Ante Kadic (essay date January 1967)

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Last Updated on June 7, 2022, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 7142
SOURCE: "Krleza's Tormented Visionaries," in The Slavonic and East European Review,
Vol. XLV, No. 4, January, 1967, pp. 46-64.

[In the essay below, Kadic establishes a biographical context for an examination of Krleza's
early works, tracing his preoccupation with "tormented" protagonists.]

Since Miroslav Krleza (born in 1893) is the leading Yugoslav Communist writer and as such
believes in the progress of mankind and the ultimate victory of the proletariat, Yugoslav
critics have been understandably reluctant to analyse his early output, especially the plays
written at a time when he was a nihilist and sceptic. A thorough examination of the early work
of Krleza, in which his doubts remain unsolved, is worth-while.

For an appreciation of Krleza's early plays in which, at the beginning of his literary career, he
portrayed certain well-known historical figures as idealists who gradually became
disillusioned both with their own visions and with their followers, some biographical details
are relevant. This distinguished Croatian writer is generally considered to be at least as good
as, if not superior to, Ivo Andric. Whereas Andric (born in 1892) excels in form, Krleza's
strong individuality, his early revolutionary and subsequently revisionist ideas are real
cornerstones of contemporary Yugoslav leftist literature.

Krleza's solid catholic and biblical education, and his constant attachment to catholic liturgy,
empty cathedrals and even village chapels should not be overlooked; it should also be stressed
that he did not become an atheist and materialist through Marx, but rather by reading
Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Darwin's evolutionary theory, and Nietzsche's Also sprach
Zarathustra. Like another Croatian poet, Silvije Kranjcevic (1865–1908), whose influence on
his early writing is obvious, Krleza shouts about the great nonsense that reigns in this world;
he rejects the supernatural origin of Christ and his teaching, but he believes in his sincerity
and goodness. He is never indifferent toward Christ: sometimes he writes that he is a 'bastard'
and seducer of the weaker sex (in the poem "Jeruzalemski dijalog") and sometimes he would
like to save him from himself and his illusions, as if he were his brother or friend.

In 1913 Krleza attempted to enlist in the Serbian army but was expelled from Serbia as a spy
and then tried by a Hungarian military court as a deserter. Though an officer by profession, he
was sent in 1915 to the Galician battlefield as a private. He became ill and feared that his last
moments were approaching. His countrymen were being slaughtered en masse on various
fronts for the interests of the Austrian and Hungarian militarists and imperialists.

If it is remembered that Krleza began to write in 1914, at the beginning of World War I, it will
not be found surprising that the absurdity of human life and death were his favourite themes.
In his first published poem, characteristically entitled "Pietà," there is the following refrain:
'We were slaughtering each other, my dear mother … Oh, why were we slaughtering each
other, my dear mother?' ('Mi smo se klali, mati moja draga … O zasto smo se klali, mati moja
draga?"). In his famous essay "Moja ratna lirika" ("My War Poetry," 1933), he frankly states
that his early poetry was predominantly funereal. There were so many freshly-dug graves—
how could he see anything else but death? In an entry in his 'Diary' for 1914 he depicts an
abysmal collective cataclysm, because he saw trains incessantly bringing thousands of
wounded and mutilated victims who were admitted to the hospitals for a short while and then
inevitably carried to the cemeteries. On the city's streets only funeral processions were seen. It
is no surprise then that Jesus, the innocent victim of Golgotha, and the laments from the Good
Friday services and Dies irae ('confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis …') became
Krleza's frequent leitmotiv and cherished image.

Krleza saw dark forces on every side surrounding him and those whom he loved. He knew
that God was dead for him, but he saw Satan and his abominable assistants taking God's place
everywhere. Having rejected the Christian faith and reached a pessimistic view of the human
condition, Krleza looked in vain for a solution. He was desperate, for he envisioned his
beloved Croatia, with the rest of the world, as a runaway train moving rapidly toward an
unavoidable abyss (Hrvatska rapsodija, 1917).

Then suddenly, in October 1917, he heard about the Russian Revolution and Lenin. Lenin
came as Krleza's salvation. Subsequently he was to devote many hymns to him which did not
portray the real Lenin but Krleza's 'fantasy' about him. Lenin had replaced the Christian God:
when Krleza utters the name of his idol, he is on his knees, his imagination runs free and the
litany of eulogies becomes endless.

When the Yugoslav Communist Party was organised in 1919, Krleza became one of its most
zealous and influential members. Between the wars he launched four literary periodicals
(Plamen, Knjizevna republika, Danas and Pecat), all of them extremely important for students
of Yugoslav political, ideological and cultural life.

