZ"s Death, one-acter, 1921), but more than
anything, in his texts we find motifs from Dostoev-
skij's works. If Polie Kamov introduced into Croatian
literature the almost nihilistic dispute of tradition-
al structures for the sake of stressed antiaestheti-
cism, then Donadini opposed the aesthetics of harmony
as it was revealed in the decorative stylizations and
myth-formations of Croatian art nouveau, by a psycho-
pathologically motivated, and thus too often excessive-
ly interpreted, world of disorder in the human person-
ality. If PoliS: Kamov sarcastically and blasphemously
dethrones biblical prophets, then Donadini in 1917 des-
pairs because the world is deprived of its centre:

Contemporary architects cannot build a tower that would

point into the sky. Contemporary sculptors could show
sincerely onZy a person who like a ma&an extends his
arms into nothing (emphasis
A.F.).
(Suvremena zanjetnost [Contem-
porary Art], 1970:499).
A contrary conclusion will be published in Russian
literature two years later by Mandel'stam, however,
his point of departure will be the same as that of
 The Croatian Avant-garde

Donadini: the metaphor of the "empty sky":

To build means to fight with emptiness, to hypnotize
space. The good little arrow of the Gothic bell-tower
is evil because all it is after is to sting the sky,
reproach it for its emptiness. (1929:47)

The contestation line of common sense, of which

Donadini's work is one of the significant landmarks
in Croatian literature, is especially pronounced: it
takes us from KovaEif's novels, through Matog's first
short stories to PoliC Kamov's already programmatic
attitude and to Donadini's "expressionism". Hereafter,
it integrated itself into the series of Krleza's texts
up to the novel Na rubu pameti (On the Verge of Pru-
dence, 1938) with a characteristic inversion: mad is
the society that excommunicates the writer "from the
verge of prudence".
The year 1917, the publication year of what some
consider as the first manifesto of "expressionism" in
Croatia, Donadini's text Suvremena umjetnost (Contem-
porary Art), also saw the publication of Krlesa's text
Hrvatska rapsodija (Croatian Rhapsody). In it are dis-
puted both national mythology and poetics of Croatian
art nouveau, and by the movement towards cosmopolitism
optimal projection into the future is marked; hence, the
poetics of avant-garde found its most complete realiz-
ation. Furthermore, it is also the year in which the
periodical Vijavica (The Blizzard) made its appearance
under the editorship op A.B.Simid, the poetwho profess-
ed the closest points of contact with German expression-
ism and Apollinaire. Thus, we can consider that his-
torically decisive year as a landmark in the periodiz-
ation of Croatian literature.
A.B.Simie was certainly nearest to the formation of
an expressionistic movement in Croatia: his periodicals
Vijavica (The Blizzard, 1917-1918) and Juris (The Storm,
1919) by their very titles remind one directly of Walden's
Der Sturm. His programmatical texts are, together with
Krleza's Hrvatska knjibevna la2 (The Croatian Literary
Lie), closest to the structures of the avant-gardistic
manifestoes, although they are considerably less aes-
thetically provocative than Italian or Russian and, of
course, dadaistic models. A.B.gimie's poetical texts
are not aesthetically provocative either at first sight:
he is not a destroyer of tradition, at least not in
his verbal utterances. The principle of contestation
is in fact realized in his poetry: in Simid's texts
finally free verse is established as an unstressed
opposition to the tradition of the 19th century and
 6 Aleksandar FZaker

