From the first meeting in the salon of the young and beautiful woman from Zagreb, Evgenija Gojmerac, sometime around 1910, a half-century of literary and life competition began between these two, then only poets and young men.
Ivo Andrić and Miroslav Krleža, Photo Museum of the City of Belgrade, legacy of Ivo Andrić
And it started with who will be the first to win the heart of an enchanting teenager, and through who will be the leader and first writer of this new, most famous and best generation of writers in this area and the same language – from then until today – until the moment whether who will be the first of the two to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. From that time of the long-conceived youthful rivalry over the girl’s heart, until Andrić’s death in 1975, Krleža’s eternal lag behind Andrić lasted, bigger and faster as the years passed. And the biggest gap was made in the years after Krleža’s death: the dead Andrić escaped the dead Krleža unattainably for all time. Because nothing so precisely and ruthlessly weighs value to artists as the time after their death.
Let’s say, Ivo Andrić overtook Krleža for the first time in the race for Evgenija Gojmerc’s affection: “the most beautiful Bosnian” in Zagreb’s public life at the time, quiet and humble, elegant and delicate, poetic and gentle, he easily overtook, according to these criteria and everything else, I’m tickling. A woman’s heart is, as in this case, often a very accurate scale of life.
The years before them separated them more and more, Krleža constantly went to the left politically and Andrić to the right, so they spent the first half of their literary maturity in the Kingdom of SCS: relatively conciliatory, but secretly waiting for the moment of the final showdown. He came with the creation of the second Yugoslavia, the appearance of Tito and Andrić’s approach to him, and with whom Krleža had already sat on his right knee. From 1945, politics and ideology no longer separated Andrić and Krleža, but only literature, its laws and values. That is why Broz’s influence on the final outcome of that match could not be decisive.
The FIRST “big derby” between the two writers was played during World War II and in the first year of peace. Andrić spent the war in occupied Belgrade, kept silent and wrote in secret, and provoked the explosion in the public of the new state with two things: he joined the communists and published, in a year – from the end of 1944 to the end of 1945 – three novels: “Bridge on the Drina “,” Travnik Chronicle “and” Miss “. And Krleža spent the Second World War in Zagreb, flirting with Pavelić and considering whether to join the partisans or not.
Leposava about Iva
KRLEŽA’s wife Bela (Leposava Kangrga), an actress, from Lika and Serbia, whose name Krleža changed after his marriage to him, with the explanation that “a woman with such a name and surname cannot follow me through life”, was even harder for her husband Andrić “Nobel”. Rodoljub Čolaković wrote in his Dnevnik that Bela in 1962. she literally said: “He, Andrić is a pygmy to Krleža. He wrote two booklets of some stories and Krleža wrote the whole library!”
He did not leave, and later spoke, saying “he is terribly sorry and suffers that he is not.” By the grace of Broz, the first was forgiven and the second forgotten … and so saddled with that artificial strength, he was taken to Andrić on the 17-19 square. November 1946, when the First Congress of Yugoslav Writers was held in Belgrade, at which Ivo Andrić was elected president and Krleža vice president. From then until forever, Krleža is always second behind Andrić: only he will not recognize that order, he will “send” Andrić and himself to the other world convinced that he is – the first!
A turbulent literary life took place in the new Yugoslavia, led by these two writers. Andrić became a communist functionary in various positions, wrote persistently and was even more persistently silent about the frequent gossip of the Belgrade Bazaar that he “surrendered to the Reds”, Krleža’s literary and political bites on the seats near Broz or during rare meetings with him. Behind the curtain of these public events, from the middle of the fifties, a dramatic match began to take place in the nomination of the Yugoslav candidate for the Nobel Prize, because the new state desperately needed that world medal. Krleža suggests Broz, Broz forces others to suggest Fritz (Krleža’s nickname) … Andrić is pushed by writers around the Writers’ Association, who know the weight of the literary word best.
NOMINATIONS for the Nobel Prize for Literature began in 1958: in parallel, for the next four years, Andrić and Krleža were nominated by the Writers’ Union of Yugoslavia.
In the fourth year of that series: 1961, Ivo Andrić, in an extremely fierce competition (John Steinbeck, Alberto Moravia …) won the “Nobel”. Krleža was known three more times and officially in the years 1963/1964/1965. proposed, and secretly several more times until his death in 1981.
He convinced Broz that Andrić, with his “Nobel”, definitely closed the way for the two of them to that recognition, wanting to at least bury Andrić in Broz’s eyes and in the eyes of his followers.
Krleža, and the circle around him, angrily gossiped about Andrić. Fritz said that Ivo was “a folklore, lower-class and local writer and that he received the award for political reasons, that he was an uncle, a Byzantine serf, that there were more great writers among those who did not win the Nobel than among those who did.” so place yourself at least on that side. But time did its thing. Circulations and editions of Andrić’s books, as well as translations into many languages on all continents, definitely threw Krleža as a writer and Zagreb as the administrative-ideological literary center of SFRY in the background: Broz had already promoted Krleža to “Marshal of Culture”. and thus automatically Zagreb as the center of that “marshal”. In a symbolic way, this was confirmed in Zagreb. In 1970, a special award was given to Andrić in Zagreb: in the action-poll “My favorite writer”, in which more than 40,000 high school students from Croatia participated, Andrić received by far the most votes, Krleža was second and one step away from him. Branko Ćopić.
KRLEŽA has not been translated much, mostly into German, Czech and Hungarian. He failed, after
Andrić’s “Nobel”, and one big state attempt to translate and place it in England.
Andrić quickly passed through all the languages in the world, not only because he was a Nobel laureate, but also because he was a universal literature for the whole of Europe and America. Andrić is both a world spirit and a writer, Krleža is both a writer and a limited spirit of Central Europe. Andrić is a doctor of philosophy, a man with an exceptional diplomatic career … which he could have made in any country and time, he spoke, perfectly or solidly, five foreign languages: German, Latin, Italian, French and English. And Krleža was only a cadet of the (sub) officer Austro-Hungarian military school in Pecs, which he did not even finish. He knew only German and a little Hungarian. And one special example very impressively testifies to Krleža’s narrow spirit, to put it mildly. His long-time mayor Enes-beg Cengic, and the author of the huge photomonography “Miroslav Krleza”, does not mention Andric in any single place. Not to mention the name of the absolutely greatest writer of this area and the most important artist with whom Krleža competed bitterly all his life, is just a measure of the huge “IA Complex”, which Krleža carried within himself. Ultimately, for writing great literature, these things do not have to be crucial, but they are very important.
TOMORROW: Bosniak cannonade on a Nobel laureate
Follow us through iOS and android apps