In December 1939, Krleza published in Pecat a vitriolic diatribe against the 'orthodox'
socialist realists (e.g. Ognjen Prica, Radovan Zogovic, Jovan Popovic and Milovan Djilas.)
Panic, disarray and turmoil grew in leftist circles. Krleza was attacked as a renegade and
revisionist; he had several faithful supporters (such as Milan Bogdanovic, Marko Ristic and
Vaso Bogdanov) but the majority of the 'progressive' writers sided with those who viewed
literature as a 'tendentious' instrument of propaganda. The Party hierarchy was thankful to
Krleza for his undeniable contribution to the Communist cause but henceforth considered him
a stubborn and incorrigible individualist and heretic.

These pre-war skirmishes perhaps explain why in 1941, when the Communists started to
organise 'the war of liberation' against the foreign occupying forces, Krleza did not join the
Partisan movement: his bitter enemies (such as the two Montenegrins, Djilas and Zogovic)
were by then in the high command. It can thus be understood why, during the entire war
period (1941–45), though in constant danger, Krleza remained in Zagreb, on the territory of
the 'Independent State of Croatia'. It is almost unbelievable that 'the father of the Yugoslav
leftist intellectuals' remained at home, while Vladimir Nazor (1876–1949), a leading Croatian
nationalist poet, far from any leftist tendency, left his comfortable residence, though old and
sick, for a precarious existence in the Bosnian mountains.
In post-war Yugoslavia Tito, after leaving Krleza for a short period in disgrace, made him one
of his most intimate associates and thus placed him in a position of great power. The fanatics,
such as Zogovic and Djilas, who had been courageous fighters on the battlefields, became a
disturbing element during the reconstruction process: Zogovic openly supported the
Cominform in 1948 and Djilas, in 1953–4, became impatient because of the slow
democratisation within the new class. Krleza, on the contrary, a rationalist moderate,
supported the regime; at the same time he devoted his remarkable intelligence and energy to
the raising of Yugoslav cultural standards (he has various encyclopedias and precious
bibliographies to his credit) and continued, with erudite and thundering eloquence, to defend
creative freedom against all Party encroachments. In his numerous essays and speeches,
particularly in his speech delivered during the Writers' Congress in Ljubljana, 1952, Krleza
has brilliantly condemned any kind of Zhdanovism or bureaucratic intervention in the cultural
domain. The present writer believes that he accepted Marxism in the economic and political
fields but has remained an indomitable individualist in literature, and that he knows well—
from experience—that he has created good literature when writing in accordance with his own
'sinful and fallible inspiration'.

Krleza is very popular in Yugoslavia, and enjoys the benefits of his privileged position, but he
continues to live and dream in an ivory tower. The playwright Marijan Matkovic, one of the
best connoisseurs of Krleza's drama, writes that Krleza is 'tragically a lonely man, lonely
when he judges, when he suffers, when he doubts, when he fights'; his numerous admirers
have accepted his leadership, but few have risen to the level of this giant whose 'feet are
deeply immersed in the mud of Yugoslav historical reality while his head is touching the
stars'.

Krleza is not different from his heroes, from his Christ, Christopher Columbus and
Michelangelo, all of them surrounded by a small élite which remained passive just when their
masters were sweating blood in mental agony. Regarding the masses, Krleza is firmly
convinced that the head stands above and guides the movements of the lower parts of the
body.

II

In his autobiographical essay Djetinjstvo u Agramu 1902–1903 (Childhood in Agram 1902–

1903) Krleza shows such exceptional knowledge of patristic and scholastic theology, Latin
hymnology and catholic liturgy that one readily believes his statement that the main interest
of his childhood was his daily attendance at divine service. He was so involved in religious
mysticism that he constructed a small altar at home. Later he decided to transform it into a
stage for his plays.

In whatever he has written, from his first to his latest work, and in spite of his various changes
in other domains, Krleza has remained adamant in his attempts to destroy those beliefs which
were dear to him in his 'teens. As if he were ashamed of how stupid he was when accepting
catholic dogmas blindly, as if he were suspicious that his personal enemies would accuse him
of religious relapse (as they did many times), Krleza regularly raises his voice whenever he
touches upon the subject of the catholic church and its hierarchy. There is such a dose of
hatred in his vocabulary that one suspects it was caused by something more than mere
ideological discrepancies; it seems as if something of a personal nature happened.
Krleza insists in Childhood in Agram [Djetinjstvo u Agramu] that it was Charles Darwin who
opened his eyes and freed him from religious hallucinations. Having discovered that
clergymen 'hide an ape's tail under their cassocks', the young Krleza became a different
person. He had previously believed in original sin. Now he was glad to discover that the
former ape was able to stand erect and, thanks to his own effort and creative power,
constantly move upward and finally take the place of the imaginary god. When man was still
superstitious, he needed the divinities, but now he knows that they were a simple product of
his imagination. God, his saints, and whatever they represent, are dead forever; even man is
unable to resurrect them any more.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra was translated into Croatian in 1912, and Krleza published his poem
in prose "Zaratustra imladic" ("Zarathustra and the Youth") in 1914. In this paradoxical sketch
Krleza's concluding sentence is most revealing: 'Doubt is in my thoughts' ('Sumnja je u
mislima mojim'). Krleza also assiduously read his favourite Croatian poet Kranjcevic, whose
best known poem Mojsije ('Moses', 1893), with its insistence upon the destructiveness of
doubt, made a deep impact upon him.

