The origins
In 1851, on the island of Krk, a stone weighing 800 kg was discovered in the pavement of the Church of St. Lucia, dating from around 1100. On this stele, known as the Baška stele because of its proximity to the town of the same name, is an inscription in Old Croatian, a mixture of Chakavian and Slavonic, written in Glagolitic, the alphabet composed by the brothers Cyril and Methodius. Although this is not the oldest remnant found in the country, it is significant because it includes, for the first time in the vernacular, the term Croatia. For a long time, the written word was essentially at the service of faith, and it was as early as 1483 - barely thirty years after Gutenberg's famous 42-line Bible - that the Missale romanum glagolitice was printed, the very first missal not to be written in Latin.
However, poetry won the hearts of men, and the verses of the Ragusan Džore Držić (1461-1501) have remained in this one. While he bears the influence of Petrarch in his lyrical and contemplative poetry, his pastoral dialogue Radmio i Ljubmir prefigures future Croatian drama. Certainly highly regarded in his day, some of his writings featured prominently in the compilation begun in 1507 by the 14-year-old Nikša Ranjina. This first collection of poems, nicknamed Ranjinin zbornik, also features Šišmundo Menčetić. Also born in Dubrovnik in 1458, Menčetić lost his life in 1527 during a plague epidemic. Like his fellow countryman from Ragusa, he drew inspiration from the Florentine master, evoking love and sometimes even indulging in a certain sensuality.
Their contemporary, Marko Marulić (1450-1524), was born in Split, and is considered the father of Croatian literature. His Latin works,Evangelistarium andInstitutio bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum, met with dazzling success, and are said to have been known as far away as Japan. But it's his epic poem Judita, written in Chakavian, that has been best remembered. The author recounts the biblical episode from the Book of Judith, at the very moment when his hometown is threatened by Ottoman troops; perhaps this is a prayer to divine power or an encouragement to his compatriots.
Zadar-born Petar Zoranić wrote the first Croatian pastoral novel, Planine(The Mountains), which was printed posthumously in Venice in 1569. In this story of a shepherd who is delivered by fairies from the suffering of unrequited love, and who ends up following the religious path, the fear of the invader is also apparent, and the regret that so few texts are written in the vernacular is already taking shape. The previous year had seen the publication of Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje by Petar Hektorović (1487-1572), also in the city of the Doges. This unclassifiable text, a cross between a travelogue, a discourse on fishing and philosophical reflections, offers a magnificent insight into life in 16th-century Croatia. The author is also known for the sailors' songs he collected, whose house can still be visited on the island of Hvar, and for his Croatian translations of the poet Ovid.
Another major figure of the Dalmatian Renaissance was Marin Držić (1508-1567), Džore's nephew and merry boaster, whose life is the stuff of legend. It all began in earnest, however, as he entered Holy Orders as a teenager, but his passion for the theater soon overwhelmed him, and a stay in Siena did little to help. Back in his native Dubrovnik, he wrote most of his work, and although nothing remains of his first prose comedy, Pomet, we do remember that it was performed on a carnival day in 1548, and certainly earned him one of the many attacks to which he fell victim, including accusations of plagiarism. A debonair man, he had no tongue in his pocket, his jokes were full of scratches, and his disgust with social injustice was obvious. His masterpiece is Dundo Maroje , a truculent tale of a young man who forgets his father's instructions and sets off to spend all the money entrusted to him in Rome. The second half of the 16th century was marked by the Reformation, which had little influence on Croatian literature, but this is an opportunity to mention Matija Vlačić Ilirik (1520-1575), a Protestant theologian born in Labin and author of several major texts, including The Key to Sacred Scripture, a famous biblical lexicon, and Bartol Kašić (1575-1650), a Jesuit priest and the first translator of the entire Bible into Croatian. Religion, again, permeates The Tears of the Prodigal Son by Ivan Gundulić (1589-1638), a jewel of the Baroque style and a luminary praised for his epic poem Osman. His Christian morality and nationalist ideas resonate with the concerns of a people who must position themselves in the face of strong, sometimes conflicting external influences. In this vein, the patriotic design of Andrija Kačić Miošić (1704-1760) illuminates the Age of Enlightenment. A theologian and philosopher, he published Conversation agréable du peuple slave in the vernacular in 1756. His primary aim, in addition to safeguarding a certain folklore of which his country could boast, was to establish the history of his people. This encyclopedic work, interspersed with poems, continued to be enriched, even after his death; today, there are almost eighty editions.
