during his lifetime:
give me a place to live,
me a whole street.“
in Croatia
Augustin Tin Ujević (1891. – 1955.)
is considered to be one of the greatest Croatian poets of 20th century. He was born in small town of Vrgorac in Dalmatia, grew up in Makarska and Split and spent most of his life in bohemian milieus of Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo. As a poet with a unique voice of modernist, turn-of-the -century lyricism, but also an essayist, translator and feuilletonist, he published a large amount of relevant work that made him appreciated and influential both in literary circles and in the wider audience during his lifetime. Posthumously, he became a true poetic and bohemian icon.
A Record on the Doorstep
These poems - it's not me, even
though I wrote them.
These moans, it's not me, though I
really sighed them.
My real life, I was just breathing.
Because I also live when the song
dies. I live when the suffering passes.
There is a dear unrest in me, and
there is my width. I let another speak
for me.
And I speak other ones myself.
I don't care to be a man if I can speak
a man in a divine way.
Oh, me.
I am than myself both smaller and
greater.
Oh, me.
My second and my third.
I don't dream of happiness.
But I have no doubt about happiness.
Look at this duality and my trinity:
there is darkness in me,
but there are serenity in me,
and my divine harmony.
Tin Ujević is, arguably, what we would namethe biggest Croatian poet of all times. Grandmas recall his sonnets being read to them as girls, on the way to be disclosed as women. Grandsons attend schools named upon him, all those hundreds of them. Even the pigeons know him – taking a dump upon his well-done, big-scale bronzes.
That he was somewhat of a bohemian lifestyle is common knowledge. The fact that, as a youth, he was an armed revolutionary ready to die for the cause is way less known. But, is a bohemian lifestylealways fully a matter of choice? Where did the revolutionary politics come from?
“While I am alive, you won´t give me a place to live, but when I die, you will give me a whole street”, the poet had said. How does that add up? Moreover – is the only good poet a dead one? The time is, it seems to be, both the revelator and the worst enemy of an artist: the living one. Romantic ideas about writing unconditionallyand for the eternity meet the stereotype of starving artists, working in moldy rooms, before they are so kind to die of tuberculosis, preferably before they turn thirty, and right before polishing their magnum opus.
Capitalism is, however, way less romantic. An applause doesn’t seem to be paying the rent. And the society taking culture as yet another market niche, is on a safe path to end up self-dismantled. Yes, the time is the most reliable art-critic, though that’s only partially true. Important things get lost in the meantime: details, nuances, contexts, and also lives. And the cult of death’s saying: hold on, grin and bear it, the heaven is near. Sometimes, when you are no more, they’ll be printing your name on envelopes. The pigeon kingdom will come.
– ANIME exhibition