Krleza has often written about historical figures; he is attracted by those who have played a
significant role in human history; he feels an inner urge to formulate and express his own
opinion about all of them; he is neither objective nor fair when he does not agree with them.
But even when we disagree with Krleza's judgment we are forced to recognise that he is
usually knowledgeable and never dull.

Krleza's early 'expressionistic' short plays are interesting for their consistent existentialist
philosophy but are uneven in literary value and offer difficulties for theatrical presentation. In
the manner of a French existentialist writer, Krleza first tests his philosophical concepts in his
literary works, and then proceeds to formulate them as theses. All his books are a kind of
artistic laboratory testing the anxiety, absurdity and paradox of human existence. His
philosophical outlook does not fit into any definite doctrine, but is personal and original.

Krleza wrote his play Legenda in 1913 at the age of twenty, and published it the following
year in Marjanovic's Knjizevne novosti. It contains the well-known triangle of Christ,
Lazarus's sister Mary and Judas. Judas is mad with jealousy; he loves Mary but she is attached
to Christ. Christ is aware of Mary's love; they meet in the garden lit by the moonlight, Mary
caresses his feet, timid but ready to surrender; instead, Jesus asks her lovingly to leave him
alone. Judas has decided to buy a piece of property with the thirty pieces of silver he will
receive for the betrayal of Jesus, and thus he hopes to convince Mary to marry him.

This plot lacks originality and often approaches cheap erotic literature. All the prerequisites
for a passionate encounter are there: two young lovers are left alone, surrounded by the
moonlight, singing birds and floating stars. As Krleza later recognised in his speech at Osijek
in 1928, his early plays suffered from 'too much lyricism and moonlight' ('puna lirske
mjesecine').

The interesting aspect of Legenda is the fact that Krleza has adroitly introduced into an
otherwise trite framework the Tempter, whom he labels 'the Shadow' ('Sjena'). The Shadow is
in fact none other than Christ himself, his alter ego, his earthly side, which would prefer
Mary's charming presence and embraces to the snoring of the three rude and boastful
fishermen. The Tempter has convincing arguments: he shows to Christ, in a panorama of
historical events, that his church, in due time, will not differ a bit in financial undertakings
from the Jewish temple. Christ is shaken, and he appears to be ready to concede that he was
wrong, but he also realises that he has gone too far and consequently there can be no
honourable face-saving for him. He is aware that if he should show the slightest hesitation, he
would be immediately laughed at, and would soon become either a forgotten imposter or a
small carpenter in provincial Nazareth. There he would constantly meet the accusing eyes of
his mother and numerous brothers, whom he has previously abandoned in utter poverty. Only
if he appears firm will he be respected, become a martyr and a saint. People will then build
sumptuous cathedrals in his honour, and a throng of women will weep at his tomb. Rather
than an abject existence, Christ chooses posthumous fame: his spiritual pride is greater than
his instinct of self-preservation.

There is a basic difference between Krleza's Shadow and the Devil who tempts Christ in the
desert (Matthew 4:I-II). The biblical Tempter offers Christ terrestrial things, for which he
shows no interest. He is tempted, as any other Jew would have been, by material benefits
which the Jewish people expected their Messiah to bring them. In the temptations as reported
in the Bible the divinity of Christ remains intact; he comes out as an incontestable victor; his
inner being remains undisturbed. As soon as doubt is put into Christ's mind, and Krleza does
this persistently, he is deprived of his divine aureole and placed in the category of the captain
who is ready to abandon the ship because it is apparently sinking. Furthermore, Krleza's
Christ is unwilling to sacrifice his own life for the sake of those who would leave him at the
first disappointment.

Krleza's Christ does not belong to the category of visionaries such as T. S. Eliot's Thomas
Becket. In his magnificent play Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot introduces four tempters; the
first three remain in line with Christ's three temptations: they are 'temporal tempters with
pleasure and power at palpable price'. These tempters encourage Becket to return to his early
life, when he enjoyed merriment and women, to take supreme power in England and to
become the national hero by restoring Norman political independence. Such temptations were
going through Becket's mind, he knows them well and therefore is able to reject them, giving
preference to penitence, spiritual power and friendship for Henry. The real danger, which
Becket did not expect, arises when the fourth tempter puts into his mind the suspicion that he
is relinquishing all these transient pleasures for spiritual vanity, in order to become a martyr
and saint, and thus to be remembered much longer than if he had held political power in
England. Kings are forgotten, but saints become powerful after their death, they 'rule from the
tomb'. Thomas counters by putting his confidence in the 'good angel whom God has
appointed to be his guardian'. Becket is concerned only with God's glory and therefore
remains calm and confident; his faith overcomes all his human imperfections.

