Poetry
Z mojih bregov
Not translated into English
Fran Galović · 1925
Opening lines
Po zemli se črevec vleče,
Trsje mirno spi,
Vrana dalko kvarče i leče,
Nebo se plavi.
Over the earth a worm is crawling,
The vineyard sleeps in peace,
Far off the crow caws and flies,
The sky turns blue.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from hr.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Twenty-two poems in the Kajkavian speech of a village in the Podravina, arranged in four parts named after the seasons: spring on the hills, summer in the vineyards, autumn in the cemetery, winter and its silence. The first is addressed to the writer's father. The motifs recur from one poem to the next: leaving the homeland, the impossibility of returning, happiness out of reach, the fear of losing one's roots.
Context
The cycle was written in two stages in the family vineyard in the hills near Koprivnica: thirteen pieces in May and June 1913, nine others in July 1914. Its author had planned it in thirty, seven per season; the war interrupted the work at the twenty-second. None of these pieces was printed during his lifetime: two appeared in a journal in 1917, and the whole was published in 1925 by Miroslav Krleža in his own, the Književna republika. His texts were later collected in ten volumes of complete works by a friend. Croatian criticism sees in this cycle the rebirth of twentieth-century dialect poetry, and a literary festival has borne his name since 1994.
Who it is for
Twenty-two short poems in a regional dialect, which Croatian readers themselves approach with a glossary. No French edition exists.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the pinnacle of its author, and ranked with Krleža's Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh at the forefront of modern Kajkavian poetry.
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