to Nazor's adaptation of classical metrics to the

needs of Croatian versification. Mimic is perhaps in-
deed closer to Arno Holz and to the ornamentalism of
Jugendstil (Slamnig 198O:lOO) than to the graphics of
Apollinaire's Calligrammes or to Russian futuristic
miscellanies, however, the fact of stressed reduction-
ism in the visualization of the poetic model is indis-
putable and establishes a contact between Simi??'s
texts and Munch's paintings (Ivanigin 1975:116) and
thus, his more contemporaneous reduction of designated
to signifier is fully legitimate. Behind the verse so
frequently quoted in Croatian literary criticism, from
the collection with the characteristic title Preobra-
Lenja (Metamorphoses, 1920 - with the expressionistic
painter Sava Sumanovie on the title-page): "Poets are
astonishment in the world"(Fjesnici [The Poets], 1963:
63), stands in fact a whole programme of "making
strange" (Russian ustranenie!) of reality and a vision
of space "from two perspectives; earthly or Euclidian
(Pjesma jednom brijegu [A Song to One HiZZ]) and star-
lit or relativistic (Moja preobrazenja [My Metamorpho-
ses])" (Kagtelan 1963:17). This programme introduces
Simie's texts into the orbit of general, literary and
artistic aspirations of the European avant-garde whose
more reconciled and more laconic representative is Si-
mic, especially when we compare him to German expres-
sionists and also to his contemporary - Krlesa.
A.B.Simie was not successful in establishing a more
ramified movement: his lyrical texts were more effec-
tive than his programmes; he was avant-gardistic in
the authentic sense of the word - he created new pos-
sibilities and a reliable countenance for Croatian
verse. Without greater consequences for Croatian po-
etics, however, in Zagreb there appeared much more vo-
ciferous and aesthetically more provocative movements
that, by their concordance with avant-garde movements
in other European countries and also, by the differ-
ence in links with other avant-gardistic groups, at-
tract attention even today. Here we are concerned, in
the first place, with "zenithism", in fact with the
periodical Zenit (Zenith), whose editor Ljubomir Micie
published his "zenithal" manifesto already in Simie's
JuriZ (The Storm), and then edited a periodical (1921-
1926) that attracted writers from the Belgrade group
"Alpha" to co-operation at first, but subsequently
limited itself to a minimal number of collaborators in
the country, expanding, however, the number abroad
(from Iwan Go11 to Il'ja grenburg and 21' Lisickij).
In its essence, it seems, the eclectic programme of
"zenithism" reduced the antinomies that characterized
 The Croatian Avant-garde 7

the European avant-garde: attempting to bring into the

same sequence futuristic civism and Russian construc-
tivism after the October days with the primitivism and
extreme iconoclasticism of dadaism, and to reconcile
the anarcho-individualism with the propaganda of
Soviet collectivism, Micie marked the central point of
his programme by the slogan "Barbarogenius" as his re-
ply to the "'European' understanding of the Balkans as
the land of pure barbarity" (R.Konstantinovie 1969:ll).
However, neither Micie with Zenith nor Dragan Aleksie
with the periodical Dada-Tank (1922, with contributions
from Tristan Tzara, Kurt Schwitters, R.Huelsenbeck,
and others) and the anthology Dada-Jazz were success-
ful in attracting a great number of collaborators from
Croatia: Marian Mikac in poetry and Jo.Klek (Josip
Seissel's pseudonym) in the sphere of fine arts (Hor-
vat-Pintarie 1978) in Zenith only confirm Micie's iso-
lation from Zagreb circles at the time when co-opera-
tion between avant-gardists of Zagreb and Belgrade, in
Kritika (Criticism, 1921-1922; ed. M.Begovie and Lj.
Wiesner), "open to all, even to the most radical ones
amongst the young" or, in Knjiievnik (The Writer) of
A.B.SimiE, was actually being realized and Belgrade's
group "Alpha" "attained its reputation" via the Zagreb
periodical (Vaupotie 1965:794-795).
Actually, Zenith and the dadaistic groups in Zagreb
appeared too late. In 1921 the original dadaistic move-
ment was disintegrating already: on the one hand it
functioned socially (George Grosz, John Heartfield),
on the other hand the movement towards the subconscious,
towards automatism - towards surrealism (Max Ernst,
Breton), was evident. Addressing himself critically to
the European avant-garde (painting) that same year,
Krleza considered dadaism in Croatia as a "ritiiculous
phenomenon, as import", disproportionalto the Croatian
cultural situation (1932:136).
In 1926 in his essay "Nekoliko rijeEi o Lenjinu"
("A Few words about Lenin") Krleza already attacked
the effects of the European avant-garde movements:

Today the meander is an adornment on the maiolica of

some water-closets and the destruction of form, from
the Parnassians to expressionism, is only a single
symptom of chaos and further decadence. 'Barbarogen-
ius'-Micic calls Dante incompetent to collaborate with
"Zenith". In such a manner Arabic music, Negro sculp-
ture, Negro dances, Shimmy, Foxtrot, Ragtime and Saxo-
phones are sensations, the beloved musicof middle-class
Europeans, after Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.
(1926:137)
 8 Aleksandar Flaker

