Poetry
Kipci i popevke
Not translated into English
Dragutin Domjanić · 1917
Opening lines
Zmisliš se, mama, tih jutrah tak plavih?
Rosa još s trave se svetila vani,
Stare su vure polahko odtukle,
Glas im je tenek i tih i pospani.
Do you remember, mother, those mornings so blue?
The dew still shone out there on the grass,
The old clock slowly struck the hour,
Its voice was thin and soft and drowsy.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Images and songs: short poems in the speech of the north, on gardens and orchards, the painted wooden Virgins by the roadside, flowers named one by one, and regret for a world that is passing quietly away. The first piece addresses the mother and tells of a bush of white roses against the old wall, then the ruined house and the dead garden.
Context
The collection appeared in 1917, during the war, with the Society of Croatian Writers, one hundred and nineteen pages; a second, bibliophile edition was issued for Christmas 1922, the poems copied and decorated by hand by an artist. Eight years earlier its author had published a first book in standard Croatian, marked by Verlaine and by his noble origins, in which terraces, parks, marionettes and marquises predominated: by returning to the dialect of his village he found his voice. The title announces the method, figures first and songs after. This book forms with two later collections, one of them posthumous, a kind of Kajkavian trilogy. His dialect poems, set to music, have become songs that the country still sings without always knowing where they come from.
Who it is for
Very short poems, written in a northern dialect that even Croatian readers approach with a glossary. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
The best-known book of its author, and the one that reopened to written poetry a dialect that the Illyrians had set aside.
Sources for this page 2
The pages consulted to check this page.