Whereas Eliot suggests that his hero will die for his ideals, Krleza deprives his 'dreamer' even
of this honourable exit: his Christ suspects that he is mistaken, but his vanity does not allow
him to retreat. Eliot accepts spiritual forces, while Krleza judges everything from the
materialist point of view. Krleza's visionaries all succumb, in despair or futile bravado,
because there is nothing worth dying for.

Oscar Wilde's Salomé was performed in Zagreb in 1905 and published as a book in 1912. It

had a direct impact on a number of Croatian poets and dramatists, particularly on Fran
Galovic (1887–1914). It likewise influenced Krleza, who drafted three variants of the
play Saloma between 1913 and 1918. For instance, the name of John the Baptist in Croatian is
Ivan, but because Wilde called him Jokanaan, Krleza made his name Johanaan.

Krleza's idea that Salome was madly in love with John and passionately kissed his dead lips
(at the end of the first scene in Legenda) does not come from the Bible at all (Mark 6:14-
28; Matthew 14:1-12), but from Oscar Wilde. Krleza writes that there was a happy expression
on John's dead face when Salome kissed him, and a blissful tear fell from his eye-socket onto
a silver plate. John had realised that certain things which he had ignored or despised in life
could have brought him greater pleasure than eating locusts and wild honey and wearing a
garment of camel's hair. In Oscar Wilde's Salomé, Salome bites John's mouth 'with her teeth
as one bites a ripe fruit'; she senses 'a bitter taste of love' on John's lips. Wilde does not go
further; he stops after having hinted that perhaps John would have loved Salome if only he
had known her better, because 'the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death'.

Although Wilde's play created a famous scandal in Britain, it is moderate compared to

Krleza's Saloma. Whereas Wilde pictures Salome in her perverted pleasure, Krleza in his play
describes John the Baptist as an illiterate and stupid fanatic who succumbs easily to his first
real temptation. In order to deprive John of any dignity, Krleza makes Salome an intellectual,
an honest person, searching for truth and ready to accept John's ideals if only he could
convince her 'of the existence of immaterial values'. But John fails miserably.

In Saloma John is an energumen who raves against Herod, Herodias and her daughter Salome.
Salome plans to accept a renewed proposal of marriage from Herod, her step-father; Herodias
claims that Herod is Salome's real father, but she does not believe her mother, who killed her
former husband to marry his brother. Salome fears that Herodias intends to kill her too.

Salome has saved John in the past, because he aroused her sympathy by his readiness to lose
his own life, wishing to put some moral decency into the royal court. She orders that John be
brought to her and then tells him how much she is impressed by him. Her flattery and
intimacy, particularly her perfumed body, easily turn John's head; he instantly forgets what he
has been preaching and behaves as an 'uncontrollable Jew' who cannot resist the power of
female proximity. Salome spends a night with him but afterwards becomes disgusted and
personally asks for his head.

Here again Krleza is closer to Wilde than to the Bible: the Evangelists say that Salome
requested John's head at her mother's suggestion, while Wilde writes that John became the
victim of Salome's revenge. According to Wilde, she wanted him dead because he had refused
her advances. Krleza implies that John was pointing an accusing finger at the sins of his
countrymen because he was afraid of recognising his own weakness: only those who have
experienced and accepted their human condition can be understanding and merciful toward
others.

An obvious comparison comes to mind between Krleza's Saloma and Somerset

Maugham's Rain (1921): Davidson too has taught his parishioners 'to make sins out of what
they thought were natural actions,' while Sadie Thompson takes pleasure where she finds it.
John and Davidson are severe because they are basically weak; they have about them 'a look
of suppressed fire'. Both Salome and Sadie are ready to accept truth and undergo radical
changes in their lives, but finally discover that both missionaries are 'filthy, dirty and hateful
pigs'. Both women, previously looked upon with scorn, feel triumphant in the end.

There is, nevertheless, a great difference between Maugham's Davidson and Krleza's John:
Davidson is so disillusioned with himself that he cuts his own throat; John is such a weakling
that he is denied even the dignity of despair. John does not judge himself; he is instead
repudiated by one whom he once called 'a harlot and a wanton'. Salome emerges as a heroine
and he as a moral tramp.