The essay was published in the Knjizevna republika

(The Literary Republic), Krleza's and Cesarec's sec-
ond periodical. The first one, Plamen (The FZames,
1919), with Ljubo Babic's design of the title-page,
belonged undoubtedly to the European avant-garde as
did both its editors, and hardly anyone in Croatian
literary historiography today will doubt the existence
of a so-called "expressionistic phase" in the works of
these two founders of the Croatian and Yugoslav "lit-
erary left", in spite of Krleza's disassociation from
expressionism as a movement. We are concerned here, of
course, with Cesarec's poetry and the programmatic
texts of the two editors of a periodical whose publi-
cation year coincides with the year of the establish-
ment of the Communist party of Yugoslavia; with Krle-
!Za's so-called "war-lyrics" (Pjesme I [Poems I], Pjes-
me II [Poems II], 1918; Pjesme III [Poems III], 1919),
with his dramas, from which "Kraljevo" (Kraljevo Fair,
1918) with its polyphony of sounds from the plebeian
fair should be singled out; with the dramatic text of
"Hrvatska rapsodija" (Croatian Rhapsody) with the pol-
yphony of plebeian and also of ideological and intel-
lectual voices placed into a train that speeds along;
with "Cristoval Colon" (1918, later "Kristofor Kolum-
bo [Christopher Columbus]) as a tragedy of anticipa-
tion; and finally with "Golgota" (Golgotha, 1922) with
resemanticized Golgothic motifs so frequently present
in both KrleHa and Babie's paintings (but also in Ger-
man expressionism), now introduced into the factory
ambience and the situation within the labour movement.
It seems as if the period of KrleZa's avant-gardism is
brought to an end with "Golgotha": it was crowned by a
performance in which the play's motifs were echoed by
the judicial murders of Yugoslav communists.' It was
directed by Branko Gavella, scenically shaped by Ljubo
Babie, and attended by a group of members of MChT in-
cluding Stanislavskij.
In that same year KrleHa published a collection of
short stories entitled Hrvatski bog Mars (The Croatian
God Mars); the prose cyclically organized under that
title was mimetic, founded upon the authenticity of
war happenings at the Galician front and read in 1933
as tales about the "vulgar sergeant-sadist or stulti-
fied and b1as.s officer", as "short stories more auth-
entic than Svejk's burlesques" (Benegie 1963:185).
For all that, Hrvatski bog Mars (The Croatian God Mars)
reflected its point of departure: its turpisms were,
admittedly, realistic because the narrator's point of
view is placed within the peasant-military masses. But
personages in those masses were seldom individualized
and the narrator, it seems, embraced by his point of
 The Croatian Avant-garde 9

view not only the passivized Croatian military collec-

tive but also maintained his own global vision of a
belligerent world. At the same time he discovered, in
the "subversion" of the plebeian tongue, that footing
which will dominate the whole structure of the subse-
quent dialectal BaZade Petrice Kerempuha (The Ballads
of Petrica Kerempuh, 1936) and, in the monologue of
Valent Zganec, together with the narrator, will oppose
both the "human folly" of the bourgeois puppet-theatre
and dogmas of the "syndically-conscious" Weltanschau-
ung in the novel Na rubu pameti (On the Verge of Pru-
dence, 1938), which was published while Krleza's allies
were already persecuted by the right and attacked by
the left-Serbian surrealists.
Krlesa's work did not stop at the initial function
of avant-garde: its aesthetic re-valuation. It also
performed functions that Croatian literature of the
19th century did not fulfil owing to the underdevelop-
ed state of its own realism. The recognition that
Krleia gave to Croatian culture is in that respect ir-
replaceable in its syncretism: Krleza was not only re-
valuating literary history but he also imposed upon
the recipient his own new vision of cultural, social
and political segments of the history of region and
people. His imaginary Croatia of the 16th century,
with the reconstruction of its plebeian language built
mainly according to literary and painted (partly Flem-
ish) models rather than on the ground of historical
facts, is more real today than the Croatia investigat-
ed by historiography. His dramatic short-story cycle
about the Glembajs, constructed as an opposition to
the European genealogical novel from Zola to Gorkij's
Artamonovs' Business, introduced itself by' its fiction-
ality as a contemporary myth of decadence of an in
such forms historically non-existent Croatian-Danubian
bourgeoisie. Contrary to the subordination of litera-
ture to socio-didactic functions that were, especially
in the thirties, imposed by normative poetics as a
mark of the Third International and which Krlesa op-
posed very early (Preface to the painted map of Podra-
vian Notives by Krsto HegeduZie, 1933), Krlesa steadi-
ly defended the aesthetic function of the literary
text and that too was taking his texts further from
the paradigmatic structures of avant-garde literature:

