Ivica Matičević

This paper attempts to define the basic characteristics of Krleža’s and Ujević’s literary criticism discourse in the context of productive and divers Croatian literary criticism in the period between 1914 and 1952, i.e. between the end of Literary Modernism and appearance of the literary magazine Krugovi (the so-called Second Literary Modernism). Krleža and Ujević share a principled understanding of criticism as a combination of emotions (experience of something artistic) and intellect (knowledge of literary and extra-literary context), a philosophical dimension of subjects observed and questions asked, and the refusal to accept any kind of previously prescribed „objective method“ or poetics. The key difference is in approach and description. In Krleža’s work, along with his characteristic artistic gilt we can also discern a sociologic, historic and ideological level with mostly left prefix along with incorporated consideration of literary phenomenon. However, Ujević’s works are dominated by an „adorable chaotic fair of sensations, and spontaneity of soul“ (M. Vaupotić) with no firm foothold in any kind of superior opinion models. In the development of Croatian literary criticism from Literary Modernism to the literary magazine Krugovi, critical essays of Krleža and Ujević hold a special position due to their associativity, and rhetoric and erudite diversification.
 

In the poetry of Boris Maruna (1940–2007), a Croatian modernist poet who is, together with Viktor Vida, considered the best Croatian emigrant poet, one can see the influences of American popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s. By living on three continents – Europe, South America, and North America – and having gained education in Los Angeles, Maruna incorporated into his poetic code some of the fundamental and typical determinants of American cultural and subcultural lifestyle. Fast food, television, film, rock/pop music, cars, freedom of sexual behavior… are some of the adopted forms of American culture that Maruna in his narrative poems both thematizes and advocates, but also questions in an extremely critical way. Irony, humor and strong satire represent the aesthetic aspects by which Maruna reveals the hypocritical, vain, and existential face of the United States of America of that period. On the other hand, like a distant Arcadia, there are landscapes and symbols of the homeland that he abandoned, and the desire to one day return into its physical spaces. However, even the so desired homeland cannot go without critical invectives and poetically ironic comments. Even then, Maruna’s liberal “unadjusted” consciousness makes itself heard, outside all the dictates of expected behavior, thus completely isolating him from the matrix of Croatian emigration poets.