A Nimble Footing on the Coals: Tin Ujević, Lyricist: Some English Perspectives

Abstract

The Croatian poet Augustin (Tin) Ujević (1891–1955) is one of the finest Southern Slav lyric poets and one of the great poets of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. What follows is a sketch of some of the qualities of his lyrical poems, from the particular perspective of an English poet who has translated some of them. My intention is to introduce a poet who, so far, has scarcely been registered at all in the English-speaking world, by prefacing translations of twelve poems. The idea here is to pick out strands and suggest possible entry points. I also want to explore some of the reasons why I think he merits the appellation ‘great poet’, one that is easy enough to bestow, perhaps too easy, but less so to justify. The procedure I shall adopt in the notes that follow will be suggestive and glancing rather than direct and expository. While the notes will of course move into and around some of Tin’s lyrical poems and suggest paths for critical analysis and interpretative discussion, they will follow zigzagging forays and tangential meanderings, some of which will spiral back on themselves, as well as paratactic jumps and juxtapositions with other reference points and contexts, especially in the Anglophone literary tradition, rather than any kind of straightforward march towards a preformulated thesis. The act of writing this involves discovery for me too. I learn by going where I have to go (Roethke 104).