In June 1914 Krleza submitted Saloma to the director of the Croatian theatre, Josip Bach, who
found it impossible to produce on the stage; he remarked that it belonged to the category of
such 'dramas' (!) as the Song of Solomon, the Psalms of David and Nietzsche's Zarathustra.
Krleza needed both the stage experience and money, but Bach remained uncooperative.

In the autumn of 1915 Krleza tried his luck again by offering to Bach a new short play U
predvecerje ('On the Eve'), but he rejected it as 'obscene' and an imitation of Stanislaw
Przybyszewski. This Polish dramatist was then popular in Croatia; Krleza's introduction of
Satan ('Necastivi') into his plays was probably due to the influence of this Polish 'Satanist'.

The sketch 'On the Eve' is a parody of the relationship between man and woman. Satan
encourages man in his egoistic pursuit and he consequently strangles his sweetheart. Man is
obsessed by high ambitions: he would like to become a famous writer and escape to Paris, but
he lacks everything, particularly the intellectual and moral strength. He is typical of those
good-for-nothings who spend their time playing cards and hope to achieve great things by
pure wishing.

Krleza feverishly wrote further plays, which were refused either by Bach or by publishing
houses. He became an 'angry young man'. Military call-up did not improve his already
nihilistic attitude toward the established order. Upon his release from service in the spring of
1917 he wrote other plays which were considered equally 'unacceptable'. He then entered into
bitter polemics against all authority.

Nevertheless, Krleza proved to be too powerful a writer to be neglected. As early as 1917 his
poems and prose began to be published (Tri simfonije, Hrvatska rapsodija). He was no longer
considered a megalomaniac, bohemian, and writer without taste. Josip Bach then showed a
willingness to produce Krleza's most interesting plays, such as Christopher Columbus and
Michelangelo; but in spite of their unusual plots, lyrical passages and undeniable originality,
they were incompatible with the customary laws of stage production. Krleza is a much greater
playwright than such men as Josip Kosor, Milan Begovic or Ivo Vojnovic, particularly during
the latter's deplorable 'nationalist' period; but these three knew stage technique, which for
Krleza was at this time still terra incognita.

Although Cristoval Colon (the title was later changed to Christopher Columbus) was written
in 1917 and Michelangelo [Mikelandjelo] in 1918, it will be appropriate first to
examine Michelangelo, which is much closer in content, ideology and structure
to Legenda than is Columbus.
Krleza seems to have been fascinated since his youth by Michelangelo. He identifies himself
with the great sculptor and painter and uses him as a mouthpiece for his own views on art,
artistic freedom and creative experience. In his 'Diary' Krleza writes (1917) that only Moses
carrying the Ten Commandments can be compared with Michelangelo working on the
scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel. Both were fighting, Moses with Jehovah for the sake of his
people, and Michelangelo with the Unknown ('Nepoznati'), who tried to convince him how
heavenly it is to lead a normal existence. Krleza confesses his attachment to those who dare to
face and defy the Prince of Darkness. The golden calf and all worldly pleasures cannot
procure any satisfaction comparable to that experienced by those who conceive and create
their own universe.

Although Legenda is filled with lyrical elements (moonlight, stars, birds, and two lovers who
speak in the language of the Song of Solomon), the present writer finds Michelangelo the
more poetic. Krleza does not here indulge in lyrical phraseology; rather is his Michelangelo a
sensitive soul who loves roses, caresses a spider within its web, feeds mice, sings to the rays
of the sun, and is enchanted by the magic power of colours. Krleza's Michelangelo reminds
one of Francis of Assisi, and at certain moments we are aware that the author recalls
the Cantico del Sole and has given his hero many of the Franciscan traits.

Michelangelo was willing to renounce legitimate pleasures, such as wine and women, for the
solitary path of artistic creation; he had to say goodbye to his beloved Vittoria Colonna. To
paraphrase Chekhov's statement, an artist may have a legitimate wife (his daily job) but his
mistress (art) is dearer to him than his wife. Michelangelo and Krleza were each happy in the
exclusive company of his mistress.

Krleza insists that men who accomplish indestructible things are victorious even in death.
Michelangelo lives through his work in mankind's grateful memory.

In Legenda Krleza had already demonstrated his pungent sarcasm against the catholic church:
he had written of bloody crusades, the Inquisition, the destruction of forbidden books and the
burning of free-minded individuals at the stake; depicted temples, cold and dark like wine
cellars, full of statues honouring the 'madmen' who flagellated themselves and denied life;
ridiculed the pope and his claim of infallibility. Michelangelo ends with a scene that stresses
how the catholic church has enchained the great artist. In order to earn a piece of bread and
pay the bills for himself and his two apprentices, Michelangelo is expected to kiss the pope's
slipper and to keep silent while the 'fat and asthmatic dignitary' talks nonsense and meddles in
delicate problems beyond his comprehension. The supreme pontiff departs babbling
sanctimonious platitudes, his retinue eagerly and piously swallowing his passing remarks,
while the artist holds in his hands thirty gold coins (like Judas) which were given to him
because he had betrayed himself. He feels miserable and defeated, but he will continue to
create and find meaning and satisfaction in his work.