If we take as a starting point of deliberation about

Krleza that contrast or antithesis is the very point of
departure of Krlega's structuralizing of the world,then
we can state that he attempted to find a solution - free-
ing himself from the obsessive presence of both thesis
 10 Aleksandar Flaker

and antithesis - in the total acceptance of one oppo-

sition, in thinking in oppositions and in the artistic
reduction of oppositions to the right measure. Paroxysm,
analyticity and aesthetic quality - are three phases on
Krlega's way to himself.
(LasiE 1974:5)
These words, written as an introduction to the ana-
lysis of Krleza's still incomplete novel Zastave (The
Flags, 1962- )also define very precisely the relation
Krlega - avant-garde already discussed on one occasion
(Flaker 1978, 1979). Another investigator of Krlesa's
literary works designates, by the concept of "dialec-
tic negation", one of the basic characteristics of this
writer's texts (Wierzbicki 1975:78-86; 1980:65-70).
BY "reduction of oppositions to the right measure", by
the analyticity, aesthetic qualities and the polyfunc-
tionalism of his texts Krlesa dialectically negated
not only previous formations but avant-garde too; he
transcended it, but still remained within the frame-
work of the total Croatian aesthetic process, includ-
ing the art of painting. Without Krlesa's dialectical
negation of Vasilij Kandinskij's "Icarian flight into
emptiness" and his insistence upon "Euclidean formulas"
in Dobrovie's paintings and without his support and
canonization of Krsto Hegedusic's paintings in the
early thirties, we dare say that the values ofcroatian
painting would be differently historically arranged:
from Krlesa's Predgovor Podravskim motivima (Preface
to Podravian Motives) to the valorization of Croatian
naive painting on an international scale leads a fair-
ly intelligible road! And in the light of the volume
and polyfunctionalism of Krleza's texts the meaning of
other avant-garde phenomena in Croatia was already,
from the point of view of the twenties, essentially
diminished, as if Krlega absorbed Croatian avant-gard-
ism in his work.
If we look at Croatian literature as a "literary
system", following Tynjanov's pledge, we will be forced,
however, to point out one of the fundamental opposi-
tions within the broadly understood concept of avant-
garde. Opposed to Krlesa, Tin Ujevie represents the
other pole of Croatian avant-gardism. He also negated
and transcended the avant-garde, however, his tendency
was opposite to KrleZa's.
In that same year, when Krleza, with reference to
Cgzanne and Dobrovie, denied the achievements of Euro-
pean avant- garde painting, Ujevie too found himself
at the cross-roads. Having made his appearance as a
collaborator of the revolutionary PZamen (The Flames)
at one point, with the poem that ends with the "Arionic"
 The Croatian Avant-garde 11

aloofness of a "solitary man on a raft" who is waiting

for a "moment to clink" so that he "replies by thunder"
(SuviBni epitaf [SuperfZuous Epitaph], 1970:136), Uje-
vie now ironically apostrophized "good coffee-house and
revolutionary reminiscences of comrades Trockij and
LunaEarskij" in order to define his stand:

