Tin Ujevic
Encyclopedia
Augustin "Tin" Ujević is considered to be one of the greatest Croatian
poet
s of all times.
Ujević was born in Vrgorac
, a small town in the Dalmatia
n hinterland, and grew up in what were then the provincial towns of Imotski
and Makarska
. He completed classical gymnasium in Split
. Ujević spent his turbulent Lehrjahre
in the Zagreb
bohemian milieu, in the circle of the central figure of Croatian early modernism
, the revered and slandered doyen of fin-de-siècle aestheticism, Antun Gustav Matoš
. Briefly embroiled in the activities of Yugoslav
nationalism (1912–1916), Ujević left politics for good, spending the rest of his life as a quintessential bohemian wanderer, residing and blasphemously rioting in Sarajevo
, Mostar
, Belgrade
, Split and finally Zagreb, meanwhile have been short time a member of French Foreign Legion
.
Ujević distinguished himself in three fields: as a translator, essayist and feuilletonist
and poet
. He translated numerous works of poetry, novels and short stories into Croatian (Walt Whitman
, Marcel Proust
, Joseph Conrad
, Benvenuto Cellini
, George Meredith
, ...). He wrote more than ten books of essays, poetry
in prose and meditations — but his enduring strength lies chiefly in his monumental poetic opus.
Having absorbed virtually all of the Western poetic tradition (from Dante
and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
to Charles Baudelaire
, Rimbaud, Whitman and Ezra Pound
) and all the Croatian greats, including (Marko Marulić
and Ivan Gundulić
), Ujević created a protean
poetic oeuvre of inimitable flavor and inescapable grandeur. His chief theme can be termed as — everything under the sun and beyond. From pantheist
mysticism to humble Christian spirituality, from celebration of corporeality and ecstatic unity of human, non-human and the divine to meditative repose, from the ironic verse making burlesque
of modern technology-driven civilization
to the tender verbal music
hallowing ancient Dalmatia
n hamlets, from the powerful expression of erotic yearning to the resignation to the fates of human condition — Ujević's poetry is a polymorphous vision of life, blend of often conflicting traditions ranging from the Mediterranean ideal of harmonious beauty and modern existentialist sensibility expressed in the verses of unmatched virtuosity and profundity.
Ujević held a post in the Independent State of Croatia
in which he worked as a translator, and continued to publish some material. Because of this, the communist regime in Yugoslavia prevented him from continuing with his literary career for several years. Ujević died on November 12, 1955 and is buried at Mirogoj Cemetery
in Zagreb.
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s of all times.
Ujević was born in Vrgorac
Vrgorac
Vrgorac is a town in Croatia in the Split-Dalmatia County.The total population of Vrgorac is 6,501 , in the following settlements:* Banja, population 214* Dragljane, population 47* Draževitići, population 204* Duge Njive, population 106...
, a small town in the Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
n hinterland, and grew up in what were then the provincial towns of Imotski
Imotski
Imotski , is a small town situated on the northern side of Biokovo massif, Dalmatian hinterland, Croatia. The town was first mentioned as Imotski for the first time in the 10th century and it was held by the Turks from the fall of Bosnia until 1717 when it was captured by the Venetians. The town...
and Makarska
Makarska
Makarska is a small town on the Adriatic coastline of Croatia, about southeast of Split and northwest of Dubrovnik. It has a population of 13,716 residents. Administratively Makarska has the status of a town and it is part of the Split-Dalmatia County....
. He completed classical gymnasium in Split
Split (city)
Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...
. Ujević spent his turbulent Lehrjahre
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1795-96. While his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, featured a hero driven to suicide by despair, the eponymous hero of this novel undergoes a journey of self-realization...
in the Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
bohemian milieu, in the circle of the central figure of Croatian early modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, the revered and slandered doyen of fin-de-siècle aestheticism, Antun Gustav Matoš
Antun Gustav Matoš
Antun Gustav Matoš was a Croatian poet, short story writer, journalist, essayist and travelogue writer. He is considered the champion of Croatian modernist literature, opening Croatia to the currents of European modernism, and one of the greatest Croatian literary figures of all time.-Life:Matoš...
. Briefly embroiled in the activities of Yugoslav
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
nationalism (1912–1916), Ujević left politics for good, spending the rest of his life as a quintessential bohemian wanderer, residing and blasphemously rioting in Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
, Mostar
Mostar
Mostar is a city and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the largest and one of the most important cities in the Herzegovina region and the center of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation. Mostar is situated on the Neretva river and is the fifth-largest city in the country...
, Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, Split and finally Zagreb, meanwhile have been short time a member of French Foreign Legion
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion is a unique military service wing of the French Army established in 1831. The foreign legion was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces...
.
Ujević distinguished himself in three fields: as a translator, essayist and feuilletonist
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He translated numerous works of poetry, novels and short stories into Croatian (Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...
, George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
, ...). He wrote more than ten books of essays, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
in prose and meditations — but his enduring strength lies chiefly in his monumental poetic opus.
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
to Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Rimbaud, Whitman and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
) and all the Croatian greats, including (Marko Marulić
Marko Marulic
Marko Marulić |Split]], 18 August 1450 – Split, 5 January 1524) was a Croatian national poet and Christian humanist, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance. He signed his works as Marko Marulić Splićanin , Marko Pečenić, Marcus Marulus ...
and Ivan Gundulić
Ivan Gundulic
Ivan Franov Gundulić is the most celebrated Croatian Baroque poet from the Republic of Ragusa. His work embodies central characteristics of Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation: religious fervor, insistence on "vanity of this world" and zeal in opposition to "infidels." Gundulić's major...
), Ujević created a protean
Proteus
In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early sea-god, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea", whose name suggests the "first" , as protogonos is the "primordial" or the "firstborn". He became the son of Poseidon in the Olympian theogony In Greek mythology, Proteus (Πρωτεύς)...
poetic oeuvre of inimitable flavor and inescapable grandeur. His chief theme can be termed as — everything under the sun and beyond. From pantheist
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
mysticism to humble Christian spirituality, from celebration of corporeality and ecstatic unity of human, non-human and the divine to meditative repose, from the ironic verse making burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
of modern technology-driven civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
to the tender verbal music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
hallowing ancient Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
n hamlets, from the powerful expression of erotic yearning to the resignation to the fates of human condition — Ujević's poetry is a polymorphous vision of life, blend of often conflicting traditions ranging from the Mediterranean ideal of harmonious beauty and modern existentialist sensibility expressed in the verses of unmatched virtuosity and profundity.
Ujević held a post in the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
in which he worked as a translator, and continued to publish some material. Because of this, the communist regime in Yugoslavia prevented him from continuing with his literary career for several years. Ujević died on November 12, 1955 and is buried at Mirogoj Cemetery
Mirogoj Cemetery
The Mirogoj Cemetery is considered to be one of the most beautiful cemetery parks in Europe and, because of its design, numbers among the more noteworthy landmarks in the City of Zagreb....
in Zagreb.
Works
- Lelek sebra/Cry of a slave, 1920
- Kolajna/Necklace, 1926
- Skalpel kaosa/Scalpel of chaos 1938
- Žedan kamen na studencu/Thirsty stone at the wellspring, 1954
- Auto na korzu/Car on the street