The affirmation of an identity
In the 19th century, this need to assert an identity of its own led to the Illyrian Movement, also known as the Croatian National Renewal, spearheaded by Ljudevit Gaj (1809-1872), a linguist and politician who worked to create a unified alphabet and literary language based on Chtokavian, and who also promoted the publication of the first Croatian newspaper in Zagreb and its literary supplement. Although the era is one of Romanticism, as in the rest of Europe, the masterpiece of Ivan Mažuranić, who will hold the supreme office of ban from 1873 to 1880, has epic overtones. The five songs of The Death of Smaïl-aga Tchenguitch advocate hatred of tyranny as a guarantee of liberating power. A patriotism that Petar Preradović (1818-1872) also echoes in his songs, even if he doesn't hesitate to put love into words.
The turn towards realism is embodied in the person of publisher, poet and playwright August Šenoa. He left such an indelible mark on his era that it is customary to refer to part of the second half of the 19th century by his name. While in The Beggar Luka (1879) and Branka (1881) he painted a contemporary fresco, he devoted himself to the historical novel in The Goldsmith's Treasure (1871) and The Peasants' Revolt (1877). As editor-in-chief of the Vienac magazine until his death in Zagreb in 1881, he gathered around him a whole generation of authors resolutely turned towards modernity, not hesitating to push back the frontiers of Croatian national identity. Literature entered its golden age, with readers seduced by Vjenceslav Novak (1859-1905), affectionately known as the Croatian Balzac, the autobiography of Ante Kovačić (1854-1889) and the militant poetry of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević (1865-1908).
The twentieth century was already underway, and feathers were drinking in European aesthetics. Antun Gustav Matoš (1873-1914), whose bohemian lifestyle had taken him to Paris, was inspired by French symbolism, while his contemporary Vladimir Vidrić ended his short life as a poet cursed in Zagreb's psychiatric hospital. The brief life of Janko Polić Kamov (1886-1910), a writer so clearly avant-garde that his novel Le Bourbier desséché (The Dry Mire ) was not published until 1957, was also terrifying. Literature was abundant, with great texts such as The Dubrovnik Trilogy (1902) by Ivo Vojnović and The Strange Adventures of the Apprentice Lapitch (1913) by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, the first book by a young author who was twice shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The First World War foreshadowed the tragedies to come, and it was in its aftermath that Miroslav Krleža's talent came to the fore. His multi-faceted work earned him recognition as a novelist(Mars dieu croate), playwright(Le Cycle des Glembay) and novelist(Le Retour de Philippe Latinovicz). His great commitment to the Croatian language led him to found the Institute of Lexicography in 1950, then to campaign for the recognition of an independent nation. In poetry, it was Tin Ujević (1891-1955) who showed his true virtuosity. A great connoisseur of his predecessors, a prolific and assiduous translator of his European peers, he is said to have achieved the minor miracle of fusing classical and modern styles. Alongside him, Antun Branco Šimić (1898-1925) developed a personal poetic style, a flash of brilliance guided perhaps by the premonition that his time was running out.
At the end of the Second World War, poet Vladimir Nazor became President of the People's Republic of Croatia, and poet Vesna Parun mourned her first love in Zore i vihori, the premise of the many collections she would later publish. Ranko Marinković became director of the Zagreb Dramatic Theatre, which later became the National Theatre, and Slobodan Novak entered the literary scene, winning numerous awards, including the NIN for his novel Mirisi, zlato, tamjan. While some opted for exile and gave birth to what is known as emigration literature, others gathered around publications such as Krugovi in the 1960s and Quorum twenty years later. Little by little, postmodernism took hold, not hesitating to flirt with the fantastic, as in Goran Tribuson's Le Cimetière englouti, translated into French by Éditions Serge Safran, where eccentric, dreamlike characters cross paths, a far cry from Daša Drndić's documentary novel Sonnenschein (Gallimard, 2013), even if both books are about a quest.
Croatia proclaimed its independence in 1991, and its literature began to trickle across borders, when it wasn't the authors themselves who decided to cross them, such as Dubravka Ugrešić, who had to decide to leave her country after asserting her fear of nationalism. Several of her novels have been published in French, including Le Ministère de la douleur (Albin Michel, 2008) and Karaoke Culture (Galaade, 2012). The same is true of Slavenka Drakulić(Je ne suis pas là, Belfond, 2002), a Croatian journalist who evokes the Yugoslav wars. In theater, international stages welcome plays by Slobodan Šnajder and Ivo Brešan, and bookstore shelves are enriched by translations of Miljenko Jergović's novels(Le Jardinier de Sarajevo, Volga, Volga) thanks to Actes Sud.