I sit at the table and say: I am, for a moment at least,

in poetry a cosmic expressionist, in religion a mad re-
formator, in philosophy a neo-Kantian, in sociology a
Third Internationalist, in all one volcano and abyss, a
knot of contradictions which may not be so but rather
some more substantial truth and deeper mental reality
at the level where the spirit has freed itself from the
violence of words. ("Predlozi jeseni", Kritika ["Autumn's
Propositions", Criticism], 1921, cf.
Masli.6 1978:17-18).
In that year UjeviE collaborates with the Belgrade
avant-garde group "Alpha". He is thus a further repre-
sentative of navigation in "heretical directions" that
he announced already in his "OproZtaj" ("Parting") in
Hrvatska mlada Zirika (Young Croatian Lyrics, 1914) by
the apparently paradoxical reference to the starting
point in Croatian literature, to the distant tradition
of the humanist Marko Marulie and also to the incipi-
ent language of Croatian literature in the beginning
of the 16th century - the takavian dialect. In "Pred-
lozi jeseni" ("Autumn's Propositions") Ujevie stresses
the pluralism of his interests, contrasts that already
then characterized both the motifs from his poetry and
the direction of how to overcome those contrasts. The
liberation from the "violence of the word" is, of
course, the general slogan of the European avant-garde
from Marinetti's manifesto (Paroles en Ziberte') through
Russian futurism to surrealism, however, Tin UjeviE at-
taches to this "liberation" of the word, in fact the
liberation of signifier from signified, a metaphysical
meaning: for him The Spirit is being freed! Ujevie as
it were opposes his metaphysics to the blasphemy, to
the despair due to the "empty sky" and to Krlega's re-
futation of God, his point of departure being for a
moment Christian tradition, Hindu philosophy or occult-
ism, elevating the vertical of his unio mystica above
the object's incompatibility within reality and con-
tinuously seeking the "holy unity" of a contradictory
world (cf. StamaE 1971:121-122) :

Stojimo Eovjek protiv Eovjeka, u znanju

da svi smo bolji, medjusobni, svi skupa tmuga
12 AZeksandar FZaker

a naga krv, i poraz svih, u klanju,

opet je samo jedna historija d&a.
[We stand man against man, knowing
that we are all better, mutual, all together confusion
and our blood, and defeat of all, in slaughtering
once again is only one history of spirits]
("Pobratimstvo lica u svemiru" ["Blood-
brotherhood of Faces in Cosmos"], 1932,
UjeviE 1970a:258).

A connoisseur of the European poetical currents

from Whitman and Baudelaire, through Rimbaud, Apolli-
naire and Marinetti to French and. Serbian surrealism,
noting on the margins of his interest also individual
phenomena in Russian literature (he is one of the few
critics outside Russia who, along with D.H.Lawrence,
turned his attention to Vasilij Rozanov), thus follow-
ing the main line of development of European avant-
garde, Ujevie remained firmly devoted to aestheticism.
The Croatian poet, to whom Serbian surrealists in de-
velopment devoted the first number of their review
SvedoEanstva (Testimonies) in 1924, acknowledged the
need of a continuous search for the "new" in poetry.
He was a champion of free verse, comparing it with a
"superdreadnought in relation to the old iron-clad",
and he pretended to be a representative of the "future
revolution" as "a successful struggle on our way and
against any obstacle which could emerge in front of us".
However, in the same programmatic article he defined
poetry contrary to the general monism of avant-garde:

Poetry is magic, and consequently someone who lacks, as

a general rule, religious sense with regard to the uni-
verse, and what is that but a cosmic sensation, not only
cannot be a poet but cannot understand poetry. That is
short, that is bitter, but that is the way it is.
("Oroz pred Endimionom" ["Rooster in
Front of Endymion"], 1926, 1970b:65-66).
Excluding himself from all literary movements and
remaining faithful to the principle of introducing
poetic harmony into the world of shifted and distorted
relations, Tin Ujevic in life and poetry adopted a con-
sistent bohemian attitude and created a myth around
himself which substantially contributed to the renewal
of the aesthetic function of Croatian poetry in the
fifties.
It is evident that surrealism was "one of the occa-
sional extremes in which Ujevie's particular pictures
 The Croatian Avant-garde 13