In his novel Na rubu pameti (On the Brink of Reason, 1938), Krleza writes an inspired chapter
about Michelangelo. The main character, who reminds us somewhat of the author himself,
comes to Rome and visits the Sistine Chapel. In general rebellious and neurotic, he here
becomes genuinely infuriated because people behave as if they were promenading on the
public square; they walk in armed with guides, cameras and binoculars, look for a while at
this or that painting without discrimination, exchange a few remarks, are delighted if they are
found witty, and then rush out. For Krleza this place is sacred, not because it is a chapel, but
because it contains Michelangelo's Dies irae, and therefore should be respected as a shrine.
Everyone who has eyes to see and a brain to comprehend has an opportunity here to see and
appreciate a unique work of art.

Krleza is often very sceptical about man's progress: civilisation goes forward, he says, the
world is changing, but man is not. In his play Aretej he writes: 'The fact that we telephone is
less important than the fact that the gorilla still speaks through us. But here, in the Sistine
Chapel, Krleza points out that the theory could be accepted that human life has a deeper
meaning ('nas zivot ipak ima neki dublji smisao'). Michelangelo was able to create such a
masterpiece because he did not follow any formulas or dogmas, but was guided solely by his
own inspiration; such a giant did not need any command—he was able to see by himself. The
real artists do not accept this or that doctrine, they obey an inner voice and not external
dictates; such artists create works which bear witness to man's extraordinary creative power.

The chapter 'Intermezzo in the Sistine' in the novel On the Brink of Reason, in large part
reproduced in the polemic Dijalekticki antibarbarus, is of cardinal importance in Krleza's
work for two reasons. First, he was fighting, at the time of writing, against those socialist
realists who were trying to prescribe to the leftist writers what and how they should write in
order to fulfil their duty as Party members. Krleza emphatically declares that an artist should
form his own ideas and then 'create from a surplus of his energy through an inspirational
process,' as he thinks fits him best. Secondly, although the leading Communist writer, Krleza
never had any patience with the masses and their stupidity, and above all he is sarcastic about
their lack of sensitivity to beauty. He is appalled by crowds that behave, when looking at the
Last Judgment, as if they were examining a piece of cloth or a pair of shoes. Not only the
candles, which damage the picture, but also all 'cloven-footed ruminants' should be removed
from the Sistine Chapel, which has no parallel in the world; only those should be admitted
who are able and ready to realise, in silence and contemplation, that art alone differentiates
man from the rest of the animal world.

Christopher Columbus is the most consistent among Krleza's visionaries: he does not
succumb to doubt like Christ and does not humiliate himself like Michelangelo; he continues
to believe in the accessibility of the astral world and accepts no compromise. Christ dies so
that others shall cherish his memory, while he himself is aware that his cause is forever lost;
Michelangelo degrades himself in order to create beauty for which mankind would gladly
forgive him his weakness; Columbus discovers the New World, but he immediately senses
that his great discovery will serve purposes totally alien to his goals—in the new continent, as
in the old, there will be interest and profit, banking enterprise, greediness, slaves, rulers and
ruled, rich and poor. Columbus undertakes his perilous adventure in the hope that the New
World will be really new in every respect, will be a striking denial of the poverty, stupidity,
tyranny and bigotry prevailing in the Spanish realm.

Columbus lets 'the pygmies' enjoy the fruits of his labours. He sails on because he cannot stop
for a second; he is much in advance of his contemporaries. He is one of those predestined to
dream because no reality can satisfy their yearning. Even stars become muddy for them in
contact with the earth and its inhabitants. Columbus is never motivated by hope of personal
triumph, posthumous glory. When he is assailed by the Tempter ('Nepoznati') he does not
vacillate, because he is made of an indestructible spiritual substance. He derives his strength
from a faith that the stars can be reached, not for his own benefit but for that of others, so that
their lives may become bearable through change and constant improvement.

Columbus dies crucified by his own crew, repudiated because he will not accept the New
World as a second edition of the old one. He is another Prometheus, but his destiny is much
worse than that which was suffered by Aeschylus' legendary hero; Prometheus was chained to
a Caucasian mountain by the envious Zeus, but here human beings crucify and spit at their
benefactor. Whereas the biblical Christ dies on his cross praying: 'Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do' (Luke 23:34), Krleza's Columbus expires shouting to the sailors
that the approaching land is a great fraud and all their leaders are impostors.

In 1955 the Belgrade theatre finally succeeded in producing Christopher Columbus. Krleza

then wrote an epilogue in which the dying admiral expresses his faith in the victory of man, in
the possibility that man will be able to bring his life into accord with the high ideals of
humanism and beauty.

