An Anthology of Croatian Literature

Ivo Vojnovic (1857-1929)

Ivo Vojnović (1857–1929) Vojnović was a nobleman of Dubrovnik, and one of the finest Croatian playwrights of the early twentieth century. His works reflect his interest in South Slavic folklore, psychology, and an ardent “Yugoslavism” for which he was almost executed by the Austrians during the First World War. He is most noted for the one-act plays in his Dubrovačka trilogija (1902, translated as A Trilogy of Dubrovnik by A. Broch in 1921). The following story is a paean to the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, whose show in London in 1915 moved not only Vojnović but the British public in general to a new appreciation of that artist’s skill and sophistication. It illustrates graphically the spirit of South Slavic unity that motivated both Meštrović and Vojnović. It is taken from Ivan Meštrović: A Monograph, M. Ćurčin, ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1919): 24–29; the translator appears to be Ćurčin. An Anthology of Croatian Literature 82 Chords Weary and dispirited by wandering for so long amid the market clamor of everyday life, excited and deafened by the incessant croaking of distracted frogs who from morass to morass called and mocked one another, overcome by the nameless trembling of strained nerves—I stopped, and already half thought of turning back like a man full of restrained anger, who ever seeks and desires something but knows not what would help him to undo the knot of his tangled feelings, nor with what voice to roar out the words crowding to his lips. But—to tell one’s legs to stop when they want to go further! Ah! Yes, it is easy for them. They do not realize what loads they often carry, but go on and on—with a vague idea that their pace is quicker than the thoughts and sorrows flying at their side. Nevertheless, they knew very well where they were led by a dreamy consciousness, for when my rebellious self had mounted a flight of steps a still far voice penetrated to me as if from the depths, subduing all that was unquiet, all that struggled vainly for freedom within me. “Here it is!” the voice without echo spoke, and eyes troubled through suppressed scorn woke in an ironical smile at the weird shape of the art gallery pavilion which just on this spot offended me, giving the impression of an ugly synthesis of all that life without sense and without beauty which brought me there. Upon my soul, I should have run away from this as from so many other appointments and useless, superficial duties with which we are wearied. Why meet fresh people and recognize old acquaintances? What purpose can it serve even to encounter new things if all is to remain as before: a chord of phrases without truth and happenings without feeling? In a final impulse of bitterness which made me more ungrateful towards Providence than it deserved , I turned, on the topmost step, from the yellow block of the pavilion, in order to give vent to the last spasm of my anger against everything and everybody , saying to that which drew me with magnetic suggestion from the interior : “All is in vain, your stony dreams cannot silence the storm which breaks upon a bare rock.” Then with yet one more look towards the clipped trees of the geometrical promenades blossoming only with the large hats of modern dolls—I opened the door of the artistic vapor-bath.
 To what height have I climbed by chance? What left me breathless and faint on the edge of the precipice, dizzy above the limitless space into which all Ivo Vojnović 83 lands and all horizons stretched? Was not the sensation much the same as once when I dreamed that, the lid of my coffin having been nailed down, the board under me opened like a gate of deliverance and I found myself trembling and naked on the threshold of the starry chaos wherefrom the wind of eternal life gripped me and took me like dust along the worlds? Yes, exactly as I felt then. The same great roaring of liberation drowned all my uneasiness, all doubts and all reproach. I was alone on the summit where dominating the universe was—godlike silence. And this silence—I was watching it. It froze and took shape in outlines of mountains which distance changed before the speechless traveler’s...