Poetry
Lelek sebra
Not translated into English
Tin Ujević · 1920
Synopsis
The poems of a man without a place: hunger, rented rooms, nights spent outdoors, the humiliation of having to ask. And in the midst of this a daily lament, in which the speaker notes that no one is waiting for him anywhere. These verses date from the time when their author was still writing articles for a political cause, which he abandoned.
Context
The collection appeared in Belgrade in 1920, from S. B. Cvijanović, eighty-eight pages, in the Cyrillic alphabet and in the eastern variant of the common language: its author had adopted it out of Yugoslav conviction, and he later gave it up, as he gave up his full first name to sign, from 1921, only with a three-letter diminutive. He was returning from Paris, where he had spent the war years among the émigrés, and the verses of the book had been written in the same years as his eighty political articles. It is from this book that comes the piece that the country knows by heart. Five more collections followed, the last a year before his death, and his complete works appeared in seventeen volumes.
Who it is for
Short poems, of a direct lyricism, difficult above all because of the form of the language: the book appeared in Cyrillic and in the eastern variant. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Source of the most recited poem in the Croatian language in the twentieth century; the country's major poetry prize bears its author's name, and so do one hundred and twenty-two streets.