and statements structuralized the manner of inward

jottings" (Stamae 1971:75), but his relationship with
surrealists Ujevie explained, on reading out Breton's
first manifesto in 1931, by the affiliation to the
leading (avant-garde) current of European poetry, by
the general "chewing of a common gum of time" and by
the general "thought of creation of underground poeti-
cal language" ("NadrealistiEki osvrti" ["Surrealistic
Retrospections"], 1964:244).
Surrealism as a movement, however, Croatian litera-
ture, in contrast to Serbian literature, did not know,
but particular poetic modes of destruction of poetic
and prose forms were clearly made possible either by
the presence of French texts or by the texts of Serbi-
an revolutionary surrealists who, together with Krleza,
opposed normative poetics whole-heartedly propagated
as "new (read: socialist) realism" in the second half
of the thirties. Towards the end of the thirties, syn-
chronous with the constitution of the Slovak (surreal-
istic) avant-garde, with reference to "Mark0 Ristie
and his group" and later also to "the blood of Andre
Breton and Robert Desnos", in Croatian poetry there
appear instances - especially in the texts of Drago
IvaniZevie, Sime VuEetie and Jure Kastelan, -of "spon-
taneous surrealistic expression" (VaupotiE 1966,1968)
or "unnamed presence" (Donat 1967, cf. ZidiE 1972) of
surrealism, stimulated by the strong impression creat-
ed just in those years in Croatia by the poetry of
F.Garcia Lorca, especially in the translations of Dra-
go IvaniBevie.
This rearguard of avant-gardistic literature became
a precursor of Croatian post-war literature. It also
should be taken into account that there was no war
caesura in Croatian literature: representatives of
various styles took part in the war: from Nazor's art
nouveau to the avant-gardistic background of Jure Kaz-
telan, from Kajkavian (Miskina) and cakavian (Marin
FraniEevie) dialectal poetry to the cruel realization
of dantesque tradition and to the metaphors that could
have been of surrealistic origin but were at the same
time entirely authentic in Ivan Goran KovaEie's "Jama".
When this text, in the framework of the exposition of
Ekspresionizam i hrvatsko slikarstvo (Expressionism
and Croatian Painting, 1980), in the graphic design of
Edo MurtiC, the later abstractionist, printed on para-
chute linen in 1944 was displayed as the enduring
document of avant-garde arts on the territory of Croa-
tia, it was indeed a legitimate line taken by the or-
ganizers of the fine arts manifestation: it just mark-
ed the essential feature of avant-garde in Croatia.
 Aleksandar Flaker

There was in fact no emphatically articulated move-

ment that could represent avant-garde literature or
painting in Croatia; however, structural solutions
offered by the European avant-garde were essential for
Croatian literature and art. Integrated into other
frameworks and suitable for other functions, they pro-
vided an authentic contribution to European literature
and culture. KrleZa or UjeviE generally remain out of
the scope of literary historians who occupy themselves
with the theory and history of avant-garde; however,
their originality and their authentic avant-gardism
reside just in the fact that they knew how to overcome
the limitations of any movement.

University of Zagreb

NOTES

1. Sabrana djeZa (Collected Works) of Janko Polie Kamov (ed. D'.

Tadijanovie) I-IV (Rijeka 1956-1958), Bruno Popovid's mono-
graph Ikar iz Hada (Icarus from Hades) (Zagreb 1970), and
finally Slobodan snajder's dramatic text KmOV - smrtcpis
(Kamov - Death Account) shown on the stage of the Croatian
National Theatre in Zagreb in 1979, are essential phases of
that canonization.
2. "He stamped into my soul his martyr's figure as Christ im-
printed his figure into Veronica's kerchief on his way to
Golgotha" August Cesarec writes about the execution of the
communist Alijagid in Zorba 1922, no.4. The title of Borba's
editorial from December 1, 1922, no.8 is "Troja vegala na
balkanskoj Golgoti" ("Three Gallows on Balkan's Golgotha").
 The Croatian Avant-garde 15

LITERARY QUOTATIONS

Donadini, U. In: Pet stot,jeGa hrvatske knn'iZevnosti, vol.85

(Zagreb 197Oj.
Krleza, M. Izlet u Rusiju (Zagreb 1926).
Eseji (Zagreb 1932).
Matog, A.G. Sabrana djeZa (Zagreb 1973; commentaries in ~01.1~
by V.Flaker).
Polie, J. In: Pet stoZje@a hrvatske knjG?evnosti, vol.83
(Zagreb 1968).
Simile, A.B. In: Pet stoljec?a hrvatske knjiievnosti, vol.99
(Zagreb 1963).
UjeviE, T. In: Pet stoZje@a hrvatske knjiievnosti, vol.87
(Zagreb 1970a).
Ibid., vo1.88.
In: Hrvatska knjizevna kritika, vol.VIII (Zagreb
1964).

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