Poetry
Pjesme
Not translated into English
Vladimir Vidrić · 1907
Opening lines
Na balkonu vile herkulanske
Prazni žarke kapljice kampanske
Starac Marcus Antoninus Drusus
Za gracije, kako je već usus.
On the balcony of a Herculanean villa
Old Marcus Antoninus Drusus
Drains the fiery drops of Campania
In honour of the Graces, as is the custom.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Scenes rather than confidences: Romans on a terrace, two men crossing the night, nymphs in a wood, a landscape held still at the hour when the light changes. Everything is seen from the outside, drawn in a single line, and set down without comment. The poet never puts himself into his verses: he takes his figures from antiquity, from woods and terraces, and sets them down as a painter sets down a scene.
Context
The collection was published in Zagreb in 1907, at the author's own expense. It gathers the greater part of everything its author wrote, including twenty-five pieces composed between 1896 and that year; the first had appeared in a journal ten years earlier. Nothing followed: two years later, he died in the asylum. The motifs come from Egyptian, Jewish, Greek and Roman antiquity, from medieval Spain and from landscape, and not from the life of the one who writes. Each piece is worked down to the detail of the syllable, which Croatian criticism gives as the reason for its lasting quality.
Who it is for
About forty short pieces, to be read slowly. The scenes from antiquity can be understood without erudition. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
A single slim book, and the standing of a summit: Croatian criticism knows of no greater gap in its literature between the size of a body of work and its rank.