Vesna Parun – the most prominent Croatian poetess of the second half of the 20th century – departed this world on 25 October 2010. A lonesome soul that she was throughout her life, she left us silently.
Parun was born on the island of Zlarin in 1922. She studied at the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy (today’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) and from 1947 on she lived and worked as an independent artist.
She was a correspondent of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She received numerous awards for her work and many of her poems were published in foreign languages. She won a special award from the Central Croatian Cultural and Publishing Society (Matica hrvatska) for her poetry collection Pjesme (1948; Poems), and the City of Zagreb Award for the collection Crna maslina (1955; The Black Olive Tree). She also received the Grigor Vitez Award for her children’s verse novel Mačak Džingiskan i Miki Trasi (1968) and in 1972 in Novi Sad she was presented with the Zmaj Award by Matica srpska, the Serbian leading literary, cultural and scientific institution, as the most accomplished writer of children poetry. She was also awarded a poetry degree in 1970 in Paris.
She published over sixty books of poetry and four of her plays have been put on stage.
Her poetry collection Zore i vihori (1947; Daybreaks and Gales) in many ways marks a significant point in the development of the more recent Croatian poetry. It represented much more than the appearance of a new and original poetry. Its lyricism was a sign of a novel kind of sensibility and a symbol of the period of Croatian lyricism at the background of which was the conviction that poetry was an almost sacred calling and a strong resistance to the infiltration of ideology characterizing the writings of many post-war poets. While Crna maslina is characterized by the Parun’s principal preoccupation with love, the collections Sto soneta, Olovni golub and Salto mortale are entirely written in sonnets.
The poetry of Vesna Parun wondrously brings together traditional and modern poetical expression. It echoes with old tales and legends, folk rhymes and proverbs, Greek and Slavic mythologies, the biblical lyricism of the Old Testament, intertwining with the echoes of modern Croatian poets such as Vidrić, Kamov, Ujević, Tadijanović and others. For Parun love is the measure of life and a constant agony – even in instances when various erotic impulses are strongly accentuated, it still has a kind of holiness.
Parun expressed her indignation over the ugly side of everyday life in her book Apokaliptičke basne and a similar satire with tinges of irony and sarcasm characterizes her Tronožac koji hoda.
Bila sam dječak (I Was a Boy), Ti koja imaš nevinije ruke (You with Hands More Innocent than Mine), and Vidrama vjerna (Faithful to the Otters) are only some of her outstanding achievements by which she is remembered by a large reading audience.
Vesna Parun was also an accomplished children’s poet and found her greatest inspiration in the world of nature. Various translations and works of visual art represent another significant aspect of her intense creative activity.
Example of her poetry...
Don’t Ask Again
Don’t ask again why I love you. Ask
why grass grows and why the sea is restless.
Ask where does spring wind come from
and who steers the white ship of dreams
when the night spreads cold shadows over the world.
Don’t ask why my strange heart loves you.
Do you know how corals are formed at the bottom of the ocean?
Waves are talking about a sleeping beauty
but you live far away from the waves’ voice.
Your thought is a steep cave
against which my life is crashing in vain.
Don’t ask why I love you.
Come to me! My heart is sad.
You and the Moon: two unreachable flowers
on a high mountain of oblivion.