Socializing Naturalism in Krleža's Croatian God Mars

• In Event: Yugoslav Responsibility II: Taking a Stand: Culture, Commitment, and Critique

Abstract

The first story in Miroslav Krleža's antiwar collection Croatian God Mars (first ed. published 1922) ends with the despairing ruminations of a Croatian coroner on the Galician front of the First World War, culminating in the phrase "and there will never be an end to it" (i nikada tome ne će biti kraja), the story's last words. But Krleža wrote and published this story in a time when both the war and the Habsburg empire at large had come to a definitive end. This paper takes a closer look at the early Krleža's much-commented-upon naturalism, that is, his embrace of a fin-de-siecle aesthetics of degeneration, disillusionment, and decay. The purpose of such stylistic "naturalism" for Krleža, I argue, is precisely to establish the deeply social character of nature itself, upending the timeless ideologies of the crown and the peasantry alike and lighting the way toward a transformed world.

Author

• Dominick Lawton, Stanford U