Krleza indicated, first in his speech at Osijek (1928) and then in Moj Obracun s njima (My
Squaring of Accounts with Them, 1932), that as a student and apprentice dramatist he had read
many writers (such as Petöfi, Tolstoy, Wedekind, Strindberg), but he paid special tribute to
Ibsen, saying that his own dramatic trilogy Glembajevi (The Glembays) was 'qualitative,
psychological, and concrete in the Ibsen manner'. Ibsen is already present in the early plays of
Krleza, in which exceptional individuals stand isolated and apart from the masses.

Two of Ibsen's dramas in particular come to mind here: An Enemy of the People and The
Master Builder. Public opinion is unstable, Dr Stockman realises, for the same man one day is
considered a savior, only to be rejected the following day as 'the enemy of the people'. Dr
Stockman therefore despises the masses and believes solely in individual action. The master
builder Solness hangs a wreath around the vane on his house-top and then falls to his death.
Hilda hears a song in the air, because she alone believes in the master builder and encourages
him to mount to the top. Solness is hated by his assistants because, by his extraordinary
personality and achievements, he has kept them subordinate for so long; they would like to
see him stay quietly below. But the old master cannot become one of them; his greatness and
his tragedy consist in being different from them.

Ibsen's characters stand above the crowd; there is no contact between the two. Even
physically they are not on the ground, not to be found among common people, on the market
place; they stand high, close to the stars, as if the proximity of terra ferma were incompatible
with their being. Krleza's protagonists are also unusual characters; they fight their battles and
are despised by ordinary people. They too stand above the ground: Michelangelo works high
on the scaffolding and Columbus, like Christ, is crucified on the mast.

In all his early plays Krleza emphasises the lack of understanding and communication
between leaders and followers. In Legenda, during Christ's agony in Gethsemane his three
favourite apostles are sleeping; not only is he betrayed by one of his disciples, but Peter, to
whom he gave the keys of his kingdom, becomes frightened by a simple maidservant and
swears that he does not know him. Michelangelo is equally alone: he has said goodbye to
Vittoria Colonna, because he feels that she would be an impediment to his creation; he who
loves all God's creatures has no friends among human beings. Churchmen do not trust
Michelangelo's art, and artists are jealous of him; his two assistants, who help in his work and
eat with him, do not understand their master. There is no one with whom to speak, no one to
whom he can express his doubts or confide why his work is not progressing. When he
attempts to mix with people, they immediately recognise that he is not one of them and chase
him away. In Columbus, as in Legenda, there is a small élite around the leader: they interpret
the admiral's plans to the rebellious crowd; they are intermediaries between this solitary figure
and those who do not understand his language. But even this élite, 'the salt of the earth, the
light of the world', abandons the admiral, turns the tired and greedy sailors against him, and
crucifies him when it becomes evident that they do not share the same ideas.

Neither in these early plays nor in his later work, written when he was well indoctrinated and
accepted as a foremost Communist writer and ideologist, does Krleza assign a leading role to
the proletariat. It is true that he has written with great understanding and sympathy about
peasants and workers—particularly in Hrvatski bog Mars (Croatian God Mars, 1922)
and Balade Petrice Kerempuha (The Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh, 1936), and that he has
done his best to see their miserable condition improved; but whenever he conveys his ideas on
how the world should be destroyed or reformed, he chooses his mouthpieces from among the
intellectuals, who are incapable of and uninterested in establishing meaningful contact with
their fellow-men—for example in his novels Povratak Filipa Latinovicza (The Return of
Philip Latinovicz, 1932), Na rubu pameti, 1938, and Banket u Blitvi (Banquet in Blitvia,
1938–9).

III

Christopher Columbus, in which the admiral is rejected and crucified not only by the rank and
file but also by his intimate collaborators, Krleza dedicated in the autumn of 1917 to none
other than Lenin! The author soon realised the incongruity of this dedication and a year later,
when he published the play, he omitted any mention of him. Krleza's detractors (particularly
Josip Bach) noticed this change and claimed that he was hiding his leftist leanings.

Five years later, in 1924, Krleza gave an interesting explanation. Thinking about Lenin, he
confesses, he imagined him as a circle revolving around itself, a solipsist, a disciple of Stirner
and Schopenhauer. 'Since at that time I did not look at things clearly, but through misty
symbolism, I did not think of Lenin as Lenin, but as a desperado, who like Bakunin would
like to ram through the wall with his own head.' Lenin was for him another solitary Columbus
who torments himself and sails toward nirvana. In this mood he wrote Columbus 'which with
Lenin as such had no connection. The events of the spring and summer of 1918 convinced me
that this dedication of mine was a random shot, and having realised this, I decided to remove
it.' Lenin afterwards became for him a symbol of 'humanism, willpower, self-confidence, and
sailing under a full wind'.

This passage shows not only how Krleza had conceived of Lenin during the October
Revolution, but also helps us to understand the spirit in which he wrote the play about the
admiral who, obsessed by doubts as to whether it is worthwhile to discover the new continent,
decides to sail toward nothingness.
We have seen Krleza's predilection for depicting important historical figures as legendary
heroes, visionaries, individuals tormented by anxiety over the validity of their own goals or
the capacity of the masses to follow them. Lenin too, in Krleza's subsequent writing, has
much in common with all those who have suffered for their ideals. Lenin is not a real man,
such as we know him from history; he is a myth, an idol whom Krleza has adorned with
super-natural qualities; he is the saint whose shrine is in the middle of Moscow, and Krleza is
happy to worship there; very few of the faithful in Mecca or Jerusalem could compete with
Krleza when he starts to enumerate the Herculean deeds of this new divinity.

Krleza's obituary of Lenin is written in his usual half-biblical, half-mythical jargon. This new
Archimedes who dared to uplift the globe, this second Prometheus, is the hero of the final
Palm Sunday whom thankful mankind welcomes by 'cutting branches from the trees, by
spreading cloaks upon the road and shouting jubilant Hosannas'. He who was lonely, like
Bakunin, and treated like a madman when he predicted events which nobody would believe,
is now a gigantic lighthouse on the other side of the shore; he is the only guide to the harbour
of salvation.

The May 1924 issue of the periodical Knjizevna republika was devoted entirely to the
memory of Lenin. Therein appeared Krleza's story presenting Lenin through the eyes of the
home-guards Gebes and Bencina. This story is interesting both because it reveals the home-
guard Gebes' enthusiasm for Lenin on account of his anti-militarist slogans, and because it
shows that Krleza had heard about Lenin from the Croatian soldiers who were prisoners in
Russia. In this sketchy story Lenin is compared to the Croatian peasant leader Matija Gubec,
who in 1573 led a rebellion against the feudal lords with the slogan 'for the old rights' ('za
stare pravice').

A year later Krleza visited the Soviet Union and wrote Izlet u Rusiju (A Trip to Russia, 1926)
which has recently enjoyed two new editions, enlarged and partly changed. Its most revealing
chapter is entitled 'Leninism on the Moscow Streets' ('Lenjinizam na moskovskim ulicama').
Here again Krleza uses biblical phraseology: he calls Lenin master and rabbi, the Word at the
beginning and the Light in the darkness. According to Krleza, Lenin said to his disciples:
'And I say unto you, the gates of hell shall not prevail against me!' Lenin is compared with
Christ and Mohammed, who became more powerful after their deaths than they had been
during their lifetime. The guard around Lenin's mausoleum reminds Krleza of the holy
sepulchre on Good Friday. Lenin is already deeply rooted in the soul of the Russian people;
his name sounds soft, warm, quiet and peaceful. He is slowly captivating Moscow as a strange
and 'unbelievable legend'.

Krleza's Lenin is closer to Mayakovsky's portrayal in his poem on Lenin (1924) than to
Gor'ky's (1924). Whereas Mayakovsky identifies Lenin with the Party (for him the two are the
same), Gor'ky's warm tribute to Lenin, one of the best pieces written about the Soviet leader,
shows the vast contradictions between the man and the politician. Krleza lacks Gor'ky's
knowledge of the facts and Mayakovsky's emotional involvement with the goals of the
deceased 'prophet' and his anguish for the future of the Russian proletariat.

Krleza has continued to write periodically about Lenin. His articles and occasional writings
were collected in 1963, in the Belgrade newspaper Borba, under the title 'Themes on Lenin'
['Lenjinske teme']. Lenin is called the Lighthouse, Ideologue, Constructor, Hope of the
Slaves, Standard-Bearer, and so on. But Krleza himself recognises that he has not yet depicted
Lenin artistically.

This is perhaps understandable when Lenin's significance for Krleza is recalled. Lenin
delivered him from his terrible depression in 1917, caused by personal disillusions and by war
and its atrocities. Lenin came at the right moment for Krleza, who welcomed his anti-
militarist slogans like manna from heaven; he captivated Krleza, gave him courage to live and
made dialectical materialism his professed creed. Krleza is unable to look at such a man
objectively. His heart is guided by principles which are alien to human logic; without Lenin
the chaotic world would have been complete darkness for him.

Krleza has never ceased questioning, doubting, and being disappointed by almost everyone
and everything. It seems that he is a successful writer when depicting protagonists who
struggle with their tempters but not when placing someone on an altar in place of the
Christian God. Such a posture of worship does not correspond to his nihilistic mentality. He is
more convincing when destroying old temples than when erecting new.